I will be dating myself here, but so much of the orthodoxy in the instructional design process was forged back in the late 80’s and early 90’s when the only Computer-Based Training (CBT) tools were Toolbook for the PC, and Hypercard for the Mac. Back then, the metaphor was a deck of cards and each card was a 640×480 screen’s worth of content. Due to the technical constraints it became a law that “pages must not scroll”.  The idea that you might allow scrolling was to many an Instruction Designer taboo. The organization and division of the content wasn’t based on the subject matter, but rather what you could fit in the page.  If the content couldn’t fit on a single page, rather than allow the learning to scroll and keep their context and maintain the continuity of the subject matter, the content spilled over into the next page.  This constraint created some “interesting” design choices and some very boring page-turner content and some clever ways of cramming a lot of content into the single non-scrolling frame. This approach often obfuscates key content and leaves the user to do a scavenger hunt by clicking on all the buttons and widgets to get at the content.

Even as we progressed from CBT to Web-based Training (WBT) in the 90’s the orthodoxy still held and most of the authoring tools enforced the no-scrolling constraint. As the web took root, and the learner population shifted from baby-boomer to GenX, the expectations about how to use technology were evolving based on the adoption of web-browsers. People had no objections to scrolling pages on the web, but yet this rigid constraint persisted and WBT tools lagged behind the cultural norms. WBT looked exactly like CBT, but was now HTML/Flash based rather than proprietary formats.

In my work, we convert a lot of customer’s content to XML so that it can be brought into the LCMS, managed, and republished out to print, web, and mobile learning products. Over the years we’ve seen a lot of eLearning where one course looks just like the next with a skin, and non-scrolling, very busy screens that cram a lot of content into a page. However, in just in the past year, we’ve finally seen a shift driven, I believe, by the adoption of tablet devices like the iPad and now the Kindle fire.

The simple fact that you can use your fingers to vertically swipe to scroll pages on the tablet, is now re-shaping expectations of how users interact with the content thus changing how the content is designed.

Now, content is organization and divided by its subject matter rather than some presentation constraint. And the trend that was initiated on the tablet is now changing our expectations of how we interact with content in a computer web browser.

In my blog posts, I’ve been challenging instructional designers to embrace cultural shifts, and evolving technologies rather than brace against them.  Can we finally put the discussion of scrolling vs. non-scrolling pages to rest?

In our first post on agile development from January (http://bit.ly/I67W8Q), we discussed the basics of the Agile software development process and why it is good for software vendors and their customers. This article looks at what makes a good User Story – the core of defining requirements.

What exactly is a User Story? User Stories are simply requirements. But, as with everything in Agile, we both simplify and specify the process. Instead of massive requirements documents that are understood only by a handful of business analysts, Agile User Stories are short, simple and easy to understand descriptions of functionality.

Short – typically limited to one page.

Simple –  Describes one or more “atomic” (small) pieces of functionality.

Easy to Understand – Uses short, succinct sentences and pictures to clarify things.

A good way to think of (and start writing) a user story is using the below phrase as a template:

As a <role/persona>, I want to <action to perform>, so that I can <obtain a benefit>.

This simple sentence is the basis of any good User Story, and while a statement of this type often seems overly simple – that’s the point! We want to identify simple, clear, small pieces of functionality.

But User Stories hold one more ever-so-important piece: the test. How do you prove the functionality works? This is typically described in clear, simple, user-level focused tests. In fact many would argue that the test is the story – and I’d completely agree.

So, let’s dig into an example. I have an idea for an earth-shaking iPhone app: “Time Shaker.” What is it? What does it do? Well, let’s jump in with a simple user story for my app:

As an iPhone user, I can shake my iPhone so I can see the current time without having to touch the screen.

Ok, so maybe not the most earth-shattering, but notice how this one, succinct sentence covers a lot of ground. I have specified:

My platform: an iPhone

What users have to do: Shaking

What users don’t have to do: tapping the screen

What happens: the time is displayed.

Now the ever-important test (or proof) that once we implement it, it works:

1. 1. Shake iPhone (don’t touch screen at all)
2. 2. iPhone screen clears.
3. 3. Time appears in the center / top of the iPhone top status bar

So, we can put this all together, with a simple picture, to capture the essence of our new app.

Simple and clean, isn’t it. So, you may think, hey, that user story is trivial, what about the real world? In truth, this is the real world. If you spend time and layout a piece of new functionality, you can break down even the largest of functions into a set of smaller user stories. Agile helps by creating the concept of Epic (larger User Stories that may break down into smaller User Stories) and Themes (a set of related User Stories that implement a larger whole. So, the idea (and the challenge) is to write complete, larger descriptions of functionality as a Theme for example, then construct many smaller User Stories that actually implement that theme, yet are small enough to be easily implemented and tested.

It sounds easy, and it is!

—

By Greg Schottland, Vice President of Operations at Xyleme, Inc.

It’s a new world out there for the Instructional Designer. It’s an entirely different canvas, with new colors on the pallet. It’s no longer about producing 3-ring binders, or monolithic eLearning. It’s about harnessing the new ways of learning that are enabled by a new breed of technology, and a cultural shift in how we use it.

When designing for mLearning, we need to put ourselves in the shoes of the user who is walking around with a very powerful tablet and/or smart phone. That person today has very different expectations that are informed by social media and YouTube. They expect instantaneous access to what they want, where they are, on the device they have in their hand. And learning is not a one-way push anymore.

The camera, voice recorder, and collaboration features of the devices drive user-generated content that enable every user to be both teacher and student, and the device the collaboration space.

In light of this, a waterfall ADDIE process that cranks out a monolithic elearning courses doesn’t work anymore. The role of an instructional designer needs to evolve to  learning experience designer; someone that facilitates learning and collaboration rather than dictating it. How do you create learning experiences that meet the audience where they are?

One thing to consider is the granularity of the content and the point of access to it. Clearly logging into your LMS, then registering for an elearing course, then launching it, then navigating through it to find what you doesn’t cut it. Is the LMS the right delivery channel for mLearning? I think not.  First the content needs to be created in a granular, modular fashion so that it is consumable on a mobile device. Also, be aware that the world is changing very quickly and the moment you tie your content to a specific delivery platform, be assured that the platform will change. So, to future proof the content it should be created and managed in  XML where the presentation is separated from the content and use transformations to publish to the target platform. Skeptics need look no further than Flash!

When you have content in a granular format, that content should be stored in the cloud so it’s accessible by everyone. The point of access should be the cloud, and the apps as the delivery channel. Apps for tablets smart phones are not general purpose. They are tightly focused on the needs of a specific audience.

Another thing to consider is how to engender user-generated content. The days of all knowing instructional designer that drives a process of extracting and interpreting information from the SME seems way too mediated. The expertise is out in the field and now the SMEs have unprecedented power to turn the camera on themselves.  In some cases the learner is the teacher, and teacher a learner. The Instructional Designer (ID) needs to relinquish control of this and design environments where this happens organically.

The goal for ID’s becomes designing an entire learning experience, not just a piece of content.

This means knowing the demographics of the audience, and then creating something close to a story for the course that will appeal and engage. The bar is being set higher than ever before in that we should aim for designing complete programs that combine instructor-led, social collaboration and self-study. Instructional designers are now learning facilitators.

Needs analysis that was the purview of the ISD, can be replaced by social commenting, ratings and analytics.

Your users will tell you what they want, what’s working, and where the gaps are.  Analytics will tell you what’s being used, and how effective it is.

We are at the beginning of an evolution in learning development and delivery. It will no doubt be an interesting ride.

LEARNING REACHES TO THE CLOUD

The IMS Global Learning Consortium has announced the release latest version of the IMS Learning Tools Interoperability Specification – Version 1.1. This specification provides a way for courses running in IMS-conformant Learning Management systems to securely access remote content, tools and services, and receive back user’s results. This is a big change, and a welcome one.

At long last, we have entered a new phase in learning technologies that is driven by cloud content and services.

Till this point, learning designers have had to choose between creating content with limited capabilities that worked across Learning Management Systems (via standards-based package formats of Common Cartridge or SCORM), or, creating proprietary packages with richer functionality that work only on the system on which they’ve been created.

Access to learning tools like collaboration spaces, wikis, discussions, and blogs was only available if you created proprietary packages and used the native LMS capabilities. Blackboard, for example, provides a rich set of tools; however, they only work on Blackboard. If you use these tools, the packages are not portable, and you can only choose from the set of tools Blackboard has to offer. LTI 1.1 is a game changer – the content and services are not packaged in the course, rather, they reside in the cloud.

With the ability for courses to access cloud content and services, the learning experience is no longer constrained to the proprietary capabilities of the LMS or the limitations of SCORM and Common Cartridge. Rather, learning experiences can be designed that securely access content in the cloud from multiple publishers, and the best online tools and services available, and have it be interoperable across LMS systems.

Imagine being in a course where the reading assignments are being pulled from multiple publishers, and, when you click on a link, you are taken to a quiz on a testing site in Europe; or you launch a group project with your classmates in an online collaboration space; or launch a flight simulator. And each of these remote services communicate user interaction data back to the LMS that can be used to contribute to a grade. The learning designer finally has the flexibility to pick and choose the best content, and the best services available.

Perhaps the unintended consequence of the IMS LTI 1.1 specification promoted by the LMS vendors is that it actually fosters their own obsolescence.

The specification enables courses to access remote content and services. However, the LMS need not be the only point of entry to this content and services. The content and services are out in the cloud and accessible from other non-traditional learning spaces like portals, social network applications, smartphones, and tablets. Learning isn’t the exclusive purview of the LMS.

Learning can now happen wherever and whenever the learner needs it on the device they have at the moment they need to learn it. And now that the content and services are out in the cloud and much more readily accessible, the need for formalized courses is diminishing.

I am looking forward to seeing how this all shakes out. Now that learning designers have choices in what content and tools they use, I suspect we’ll start seeing some robust competition and innovations in cloud-based learning services. The benefactor here, of course, is the learner, who will now have access to the best tools and content that are available.

—

Authored by Jeff Katzman, Founder and CLO at Xyleme, Inc.

I attended a webinar two week’s ago featuring Stacey Harris of Brandon Hall Group and Mark Hellinger of Xyleme. The topic of conversation was this idea of going mobile with your learning; a hot topic in the learning space no doubt. They touched on the concept that learning expectations have shifted with all of the new technology, which has caused change among those who are initially developing the content. Furthermore, while social media monitoring and exploring, I am seeing an increase in not only speculation of that point, but a firm belief from others in the industry that there IS a shift happening in todays learning market. People haven’t exactly been able to call it by name, but its being felt. People are feeling a shift from the current learning demands of just getting the information out there, to infinite accessibility and readability. There is an incredible demand for data, social interactions and collaboration today, in what people are deeming the “communication age” or the “social age.” Stacey and Mark pulled no punches in their discussion of what it’s going to take for learning organizations to launched successful mobile learning initiatives and discussed a number of disruptive trends that are making organizations rethink their entire mobile content strategy.

Convenience is critical

Perhaps putting the most demand on companies today is this idea that for organizations to be successful, there must be a convenience factor; you must get the content to people the way they want to read or use it, on the devices they want, in any format they choose. This is of course different from the previous way of thinking that implies just having the content out there and accessible is enough. No longer; “if you build it, they will neither come nor participate,” commented Stacey Harris during last weeks webinar. As is possible with all change, this is causing massive disruption in the current way people are developing learning content.

Social and mobile converge

“They’re [organizations are] not only being asked about their Mobile Learning strategy, but the social networking and the ability to connect people in a community that can help them learn,” voiced Mark Hellinger, President & CEO of Xyleme, “This is just, you know, a massive disruptive moment here.”

Another major shift happening is signified by the convergence of social learning and mobile learning, which is demanding a more agile approach to content development. More specifically, organizations are moving away from big, monolithic courses with annual update cycles to content that can be update in much shorter cycles of two to three months to support the constantly changing learner expectations. This ties specifically into the third learning shift.

Social feedback becomes part of the content development process

It is more important now than ever before that content developers should be easily able update and manipulate the content based on collaborative feedback and user ratings. This further proves the point that Stacey Harris, Vice President of Research and Advisory Services at Brandon Hall Group, makes that it is all about the people. It is all about the way the people need to be reached to improve their reception of the content. Technology and the consumers are changing; it only makes sense that the content development and delivery should too.

Learning is consumer driven

The fourth main idea here behind the convergence of social and mobile is that more than ever, content development and delivery is being driven by the consumer.

“What consumers are looking for is the same experiences that they’re getting when they download any other business application that they’re using on their mobile environment,” commented Stacey Harris. “So what they’re looking for are things like easy to use and intuitive environment.”

Let me point out that I understand that these things are much easier said then implemented, because most of the previously used tools had been designed around what was easy for the instructional designer.

In this consumer driven environment,

“It’s not about you know, the learning management system.  It’s all about the content” commented Mark Hellinger. “I look at this in a way that’s not about the learning content developers, but it’s about what content are the people consuming, how do they want to get it, how personal is it, and so on.”

This shift in focus is a big change not only for the learning industry but for business organizations in general. This idea that it is less about just getting the content out there for general use, but instead getting it out there so that it is customized to how the consumer needs and wants it. Smart phones were the catalyst in the mobile space in changing the way people were receiving content, but since, other aggregators like tablets have continued to pushed the envelope. All of these mobile devices have created very specific and very different sets of learning expectations.

This is seemingly the key to all of the current disruption, that the developers and designers are no longer driving content creation, but the consumers and their learner requirements are.

“Some of them are being driven not only by the delivery, you know, expectations and what they’re seeing in their own environment from a technology perspective, but are also being driven by how they’re currently interacting with the world around them, which is where social learning comes in” echoes Stacey Harris.

I just want to take this opportunity to clarify an important point:  social platforms do not equal social learning. Informal learning also does not equal social learning. It is not enough to create a social platform and get your content out on it. Social learning absolutely has value and purpose, but it must be done correctly.

Stacey Harris answers:

“It’s a form of learning which the learner acquires information, skills and knowledge from interaction with formal and informal members of, as I said, a group, but more importantly it’s learning that’s affected by the act of learning in a group.”

While people are interacting socially on mobile devices, that doesn’t make it social learning.

This leads into the fifth type of disruption: the misconception that people are learning on their smart phones. Based on research done by Brandon Hall, people are not really spending their time “learning” when on their smart phones.  People are using their smart phones for weather, games, and the GPS or map features compared to tablets where people are searching, buying and spending time there.

Mark Hellinger frequently speaks to this point, saying

“M-Learning means different things to different people.  Tablets are great learning devices.  And Smartphones are great performance support devices.  They’re not better than Tablets, but they’re more ubiquitous. The ability to learn is different than the ability to get information.”

In summary, disruption means having a comprehensive content strategy. To be relevant in the current space, you have to have a strategy that encompasses more than just social media accounts. Consumers are demanding their feedback be heard and implemented. And enacted quickly. If you take only one thing from this post, understand that the main importance to be getting the content to the consumer anytime, on the devices they are already on and in the format they want.

Take part in the public’s first glimpse of Bravais [brav-ey]; Xyleme’s new cloud learning solution that allows you to quickly deliver personalized learning applications.

This is a rare opportunity to attend a live webinar with Xyleme’s President & CEO, Mark Hellinger. He will be your guide as you explore everything Bravais.

Along your journey you will find out how Bravais can revolutionize the way your learners access and interact with your learning content by:

* Delivering learning anywhere, anytime, on any device
* Allowing content to be accessed within your learners favorite media channels like, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Google+
* Liberating content from your learning management systems to create personalized learning experiences
* Tracking how users consume and interact with your learning content
* And more!

Reserve your spot now – before it’s too late!
 Tuesday February 7, 2012 @ 11:30 MST

What is Bravais?
Bravais is your cloud of learning content upon which you can quickly build personalized learning applications, connecting your students, employees and customers to the content they need, using the apps they prefer, on the devices they choose. Read more…

__________________________________________________________________________________________

Results of the Meet Bravais Webinar

Thank you to everyone who tuned into our webinar today. It was a great success and we wanted to share some of our favorite moments with you!

The results are in!

Mark stressed the importance of changing current content strategies because learner expectations are shifting to more mobile, social and informal models. He recommended moving away from having the LMS as the center of content delivery, and instead, putting material onto a content platform like the cloud. He polled the audience on how many people are still using an LMS-based delivery system and only 18% were not.

After the first poll, it was clear that not many people had adopted a cloud based model yet. After explaining the benefits of Bravais and the importance of getting content anytime, anywhere and on any device, Mark polled the audience on their greatest challenges moving to a cloud-based delivery model.

Our favorite mentions on Twitter:

Mark’s top quotes from the webinar:

“It’s time to rethink our content strategies. The future is moving to content being on a content platform like the cloud and then having the ability to receive feedback on the content.”

“The key is delivering content anywhere, anytime, and in any format.”

“One size does not fit all in learning. There needs to be personalized learning experiences.”

“For feedback to be effective, it needs to be more than ‘I liked it’ or ‘I didn’t like it.’”

The market is clearly excited about this breakthrough solution. If you missed the webinar and would like to see Bravais in action, please join our monthly webcast or watch the on-demand version on our website. If you would like someone from Xyleme to reach out to you to talk more about it, please email sales@xyleme.com!

I know it’s a bold statement but just for a minute here, humor me and think about a world without physical textbooks, where teachers assign, distribute, receive assignments and grade on a tablet computer. Where students can receive and complete assignments, and follow their grades on their tablet. Learning on a tablet means no paper, no heavy backpacks, instantaneous feedback, financial savings and the ability for customization to each student.

And that is exactly what Jeff Katzman, CLO at Xyleme, is proposing; replacing textbooks and gradebooks with tablets for both students and teachers. The idea is called People’s Publishing and it was presented at the Ignite Keynote at DevLearn 2011 in November.

First things first; getting in Jeff’s head.

Background

“I have a daughter in 7th grade and a son in 4th grade. My kids amaze and inspire me. They are so bright and hip, and using technology is a given in their lives.

Mobile devices, and social media are second nature to my kids, but when I send them off to school, I collect their gadgets because they are prohibited, then I hunt around for their photocopied home work assignments, load them down with textbooks, and walk them to the bus stop.

I am struck by how deeply technology is integrated into our lives, but yet my kids’ classroom isn’t all that different from my own when I was a kid. Yes, there are computers in the classroom, but the technology hasn’t really been integrated into the culture of learning. Our kids are there, but the schools aren’t….And in dealing with my kids’ homework, I see how slow the assessment cycle is. By the time the teachers hands out the assignment, the kids do it, turn it in and it’s graded, a week can go by.” – Jeff Katzman at DevLearn 2011

Where we are now

Jeff isn’t the only one talking about this revelation.  On the Move Systems Corp., an emerging mobile applications developer, announced in November of 2011 that they are planning new educational apps designed for children as schools begin trading textbooks in for iPads.

“For the next generation of students, the backpack could be obsolete,” said OMVS CEO Patrick Brown. “Tablet computers like the iPad are replacing textbooks and changing the way children learn inside the classroom and out.”

Adopting technology into the current culture of learning has many benefits. Some of the most notable include going paperless, a quicker assignment cycle and long-term financial savings. Think about doing 5 assessments in the time it takes to do one, as well as the ability to instantaneously adapt depending on each students specific needs.

There are many arguments to getting rid of textbooks, the biggest one being cost. However, while state budgets are becoming tighter, the price of textbooks increases annually. According to the Digital Textbook Run Down put out by the Association of American Publishers, the K-12 textbook market reached $6.4 billion in 2007 and the average lifespan of a K-12 textbook is 2-3 years. And, if as much as one paragraph in the text is wrong, a new edition could be required, according to the AAP. (Note, there is no cost to update incorrect text in digital books.) Now let’s examine this statistic. One student can use one tablet device to read books for all 4 years of high school – costs anywhere from $100 to $600. Furthermore, the content downloaded to these devices is free or cost a small expense. Compare that to digital books, where there’s no cost to update incorrect text.

College students are the most effected by cost of any student group, averaging around $900 a year on textbooks, according to a 2010 study by Nicole Allen. Furthermore, new editions of most books are produced about every three years and as any college student knows, each student is required to purchase the updated version. Compare that to the idea that if books were digitally published, production expenses could be reduced by approximately 55.6 percent (National Association of College Stores).

Not all students learn at the same capability, yet textbooks are produced for mass consumption. There needs to be more choices in the material teachers present.  They are grading mostly by hand, taking up a lot of time. There needs to be a more efficient way. Lastly, as we all know, each student is far from the same. We need to better support those that do not fit the mold.

The solution

Learning on tablets and teaching material based and housed in the cloud.

First, an example of cloud learning and teaching in action.

“Suppose I’m a teacher and I assign a math drill. As soon as the assignment is done, I know where my kids stand. Jenny aced it, so I go to the cloud and find a more challenging assignment. Jimmy didn’t do as well, so I find an easier drill. What took several days now can happen in moments” explains Jeff.

The key to People’s Publishing is the teachers, and that any teacher with great content can be a publisher. You no longer have to be a publishing powerhouse to share your innovations. The reality behind this is that the content will be monetized so that each time a piece of content is used, the teacher who created it receives a royalty. For example, if Mr. Jones makes a great physics lab, he publishes it to the cloud, another teacher downloads it, and Mr. Jones receives a royalty.

Maybe the best aspect of the whole plan is that because of the social society we live in, the content will constantly be rated and peer reviewed, forcing the content to continuously improve. The better the content, the more peers will choose to use it, the more royalties the publisher will make. Of course, this begs the question of who is paying for the use of content. Students are the ones using content and therefore, the ones that have to pay for it, but they don’t necessarily have income. By proxy, the responsibility falls to the parent for homeschooled or private school students. In some charter schools, teachers may have a student budget for materials, and in Public schools, the district will be the buyer.

Tablets are more accessible now than ever, and can integrate technology into the culture of learning. We can empower teachers with a cloud of content from which they can create individualized learning. And we can create a self-sustaining cloud using economic incentives.

You can watch Jeff’s full presentation of People’s Publishing from DevLearn 2011 below.

Today, the expectations of learners are much different than they were only a few years ago. Much of what is currently rolled up monolithic, one-size-fits-all courses must give way to small but relevant content updated and delivered continuously to learners based on their individual profiles or needs. In other words, learning needs to go Agile.

In a recent blog post by Bersin & Associates, Josh Bersin provides a great description of how Agile applies to training:

“Agile is also built on the understanding that people learn in small chunks – so while it may in fact take a year or two to build a highly complex website, no person needs to try to understand the entire engineering program in advance. […] Daily work becomes a part of a bigger project in a continuous, dynamic process.”

What does this mean for us?

So how do Training Vendors help training organizations go agile: they adopt Agile Development. Agile Development is an approach where vendors deliver very fast, iterative product development through close collaboration with its user base (i.e. training organizations). According to McKinsey & Company:

“This agility can deliver new systems and capabilities in a matter of weeks or months instead of years. A frequent iteration cycle also keeps IT developers and business users in sync on requirements and priorities. […] Since this approach is most effective when business needs are shifting, it is gaining favor among many IT departments.”

Indeed, according to a survey of global executives by McKinsey, over 70% of respondents have deployed or piloted Agile Development within their organizations in order to be more responsive to changing business conditions.

In 2011, recognizing the rapid change in the training industry and our clients’ need to quickly adapt to the needs of their learners, Xyleme fully embraced and adopted enterprise-wide, the Agile Development Model. This post is the first in a series, written by Greg Schottland, Vice President of Operations for Xyleme, that presents the business value of using Agile, why it has proven a key competitive advantage to companies like Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook and many others. Part one of this series provides a simple overview of what Agile is. You’ll begin to see the value just discussing the basics in this post.

Agile is simple:
• Build in small increments.
• Focus your team on one well defined goal.
• Keep the team small.
• Coordinate daily
• Get everything (and everyone) else out of the way.

And the result:
• A working product in weeks, not months.
• Customers that get what they are waiting for quickly.
• Developers that build what the customer wanted and nothing else.

Sounds simple, and it is. While there are volumes written about the details of effectively practicing Agile, this post will focuses on what Agile looks like “on the ground” in daily practice.

Taken from Josh Bersin’s blog

It all starts with an idea.

Somebody wants software to do something. Say we get this great idea to be able to create and store documents on the web (a la GoogleDocs). Rather than designing an entire web based document application, we start small. What is the most important problem to solve? This is simple to define. What do users have to be able to easily do at the most basic level? For our application, this would be the ability to create a simple document using a plain web browser over an average internet connection. You may be thinking, that is pretty basic, shouldn’t we at least include other basics like spell checking, text styles, maybe import/export? I mean who wants a document processor that doesn’t support bolding and italics…I mean really!

This little example is chock full of important lessons that Agile helps address. We might be inclined to design a more complete first version. The logic being it is easier to design everything in from the start. And, in some cases it is. But, more often than not, without getting key usability, architecture or market acceptance issues implemented and down cold, much of our “complete design” ends up being wasted, as key assumptions run into challenges. Years of effort and millions of dollars down the drain.

Let’s look at our example in this respect. We have put a stake in the sand and said that the one thing that has to work is the ability to create basic text document on any browser over an average internet connection. If this doesn’t work, no one will care how slick our spell checker is, nor how easy it is to bold some text. If response is slow, same problem. But, if we have version 1 prove that we can connect 1,000 users to our system, and things are snappy responsive and basic documents can be created, isn’t that a relief? Now we can build on top of this base.

So, turns out our too small initial release may be just about right. What we do at this stage is write up our requirements for this initial release in a set of short, concise documents called User Stories. They include two major pieces of information: 1) a clear statement of some small functionality and 2) detailed description of how to test this functionality. That’s it. No massive requirements document. One of our User Stories might be that users can connect to create and save a blank document. The test would detail step by step instructions of the URL, the buttons pressed, dialogs that appear, etc.

Ease of Development.

As you can see, with well written User Stories, development is a whole lot easier. We code to the test; back our design into the tests. As a development manager, or customer, I can sleep at night. Developers aren’t done until our tests work. I don’t have to watch over it.

So, our initial planning will consist of creating a small set of User Stories which define our first release. We’ll call each such small release a “Sprint.” Each Sprint will be scheduled to last several weeks. No magic number here, can be 2, 3, 4 weeks, but probably should be less than 8 weeks. You’ll go back and forth trading off initial features against time and end up with a Sprint 1 of say 4 weeks (just an example we chose, no magic number).

You’re almost ready to start coding. The one remaining task is to take each User Story assign them to developers and have the responsible developer estimate what tasks they’ll have to do to implement the User Story, and estimate their best guess of how long it will take to complete that task. But…one twist. These tasks have to be small enough that they take between 4 -16 hours to complete. This level of detail is often unnatural. But, it has magic built into it. By forcing yourself to break down work to this level, invariably important overlooked details emerge, providing for much more accurate estimates. Now, admittedly, you are relying on the best guess skills of your developers, which will vary by developer, by task and sometimes by whether they have just had their morning coffee and are feeling optimistic or not. But, it provides a starting point, and over time you’ll find your developers get better at this, and you get better at coaching your under or over-estimators.

Ready. Set. Code!

You are ready to start coding armed with User Stories and a detailed task list for each developer. You may feel like you’re traveling light, and you are. That’s the whole point. You backpack has everything you’ll need and nothing else. You will have a daily meeting (called a Scrum) with all the developers with tasks on the project and you, the project leader and no one else. No managers, no other developers, no business analysts, just the “doers.” These meetings will be no longer than 15 minutes. You’ll ask each developer just three simple questions: which task did you work yesterday, which tasks will you be working on today, what is blocking your progress? That’s it. No lengthy design discussions or play by play of your development day. Just these three simple questions and 15 minutes later you are done. The purpose of this meeting is to ensure that any blocks from progress are removed immediately and that your developers stay on task. You, as leader of the Scrum, are there to listen for blockers and remove them as fast as possible. All the team members know exactly where the project is all the time.

One final task.

At the end of each day, developers update their task list with their best guess of the amount of time remaining to complete each task. Sometimes these numbers go down as work progresses, sometimes they increase (as you discover the task is more complex or taking longer than you guessed). Over time, you get a nice chart of all the hours remaining for the Sprint, called a “Burndown” chart. This chart, while simple, is amazingly powerful. Bersin reports,

“Companies which can adapt to agile management models will move faster and out-perform their competitors.”

So that’s it. Your team writes code each day to fulfill the tests in your User Stories, meets for 15 minutes each day, updates the time remaining for their development tasks — and after 4 weeks (in our example), you done. Delivered on time and to spec.

It sounds easy, and it is!

In our next in the series, we’ll look at how this simple process translates into faster time to market, lower costs and wildly happy customers.

Pastiche 2.0 is finally here. Pastiche 2.0 is a major step forward in the development of the Pastiche ecosystem with the introduction of the Pastiche Store.

The Pastiche Store is a hosted service offered by Xyleme that allows you to build an online catalog of your training products that your learners can browse and download using your custom branded Pastiche app. What is more, the Pastiche Store provides a web administration interface that allows you to control how learners access your content on a per product basis:

• Public: you can make a training product public so it is available to all users of the app.
• Private to specific users: for each particular product you can decide which users can access it.
• Private to specific groups: build a catalog of products and make it available to a group of users.

Your learners get access to your product catalog through the in-App Store accessible through your custom branded Pastiche iPad app. The first time they access the store front they will be required to sign up for an account. Once they have an account, your learners can browse the store where they will only see the products they are entitled to download based on the permissions you have assigned to them.

 Figure 1 – The in-App Pastiche Store

With the Pastiche Store it’s also very easy to distribute updates. You can update a product using the Store web administration interface and it automatically becomes available to your learners for download.

On top of the Pastiche Store, this new version of Pastiche also includes support for 5 new questions types and an in-App browser to access external resources.

New question types

Pastiche now supports a total of 7 question types:

• Fill in the Blanks
• Multiple Choice / Multiple Select
• Matrix – New
• Matching – New
• Image selection – New
• Drag and drop – New
• Bin Drop – New

With the new 5 question types, Pastiche offers a wide range of interactive activities.

In order to provide the best user experience we have adapted the drag and drop metaphor to a touch screen. We decided to use tap once to select, tap again to release.

Check the “Our Solar System” course that you can get through the Pastiche for iPad demo app.

In-App Browser

Whenever a user access a link to external web content such as web pages or videos that you authored in your content, Pastiche will flip the screen and open those links within a built-in browser. Learners can navigate the external content and easily go back to content they were reading at any time.

Download our sample Pastiche 2.0 iPad app from the App Store and let us know what you think.

While you play with the new functionality, we’ll be busy building new exciting features for the next version of Pastiche that will be released in February 2012.

For more information on Pastiche 2.0, please visit our website.