Continual Improvement

• Panasonic Plasma TV Review: Panasonic TH-50PX60U HDTV Plasma Television
  Thanks BW. Blog world rocks!
  (tags: p panasonic tv plasma color via:bwhichard)

• Latest and greatest information on cell phones - Phone Scoop
  This is a great site to compare different phones and see what the latest phones are.
  (tags: cellphone phone mobile cingular telephone)
• “State of Agile Development” Survey
  Interesting stats produced by a company specializing Agile software development.
  (tags: agile scrum programming software)

• Xbox games that are compatible via Xbox 360
  I was looking for the old arcade games for my 360, and JC pointed me to this site.
  (tags: xbox games arcade)
• Mutual Funds - Slow and steady still wins the investing race.
  Excellent article about the real investor return. It requires a careful reading to capture the points. Note for all those Fool’s champions: Notice those index funds at the bottom of the list.
  (tags: money mutual-funds index-funds)

• Austin is impatient apparently.
  I would not have guessed this: Austin is the most impatient city in America, according a new study by online auctioneer eBay.
  (tags: austin traffic city patience)

• Top ten geek business myths
  Funny and true.
  (tags: business myths startup)

There are occasionally some odd situations that transpire during the Agile planning process, and one question that frequently arises is how to stay releasable when certain features cannot be broken down into releasable code prior to the ship date. Ideally, the basic Agile tenets are observed before starting to classify something as out of the ordinary: nightly builds of fully installable and executable software, small increments of working software delivered (2 weeks), continuous testing, and etc. Even if a team is following all of these, there can still be some situations where the team cannot complete a feature to a point where it can be delivered to a customer. This could be a situation where the small increments of the feature, while working independently, do not add up to enough value to complete a useful workflow, or the team may have incorporated some 3rd party tool or product, which instantly overwhelms the team with integration test cases. In these rare cases, teams are left with the question of how do we keep the software releasable but continue working on features which may not make it to the customer’s release. The following list provides some ideas to combat this problem:

• Hide the functionality. This option could include several things such as hiding a tab (via configuration or unreferenced URL) with the incomplete functionality, but allowing access to the product owner, developers, and QA, so that testing can occur in the main branch of the software. It could also involve licensing, where a license key prohibits the customer from accessing the uncompleted parts of the product.
• Wait on delivering the 3rd party product. Even though the team may have spent vast amounts of time implementing new APIs and testing the new product during the release, the incorporation of the new 3rd party product should be constructed such that it does not prevent the rest of the product from shipping.
• Limit the selling points. While it’s never a good idea to have visible parts of the product which are not fully usable by the customer, the important point is to make sure the rest of the product continues to function properly. If other useful parts of the code can be delivered to the customer, the customer may want to take advantage of the other fully working functionality, and this is what should be promoted.
• Document unfinished workflows. As with the option above, release notes and known issues can documented where the product is lacking. With both of these last two suggestions, the limited functionality should not create additional problems nor allow the user to sabotage himself.

A friend was recently revealing his encounters with someone writing forged checks all over town with his bank account and driver’s license numbers. While identity theft seems like one of those media generated fear campaigns, it is a real occurrence, and until I had heard this real life incident, I hadn’t realized how easy it was for someone to get your information and how much of a pain it is to fix the problems. Granted, your bank or credit card company already has a plan to get your money back, but the real issue becomes spending days and days fixing your credit, filing police reports, and dealing with all the merchants who have turned your information into collections agencies. Based on the information gathered from my friend’s frustrating misfortunes, here are some simple changes I’ve already made or will be making in the near future.

• Never write checks for anything. It’s hard to say ‘never’ on this one, but online checking will definitely be the preferred method for me as it already is for most reoccurring bills. The hard part will be paying cash or credit card for the variety of home services work such as home improvements or housecleaning, but as mentioned earlier, this inconvenience is relatively minor.
• Never put anything with theft potential in an unlocked mailbox. This one is easy to say ‘never’ due to the number of convenient secure mailboxes located around any city. Fortunately, I have centralized security mailboxes in my neighborhood, but the friend mentioned above believes his home-based mailbox is how his checking account information was acquired. The police mentioned it is very common for thieves to check the unsecured, individual mailboxes outside of many homes.
• Keep your driver’s license hidden as much as possible. Apparently, the state doesn’t consider driver’s license numbers as protected, and most likely, you won’t be able to get a new one if your identity is abused. Therefore, it’s up to each individual to secure their license, even though it can be acquired via the Internet with a little bit of work. This latter fact is why it’s so important to protect the other account numbers, because the combination of license and account is all that’s needed.
• Lock information inside your home. This can range from buying a small safe or just keeping account numbers in a locked file cabinet. Leaving bank and credit card statements out is just asking for trouble from the various services groups (air conditioning, painting, housecleaning, etc.) that may be inside a house over the course of time.
• Shred everything before trashing. Apparently, another sneaky way to acquire information is by digging through the trash, and since a small shredder is so cheap, there’s no reason to throw out any documents without being shredded.

• Motivating others: why “it’s good for you” doesn’t work
  An interesting article on what motivates people (or what does not motivate people).
  (tags: motivation management GUI)
• How to Run a Meeting Like Google
  Great article on some of Google’s practices. I’ve always liked meetings where i could see the notes being taken, but the suggestion on only using metrics is going to be a stretch for most companies, because these metrics do not exist in many cases.
  (tags: meeting management goo google process)
• Are you a scary manager?
  A few reminders on what not to do as a manager.
  (tags: career management employment)

As strange as it may seem, I was recently picked for the jury selection process and a subsequent jury for the first time in my short life. While many people feel like this is a major headache in their lives, I quite enjoyed watching the process and seeing how the legal system really works. Parking is a major pain, and unless you are familiar with this part of downtown, driving around in this area can be incredibly frustrating. On the other hand, getting people to serve must not be as big of an issue as it seems because the parking hassles contribute a significant amount to people’s general dispassion for jury duty. In any case, here are a couple of tips for those being selected to serve in Austin (for district court on 11th Street):

• Parking. For the selection process, each person is on their own to either pay for covered parking or run down to a meter every 2 hours to feed coins; however, once you are selected for a jury, you can park for free in the metered locations within a 2-3 block radius of the courthouse. Granted, this still assumes you can find an open space. The jury instructions recommended using the city’s bus system to help with this, but unless you are familiar with the public transit system, it can be more time consuming. If you want to avoid all the trouble and don’t mind paying, I recommend the Bank Tower parking at W 16th and Guadalupe. The 11th Street courthouse is just a few blocks walk down the street.
• Dress code. For jury selection, shorts and just about anything is allowed. Once selected for a jury though, no shorts or short skirts are allowed.
• Entertainment. Be ready to experience some very boring delays in the selection process and during the trial. I highly recommend taking a book or magazine to help fill some of the time.
• Trying to get deselected. I heard many people try to avoid serving on a jury for business reasons, and the judge denied 90% of those who tried, even self-employed persons. Having children over 10 years of age will mostly likely not get a person out of serving either. During the selection phase, it was obvious who was trying to get dismissed by answering the questions in manner to suggest an inability to be impartial; however, this is not recommended unless the reasons are factual.

In the end, the trial for which I served dealt with an attempted murder case, and we handed down a “not guilty” verdict due to a complete lack of evidence by the state. Here’s a picture of the jury room where we, the jurors, met and deliberated the case.