Pete On Rails

I really like the app on AngelSoft’s new homepage.

A long time ago I created an app that would post messages to the homepage in a ticker when site visitors would do stuff. It was for a liberal political action NGO. From the homepage of this NGO’s site the ticker would flash messages like “A member just sent a fax to Senator Jim Webb about Senate Bill 1022″ or “Bill Jones just became a new member. Welcome Bill!”

I like how they’ve taken that concept and put it on a map. Nice.

Funny how we forget cool ideas from long ago. And funny how we forget that there’s always a chance to build off of old ideas to create newer, better ones.

Great work, AngelSoft. I expect to see a lot of people follow suit.

Microsoft has been issued a patent on Page-Up/Page-Down functionality (see below). I was annoyed when Amazon patented One-Click-Checkout, but this patent is even more troubling. I have written about Patent craziness before, mostly as it related to “Submarine Patents” (i.e. patents for products that will never see the light of day, to the benefit of the patent-holder).

This tactic is somewhat different. It patents an industry standard that has been in effect for a long time. 30 years ago, computers had page-up and page-down keys on their keyboards. It seems a little late to be seeking protection for such an innovation.

Anyone know the prior art backstory here?

From the USPTO

A method and system in a document viewer for scrolling a substantially exact increment in a document, such as one page, regardless of whether the zoom is such that some, all or one page is currently being viewed. In one implementation, pressing a Page Down or Page Up keyboard key/button allows a user to begin at any starting vertical location within a page, and navigate to that same location on the next or previous page.

For example, if a user is viewing a page starting in a viewing area from the middle of that page and ending at the bottom, a Page Down command will cause the next page to be shown in the viewing area starting at the middle of the next page and ending at the bottom of the next page. Similar behavior occurs when there is more than one column of pages being displayed in a row.

A lot of people are in the business of cataloging “Scrum Smells”,  those warning flags that indicate you may have some problems in your agile development process.

These are the ones that I think are important, and common. If these things are happening on your team, UR DOIN IT WRONG.

1. Your Burndown Chart does not have an entry on it for every day’s remaining activity.
2. Someone asks you how your sprint velocity is changing over time and you answer, “It’s hard to compare sprints, because each one is a different length.”
3. You can’t tell me when the next Sprint Planning Meeting is, or what was agreed to at the last meeting.
4. You have no idea what you’ll be working on in 4 weeks. Not even a foggy notion.
5. When asked if you use scrum, you have to answer, “We use our own special flavor of scrum.” Seriously. There isn’t enough process involved in scrum to have seasonings added to it.
6. You are the product owner and the scrum master.
7. You are the scrum master and the boss of your scrum team members.
8. Your burndown chart goes up sharply at the beginning of each sprint (hint: play planning poker 2 days ahead of the sprint meeting).
9. Business stakeholders get mad at the engineering team when their feature isn’t scheduled for an upcoming milestone (hint: that’s the product owner’s baliwick.)
10. You have more than 3 or fewer than 1 sprint goals on the board.

Quotes. I love quoting people. I have a ton of quotes saved in text files, on my blog, in my various mood messages on IM platforms, and who-know-where-else.

I decided to build an application to manage, organize, and syndicate quotes. You can read more about it on my project page for MyQuotable.

If you read this blog, you are invited to participate in my open alpha of MyQuotable.com.

Early Alpha image of myquotable.com

In technology, knowledge is the important asset. Sharing knowledge is the important work. Conversations are therefore the most critical element of the business.

There are particular conversations that are important to facilitate, encourage, and enable. As managers and architects of our businesses, it is important for us to make sure that productive, meaningful information flow is taking place within our organizations.

In an article that I cannot find an online reference to, John Fini suggests that innovators be removed from operation of the business. In Howard Anderson’s TR article detailing the organizational barriers to success, he suggests that the most creative set of people in the organization should have the least red tape to cut.

In my opinion, the only way to make this work in a large organization is to go Agile. If you’re in a position to choose, I think this is evidence that you should choose a startup over corporate IT if you care about inventing.

I made myself this promise my first day as Director of Software Engineering for a technology startup. Many people spend a lot of time trying to figure out the political landscape, the business environment, and the legacy on their first day of a new job.

It’s a better idea to rely on your own brain. That’s why you got hired.

It’s worth speaking your mind early, frequently, and candidly.

Forget about reputation and fallout. It’s much better to tell the truth as you see it, analyze it, and use it to bridge any divides between viewpoints. Sometimes, people that seem to really know what they are talking about…are bluffing. The only way to tell is to dig into what you don’t understand.

Call Bullshit. All the time. My boss has come to expect that of me. It’s part of my personal brand.

I went to B-School when I was stuck in a corporate job, looking for a way to climb to the next level of misery. By my last year of MBA classes, I had made a radical 180 in my thinking. Smart people don’t need to stick with lousy jobs. That is follower behavior. Lead and make a great job for yourself and others.

Innovation is not efficient. It is inherently wasteful. There is churn and rework. However, it is the only strategy to sustain a competitive advantage. So to the extent that you can organize your teams and processes to embrace this fact, you will be successful.

Self-organization and empowerment of teams has a really powerful influence on success. I had a garden one year that I micromanaged. I pruned it, weeded it, watered it, fertilized it, and generally over-managed. It died. The next year, I did a whole lot less micromanaging, and it grew to produce a lot of fruits. People are similar.

My friend and colleague Theo Nguyen-Cao posted on his blog about considering graduate school. He inspired me to dig up some reflections on my B-School experience and my startup lifestyle.

I’ve learned a few things working on startups while going to B-School. Here’s just one:

Creation of value means more than selling more
Delivering value to shareholders is often cited as a business objective. Certainly that is a component of what value creation entails, but there’s more to it. There are elements of value creation that include building better products for customers, aligning organizational and social objectives, and reducing impacts to other parties.