Empowering everyone to evaluate usability can improve the digital workplace. Here is how you take the first step with userpoll.io. Continue reading
Methodology
There are 8 posts filed in Methodology ().
Keeping goals to yourself increase chances of completing them?
Did you think that by announcing your goals you would feel more pressure to work to achieve them? Apparently works the opposite way.
When Intentions Go Public – Does Social Reality Widen the Intention-Behavior Gap? by Peter M. Gollwitzer et al.
Changing energy behavior with real-time feedback
In this blog post I try to put household energy usage in a control theory context to see if we can find better ways to influence behavior. Continue reading
The case for uninterrupted work
Ho do you manage your interruptions? Continue reading
Reducing distractions, increasing productivity
I have been trying to reduce distractions in my computing environment lately. Apparently, our brains aren’t wired properly for task switching: Continue reading
Defining Characteristics of a Successful Software Project
Lately, there has been some really interesting presentations and articles on agile methods and how they fit into the big picture of software development. One that was particularly interesting was Scott Ambler’s 2007 IT Project Success Rates Survey (also see the Javapolis presentation). Continue reading
Rapid prototyping makes usability testing easier
In an article over at Dancingmango Marc McNeill writes about how new web development frameworks such as Ruby on Rails will have an impact on usability testing practices (“What’s the point of usability testing”). The only real reason to test a mockup instead of a real application is of course that it used to be more expensive and time consuming to create an application. With Rails there is no such barrier anymore and usability tests can (and should) be using the real application instead. It is likely that this will lead to a better understanding of how users behave in e.g. a task based system.
Coupled with the extremely short feedback cycle realized by using dynamically typed languages such as Ruby, Rails may have a deeper impact on software development practices than I previously thought.
Scrum, Lies and Red Tape
Philip Su from Microsoft gives us a glimpse of the inner workings of one of the most complex software projects in the world. It is interesting to see that the same problems that sometimes plague small waterfall projects (lies, red tape) exist in an organization that have put a lot of effort into their development methodology.
At a recent Scrum training session Ken Schwaber said “it’s all bout telling the truth”. Philip’s post contains some interesting quotes related to this topic:
“When a vice president in the Windows [Vista project] asks you whether your team will ship on time, they might well have asked you whether they look fat in their new Armani suit.
“[…]the intrepid managers finally understood how to get past the dilemma. They simply stopped telling the truth. -‘Sure, everything fits. We cut and cut, and here we are. Vista by August or bust. You got it, boss.’ Every once in a while, Truth still pipes up in meetings. When this happens, more often than not, Truth is simply bent over an authoritative knee and soundly spanked into silence.”
Didn’t Microsoft adopt Scrum a year go? Maybe they skipped the part about transparency. Granted, the Windows Vista project may be one of the more complex software projects to date, but how many VP:s do you really need? And even if you do the waterfall dance, there must be some insight into real progress, even for pointy haired bosses?
Update: Apparently too many readers turned his blog post into the standard Windows/Linux shootout which made him remove the interesting parts. Google cache currently has the original.