Of all the information that I have gathered, I must make it as simple as possible and avoid any kind bullet points. There should also be details in the slides when it is printed out, but not when presenting. Hide all the details.

There’s a few good tips from Dave Yewman on making a good powerpoint presentation slides.

Information are collected through slideshare and scribd. Both contains huge amounts of slides that are being used for presentations. Its up to the team to filter it to create a presentation suitable for our situation. If its possible, I will upload the results to both of the sites (in gratitude of providing these excellent sites) and share it.

Hopefully we can avoid this embarrassing situation.

The results for the User Stories & Daily Updates is left hanging, I didn’t get the chance to get the feedback that I need from my colleagues. One thing for sure is, my approach of introducing and implementing does not bear the results of what I had in mind. There’s room for improvement.

Since I’m freelancing, I guess I have the time to reflect and read up on some experiences on User Stories & Scrum from the trenches.

Update 2/07/2009: Fixed a typo. LoL.

I tried to muster an environment where people would update each other through email every day on the progress of the project. Having a sense of progress can really turn things around. I have no solid data or citation for this, just from my observation so far. After I stopped emailing the team members of the updates, none tried to continue this practice that I’m trying to establish. Why?

These are the questions that I’m trying to find an answer, maybe I can find it in some books but it’ll be better if I asked my colleagues directly.

I thought the use of User Stories is obvious to get what the users want but there’s a bit of confusion involving what’s inside the URS is not what the users want. The users wants this and this, but the team lead insist on following the URS. So what’s it gonna be?

There was a weird suggestion though to make the user stories as a formal means of refining the user requirements which require the user’s signature. I’m really against that, the last thing we need is to get the users to sign on more stuffs, it will make them think that they’re signing a death warrant if something goes wrong which will make them avoid signing it. They’ll bounce the form back and forth to other officers.

What I had in mind is that these user stories are only to help us make better software and useful for planning.

There was no objection to the usage of user stories, so I guess I can look forward to seeing how the user story are being produced and used.

Three months (for a seven month project) spent on requirement specification without starting development is a mistake. The development should start after the first few weeks of engaging the users for its User Requirement Specification, since it will give time for planning, learning, designing, iterating and refactoring.

Some might say, “What about the costs, and all the other stuffs if we start too early when the users are not sure?“. When the developer starts early they can plan about the framework or architecture of the system. Prioritize the first few requirements and see how it can be as flexible (this is difficult) as possible so that if its not needed, it won’t be a problem. If a certain requirement are dropped due to time constraint when revising the URS, no big deal, later on when its needed, we already know it can work perfectly and kudos to us for having a resilient design.

Two more months left to deliver, more than half a dozen modules have not even begin development.

I fear for what the future holds. I hope that I am not doomed to failure. Heh. Another rant fueled by the power of hope!

Writing calls on two skills that are so different that they usually conflict with each other: creating and criticizing.

Now I understand why it is so hard for me to write sometimes, I wrote long posts and in the end I dare not post it because it has become so dull to the point I feel ashamed to post it (sometimes I post them anyway).

function actions()
{
        $projects = $this->input->post('project');
        $this->_check_selected_item($projects);

        $action = $this->input->post('action');
        // So what the fuck does this do?
        // When a form passes the value 'invoice' as an action
        // (Invoice those bastards!),
        // $this calls for the method 'invoice' (e.g. $this->invoice())
        $this->$action();
}

Designing and Engineering Time: The Psychology of Time Perception in Software

Few interesting points:

• Response time of typical action in the application should be about 2 seconds.
• If response time takes more than 5 seconds, it is required to show a progress indicator. User should know that system is working on the task.
• If system response time is more than 7 seconds, people tend to leave web site or switch to another task. It breaks interaction flow.

Another important point is how to make a noticeable performance improvement.

If you are going to improve performance, it should be faster by more than 20%. Otherwise most people will not see the difference (it was shown in some researches that performance difference is noticeable in a range between 10% and 18%). For example, if you are improving search function with 10 seconds response time, it is required to make response time at least 8 seconds (or less).

That blog post describes it in its context of making its software, for the public, I’m not sure how it fits in my situation but I’m sure it has its place when the time permits (very tight schedule).

That was one of the awkward moments I had in college, the other one was when I almost threw a chair (which could cause collateral damage) and yelled at someone in the class for provoking me too much.

Ok, enough of my past, how to learn a little every day?

• Make it part of your routine and give it 20 minutes.
• Think About What Interests You and Surprise Yourself
• Take notes, spend some time reviewing

After watching The Psychology of Incompetence by Ron Burk on youtube, I searched for more information on Fixed mindset. I found a book that might help me in learning about people and myself.

The book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success is an interesting view of the way people think, even though it couldn’t possibly cover all the mindset that mankind have, it is still interesting by the looks of it.