Rockefeller Habits meet SCRUM

For the past 2 years the amazing sales team that I work with at Q4 Web Systems have ventured out to San Diego for the annual NIRI conference. It’s a really important event for us and it’s always great to hear about it when the team get’s back.

This morning while I was going through google reader, I noticed this post from IR Web Report talking about some of the newer social networks (twitter and friendfeed specifically) and NIRI’s presence on both of those social networking sites. There is a friendfeed room dedicated to this years conference and you can follow niri08 on twitter.

I was really excited to see this, as part of my job going to these events doesn’t really make sense for me personally but I’m always really excited to hear about the event afterwards. This year it looks like I’ll be able to follow the event a little more closely and share in the experience even though I won’t physically be there.

It’s great to see these newer technologies playing a role in business sector that’s just starting to realize some of the potential of these new networks, it goes a long way to prove how valuable some of these services can be.

To cut to the point, I was promoting some changes for a client last night. It was an update to part of our product that allows our customers to send automated and one off emails to lists of subscribers. I had done promotions similar to this in the past (in fact i’ve probably done the same thing maybe 100 times). But somehow, someway I managed to screw up. Not a small screw up either, I accidentally sent a test email message to the subscribers of one of the clients email lists.

That doesn’t sound so bad?
Sure it might not seem like a big deal, in fact I wasn’t even aware of it until the client pointed it out to me (there is nothing worse then this, NOTHING). You see our customers are publicly traded companies, and the software we develop helps them streamline and manage disclosure around their websites. I with an accidental mouse click had caused some level of damage in there shareholders eyes. I don’t even have to tell you the anxiety and frustration I felt when I was alerted to what I had done.

Ok, that’s bad
Yes it was bad, it was too late to undo anything so it was time to put into play this great saying one of my co-workers has:

First, get the cow out of the ditch, then figure out how the cow got in the ditch, and then make sure that cow never goes back in the ditch.

It has nothing and everything to do with software development all at the same time.

Obviously getting the cow out of the ditch was out of reach, but there were some measures that could be taken to ease the impact on our customer. I recommended that they send a one off email to the list that I had accidentally sent to, simply explaining that a test message was sent in error, they thought this was a great idea and did it.

Next, I had to examine all the various steps I had taken trying to reproduce what I had done. I had opened the wrong test email and sent it, an honest mistake but one that can’t ever be repeated again.

With that information in hand I put together some process recommendations for our company internally to implement when promoting these kinds of changes, as well as some product changes that could make this same scenario much more difficult to repeat in the future.

So in the end it worked out ok?
I guess if you look at it optimistically, yes everything turned out ok. For me, this was a situation that I was not comfortable with happening ever again. Fortunately the people I work with let me handle the problem start to finish, they didn’t breath down my neck and demand answers right then and there, they trusted that I would do the right thing, plus the client who was initially annoyed and frustrated appreciated the constant communication and recommendations that were made.

So what do you do when the shit hits the fan?
I’m sure this has happened to many a software developer. What do you do when this happens to you? I would be very interested in hearing about it, I think these hard learning lessons are ones that should be shared, never swept under the rug. If we can’t reflect and learn from these mistakes we as individuals and groups will continue to make them over and over again.

As an employee of a software development it’s fairly common to have people of many nationalities and cultural backgrounds as co-workers. More and more people from around the world come to Canada and the United States to find jobs in the tech industry, bringing there ample skills and knowledge to the companies they work for. Now you might think I’m going to talk about the language barrier that can sometimes exist in these situations, but I’m not. I’m going to talk about the language barrier that exists in companies that has nothing to do with foreign languages.

Your saying the same thing, but different
Dealing with language barriers with people from other backgrounds can be difficult, but even more difficult is when you are all speaking the same language but your not understanding each other. It never ceases to amaze me how differently a concept or task or email can be interpreted by people that speak the same language!

Clearly defined language and terminology regarding the business you work in is key to having a team that is cohesive and on the same page. There is nothing more frustrating then sitting around a table with a group of people who are all saying the same thing, differently.

You say potato, I say potato
When you are sitting down to meet about a sprint, or a release or something that is applicable to your particular business does everyone speak in the same language? Is everyone using the same set of terminology to talk about development work? Business Value? Semantics, language and meaning play such an important role in business today it’s very easy to get tripped up and swirling in a black hole of misunderstanding. The next time you see something like this happening it might make sense to stop talking about the problem at hand and all agree on how your talking about it. It can save time up front and time in the long run, but most of all it makes everyone feel involved and appreciated!

Its a great video about how 37 signals has become a profitable business over the last 4-5 years without taking any venture capital funding or outside investment. Certainly a strange topic to discuss at a conference that is geared towards helping start up companies raise vc funding!

The tone of the video borders on hilarious at times with my absolute favorite part coming about 5 minutes just after David explains their business model (make a product, get some people to pay for it, make it better), he exclaims that its not rocket surgery!

Its really refreshing to see this kind of attitude in the high stakes work of internet businesses, and it goes to show that a commitment to your business, product and customers can make you just as successful as a huge exit to google or microsoft.

I’ve been asked by several people what twitter is and what is the value? I admit, we do live in a world that is riddled with information in all different forms. Twitter is just another one of those streams. But back to the value, it’s not an easy question to answer and it’s not a one answer fits all type of deal either. Twitter is effectively what you make of it. It’s not for everyone for sure but those who use it, do love it. The key thing though is that like myself everyone uses twitter in there own particular way. Twitter not a form of communication it’s a venue for communication and with that comes a vast amount of noise that you are responsible for cutting through.

Twitter is the perfect example of a network of trust. You don’t immediately start following hundreds or thousands of people, you begin with a few people that you trust. In my case some of the earliest people that I started following were tech blogger’s who’s blogs I’d followed. A couple of examples would be Robert Scoble and Scott Hanselman. Now these aren’t people I would necessarily trust in real life but in the digital world I tend to value and agree with a lot. What started happening is that I would see them replying to things people had asked them then I would go and look at that other persons twitter stream and I might follow that person or I might not, but that’s how your network builds out and it’s an interesting real world example of a natural built in human condition.

But again, back to value. It’s going to be up to you here to make it valuable for yourself. It’s easy to get sucked into the negativity of twitter but it can be something that is a positive experience. If it’s important to you, you can make the twitter experience work but you just have to give it a fair chance and at least a bit of your attention.

Whether you are a hockey fan or not this guy is a sight to see on the ice. Every goal he scores is like his first goal, every game he plays is like his last. Every minute of the game you can tell there is no place in the world he would rather be then in that building playing that game. It’s inspiring and devastating at the same time. The side effect of his passion is that everyone else around him feeds off it, it motivates them and drives them to work harder. His teammates give that little extra effort and the crowd in the build cheers just a little bit louder.

So what does this have to do with software development? Absolutely everything! Being passionate about what you do not only makes you better at your trade of choice but it makes those around you better. If you are excited about what you do it’s hard for people around you not to start having the same attitude. Don’t just think about this as a way to improve yourself, it’s also a chance to improve others around you.

As always, in business (as in hockey) what you are passionate about can get lost sometimes, deadlines, interviews, clients, fans… they can all go a long way to drive the passionate parts into the background. This happens to everyone and can’t be avoided at times, but the best way to deal with it is to be positive and be passionate, your customers, clients and co-workers will appreciate it.

What went well?
Not a lot in this case, the one thing they did manage to do well was take the drop offs quickly and get you on your way.

What didn’t go well?
Customers were very frustrated, it took a long time to get prescriptions filled, there was no communication between staff and the customers. Over promised on delivery time.

What can we try next time?
Let customers know what is going on, people will be less likely to get angry if they are aware of what the situation is. Don’t have people moving from one station to another, on a couple of situations one worker would bring the prescription up to the front, talk to the customer about it and then hand it off to another worker to ring through, just drop the prescription off and go back to filling more. Be honest about how long something is going to take, again people are less likely to be angry if you tell them it’s going to be 45 minutes and you deliver in 30, then if you tell them it will be ready in 20 mins and it takes 30.

There are a lot great things to improve on in this situation, and it translates for me into work life. We deal in a customer focused environment and these types of situations can arise (and have in the past). Just because I deal in software and they deal in drugs (see what i did there?) doesn’t mean there aren’t lessons to be learned from both.

Q4 Web Systems is looking for a kick-ass senior .NET developer.  If you are a technology junkie and your idea of fun is spending a Saturday night reading about Team Foundation Server 2008 or playing with Silverlight 2.0 just because it’s cool, we want you!

You will become assimilated into our product development team where you will be responsible for the product advancement of our 2 application suites.   You will participate in design and architecture reviews, code reviews and write code with automated testing in mind.

Q4 offers a great environment as well as competitive salary and benefits.

Job Requirements:

• 7+ years enterprise application development experience with 2+ years in architecting software platforms
• 4+ years experienced with .NET/C#, ASP .NET, distributed services
• Strong interest in Design Patterns, Refactoring, TDD
• Solid understanding of object oriented vs. component design
• .NET Application deployment methodologies with N-Tiered systems, redundant/failover Windows technologies
• Excellent Understanding of FSDL including best development practices, documentation, QA processes and deployment strategies
• Windows 2003, SQL server 2005 and IIS 6.0 as it relates to application development and scalability
• A willingness to promote and ensure a common understanding of user stories
• Prominent participation in the planning, design, and implementation phases of high level concepts as well as user stories
• Ability to work well within a team of developers
• BS in Computer Science
• Secure application development
• Application stress testing

How to apply:  Send your resume to careers@q4websystems.com Only suitable candidates will be contacted for an interview.

What followed was literally a couple of hours of back and forth with the CEO of the company and we had the site done and ready to go.

For such a quick turnaround I’m really happy with the results.  Clean, simple and to the point.

www.q4press.com