Is it ketchup or catsup? I prefer ketchup. Some people like ketchup with everything they have. So maybe a little ketchup will be good on the blog.

Every Friday, I get a reminder that I have a blog to write and I have intentions to write something every Friday, but the more times I ignore it, the easier it is to push it back into the mind and get busy with other things. But it’s always there.

Seriously, I have had an incredibly difficult time in writing new posts for this blog. There are always excuses and reasons to not write, but for me, the difficultly comes from these strengths (blog weaknesses):

For brevity I will catch up on what’s been going on at New Dawn using hashtags:

#skiingforthe2ndtime #longesttopdowntestinginhistory #longestwinteronrecord #AmazingTeamBuildingActivities #EggDrop #RocketLaunch #Hiking #UltimateFrisbee #BoardGames #BookDrive #SnowShoeing #Sledding #Winning #TrainingConference #RainForConference #ReleaseMajorVersion #UltimateFrisbee #ReleaseAnotherMajorVersion #SunFinallyShowingUp #hardwork #fun #dedication #NewLogo #NewBrand #RagnarThisWeekend #hashtaghell …More

I hope to not be playing ketchup next time. I am running Ragnar: Wasatch Back Relay this weekend and I should have some pictures and stories to share.

So if “ketchup” wasn’t bad enough, here’s some extra cheese or the lesson I need to learn:

“It is better to have blogged and #fail ed than to never have blogged at all”

Follow me on Twitter: @MrtheTrain

Here’s the scenario:
You are at the mall. (10:00 am)

The kids want to play on the kiddie rides and mom wants to go shopping. (10:15 am)

You’re not much of a shopper,so you stay with kids and mom begins shopping. (10:16 am)

Luckily there’s a bench for you to sit down, because standing in one place for a long time is tiresome. Some time passes. (11:00 am)

Kids get tired, or your run out of quarters (usually the latter). (11:15 am)

So you decide to take them to the toy store –”you can look, but we’re not buying anything.” (11:20 am)

More time passes. (11:40am)

Kids are getting hungry and tired, and you are hungry, tired and annoyed from “can I have this” and “but I really want it.” (11:45am)

So you venture out to find mom. Besides, its lunch time now.(11:50am)

You start looking into all the stores to find her. (12:00pm)

You may get some weird looks and you are dragging the kids behind you and peering into “non-men” stores. (12:15pm)

More time passes. (12:30pm)

You stop and buy a cookie and a drink (12:45pm)

You continue the quest to find mom and give her the crying, whining, tired, hungry kids. (12:55pm)

You are at the last store to check and do a thorough sweep of the store, possibly calling into the changing rooms for mom. (1:00pm)

You find nothing. (1:01pm)

With even more speed and intensity you pick up the pace and walk the mall again. (1:10pm)

You think, “I can’t believe I forgot my phone.” ( 1:11pm)

More time passes. (1:30pm)

Feet are sore, legs are sore, back is sore and tired, you are now carrying two of your children in your arms or shoulders. (1:35pm)

You are just finishing your third trip around the mall, when mom walks out of the store you just checked 5 minutes ago. (1:45pm)

How do you feel at this point? (1:50pm)

Two simple things that were NOT done beforehand had a significant impact on this experience:
1) No time was set to meet back together
2) There was no way to communicate while separated

One of our purposes as developers is to take a customers requirements and turn them into code and that code needs to add the functionality in our software they need to help them get their job done. To accomplish this purpose we rely heavily on our Product Management team to communicate between the customer and the developers. This team helps guide the direction of the development of the product. This allows us to be agile and flexible. We work in set time frames for our development cycles. We call our basic cycle, a sprint. A sprint is exactly what it sounds like, a short burst of effort and working as hard as possible to the end. For our scrum teams, we have found so far that one month sprints have worked the best. The next level of cycle we have is an Iteration. This consists of multiple sprints and is capped with a release of the product. These set times of sprints and iterations help us to know when to “meet back up.” So through these set sprints and iterations(1) and with the Product Management team’s regular communication and discussions(2) we are able to deliver the best functionality and enhancements possible.

What would happen if the wife decided to implement scrum at home? It would include these three scrum artifacts:

Artifact #1
The first artifact that you will see is a massive (possibly endless) “honey do” list. Now, when I say “see”, in this example, it’s possible this list only exists in the mind of the wife. This is the “product backlog.” This list includes any and all jobs that the wife would like to be done, ever. This list is ordered by value to the wife, so the first item is most important or has the most value to the wife and the last item is least important or has the least value.

Artifact #2
The wife sits you down and you discuss which items in the “product backlog” should be worked on this “sprint” (period of time to work on the list, about 30 days). You and the wife review each item and you estimate how much time it will take to get that job done. If the estimate is too big, the item needs to be broken down to smaller items. Items are then broken down to specific tasks that take 1/2 day to 2 days of work to get done. So painting a bedroom (your estimate was 3 days), might be broken down with 1 day of prep time to move beds and clean up, 1 day of primer and 1st coat, and 1 day to put on the final coats and put the room back to normal. Once all your estimated time equals your available time (in this example 30 days), you finally get to breathe and stop adding new items to the list.

Artifact #3
It is now craft time. Get out a large poster board and draw an X-axis and list each day of the sprint you will be working. Then on the Y-axis, starting at the top, enter your estimated time (30 days x 8 hours/day) and draw a straight line from this point (240) down to zero on the last day. (See picture).
Each morning before you get working on the list, (at a specified time like 6:00 am) you and the wife discuss what got done yesterday and what you plan on getting done today. You will also update the burn down chart with the actual amount of time left on each task. Sometimes tasks are easier than you thought and you burn down faster, other times fixing that “easy” leak is actually digging up the front yard all day and replacing the leaking pieces. (Trust me on that one). So each morning you look at that chart to help determine the current success of the sprint. If you begin burning up, some of the “honey do” items can be removed from the list, but only with the approval of the wife. (Or you could find yourself working into the wee hours of the night). It is typically considered successful if you are able to burndown to zero at the end of the sprint, which means the wife is happy. Below is a example of a burn down chart that is about the finish the sprint.

Another great product from Cincopa Send Files. Also read about Cincopa best wordpress plugins for your website.

Back in 1989, the thing to do was to make a comment to your friend like “you’re cool” and then pause for a second and say “NOT!” and then laugh. With that in mind, here are a few things to get to know theTrain better… or not.

10 things theTrain is NOT:

1. A mineral

–However, theTrain does like breakfast cereals fortified with essential vitamins and minerals

2. A vegetable

–But, theTrain does eat vegetables, especially fresh from the garden

3. A vegetarian

–No, theTrain doesn’t eat vegetarians either

4. “Officially” an office linebacker

–But, theTrain may instill fear with coworkers

5. An employee of Doofenshmirtz Evil, Inc.

–However, theTrain may have submitted his resume to said company

6. A relative of Thomas the Train

–But, theTrain is possibly a (distant) relative to the Monorail (Mark V) at Disneyland

7. On the bleeding edge of technology

–However, This is only due to lack of funds to buy the latest and greatest gadgets and whiz-bangs

8. Not a fan of Star Wars

–theTrain enjoyed his Rancor and Gamorrean Guard action figures as a younger train

9. A child of the 70’s

–Well…more like the 80’s (Gargamel slippers are a dead giveaway)

10. Allergic to peanut butter, candy, ice cream, pizza or tasty food

–theTrain would be theTwig if it weren’t for these.

BONUS: Afraid of Chuck Norris

–OK, maybe a little bit

This is the best time of year.Bar none.The air is turning crisp. Kids are back in school. And most importantly it’s the start of College Football. I have two major biases towards the college football season. First, I am a guy. Second, I have been through two-a-days and know that once the season starts, it’s a great relief to the players to be actual be playing a game. ESPN does a “College Game Day” each week to highlight the big games. Sometimes one of the teams isn’t quite ready for the game and they make some big mistakes, other times both teams perform well and there is a great spectacle to be had. Whether the team is ready or not doesn’t matter to “Game Day.” They aren’t going to push the game back a day or two or even a week, just because the team didn’t “prepare” well enough. As in football, so it is in our scrum teams. We have a monthly “Game Day.” On this day we have to demonstrate to the stakeholders what we’ve done with our time and their money. Here are the game day events:

1st) Pre-Game Meal

This should be done well in advance of the actual game , because if you eat too much too close to the game, you will not be a happy camper. For a scrum team the pre-game meal is not a meal of body, but of the mind. This involves the team collaborating the flow and content of the demonstration and working out any loose ends. Some teams will do one of three things: have a feast, a famine or a binge.

Feast: This team is focused, they are creative and come up with and practice their demo, so on “Game Day” it’s easy as pie.

Famine: Assignments are made to team members. Expectations are such that each assignment will be fulfilled but alas, nothing happens and there is lack of focus and flow in the demo. (Worst case scenario, the stakeholders pull funding for your team or your boss offers you a list of job openings at the local McDonalds).

Binge: So much time and effort is put into this demo that you feel sick come game day. Although everything is in place meticulously, you have double vision and miss the mark.

2nd) What time is it? Game Time!

For me, whether I prepare well or don’t prepare, I get the game day jitters. For developers, speaking in front of people is something new, it’s a stretch of the body, mind and soul. But as with everything else in life, it comes and it goes. But the more prepared you are, the less easy mistakes are made and the smoother landing you will get.

3rd) Post Game Pep Talk

After every game the coach wants to say a few words, if it was a loss, it will be rants and raves. If it is a win it will be rants and raves (but with a partial smile). It’s a time for the team to look back and see how they did, “Sure we won, but you sure missed that tackle?” or “too bad we lost, but did you see when I ran over #56?” You may even here a few teammates yelling at each other and shoving each other into the lockers. As a scrum team we too have a retrospective to discuss the good, the bad and what can we change for our next “game day.” These may be things such as changes to processes that aren’t working, kudos for innovative solutions or concerns for lack of communication. There is no script and as long as you don’t throw your teammate through the window you’re good.

These three game day events help to reinforce our team’s commitment to the scrum process and help our team to maximize our potential to create world-class software.

Go Aggies!

Throughout my life, I have had many opportunities to be organized into teams. One of my first experiences with teams was playing on a 6th grade basketball team, we named ourselves the Terminators. (Luckily we were good enough to back up our name). Academically, I was put into a lot of teams to get a homework assignment or project done.

Now, professionally at New Dawn I’ve been a part of many teams. This past week we took part in reorganizing our teams for the next development period.  I have one of the unique roles of being on multiple teams throughout these cycles and have found the first (possibly most important) step in the formation of a team is for the team to name itself.  The team name can fit into 4 categories.

Number Four: De Facto Standard. The team overlooks this all important step and winds up being named Team 2, or Team B competing against Team 1 or Team A.   The only benefit is that the team doesn’t have to worry about coming up with a name.  For teams that will be together for a very short time, this can work because there’s no time to get emotionally attached to the name. But for those that last longer, this is devastating to the team’s morale and unity and a huge blow to the team’s creativity.  Who’s going to rally around such a default name as Team B?

Number Three: Funny Business.  The loudest team member comes up with an off the wall (and maybe out of line) name that causes each team member to blush or giggle like a schoolboy. Although some may consider the name to be creative and “outside the box”, it actually becomes a major distraction to the team.  This type of name is indicative of a team that is still in high school, lacks proper leadership, or happens to be having just one of those days.

Number Two: We are Project. The team names itself the same as the project it is working on.  This is a step out of the shadows of poor teams and into the light  with competitive teams.  The team can rally around the current project it is working on and find short term successes.  Unfortunately, this also stifles creativity in the team and a new team name has to be established when new projects are started.  Also, there can be some confusion whether one is talking about the project or the team and can lead to communication meltdowns.

Number One:  Pinball Wizards.  The team aligns itself with a thought-provoking word or phrase that provides guidance and direction for the team.  It is quirky, witty, and creative and lots of other really good things.  It unites the team with a common purpose and rallying cry.  If the team were to accomplish nothing in its life-cycle, it will still be successful on the merit of its name.  Plus, what team doesn’t need a theme song?

What are some of the unique team names you have been a part of?

I don’t think of myself as a runner and neither should you (consider my name “theTrain”), but within the last year or so, I’ve caught the running bug and have come to really enjoy it.  Something about me against the road that is exhilarating.  So when a co-worker asked if I wanted to be a part of the “largest relay race in the world,”  my mind and heart accepted the challenge, ignoring my body’s moaning, groaning and creaking.  This giant relay race is the Ragnar Relay: Wasatch Back.  A 12-member team running from Logan to Park City for about 188 miles.  It goes up and over mountains, in the heat of the day and in the middle of the night.  It was a great team-building event, you really have to trust that the rest of the team will give you water at the next mile or so and that the other van will show up in time for the hand-off and that the person your sitting next to won’t mind the your blood sweat and tears.  As a bonus, this year New Dawn decided it was a worthy cause to get our developers ( and other employees) off their chairs and out of the office and into the wild, so they sponsored us as a team!  New Dawn is the BEST place to work, love it.

I was assigned the last running position as runner 12.  My first leg was at about 2pm in the heat of the day and up a mountain road for 3 miles, the last mile I thought, “this is the hardest run ever.” But I made it. I had to hangout for a couple of hours while the other van and the rest of my teammates ran their 2nd leg. Then, I waited some more. After nearly 12 hours after my first run it was abut 2 am and my turn to run again.  Everyone in the van was pretty tired and ready to get some sleep, but we kept trucking along.  For my 2nd leg, since it was in the wee hours of the morning, I was required to wear a reflective vest, a flashing LED back light and a headlamp.  This leg was pretty tough, a decent climb for 6.5 miles in the middle of the night.  It was pretty sweet run though, I’d have to say it was my favorite one.  Nice and cool, beautiful stars in the sky and very little traffic.  I even had a few shooting stars cross my path.  A great run.

We went to a local high school afterwards to try and catch some z’s.  I slept for about 30 minutes with my bag as my pillow, so I was well rested. (Maybe this is the time I should pull out the free Red Bull). The trek continues as we meet the van 1 around 7 am at the next exchange. Van 1 has now completed their race!  So envious.  For van 2, this last stretch is the hardest one of them all.  Some teammates have to run up the “Ragnar” hill (4 miles practically straight up), and I thought my run up the canyon was hard!  Then someone has to run all the way down the steep descent on the other side of the mountain,  and then, then…. its my turn to bring it home. Part of my run was downhill which was really nice, but the last 2 miles was the toughest two miles in my life, a strenuous climb up to the Canyons Resort, but I can’t give up, its the LAST leg!  Amazingly, as I am running on a trail next to the highway, my mom, of all people, happens to drive by and wave to me.  Can you say second wind? (It was probably my fifth wind).  After 32 Hours of racing, our team met up and ran the last 100 meters through the glorious finish line!

Hooray! It was such a great feeling to be done.  I vowed to never run again.  My body was so tired, sore and exhausted.  How do you explain my thoughts that night when I got home, “When can I do that again??” (I must be crazy). After our successful efforts this year, New Dawn is sponsoring a team again for next year! Kickawesome, thanks New Dawn!  And of course, I had to sign up again.  Although its a year away, I can’t wait to do it all over again!

Another great product from Cincopa Send Files. Also read about Cincopa best wordpress plugins for your website.

Here at New Dawn, we each have our own personal preference in terms of the work environment we like to be in.  In the developer section of things, for instance, we all (much to my chagrin) work in the dark.  The lights above our cubes are never on and turning them on elicits a negative response that is both swift and passionate.  I, for one, am not as enamored with the dark as are some of my coworkers, but I have learned to tolerate it.  It helps that I am able to take a walk outside once in a while to replenish my vitamin D reserves.

In other news on the topic of work environment, using computers all day presents unique ways to customize one’s surroundings.  The tool we use for writing code is Microsoft Visual Studio, which has a handy-dandy tool built in to highlight your code in such a way as to make it easier to read/write.  It looks like this out of the box:

Not too bad, but a little bland.  I prefer something more like this:

Besides being cooler looking, I find it a little easier on my eyes rather than staring at a bright white screen when everything else is dark around me.  I even like to switch colors around once in a while to keep things fresh.  I take some flak from other developers about this, since it tends to look somewhat like a command line interface:

All of you who have come to JustWare from some form of old and moldy mainframe system will know how wonderful this is.  Yet, in spite of these similarities (as a developer and a nerd I actually don’t mind using command-line tools - creepy, I know) and the ribbing I receive from other developers, I use these settings because I’m comfortable with them.

JustWare itself allows for a bit of color customization:  you can change the active Snap-In border color and the colors for the background and text in juvenile/duplicate alerts.  The rest of JustWare takes its color cues from your Windows color scheme, which allows for plenty of customization as well.

More obvious than on-screen customization, we all do things such as bring family pictures and other knick-knacks to put on our desks to make a more comfortable and homey situation to work in.  So I’m wondering, JustWare users and other blog-browsers alike, what makes your workspace a nice place to be?

It’s been a little bit since anything new has come from Geek’s World, but there’s a good reason for that.  In the time since the last post, all of us in development have become “Scrumdog Millionaires”.  You should all be jealous of our millions of dollars.  No, really, start being jealous now.  Now.  Alright, so we’re not really millionaires, and the phrase “scrumdog millionaire” is just something that was coined as we were talking about our recent adoption of certain parts of the scrum development methodology.  We are, however, coding like never before.

Our foray into the scrum world has been a successful one to say the least.  From the time we held our full-day meetings a couple of weeks ago to plan our development for this iteration, we’ve added more new functionality to JustWare more quickly than ever before.  There are a lot of really great new pieces of functionality that are making their way into, and adding value to JustWare.

Besides this, we have enjoyed a far greater sense of teamwork not only amongst ourselves as developers, or amongst the teams of developers, but also amongst the scrum teams as a whole.  Working more closely with QA and Documentation has caused us to become more familiar with our coworkers and streamlined processes that previously caused us a fairly decent amount of stress and anguish.

Beyond those benefits, scrum also leads to a greater buy-in for everybody in the JustWare lifecycle.  Because more people are involved more deeply from start to finish, there is a greater sense of mutual responsibility and accomplishment.  Also, we’re all learning more.  I myself have learned many new things about JustWare that I wasn’t aware of before, and Wes, the tech writer on the Badly Bent scrum team (our team), now has a deeper knowledge of caching mechanisms within JustWare than perhaps anybody besides those of us actually coding it.  This leads to an overall smarter, more knowledgeable and more enthusiastic workforce.  Scrum has definitely been a boon here at New Dawn.  Hurrah for short shorts and striped shirts!!!

For your dose of geek culture this round, follow this link:

4 Gregs

This is a cartoon from Homestar Runner, which is one of my favorite websites (and a favorite of many other geeks and non-geeks alike).  I would dare say that most of us here at New Dawn, and all of us in the Development department, have been or are at least one of the four Gregs at one time or another.  If some of the jokes/geek references are over your head, you should feel good - you’re not a geek!  If you understand them all, congratulations and welcome to the geek world!  While you’re there, poke around the website and see if you find anything else you like.  Feel free to share.  My personal favorite are the Strongbad Emails.  If you’re interested, watch the ones called “Dragon”, “Kid’s Book”, and “Japanese Cartoon”.  Enjoy!

We’re going to be scrumming this week at New Dawn.  No, we’re not donning rugby apparel and running into each other as the title of this post might indicate, we’re adopting some new software development strategies.  According to the Wikipedia Article on Scrum development, “Scrum is a process skeleton that includes a set of practices and predefined roles.”

In practice here at New Dawn, what that means is that we will be running our development iterations a little differently from now on.  From now on, developers will work together in teams on every piece of new functionality added to JustWare.  This includes reviewing each others’ code to make sure it is well written, bug free, and robust.  Thus each new piece of code that is added to JustWare will now pass at least two sets of developer eyes.

In addition to this, teams of developers are part of a larger team that includes developers, a QA team member, a “customer” who helps us to nail down requirements, and a “Scrum Master” who helps to remove roadblocks and distractions that might get in our way.  The idea is that by working in autonomous teams we are able to accomplish more with more efficiency.  This also fosters closer working relationships disparate departments and teams (development, QA, documentation) as we work together on scrum teams towards accomplishing the common goal of finishing our “user stories” for the current development iteration we are working on.  The name “scrum” comes from Rugby and is applied to this concept of teamwork towards a common goal.

We are all excited about this new strategy and the results we are expecting it to produce in the quality and quantity of product that we are able to develop each release cycle.  We’re also excited about getting to wear cool striped shirts with white collars.  We’ll pass on the short shorts for now.