[dba-VB] SCRUM: Northwind.NET v.1.2 Released

Gustav Brock Gustav at cactus.dk
Wed May 13 06:25:17 CDT 2009


Hi Shamil

Well, that download count is already at 600+, so I think you are right - the description and purpose really makes a difference. Actually, I'm convinced it has, as I often myself have felt lost when studying a project at SourceForce or elsewhere with pages of change logs but nearly nothing about what the project is for or why I should download it not to say get involved. Very nerdy, and we all are so busy so spending half an hour to find out what you could have read in two minutes from a text is not going to happen.

I have no formula to get the teamwork to operate more smoothly. Two problems exist. First, the different level/experience of the members; second, the lack of priority.
The first is natural with the diverse backgrounds and interests we have. However, I don't think anyone expects special education videos, only advice and links to relevant material. When you take the time to make a video I'm impressed, as I wouldn't know where to get the time to create such even though it could be fun. 
The second as hard too, as most of us have a job for a living and also - for some - even a life of some kind (even Drew who used to burn his house down but I think he stopped that activity). Thus, projects like this will be assigned second priority and this can mean zero attention for days, even weeks. This could perhaps be met by some members working together as one "member" hoping that at least one is active.

Of course, just a few more participants would help a lot, and perhaps some discussion can attract some. Yes, that's you - the reader - feel free to join!

At this moment I've already learnt a lot - having seen the value of subversion in action is alone worth all the trouble - and I would love to experience the SCRUM process in full too - at this moment I think we have had only a little more than the smell of it - just enough to feel the potential.

/gustav


>>> Gustav at cactus.dk 12-05-2009 21:36 >>>
Hi all

Still recovering from a second instance of the flu (not H1N1A) within 6 months (what did I do?) browsing hundreds of messages, I'm a bit late on forwarding this from Shamil which was trapped by some stupid spam filter somewhere on the 10th of May:

Hi Mark and All,

This project was started as SCRUM one, which (SCRUM) implies a lot of
teamwork and a lot of feedback. So far it was not that much (as expected)
teamwork (mainly on evaluation/start-up phase) and almost none feedback. We
have to handle these issues right now - and I'm asking for your advise how
you wanted to approach those issues and to effectively solve them. Let's
call the current phase of our project a retrospection phase, and let's have
it deadlines set for two weeks: 11-MAY-09 - 25-MAY-09. All and every
opinions and proposals are very welcome.

Let's freeze work on v.1.5 and v.2.0 during these weeks - I personally can't
handle quickly them alone as I have to work for my customers, and making
v.1.5 and v.2.0 as a team is looking now questionable (please correct me if
I'm wrong) as we do not have currently a team with intermediate/advanced
C#/SQL development qualification and personal tutoring of beginning C#
developers, which can be done currently only by Gustav and myself, is very
time consuming. As well we do not have active discussion on detailed v.1.5
and v.2.0 functionality and in SCRUM the requirements are defined by
ProductOwner/stake holders/customers/external audience/market demands not by
the SCRUMMaster/SCRUM team developers (as developers tend to do more what
they like to do (fun and sometimes tricky programming) not the real life
software development - we all know that from our own experience  )

If you look at the project downloads/pages views/visits stats here:

http://northwind.codeplex.com/stats 

you'll find that we have got 500+ downloads during last 20 days - that's not
bad at all. But from that 500+ downloads we have got just one review and
link (from Alex Dybenko), and we have got linked by Jim Lawrence from
AccessAdvisors site. 

The 500+ downloads show that there is an interest of developers to the
subject of this project but absence of feedback is confusing (here) as I
wanted to have this project to be feedback/market demand driven not just as
exercises in teamwork/learning by doing experience. Of course exercises in
teamwork and learning by doing experience are useful but without active
feedback we risk to end up doing "mad scientist exercises" not
learning/demonstrating real development stuff applicable in real life
business software development...

How well feedback works shows the fact of my contacting with Alex Dybenko
and giving him an url to northwind.codeplex.com (that time without
"Welcome", "Mission Statement" etc. info and having just Northwind.NET with
MS SQL backend) - I must say first reaction of Alex was rather skeptical but
after I added "Welcome", "Mission Statement" etc. (and Arthur and Gustav
edited this text), and I have also made downgrading Northwind.NET to use MS
Access backend, as well as ASP.NET reporting sample with MS Access backend,
then added COM callable classlib contacting web service - after that I have
got positive feedback from Alex and he blogged on our project and also Jim
Lawrence referred northwind.codeplex.com from AccessAdvisors web site - as
you can see just one feedback contact resulted in "some fluctuations" of our
roadmap, which brought 500+ downloads...

I do think that the most important task now is to get active feedback, which
will make corrections to our roadmap and which will drive our development:
the best tool we can use now is the "Word Of Mouth" to persuade developers
who get our stuff downloaded to give us active *constructive* feedback (as
Alex Dybenko did) for us to "convert this feedback" into even more
interesting stuff to get downloaded by developers and used by them not only
"to individually dig out into samples" but to have the stuff ready to be
applied (with some rework/additional work) to their everyday (IT
development) business tasks...

As for tutoring our team C# development beginners - as I noted above doing
that personally is very time consuming - the idea is to somehow make this
personal tutoring/coaching publicly available (that public availability will
bring even more feedback I expect), and we can do that by publishing short
sample videos. But making such videos the way I did it by taking
screenshots, then putting them into MS Movie Maker, then adding comments
etc. is not looking as the right/professional way to do (and is time
consuming) - I suppose that using Camtasia Studio
(http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.asp) would be more effective and would
produce more useful videos. And we can make such videos as a team by sharing
the tasks: one gets prepared scenarios, one gets video recorded, another one
with native English makes voice recording, another one makes all kinds of
video effects etc. 

But Camtasia Studio isn't free (USD299) - if it would be possible to get a
shared license for our team (just for USD299?) I'd not mind to invest some
money in purchasing it...

What do you think about all the above?

Please make your proposals how to activate feedback - please "brain-storm"
this issue assuming we have unlimited resources - when analysing proposals
we will sort out/put on hold proposals we can't work with now because of
some limitations...

Thank you.
--
Shamil


>>> marklbreen at gmail.com 09-05-2009 13:06 >>>

Shamil / Gustav, do I need to go anything for you for this project at this
point ?





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