Multimedia Communication: When to use screencasts/movies in demos.
Posted by Robert van Loghem in the early morning: April 24th, 2009
For the last 9 months I've been working as a team member of Xebialabs on a product called Deployit. The product automates deployments of applications. As any Xebia team we use SCRUM for our development. Now at the end of our two week sprint we give a demo to the product owner and stakeholders of what we've been building.
We demo deploying applications onto a variety of Application Servers and other Middleware, like for instance WebSphere/Oracle-Bea Application Server/Portal, MQSeries, HTTP Servers and so on... Sometimes demo-ing a story, like deploy application A to application server B can take 10 to 15 minutes. That means, for an hour of demo time we can not show every user story that we finished in our sprint. So we only show the important ones. But what happens when demoing a story can take up to 45 minutes? How can can we cram multiple finished stories into the hour?
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Knowledge Transfer in Agile Maintenance Projects
Posted by ShriKant Vashishtha just before lunchtime: August 15th, 2008
When you think of inducting a new developer in existing project, it's relatively easier to do it in an Agile software development project than in a traditional project. The atmosphere and programming culture is entirely different here compared to any traditional project. Instead of people working in isolation and being responsible for assigned tasks, people here work in a mode where frequent communication across table is necessary. Instead of one person being responsible for assigned tasks, the whole team is responsible to complete it.
The mantra is efficient communication and more interactions. So when a new developer enters the Agile project (Scrum + XP based), pair programming, communication across the table makes a person comfortable with the new project environment. Instead of going through bulk of developer's handbook and design document, conversations help to bridge the gap. However when you need to really need to refer some documentation, it's always there. Also new developer continues to develop on top of whatever existing team has built on. So you see, knowledge transfer is seamless and relatively easier compared to any traditional project.
Preparing for Agile Maintenance – Knowledge Management
Posted by ShriKant Vashishtha at around evening time: August 14th, 2008
When you think about documentation in Agile software development, most of the times it talks about "just enough" which definitely makes sense considering the thickness of design documents in traditional software development. The Agile mind specifically thinks what actually is required in terms of documentation.
Agile software development also gets translated into efficient communication, collocation and sitting in one room or same table and having conversations whenever there are issues. Some of the XP practices like pair-programming helps a new joinee to come upto the speed when she joins the project.
When you talk about effective communication and resolving issues in a team as and when they arrive, you lead towards a situation in which knowledge resides in the heads. People may not feel the need of documenting in detail as they seem to know everything about the project. You may end up in a situation where a new team doesn't have "enough" documentation to begin with in maintenance phase. That's why when one talks about "just enough documentation", that "enough" word needs to be quantified.
Video Podcast Episode 7 – Screencast Introduction
Posted by Robert van Loghem mid-afternoon: May 16th, 2008
Serge Beaumont shows us in this introductory video how we approach Screencasting here at Xebia.
- Why screencasting is useful.
- What are the steps to create a screencast.
- How to release the screencast to your intended audience.
There will be a technical explanatory video following this non-techy episode very soon.
So head on over to the show page or subscribe to our podcast!
Podcast Episode 20 – Multimedia Introduction
Posted by Robert van Loghem in the early evening: May 7th, 2008
Serge Beaumont and Robert van Loghem talk about their Multimedia experiences at Xebia.
- How did they get into multimedia
- How did they introduce it to Xebia
- What were the reactions
- What are the differents formats and concepts. (Podcast, Vodcast, Screencast, Comics, Whitepaper video etc....)
In the near future they will provide different Vodcasts where they show the different formats, including howto and where you can apply them.
So head on over to the show page or subscribe to our podcast!
Agile way of documentation!!!
Posted by ShriKant Vashishtha in the late afternoon: May 5th, 2008
As you enter into Agile world, a statement welcomes you - "Just do enough documentation". For quite sometime, I was puzzled what we really mean by this. In my view "just-enough" is very ambiguous or abstract. You cannot quantify it. For some who are working for a development project, creating documentation may not make much sense as you can find people just across your table to answer your question and you can get away by doing "not just-enough documentation" (no java-docs, no project overview etc). However when you come in maintenance cycle of the project, it just sucks. Maintenance may implicitly means new people, a long project cycle and people who leave the project or even organization itself.
What do you do then? People who were in the project at the beginning may not be there anymore, either from customer side or from software developers side. Without having a knowledge repository, new people will try to reinvent the wheel, will go through the code (white box, which ideally should be a black box most of the times) or will look like people who enter in a dark tunnel without having clue on what they are supposed to do.
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