Wednesday, March 20, 2013

SETILive and Zooniverse. Create an algorithm! Scan the Universe.

I learnt about SETI and Zooniverse yesterday. So excited about learning more. Would be awesome to work on a an algorithm for setilive. 
  • http://www.setilive.org/ "We're searching for interesting signals coming from the Kepler Field. Will we find life on another planet?" (Extract from the setilive.org webseite)
  • https://www.zooniverse.org/ "The Zooniverse is home to the internet's largest, most popular and most successful citizen science projects. Our current projects are here but plenty more are on the way. If you're new to the Zooniverse, we suggest picking a project and diving in." (Extract from the zooniverse.org webseite)
Curiosity drives the mind!!

Thursday, January 3, 2013

Some words about stand-ups .... Again...

Today I have introduced a new member to my scrum team. This individual came from another team, which followed some elements of agile but not to it's fullest extent. Some will say 'Who is', but it is not to my standards. This new individual was involved in stand-ups, but again it was more of a weekly status meeting. In my book, this is NOT a stand up.

Lets examine a weekly meeting vs a stand ups.

- Group meeting sitting down vs standing up: 
This Topic, when brought up, is one that I always get weird looks from. Stand ups are for individuals to be standing up in. Not Sitting down. The objective of having people stand up is that each person will get to the point right away. 2 ~ 3 min tops. It is the subconscious acting in such a way to say: I'm here for a quick FYI and help out if needed then I'm out.  When you have a weekly meeting with a team of 5 people, each talking for 10 mins. This is 50 min.... and 10 minutes is liberal.

Summary: 
  • Sitting down = lazy and talking about the work day in a relaxed manner;  
  • Standing up = ready to go and take on the day's work
- Talking about a week's worth of work in one meeting:
In a weekly meeting, each individual will start talking about what they have achieved in the past week. So this is a summary of what was done last week. It is not discussing the "nitty-gritty" details brought up in a stand up. Because it's a week, if there was an issue encountered by any individual, then this person may have been stuck for much more than needed and the solution applied might not be the most ideal. In a stand up, because of the details and short span of a day, everyone would be aware of the issue and one or more individual may have a solution at hand and ready to help out.

Summary: 
  • Talking about a week work = general and unproductive for the team except PM; 
  • Talking about yesterday = specific, right to the point, and productive for the team and PM

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

As a I would like to so that

A user-story breakdown is as follows:
  • As a <user> I would like to <do some function> so that <reason/value>
A common mistake when writing user-stories is that in the section where we specify the <user>, the author of the story specifies the owner/requester of the change instead of a system user. 

A user story is meant to bridge the business and the system/code. This means that the <user> has to be a tangible entity understood from a business perspective as well as from a development stand point.

When a business member reads "As a <user>", he/she may understand this as the "person who is using the system", while the developer is reading it as "the user with type T with permission XYZ". Both are correct. Both have a different view of what a <user> is, but most importantly both are talking about the same user and again.... both are correct!