Paper: “Managing for Breakthroughs in Productivity”

Abstract:
This article is about creating and managing projects so as to deliberately and predictably produce results well beyond what could have been reasonably expected beforehand. This methodology was originated in the mid-1980’s and applied to 20 engineering projects at IBM with spectacular results. In the years since, many projects in a myriad of fields have been managed using the same techniques with similar results. This article describes the original IBM projects and some of the additional projects undertaken since then. It also outlines the methodology used and provides perspective on why the methodology works and the pitfalls to be avoided.

by Allan L. Scherr (PDF download) via Scott Berkun

Agile Development, Agile Design

.. Avoiding Pitfalls in an Iterative Model (by Leisa Reichelt)

slides via slideshare.net

There is a commonly held belief that Agile Methods and User Centred Design do not play nicely together. On the contrary, Agile and UCD have much to offer each other. Each can learn and benefit from the other, and work together as a robust design and development methodology.

Including an introduction to the principles and practices of Agile Methodologies, this presentation explores the opportunities for UCD in an Agile environment, how designers can shape Agile to better support their work, and what designers can learn from Agile methods.

Leisa Reichelt at Web 2.0 Expo Berlin from Johannes Kleske on Vimeo.

Web 2.0 Expo Berlin Highlights

Die Web 2.0 Expo in Berlin vom 5.-8.11.2007 kommt, wenn man sich durchs Web klickt, nicht gerade gut weg. Viele beschweren sich über das schlechte Essen, die schlechte Wahl des Veranstaltungsortes, gestörtes WLAN usw.

Ok, wenn man die Konferenz besucht hat, um dort gut zu essen, war man dort in der Tat richtig falsch. Und es hätte den Organisatoren sicher auch nicht geschadet sich den Ort des Geschehens (Berliner Messegelände) vorher einmal genau anzuschauen. Allerdings zählt bei einer Konferenz letztendlich der Inhalt und der war, meiner Meinung nach, gut aufgestellt, um zu erfahren wie die Web 2.0 Community im allgemeinen tickt, welche Probleme und Herausforderungen es gibt und was die neuen Trends sind. Ich für meinen Teil konnte in den 4 Tagen folgende Highlights ausmachen:

Highlights

• Scalable Web Architectures, Common Patterns & Approaches (by Cal Henderson, flickr.com)
• Performance and reliability, how to run large web apps (by Artur Bergman, wikia.com)
• Web App Security, Keeping your application safe (by Joe Walker)
• How to make AJAX work for you (by Simon Willison)
• Better Typography (by Mark Boulton)
• Microformats the nanotechnology of the semantic web (by Jeremy Keith)
• The Beauty in Standards and Accessiblity (by Jeremy Keith)
• Designing for a Web of Data (by Tom Coates, Yahoo)
• Agile Development, Agile Design Avoiding Pitfalls in an Iterative Model (by Leisa Reichelt)
• Photosynth (by Blaise Aguera y Arcas, Microsoft Live Labs)
• Delivering Rich Experiences (by Jesse James Garrett, Adaptive Path)
• The Starfish and the Spider (by Rod Beckstrom)
• The Future of Firefox (by Tristan Nitot, Mozilla Europe)
• Enterprise 2.0, Wikinomics (by Don Tapscott)
• Creating Passionate Users (by Kathy Sierra)

Links

• Golem: Web 2.0 Expo in Berlin - “The Site is not your Product”
• Heise: “Web 2.0 ist ein Schlachtfeld”
• der Standard: Namensgeber O’Reilly sieht Ende des Web 2.0-Hypes erreicht
• So sieht Catering 1.0 aus..
• Web 2.0 Expo slides via Slideshare

Wie wird das Web im Jahr 2020 aussehen?

Wer sich diese Frage stellt, sollte sich die Studie vom britische Social Issues Research Centre (SIRC) ansehen:

Life online: The Web in 2020 - A study by the Social Issues Research Centre on behalf of Rackspace Managed Hosting

SD Forum: The eBay Architecture

Im SD Forum gab es am 29.11.2006 einen interessanten Vortrag von Dan Pritchett und Randy Shoup über die eBay Architektur. Im Mittelpunkt stand vor allem, wie man mit Größenordnungen dieser Art:

• 212 Millionen registrierte Benutzer
• 1 Milliarden Seitenaufrufe pro Tag
• 26 Milliarden SQL Anfragen und Updates pro Tag
• Speicherung von über 2 Petabytes Daten

umgeht.

Links:

• PDF Presentation Slides
• Kommentare zum Vortrag: Johannes Ernst, Artima
• “Google’s Jeff Dean discusses the Bigtable content storage system used in google’s backend.” (Video) - (Slides)

Snips and Spaces: Managing Microlearning

Interessantes Paper über “Microlearning” und die Kombination von Weblogs und Wikis:

Abstract. Radically lowering “barriers to publish”, wikis and weblogs are rapidly gaining acceptance as simple and hassle-free ways to share and link information in a community of interest (or overlapping communities of interest). Based on a working definition of microlearning as learning from microformats, we discuss the characteristics of both formats and outline problems that may arise in a microlearning context. We propose that by combining both formats to form an integrated whole, those problems can be largely solved. This is complemented by a description of several aspects of Vanilla, a system based on this idea.
(by Christian Langreiter, Andreas Bolka)

Paper als PDF

XP Days 2006

Am 24. November 2006 fanden in Hamburg die XP Days statt und es waren mal wieder interessante Vorträge darunter. Besonders empfehlen kann ich Agile Entwicklung a la “The Eclipse Way” von Martin Lippert, Developer Awareness von Shamsuddin Butt und “Information Radiation in der Praxis” von Ilja Preuß.

• Programm und Folien
• Information Radiation in der Praxis - Ilja Preuß (PDF Folien)
• Agile Entwicklung a la “The Eclipse Way” - Martin Lippert (PDF Folien)
• Developer Awareness - Shamsuddin Butt (PDF Folien)
• XPDay 2006 Blog

WikiSym 2006

2006 International Symposium on Wikis - August 21-23, 2006, Odense, Denmark

The research paper track presents and discusses breaking wiki research, the panels let you listen to and contribute to topics like “Wikis in Education” and “The Future of Wikis”, and the workshops let you get active and contribute to on-going research and practitioner work with your peers. (Many workshops accept walk-ins, so it is not too late!) Equally important, Gerard Muller of the Danish Open Space Institute and Ted Ernst will facilitate an on-going open space track at the Wiki Symposium.

• WikiSym 2006 Homepage
• Program
• Symposium Wiki

Wiki Symposium 2005

The Wiki Symposium begins with a workshop about “WikiSpam” on 16 October in San Diego, CA . It will be co-located with the ACM OOPSLA 2005 conference.

Some of the interesting topics in my opinion are:

• Panel: The Future of Wikis
• Workshop 2: Wiki-Based Software Documentation

Resource Links

• Conference Wiki
• DRAFT: Open Source Software Development with a Wiki
• DRAFT: Wikis in the “Consumer Enterprise”
• Abstract: “WikiWiki Weaving Heterogeneous Software Artifacts.”
• InterWikiWorkshopProposal
• Wiki Based Collaboration and Web Development for the Enterprise

Calculating the True Price of Software

Therefore, the major difference in worldview between open source advocates and proprietary software license advocates is explainable as a differing opinion on the correct value of the volatility of maintenance and upgrade pricing. People who believe that the pricing on maintenance is stable and unlikely to change see greater intrinsic value in the software. People who fear that the pricing is subject to large fluctuations see no intrinsic value in the up-front license; stripped of the options, the license value approaches $0.

For the open source movement, perhaps a better way to position the change that OSS is making is this: we’re converting warrants on future maintenance and enhancements into options, which means that instead of having a sole supplier (warrants), we have created a third-party market (options) of these derivatives.

How capitalistic is that?

by Robert Lefkowitz (link to article)