We all have difficulty getting stuff done. There are always challenges that derail us or distract us from getting the things we need to get done, done! Whether that be Facebook, text messages, instant messages, email, cell phone, or the household dog that wants to tell you that the cat wants out. Let’s face it, we at a time of instant communication and information overload.

Enter time boxing. Time boxing is a technique where you stay on task for a block of time and then break to do what ever you want to do. It is effective and has proven to work. There are many articles on time boxing you can find on the internet and a good intro is 5 reasons to practice timeboxing. One technique that I think is very well written is Pomodoro Technique. Being a fan of E-Myth by Gerber I like to document routines and provide feedback into the routine to improve the process. Pomodoro Technique has this nailed.

All you need is a paper and a timer to get off your procrastinating butt and get stuff done! I use a dashboard timer for my Apple Mac from http://www.freelanceadvisor.co.uk/lifestyle-and-timeout/tools-time-boxing/ allows you to setup multiple dashboard timers of differing times to execute during the day.

Just got off a project where everything was specified by the customer as one liner requirements. System shall do this. System shall do that. Such old school gathering of requirements shows the lack of understanding what a customer really needs and what adds business value.

Here how software development falls apart right from the beginning. First, there is no realistic way to track metrics. Second, the business analyst have to string together what “they” think are the processes. Many requirements are likely never defined but should be or implied. No way to track that either.

Here is an example building a house to illustrate a point:

House shall have 3 bedrooms
House shall have 2 bathrooms
House shall have a kitchen
House shall have 4 electrical outlets in each room
House shall have a family room

Ok, the the analyst spends time putting together the specs and then reviews it with the customer.

Customer response:

Why am I walking through a bedroom to go from the kitchen to the family room?
Where is the shower? I said we need 2 bathrooms! (yeah but you said bathrooms, I didn’t know if you meant half-baths or full-baths)
Why are all the electrical plugs on the same wall?

This goes back and forth and then you get to the front of the house and all the subjective stuff comes into play such as what kind of door, windows, colors and it goes on and on.

So what is wrong with that? It is terribly inefficient. Once more it is a guessing game for the analysts to interpret what the customer wanted and sometimes the customer needs to be saved from themselves. Customers tend to ask for the moon when a 1 acre plot will do.

Also on the metric front, it adds no value and has no meaning. I have 200 one-liner requirements and they get broken down into 40 use cases. Some of those requirements are shared across multiple use cases. So what is the point is tracking how many requirements are complete? You could to have the PM map it all out and spend the better half of the week trying to build a burn down chart for the last week? Who cares about last week! What about this week? If I have one use case that has a single requirement that takes 30 hours to implement and another use case with 10 requirements that takes 30 hours to complete are you going to build a project plan based on the velocity of 11 requirements a week? What happens if I schedule 11 of the 1 requirement use case’s that take 30 hours to complete each? Worthless metric.

So what is the solution? Well I believe small incremental builds that continually add business value is the way to go. Agile development has been working well in that regard for years but it is not is not without issues. Stories written by product owners are either well done or not much better then the one-liner system shall requirements.

I will be discussing the requirements gathering topic in follow up articles. So what works in your shop?

Don’t you hate gathering metrics that don’t mean anything? In the 80’s it was KLOC (thousand of lines of code) in the 90’s projects got so big we had to do big bang waterfall estimates where nobody had a handle on how long it would REALLY take to complete a project. Now in the agile age we have story points but management still wants hour estimates so they can answer, “when is this done?”

All of these methods have issues with dealing with the unknown, risk, interruptions, attrition on and on and on.

I do like story point estimates. SCRUM and Paceline as well as other agile methodologies do estimate based on story pointing. A customer or product owner would describe an end user feature. The team would then apply a story point to the feature. One common method is use a fibonacci sequence of 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13. This was really effective and development teams would quickly have the same feel as to a story point based on amount of work, complexity and risk. Stories that were larger then 13 probably were too complex or too broad and would have to be either broken down or the product owner would rewrite the story. It is amazing how quickly the team sizes the story pretty much the same way.

Story point estimates are great because:

• They incorporate complexity and risk
• They are decided by the team
• Easy to size up an iteration once you have team velocity (number of story points complete in a cycle)

Where story points fall down:

• Management erroneously attaches hours to story points

Great article on story points vs hour estimates I recommend reading blog post from Jeff Sutherland Story Points: Why are they better then hours?

To address the deficiencies, the backlog is complete can be calculated by velocity of the team. Velocity of the team is known after several cycles have been completed. But then all the management what-if scenarios start being asked:

• What if I add this team member?
• What happens it this team member leaves or get reallocated?
• How many folks do I need if I want the backlog complete by 2nd quarter?

SCRUM tools out there do not do a good job providing this information so management and product owners can make decisions. There are other variables such as heads down time of the developers versus meetings they are attending but not coding.

Development metrics are not enough, I believe team management metrics are also in order and should be captured. Beyond story metrics, velocity should also be combined with:

Code blocks per week
Hours of coding per week
Average hours per code block

Why I think this is important is we all know interrupt driven development is unproductive. A developer working one block of 4 continuous hours will be more productive then a developer that works 4 blocks 1 hour each with meetings in between each block. Now here is a metric that management should focus on! An optimized work day for developers will have a higher velocity then an one that interrupt driven.

I would put forth that this should be measured by role: Team Lead, Developer, Test Plan Writer, Test Executor, etc.

Now if we had those metrics combined with velocity we can see how long it will take to finish this backlog of 50 stories and we now have metrics to make management decisions to try and make the team a productive as possible.

What metrics have you found to be useful?

We bought a home in Fuquay Varina that is 20 years old and we knew it was going to take some work to get it where we want it to be. One of the items on the list was the deck that was build to wrap around the above ground pool. My estimation was the addition to the deck was a do-it-yourself job by the previous owner. The wood was splintering, the rails were rickety and very much out of code. The rail posts were only 4×4’s and not very steady. The kids were constantly getting splinters in the feet and because it got so much sun during the day, nobody would go out there until late afternoon or evening. The deck also got very hot as it was in constant sun. We would not go out there until early evening.

We had Rick Ransom, that built and remodeled homes around Raleigh, Garner, Apex, Cary, Holly Springs and Clayton area, put together together a plan to take care of our problem areas. We didn’t like the fact that there was not an edge piece around the pool which made quite uncomfortable to sit on the edge and dip your toes in the water. We also wanted to cut down the amount of sunlight on the back deck. We also would like storage so pool cleaning equipment was not laying all over the place.

Rick did an incredible job. We have bench seats around the pool that doubles as storage for the pool equipment. Rick designed a shadow box over the main part of the deck with an outdoor ceiling fan to keep the air moving. Lattice work on the side also help cut down the sunlight but still lets the air move around. The edge board bent around the pool looks great and keeps the board edges from poking and scraping as you sit on the edge of the pool. The posts are strong with chippendale rails that look great! Rick did an incredible job and I highly recommend him!

If you have a remodeling or new addition you will not go wrong with Rick Ransom. He use to build houses until the bubble popped. So no project too big or small. Give him a call at 919-369-6370 to get quotes on your project if you are in Raleigh area.

You can see more images (before and after) at http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=184985&id=607962134&l=bc70f64903

Before

After

The Sony Vaio VPCCW17FX uses the Realteck ALC262 codec and out of the box Ubuntu 9.10 the internal microphone does not work.  However the mic input jack does work.

Recently purchased a Sony VPCCW17FX laptop that is equiped with an nVidia 220m graphic chipset.   Not a fan of Windows 7 so I installed Ubuntu 9.10 without a problem.

However to take advantage of nVidia and have all the bells and whistles I needed to update the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file.   There were several issues generating via X -configure.   First was the xorg.conf file when tested would come up with a blank screen.  The second was getting the monitor timings correct.

I found this helpful post on nVidia forums and have to give credit to egghead3!

Anyway, to make life easier for everyone I figure I would post the files needed to make nVidia shine on the Sony laptop.   If you are not using a VPCCW17FX this might not work but check the post mentioned above on how to set up your nVidia 220m

Download xorg.conf and SNY05FA.bin and place them in /etc/x11 directory.  Make sure you backup your old xorg.conf file if you have one.

UPDATED: Fixing wireless issues with Ath9K driver.

There is a a bug with straight 2.6.31 kernel install with the wireless driver and it will drop the connection during reauthentication.   The following will correct this problem with 9.10 Ubuntu

sudo apt-get install linux-backports-modules-karmic linux-backports-modules-wireless-karmic-generic

I’m not a doctor but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.   That being said I did work for a large cell phone carrier and visited a testing lab where all the engineers used hands free sets with phones they were testing.  Understandable since they get in demo phones for testing and until they do, they have no idea what the radiation levels are being emitted.

Now I’m not going to argue if cell phones are safe or not.  There are plenty of new articles out there like this one from The Street,  but I did find this useful CNET site that does describe the cell phone radiation levels and what they mean as well has list currently manufactured cell phones and their radiation levels.

In a nutshell, I think I will use my bluetooth until all this is sorted out.

This weekend a local wine store opened in town and my wife and I decided to spend time on main street and check it out.   It was a nice store in a historic building with a good selection of wine.

I notice a buddy of mine who is an area wine rep was helping the new store owner by doing some tastings in the back of the store.   Great guy and very knowledgable.   Never got to talk to him as he was helping another couple.

We browsed the store for probably 15 minutes to see if he would free up.  As we perused the wine there were some unique selections that we studied.   We might have even bought a few of these unique bottles but nobody helped us.   I am assuming the other two other folks were the owner and employee or partner.  Not once did they greet us, welcome us to the shop, or asked if we had questions.  Nor did they seem busy as they just hung out at the cash register talking to each other.

Now this might be a bit obvious but if a person comes in your shop they are likely there to buy.   If you do not help said customer out or out right ignore your potential customers, how do you plan to sell the wine?   If I wanted to be ignored and not talk about wine I could have gone to the local super market.

When your a specialty shop your advantage of the mass market such as a super market is expertise in the product.   People go to these specialty stores to learn more about the product and enjoy the experience.

As a business owner you should always ask yourself:

• Are you ignoring your customers?  What can I do to increase interaction?
• What is your competitive difference the market place?
• How can you exploit that to your advantage?

I was reading Whitney Hoffman’s article on the Difference Between Listening and Hearing and it got me to thinking about all the conversations I have had last week, last year and all my life where the conversation was frustrated by neither one of us listening.   I would say X and they would hear Y and then I react to Y and they start talking about Z.   Very frustrating.

I have played a lot of poker and chess in my lifetime.   I like to think several moves ahead and reading people is important to know how they react to such moves.   My father is a classic conversationalist.   He can steer a conversation and take you down a path without you knowing it.   As a teenager it was a bit unnerving because the topics would change to a subject I would rather not talk about and find myself in the middle of the conversation without knowing how I got there.

Conversations come in many forms today with social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook.   Filtering information has become specialized features of these sites and value-add software such as TweetDeck.    Tools make online conversations much easier and person to person it has become harder.    Especially when some folks solely rely on their email accounts.  You can tell a person something but if it isn’t in a email form then the conversation didn’t exist for them.      And what about a more flamboyant conversation online?   Well, Google Wave is about to wash upon us like a tsunami.  I think this problem is just going to get worse where personal communication becomes harder and harder.  Where the computer and email has just about put the death knell on writing letters to a friend and cursive writing, we now have instant conversations via email, Twitter and Facebook.

But what about in person?   I am in the middle of reading    Just Listen by Mark Goulston M.D. (no I do not get any referral fees from Amazon, I live in North Carolina) and he talks about the difficult conversations were people are not listening.    I find it an excellent book for anyone that finds themselves in difficult non-listening conversations be it your teenagers or your boss.   I won’t go through the techniques here since I am only half-way through the book and Mark does need to make a living so buy his book!

That brings me to Whitney’s article of a video of Malcolm Gladwell talking about plagiarism and I had to laugh.   About a month ago I found a presentation with Seth Godin at a change conference where Seth talked got an advance book of The Tipping Point by Gladwell and it inspired him to write a book on the subject and give it away for free.   Of course he sent Gladwell a copy of the book and asked permission to publish it since it was on the same subject Gladwell was writing about.  Gladwell not only approved but wrote the forward to the book!  I recommend you check out Seth’s presentation. It is a great talk on is approach to publishing and marketing that is quite unique and I think can be applied to many businesses and not just publishing.

Organizing

It isn’t easy to clean up my internet mess!   All the social media sites, the blog, the email accounts, rss reader!    Here is a couple of tips to help you clean up!

Blog clean up

This blog has been updated with the latest WordPress.  I originally used an installer my hosting company provided but it was always out of date. I worried about migrating to a new installation of WordPress but found the export utility to run flawlessly on a test site I use.   I am happy to report it works perfectly!

Next I made sure I was signed up on WordPress’s site to receive an API key so I can integrate Akismet plugin to combat spam in the comments.   Everyday there is some bot trying to post about buying drugs online or linking some other phishing site.   Thank the heavens for this plugin!  Filters out the spam so I do not have to go through all the bogus posts myself.   Imagine if you didn’t have a spam filter on you email?   Yeah, it is the same problem with comment system on a blog!

I have also found a new template via WordPress Theme Review that reviews themes for search engine optimization (SEO).   This was highly rated so I figured to give it a try.   I do like the layout but may change the colors.   What do you think of it?

Next I tackled adding Feed Burner to the site.   I found out that Google has acquired Feed Burner and my account with GMail was an old business account.   Didn’t seem clean to have people subscribe to the blog and see an old business account.   So, I had to create a new gmail account and sign up for Feed Burner.   The problem was my WordPress plugin for Feed Burner was updated but I would not see the site use the new URL for my feed.   I found out it was the permalinks feature that wasn’t allowing the system to be updated.   I had to turn this off to get it updated correctly.  Once it was fixed I could turn permalinks back on for the site.

Next was adding Google Analytics to the website.   This was relatively easy by signing up for analytics and inserting a bit of code in the WordPress theme.  Google Analytics gives great detail on where people are finding my site, where they are coming from, what day and time they are coming as well as keywords used from search engines.   Invaluable to track the progress and success of the site.

RSS Reader

I read voraciously!   I found that Google Reader allows me to read many blog feeds in an easy to use interface.   Switching email accounts I was worried I would loose my list of blogs that I follow.  Google has setup The Data Liberation Front that shows how to import and export from any of Google’s applications to other applications.   It was pretty painless to move from my old account to the new account.

I periodically clean up the sites that I read if I find they are no longer active or their posts are no longer an interest to me.   I am back down to 81 feeds that I read (ok, skim) and you can see the ones that have interested me through my shared items.

Twitter

I have not been using Twitter very much because I found that when you have a lot of followers it is hard to keep up what is going on in the world.   Twitter recently updated their system to create lists.  I find that pretty useful, however I found an application that helps Twitter shine and that is Tweet Deck.   This little desktop gem will work on all OS’s that support Adobe Air.   You can setup columns based on users or even search terms.   They also have an iPhone app that is excellent.

Next for Twitter I changed my generic ho-hum background.   I found that Twit Backs can generate a custom background with all your information about you via a web interface.  You can see the results on my Twitter page.  Let me know what you think?

Bookmarking

I have been a long time user of Delicious but I had an account that was an old alias of mine.   Trying to be consistent I created a new account on Delicious with my name and was able to easilly export from my old account to the new account without any problems.   If you want to see what interests me you can see my links on my Delicious.com/geoffcorey

Anyone else have any internet cleanup tips?