Report from my backyard - at work

This is a report from my business backyard literally. But at the same time I am at the front yard realizing communication plan, giving talks & demonstrations and educate service staff. I am having F.U.N

The new customer website is launched 6 May so I am just finishing the last of communication plan and launching preparations. Last week I had three days of editors classes. This week I have three days full of meetings with people giving service to customers (helpdesks etc). Next week I will have four introductory classes for helpdesk & service people who must be able to help customers with help of the new website. At least this is what people think I will tell them.

These meetings have however another more important agenda for me. That is to make everyone understand that "shit in - shit out". All persons delivering service must give feedback and report problems both customers and they self have while looking for informations & services at new website. We have developed a brand new search interface based on tagged information. But we need service staff´s help to set the right tags. We need the switchboard operators help to find what people look for. What people cannot find at the website they must give me information about.

Our new customer website will be the first "helpdesk" our customer get in touch with before they lift the phone. That is why operators and helpdesk staff is so vital for refining the new website. Of course I had tons of usability tests helping us taking decisions. But to trim the search interface will be a never ending project. And luckily I have got the perfect assistant to help me.

I love this phase of the project - the public part. I love talking at big and small meetings. I love to teach and develop my teaching. I love meeting all these beautiful people with experiences I do not have. They give me energy even if I must confess it also takes some energy too (this weekend was really hard since I was in coma half the time). But today I feel great again.

After a meeting far away I managed to slip into my home office for the first time of fourteen days. I got lucky when I saw the cherry three was in full blossom. I can see it from my new office at bottom floor but I have to almost lean out of the window. I picked my camera at afternoon coffee break and shot a few pictures. Sadly there were soft semitransparent clouds over the sun. But at next visit there will be no flowers left over so the photographing had to be today.

This cherry three has given me many great metaphors at work regarding presentations and web productions. This what it looked like today.

While looking below I think you understand why I have had great use of it for visualizations.

This picture is from last year when a truck hit it while trying to deliver some goods to the adjacent restaurant. I think it was a good thing to tear down that brick wall since it has given me,  my students and my listeners at talks so many laughters. It has been a great metaphor for crashed projects, crashed teams and relations, "see the light in the tunnel", contrasts between good and bad, ugly and beautiful etc. But I think the new fence is horrible (the truck drivers insurance company could probably not afford anything better). I preferred the brick wall after all. It had its charm while it still was functioning.

Pictures from SDC2011 and Scrum and Agile Fundamentals

Software Developers Conference 2011

Scrum and Agile Fundamentals with Alistair Cockburn

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It has to be fun, or else we cannot make it

I survived - does it make me to a certified Scrum master or Scrum mistress?

No I have nothing to write about. Or too much. My brain is still like minced meet after two days of Software Developers Conference at Göteborg and three days of "Agile fundamentals and Scrum master class" with Alistair Cockburn at Stockholm. I am however now a certified Scrummer. I not only survived Alistair´s class - I learnt a lot too. I listened to a lot of great speeches at the conference. I meet a lot of interesting people making me feel good. And I had F.U.N all the time.

I am happy to say I am not surprised about Alistair´s teaching ability. To be surprised is namely the eight deadly sin due to the Agile world. "Never surprise your customer". The way Alistair presents himself  - on his website and all youtube clips - and other peoples reviews made a potential customer like understanding what I could get. So I knew what I "bought" when I once e-mailed him in December and he delivered just that kind of class I wanted. Just that kind of class that makes me understand and learn the very best. It was actually worth some pain to get there.
Except for being an excellent teacher Alistair is a really good listener. He saw subtle gestures from the students and got back asking if there was any questions or explaining things that could have been misunderstood. An amiable person with an excellent presence in the room.

There are a lot of new impressions I will take care of in time. A few hightlights are::

• the way you can trim a project team with help of retrospective
• the value of self organizing teams and 
• the need of involving the customer even more than I do today

The class content was both familiar and new to me. No surprises but deepening my knowledge and made me understand better. The mixture of workshops and talks was excellent to achieve the goals.

I was happy anyhow when I at third round of the hectic ping-pong-ball game could recognize myself and one of my old roles in project teams. I was the last person just before throwing the balls into a basket. I screamt "we are doing great" at about third set. At fifth round still screaming "the quality is still improving - there are three balls all the time,WE ARE THE CHAMPS!" while we had shuffled the balls three and three at a frenetic speed making us sweat and getting lactic acid in our legs. It felt nice that old Bettina had a place in this "new" world.

No it is not a new world - it is my world. It is just that I haven´t had an label for it yet. And without a label I have had hard to get the managers with me. I am a natural Scrummer my boss told me - I just needed some theory and lots of practice. With a well known "method" it will  be easier I think. At least to get the managers with me. The team members must be convinced by acting.

When we had the last Aha moment that day I remembered what a pain "big balls" was in the ping-pong ball game. They took just as much energy as three small ones and gave only one point. I recalled how easy it is to run for "bad balls" and fix problems that actually not is within current project. So of course I said:

"Do not accept big and hairy balls"

I am definitely not a Scrum mistress (getting back to title of this post). Not the way those word can be misinterpret anyhow. But as always I like to explore words - amused by the way they change meaning. (And I am also a fan of bad jokes...as if you wouldn't have noticed)

Once upon a time the mistress was the wife of the master. A person with respect taking care of house, family and servants. But it also meant power. Something a Scrum master do not have. Something the word Scrum mistress may or may not associate to now a days depending on your own back sack of experiences and preferences. (Wiki about mistress)

Anyhow - I am the one I always have been. Just more prepared for the future and new projects coming in. For the moment I am too tired to figure out next step but I do recover well. Soon I will be back on track again. 

There is more to be said about this class and Agile development. But not today - not tonight. Tonight is reserved for catching up with bills. And simply sleep.

Links
Pictures from SDC 2011
Pictures from Scrum and Agile fundamentals
"It has to be fun" while learning the background why I initiated setting up this class and inviting Alistair to Sweden

Elvira lives at my office and she was very
happy for the "I survived pin"

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It has to be fun, or else we cannot make it

Long distant usability test - a better experience than expected

This are a few notes about running usability tests at long distant. I never believed in it - but I think I have changed my mind.

As a final test of the new Customer website I created a usability test with help of XLS. I actually did not believe in this method but since we are running out of time. We needed to check up a few interface "problems" and we wanted to see if use right keywords is specified. So I set this test up reluctantly.

When you run a usability test sitting right beside the candidate you can tell them to give up. You can also see if they are so lost that they cannot have a chance to fix next question. You can adjust the language to the tester while running at volume test like this one you cannot.

Scrum and Agile fundamentals with Alistair Cockburn - the circle is closed now

In December I was supposed to attend an Scrum Master class with Ron Jeffrey. I had been told by my colleges the added value of going for one of the ones who was there from the beginning. Sadly Ron had to cancel because of his knee and I was really disappointed.

Updated: About the course 6-8 April 2011 - I survived

A class like that one is expensive for my organization and what I was going to get wasn´t what I had expected despite a great replacing teacher. It would take years before next chance for me to meet any one from "the inner circle". Besides I got crowded by work so I cancelled that class.

I was bored that day
I was bored that day and got a sudden idea - why not try that guy who's website had been bubbling up at different Google searches last two years? Different subjects all the times. The man I speak about is Alistair Cockburn (read his website and you understand what I mean). I had seen a few videos at Youtube and presumed he would be exactly hat kind of teacher I want to go for. I had also searched for information about any Scandinavia travel plans a few times.

A day at The Opera or some words about decremental "system" development

A day at the Opera - what an amazing theme I thought sitting at the train that morning. I was going for a kick off regarding the new cooperate Intranet - the top layer, the "hub" connecting all other 50 Intranets. The conference room was called Carmen and full of excitement I entered the foyer. But it was empty - except for the three beautiful "ghosts" above.

Proxyservers, statistics and usability

When realizing there is such a thing as web visitors statistics many people feel very bad at ease. I can understand that – I do not want my footprints on the net to be recorded. I do not want my Internet habits to give background to commercial campaigns for example. I can see more and more people are hiding from web statistic programs like Google Analytics - they only show up in server based statistics.

Some people use free proxy serves when they want to hide their identity. There are several free proxy serves to use on Internet. Just surf around. But keep in mind that most of them do not work as great as they say...