Earlier in my career and before my other business lesson, I was asked to help out with some computer troubleshooting at a major medical billing facility. This facility had around 4-5 people running the billing exclusively for a hospital.
One day, they had some issues with the network and had to call someone in. I was not available at the time. The "network specialist" came in around 10:00 and started to diagnose the problem.
Working in the design business taught me to pay attention to the organization, the system, the country — the “Big.” At the same time to have an ear for the individual, the person — the “Small,” To work successfully, I have to harmonize what the “Big” wants and what the “Small” wants. I believe, that bringing together the Small helps facilitate and create the Big. And that’s what microinteractions are all about.
Design can solve small, universal and overlooked problems and these really little things have a huge amount of impact. Microinteractions are the small moments in UX that can be boring and easy to forget, or exciting and engaging. They are everywhere: in the gadgets we carry, the appliances in our house, in the apps on our phones and desktops.
Impact Mapping is a powerful technique that helps teams understand how to link the work that they do with results that their organizations would like them to achieve. We’ve been using this technique for a while in our Scaled Professional Scrum and Professional Scrum Product Owner courses, but I have had a growing discomfort with the approach that I couldn’t well articulate until we were using it recently in an Agile Measurement (EBM) Workshop. There seemed to be something missing in the usual Goal-Actors-Impact-Deliverables chain (see Figure 1).
Figure 1: A "classic" Impact Map Example (for a ride-sharing service)
I was working on getting the latest DataStax Enterprise 6 up and running via the Docker Image offerings today and I stumbled across a site called hashnode.com. On that site was a harmless little question, but something I realized I ponder a lot, and even find myself in conversation about on a regular basis. The question is posed,
"How many minutes/hours do you really sit to write code at a particular moment?
It’s that nagging feeling that you’ve somehow stumbled into your plum position by accident and you’ll be found out at any moment. And when they come to show you the door, you’ll think "Well, that’s fair enough I guess."
If this sounds familiar, then you know what it’s like to experience impostor syndrome. I’ve felt that way several times in my career, and it makes me think we all have…we just haven’t said it out loud.
A common question I hear in Scrum training courses and in coaching sessions is, "How much Product Backlog refinement should we do and how much detail should be in the Product Backlog?"
First, let’s look at the Scrum Guide.
Have you ever had one of those unforgettable travel experiences that you just couldn’t help but talk about upon your return? Glad I’m not the only one; however, today I would like to share a particular experience with you, one that may not be what you’d expect. I say that because my excitement wasn’t caused by the country we traveled to, the city we explored, or the attractions we visited. Rather, it was the hotel my family and I stayed at that left such a lasting impression and quickly became an attraction in and of itself.
Over the years I have stayed at many hotels; however, this particular experience quickly became unique from the moment I completed the reservation. Like most people nowadays, I make my travel arrangements online, and while receiving a confirmation email is nothing new, in this instance, I also received a link to download the hotels’ app, an action which entitled us to a discount. Never one to pass up a deal, I downloaded the app, received my discount, and patiently awaited my departure — but things got interesting way before that.
With software engineering being in such a fast-paced environment, traditional project management approaches are no longer viable. That means that IT professionals must find new ways to handle frequently changing development tasks.
Sharing this idea and focusing on the existing incremental development techniques, 17 software specialists introduced the Agile project management philosophy in 2001. Principles of flexible, fast, and collaboration-centered software development were outlined in the Agile Manifesto.
Over the years a lot has been done to enhance the control and efficiency of application development processes. From Agile development to change management solutions based on ISO and ITIL standards, the progress has been remarkable. However, like everything else, this, too, has a downside. They say that every cloud has a silver lining, but in the world of technology, this silver lining is likely to affect the functionality of the cloud. The increase in the use of Agile development has aggravated the pressure IT organizations face in deploying new applications.
Each new enterprise application brings in several diverse application components spread across numerous environments, including application servers, desktops, Web servers, mobile devices, databases, etc. Also, most large organizations have different departments handling each of these functions, and the potential product users are often not in control of the timelines. Besides, since security and compliance requirements put a lot of burden on the IT teams, companies adopt a "better safe than sorry" approach and discourage employees from easily getting new applications or their versions. For the product vendor, the total cost of support is directly proportional to the number of older versions out there in the field.
