Michael Carøe Andersen

Tag: online-tools

  • Agile planning tool on Rails

    We have recently been working with Ruby on Rails and started Digital Planning Board a small pilot project to see what we could build with the Rails framework while building an application we could use for our project planning. We have been working with Ruby on Rails since we went to see David Black in Malmø and it has been a great experience so far and we will probably use it for a couple of our future projects.

    The Digital Planning Board is basically an online edition of the analog originator that we used for planning at Menlo Innovations:

    Analog planning board

    The result became this online application:

    The Digital Planning Board

    The Digital Planning Board has a few rules it works by. It is for planning one week iterations using these basic rules:

    • Blocks represent a task
    • A lane represent a person or a team.
    • The size of a block displays the estimated time to complete the task.

    The colors indicate the status of the card:

    • Not Started
    • In Progress
    • Complete
    • Blocked

    Tasks can be moved around freely but adding a task to a lane will push the subsequent tasks further down the list.

    Further development
    Since this is just a side project I am not sure how much further we are going to develop it but based on some of the feedback we have received so far here is a couple of things we could implement:

    • Update board state real time so changes made by others show up on other collaborators views(without doing a browser refresh)
    • Current time indicator (some kind of way to show how far in the week we are now)
    • Hover on a task would show all the details
    • The equivalent of sticky notes could be added to show additional information and draw more attention
    • Faster editing of task details (right now you have to open a card and click edit)
    • Find a way to preserve the cards history. In real life you can cross out things or scribble additional info.

    Read more about our planning board or feel free to try it out [update 27/06/07: Sorry the prototype is not live anymore] and please let us know if you have any feedback :)

    Yesterday we spend the afternoon hanging out with Copenhagen Ruby Brigade at the office of Capteco for a hacker workshop. It was a nice laid back afternoon and the first time I met these guys but definitely not the last time I join the Brigade for some geeking.

    IMG_0016.JPG


  • The Virtually Free Office

    In setting up our business we pushed our office online by using a couple of the free tools and services to get started.
    gmail hosted sollution

    Starting a company means spending a fair amount of money up front before the money (hopefully) starts rolling in. Every penny counts and what you least want to do is spend a load on software were you only use a fraction of the functionalities. Using Microsoft Windows with Office will usually get the job done but if you want to stay legal you end up paying a lot of money for software.

    During our initial months we have used Writely, Googles hosted mail solution, Google Spreadsheet, Google Calendar and Thumbstack presentations in running our company.

    Our experience has been mainly positive but there are still some shortcoming in these online application that prevents a complete switch away from desktop apps. Here are the experiences we have had using different free services.

    The tools we use

    Writely
    This is an online alternative to MS Word owned by Google. It has basic word processing features like spell checking, text formatting, inserting tables, images and links. There are more advanced features like sharing and collaborating a document as well as posting to a weblog.

    Update: Writely is now known as the first half of Google Docs & Spreadsheet writely

    Gmail for Your Domain
    This feature is wonderful for a small company like us. We get the GMail mail client interface for our own domains and send email from our own domain while having all the benefits of GMail. That means that there are no need to run instances of Outlook or Thunderbird or a slow Horde.
    gmail hosted sollution

    Google spreadsheet
    An alternative to MS Excel. We havent used it extensively but it seems to have most of basics spreadsheet features working and there is a feature for importing and exporting to Excel. Macros and other more advanced features are not provided.
    Google spreadsheet

    Google Calendar
    In the suite of cool Google Apps there is also their calendar. It integrates with Gmail and it is very easy to share calendars and events. There is a new feature that sends you a SMS message when you have events.
    Google Calendar

    Thumbstacks
    Create presentations online using Thumbstack. This is the least mature of the online apps we have been using. Yet again it provides basic presentation features but this one also still has a couple of glitches.
    thumbstack

    Apart from these free online tools we have been using these hosted (so they are not free) open-source solutions:

    WordPress
    For creating our website because it is just so easy. There is a big variaty of plugins avalible and with the size of our site WordPress works great as a CMS.
    wordpress.png

    ActiveCollab
    For project management we use this clone of BaseCamp that easily lets you manage a project with a set of workers and stake holders.
    ActiveCollab

    Positive experiences

    1. Sharing is very easy
    There is no need to attach files and email them back and forth – these online tools lets you share your documents very easily. Its easy to pull people in and out for reviews or collaboration on projects.

    2. Revisions are easy to keep track of
    No more need for obscure file names like proposal_edit_michael_3-02.doc. Writely has a revision feature that lets you see the changes and lets you browse them easily.

    3. Simultaneous editing
    We can work in the same document at the same time. As long as we are not working in the same paragraph it works pretty well. This enables for getting things done faster if necessary.

    4. No lost data
    My laptop broke (f!ck!) but since everything was online I just needed a new (old) computer and I was back on track.

    5. Organize using tags
    Instead of a folder hierarchy files can be tagged. With tagging things can still become disorganized but so far its worked for us.

    6. Low learning barrier
    Unlike Office XP these applications are very simple – and that is most often a good thing.

    7. Easy to get started
    For most of these applications it is very easy to get started. Sign up and you are going.

    8. Accessibility – Work from anywhere
    Documents are accessible everywhere you can get online all you need is a computer with a steady connection. Having a broken laptop and an old box I cant bring my stuff with me, but when I visit my parents in the other end of the country I can still work on documents on my dads computer.

    9. No upgrading
    These products are still quite young and new features are added regularly usually without any action needed from me.

    10. Its free!

    Negative experiences

    1. Security and confidentiality
    Putting your data out there on the Internet can be a scary. How can you be sure nobody is snooping? How can you garantee confidentiality?

    2. No Internet – no work
    As if it wasnt already true, your Internet connection become just as vital as your power plug. If you loose connection you cant get any work done.

    3. World of Beta
    Features might come and go, and the interface might change overnight – tho usually to the better. Some might become premium features once the application has matured.

    4. Lack of features
    I dont miss a lot but there are essential features that I still really need in order to do everything using these tools. So I still need to pull them out into a desktop application to make them look pretty.

    5. Lock-in
    Can I get all my data out the day I find a better alternative? Most of these tools allow you to export the single document but so far there are not a batch functionality for it.

    6. Missing localization
    The spell checking is only in (American) English, number and date formats are also only available in English standards.

    7. No possibilities for audit of changes
    Since we are only two people this hasnt been an issue – but for a bigger group the option of approving/auditing changes might be a necessity.

    8. No linking to other documents wiki-style
    Writely is not a wiki-tool but the ability to create relations to other documents would be a very useful feature.

    9. Exporting to .doc creates some layout issues
    Exporting a document to Word/OpenOffice for further editing and layout inherent some layout issues. It inserts some blank lines and you need to do some clean up of the document before it looks ok.

    10. Its free
    So what can I expect/demand from the supplier?

    Conclusion

    Overall this has worked out fine for us and we continue to use these apps – tho still with the backup of desktop apps. It will be interesting to follow along on the scene of online applications to see what they have evolved into in a year or two.

    Further reading


  • Working online and off site in an Agile environment

    Femi and I recently finished a three week gig for Menlo Innovations. We left Ann Arbor about three months ago so it has been great fun and an interesting experience working with them again. We were working with the same team we did back then. But instead of sitting right next to them we were now 4,000 miles away and the only thing connecting us was Skype.

    Menlo developer team
    The Menlo development team at the pair programming pods

    Since we knew the processes it was not difficult getting into the rhythm again but there was still a couple of things that made the experience very different from being there in flesh.

    First of all our kitchen is not close to being as interesting as Menlos and we do not have a coffee shop next door providing java for the Java.

    Snackbar
    This is Menlos kitchen – Im not showing ours

    Another thing that we could not really participate in was the daily stand up meeting. We tried doing it over Skype conference phones but it just isnt the same experience. Every day at 10 AM the dart board on the wall makes a noise, everybody stands up in a circle, and pass a viking helmet or another toy around telling about the activities you have planed for the day and any problems you might have. It sounds weird – I know – but once you get used to it and the many other seemingly crazy things Menlo do they make a lot of sense. They got this plenitude of practices that supports cross-company communication, collaboration, standards, project management and development.

    Standup meeting at Menlo
    Richard the CEO has the token at the daily stand up meeting

    But apart from not being immersed into this crazy, loud and yet very productive environment it was a lot of fun being back on the team – pair programming from our small flat in Copenhagen. The amount of team communication was not nearly as high as when we sat next to our peers and Skype isnt perfect but it still worked out pretty good.

    Femi and Michael ready to start on the a Menlo project
    Femi and me working in Copenhagen on the first job as company owners

    This will not be the last time we have worked for Menlo but since we ended this current gig we asked for a quote for our website and Richard the CEO wrote us a nice piece.

    As you probably have figured by now I am a big believer of the way that Menlo do things. And for right now I cannot quite stop talking about the experience of working there. I ran into Alexander of Positive Sharing at a Copenhagen Bloggerdinner and talked to him about what a cool place to work is, I of course started speaking of Menlo. Yesterday he made a post about Menlos Extreme Interviewing which I had the fortune to be a part of during my stay.

    Alexander does a good job of describing the way the extreme interview works so Im just refering to him and the original white paper. Id just like to add my two cents as this was the first time in my life I was a job interviewer. First of all it didnt feel like an interview at all – but being an observer of the exercises really gave me a chance to see the dynamics when two people work together. Some people just click, most people are polite and attentive, some are controlling and a few are obnoxious. Watching others was a great way of becoming aware of my own behaviors.

    Menlo Extreme Interview
    After we had 20-something through the interview the Menlo team sat down and evaluated each interviewee