Thomas Henson

Best of the Web 01/16/2015

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A lot of products on the list this week. Below is a picture of our record .25 snow this week…..oh and some great links:

snow on trees

If you have a need to create screencast, you know the software you are using can speed up your workflow. Camtasia is an amazing tool. It is pricey at 300 for the PC version but worth it. They do run a 30 day free trial but after the 30 days I was hooked.

While you are making screencast you will need a good microphone. Let me repeat that, you need a good microphone to make screencasts. I really like the Blue Microphones and have both a Yeti and Snowball. We use the Yeti at work in our conference room and I have a snowball at home. The Snowball is a great entry microphone at $50 and the one I use for screencasting.

In a meeting this week there was a discussion about using Discourse for a project I might be working on. While I had not heard of it, after some research I realized I had seen it used on many sites. Discourse is a new forum/discussion platform and is opensource. I can’t wait to start playing with it.

During the past year I have gotten into the cloud computing on a small scale. Microsoft Azure has an awesome 30 day trial which I ended up keeping the service after that. In the next few months I will post some tutorials on using Azure.

Let me know if I missed anything.

Book Review – Nuts

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Back a couple of years ago while working on my MBA, I had to read  Nuts: Southwest Airlines Crazy Recipe for Business and Personal Success. At first I looked at it as an assignment I just needed to get done, but what I found was an amazing story about a start-up.

airplane taking off
Photo by khunaspix,
http://www.freedigitalphotos.net

Southwest Airlines was a renegade airline back in the 80’s and 90’s. The company  started out as a regional airline in Texas but has became one of the biggest airlines in the US.  Many people attribute Southwest’s success to their low fares but over the years Southwest wasn’t the only company with low fares. So if low fares weren’t the cause of Southwest’s success, what was? Below are some of the reasons I attribute to  Southwest’s success.

Motivation

  • Celebrations help Southwest motivate team members to achieve their mission. Southwest’s team members work together to achieve goals then celebrate achieving those goals with a party.
  • Giving back to charities keeps employees motivated by letting them know they have a purpose other than just a great career at a great company. Together they are helping the Ronald McDonald House all around their hubs.
  • Maintaining a company newsletter that is interesting and keeps the employees engaged.
  • Painting the Planes builds morale and a sense of pride (and is just fun).

Communication

  • Southwest creates an internal news letter that allows for company wide communications.
  • Southwest has a innovative marketing campaign that includes using front line team members for their ad pieces.
  • Southwest celebrates win and losses with all team members which allows for more communication between team members.

Management of Change

  • Southwest is known for creating an environment that allows for a culture of change.
  • The Southwest “Walk a Mile in My Shoes” program encourages change management.
  • Southwest hires personnel who might not have the industry bias toward their area of expertise.

Ethics & Integrity

  • Charitable contributions and giving back to the community.
  • Honoring all contracts even when legally Southwest could back out.
  • Herb is able to work closely with unions on contracts in good faith.
  • Southwest puts employees first, even over profit.

Time Management

  • Southwest team members take an ownership role in their jobs.
  • Southwest team members regularly do jobs outside of their scope. Herb can be seen working with the ground crew around Thanksgiving.
  • Southwest team members are encouraged to show their unique personalities throughout their work. Herb arm wrestles for charity and publicity.

Power & Politics

  • Southwest keeps a policy of giving all levels of team members too much information. This allows for all team members to know what is going on with the company at all times
  • Southwest has a policy of “being serious about work, but not taking yourself serious.”
  • Southwest has an open door policy meaning that all levels of employees can talk wit the CEO or any manager.

Decision Making

  • Southwest’s motto for decision making is “do the right thing”.
  • Southwest uses the “do the right thing” attitude for all team members, not just leaders.
  • Southwest givse their employees as much information as possible, which improves their decision making ability.
  • Simplicity is one way Southwest speeds up decision making, this prevents paralysis analysis.
crazy face
Image courtesy of artur84 at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

While this book has never been listed as the top 10 business books to read, I think it’s a must read. A lot of the things Southwest did in the early years has been copied many times over now. Southwest was one of the first companies to embrace the weirdness factor and only hire weird employees.  If you are looking for a book on how to run a successful start-up, start with this book.

Best of the Web 01/09/2015

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What a cold week! I hope everyone is enjoying the Polar Plunge this week. Let’s find out what I thought was awesome on the Web this week.

snow in park

We were looking for free stock photos today at work. Here are some free stock photos we found:

January is normally the time of year people begin to focus back on their health. My wife has been talking about Sworkit since this summer and this week I finally downloaded it. Wow it was a really good workout. Sworkit is available in Google Play and App Store. If you are using the app on iPhone it integrates with iOs Health.

During the past week I have spent way too much time on Wareables.com. If you researching any wearable technology be sure to check out their reviews. Just this week rumors were out that Apple will release the iWatch in March.

Jeff Sutherland is offering a free webinar on Scaling Scrum. Great opportunity to learn Scrum from one of the founders of the community. If your a Sutherland fan checkout his latest book
Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time. It’s a great book for anyone interested in Scrum or just learning how to get things done.

 

Let me know if I missed anything this week.

 

Book Review – Winning Jack Welch

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Winning: The Ultimate Business How-To Book by Jack and Suzy Welch is a book about how to succeed in business the Jack Welch way. The book offers advice for your career from Jack’s experience.
success starts here sign
Jack Welch was the famed GE CEO that come up from the ranks at GE. Welch’s tenor as CEO was from 1981 – 2001. During Jack’s time at GE a lot of people under him went on the become executives or CEO of other companies. Winning gives tips for navigating your career as a whole. Not a how to guide for your career but a wholesitc approach to career/business management.

In Winning Jack describes his philosophical management approach. Welch provides many examples from his career at GE and speaking engagments around the world since retirement. One story that stuck out was about Jack’s first big mistake. Early in his career Jack was running a factory at 28 and was responsible for creating an explosion at his plant. Jack was sure he was going to get chewed out by his leadership but instead was asked what he had learned. Imagine the impression this left on Jack, throughout his career Jack took the same approach with his staff. Success has cost and Jack is very open those costs. He admits to failing in the work life balance area and that he didn’t have a very good relationship with his kids while they were small. Part of this could be attributed to a generational mind set because it wasn’t seen as a priority in his era. The book overall covers how to succeed in the world of business and life the Jack Welch way.books on shelf

With every book I read I like to pull out the points that I can apply in my business/life.

Winning’s  3 key themes

  1. Optimistic outlook – One key theme Jack hits you over the head with is to never consider yourself a victim. Even in times where you are the victim it is does you no good to play the victim card. Instead he encourages readers to take a can do attitude with them into everything they do. Sitting around blaming others is not going to fix the situation, the most important thing is to move forward. Do not let setbacks derail you. Jack devotes a couple of chapters on career development and having a positive attitude is the first key to having a successful career. No matter what position Jack was hiring for he always placed a positive attitude as the first trait he was looking for in a candidate.
  2. Candor – The most used word in the book because it is at the core of all the principles Jack teaches. None of the other principles will work unless you are in a candid environment. Welch differentiates between being candid versus mean spirited. Candor allows you to have honest and open evaluations in your organization. People know where they stand because of the candor in your organization. Think about how well you could benefit from open and honest feedback from your staff and leadership.
  3. Executive Training Programs – During Jack Welch’s tenor as CEO at General Electric, GE was known as a hotbed of talent. Many Senior-level executives and future CEOs came from GE. While hiring great talent accounted for some of that success, the main reason was because of their executive training programs. Jack says the seed for the idea was from Pepsi but the success of the program was from the GE leadership. Management would identify potential future leaders in the company and enroll them in the executive training programs where they would be trained to become executives.  In baseball terms Welch called this stacking his bench. He was always trying to ensure when they lost a great leader they always had someone ready to step in and replace him.

Conclusion

This was the second time I read this book and probably won’t be the last time I read it. It’s one of those books you need to read every so often to keep yourself motivated. Some good career tips about how to find the career you want and how to go about evaluating companies you want to work for. Hopefully you will read this book and apply some of the same strategies to your career. If you liked this article be sure to sign up for my email list.

Best of Web 01/02/2015

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Happy New Year! The first best of the Web for 2015.
margarita

Great book from John Sonmez  titled Soft Skills. I purchased the book through Mannings MEAP program but it was just released for the public in the last week. Soft Skills is a macro-level look at the soft-skills software developers should learn for a successful career/life. Even though book is targeted for developers the same approach could be applied to any profession. Must read for anyone.

While we are talking about books to read, here is a post from Pat Flynn for a couple of more I will be reading in 2015. Smartcuts by Shane Snow is the first one off the list I will be reading.

And if you are already working on your soft skills don’t forget about your charisma. We could all improve our likability.

Jeremy Jarrell released “Agile in the Real World” on Pluralsight. I’ve watched about half of the modules and really thought it was great.

The talk around the web in December was mostly about the Sony hack. Sometimes we forget how vulnerable our computer systems are to attack but just in case check this evil USB necklace. As developers I have become numb to the security hacks because they always seem to involve a big company. The reality is we are all under attack daily even if it’s not by a USB necklace.

Since the new year it’s a great time to read up on IT predictions for 2015. Here are few that caught my attention:

 

Let me know if I missed anything this week.

 

Best of Web 12/12/2014

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Running a marathon tomorrow so I wanted to throw out some motivation.

Found a good stock photo site. Don’t take my word, just look at the name GoodStock.

Hour of code is gaining in popularity this year. Check out some of the stories from around the US.

CareerDean is still in beat but looks really promising, Site that allows community to ask questions to Software Developers pretty much anything, Most of the questions revolve around career advice.

Great article from Forbes describing the shift to a freelance/gig economy from the traditional 9-5.

Andriod has released their own IDE.

Infographic by Lifehacker on which programming language you should learn. Surprised SQL beat Java for number of jobs available.

Well that is all for this week. Let me know what I’ve missed.

 

 

How to increase your Scrumification

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So it has happened , your company is switching to Scrum. Your boss came into your office today and asked you to head the transformation to Scrum. Of course you jumped at the chance, I mean who doesn’t want to be known for rolling out a company wide project? The problem is you really aren’t  sure what Scrum is and in fact you thought it was something from your glory days of intramural Rugby at college.

long-highway-trees

Why do you care about learning Scrum before trying to implement it in your organization. It is just another process to learn or tool to use right? No Scrum is much more than a set of rules that can be recited and implemented in a 1/2 day. To really get the benefit from Scrum you will need commit to investing time in learning about Scrum. Continuous improvement is a key of Scrum. Everyone in your organization should have some idea of what Scrum is in order for your organization to thrive.

What is the quickest way for you to scale your learning curve

Books – Grabbing a book is the easiest way to begin to wrap your brain around Scrum. The first book I would recommend would be Agile and Iterative Development by Craig Larman book here while it is an Agile book it does give you a great perspective on Agile methodologies and why these methods work. Mike Cohn is an author and has a very helpful blog on Scrum/Agile development, you should read anything he puts out. Reading is essential for learning Scrum but it’s going to take some time versus attending training or hiring a coach.

Conference – Attending an Agile conference is a great way to get your Scrumification (knowledge of Scrum) whipped into shape. Depending on where you live you should be able to find a conference to attend a couple times a year without having to travel too far. A conference is a great way to meet other agile practitioners with different levels of experience.  If you just starting out in Scrum you will be surprised how many people you will run into who are in the same boat. Conferences also offer consulting companies a chance to set up booth space to showcase options for training and coaching should you decide to go that route.

Training – Get a training budget and send some key members of the Scrum team off to training. Many Scrum Consultants offer different training options, from fundamentals to Certified ScrumMaster, Product Owner, or  Scrum Developer. In an ideal world send the whole Scrum team off to be certified in each of their roles. At a minimum you should certify your Product Owner and ScrumMaster. Developers in your organization are more likely to have some familiarity with Scrum practices while the stakeholder/project manager might have limited exposure to Scrum. That doesn’t mean there is not value in sending the developers to training as well, the Scrum Developer training goes into depth about best practices for development and testing. Your budget will be the deciding factor in training, so use it wisely.

Hire a Scrum Coach – While this is probably the most expensive option, it is the quickest and most thorough. There are many different options here but the basic premise is you hire a certified coach to come into your organization. For a set amount of time the coach will observe and interact with your team. The goal of the Scrum Coach is to guide your team into a well oiled Scrum team as fast as possible.

These are just a few ways to increase your knowledge of Scrum. Hopefully you can tell by now that the most important part of learning Scrum is to keep learning about Scrum. There is no one perfect way to learn Scrum and your learning is never done. Insert joke about not having a proper definition of done here. Just as your team should strive for continuous improvement so should you.

 

Best of the web 12/05/14

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around the web

Hortonworks has already released HDP 2.2 and will be releasing the HDP 2.2 sandbox on 12/09/14.

If your looking for some great info on Scrum Standups, This Agile Life podcast has an episode dedicated to Standups. Episode 66

Elasticsearch is hosting their first conference in March 2015. I’m hoping to be able to get in ElasticOn.

Really hoping to get an Arduino around the holidays and try out this tutorial.

Chromecast is one my favorite gadgets and the price has dropped under $25. Hulu, HBO and ESPN now have apps for the Chromecast. It’s great if you have a non-smart tv.

Let me know if I missed anything this week.

 

Best of the web 11/28/2014

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around the web

Here are a few links from around the web I wanted to share this week:

I started using this awesome opensource text editor Atom. It’s very comparable to Sublime text without the license fee.

I am always looking to improve myself. Overcoming shyness is something everyone can relate to. Here is an article from the Art of Manliness.

Getting email subscribers in a non-spammy way is difficult but I’ve found a tool I might implement here from AppSumo – Smartbar.

Entreprogrammers is one of my favorite podcasts right now and in the latest episode they have added a new member.

A lot of news about .NET as opensource and support for both Mac and Linux. Read about it from Scott Hanselman and Scott Guthrie.

Let me know if I’ve missed anything this week.

 

 

How to become a Certified ScrumMaster

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For the past couple of years I have been working on Scrum or scrum like development projects. In both my Bachelors and Masters programs we studied Scrum, so I thought I knew how the Scrum development worked. Wow was I wrong. During the past year I have worked with a team of developers who taught me the error of my ways. Since I realized my Scrumifation (copyright pending) was off a little bit I decided to get certified.

SplitShire_IMG_4354

So where can you get certified?

At first I didn’t know where to start since there are a couple of organizations that offer Scrum Certification. After a lot of research I decided to go with the Scrum Alliance and get the Certified Scrum Master certification. The certification is 1 of 6 possible certified by the Scrum Alliance , which is the most widely accepted scrum certifying body. The Scrum Alliance has the following certifications:

  1. Certified Scrum Developer
  2. Certified ScrumMaster
  3. Certified Product Owner
  4. Certified Scrum Professional
  5. Certified Scrum Coach
  6. Certified Scrum Trainer

It was an easy choice for me when selecting a specific Scrum certification. I like communicating and helping others so a ScrumMaster would interest and it fit into my overall career path and interests.

How to get a Scrum Master Certification

Scrum Alliance requires 2 steps to become a Certified ScrumMaster:

Attend Certified Training Course

The Scrum Alliance website had a find your class resource to aid in finding a class close to your location. I went to a session held by BrainTrust Consulting in Nashville. This class was an intense 2 day session taking me through the Scrum process from a ScrumMaster’s role. ScrumMaster training is two days of intesnse learning but it is a lot of fun as well.Day 1 starts on a team of 5-6 people and you are given a project to complete before the end of day 2. The time working on the project is broken up by learning about Scrum  then applying those steps on the project your team is working on. The class was really laid back and encouraged students to challenge the trainer to highlight areas where this wouldn’t work in the real world. As the class was ending on the second day I really found myself excited to get back to work and apply the lessons learned into our current project.

Take and Pass Exam

After attending the class you will be able to sit for the exam within 7 days of finishing the class. The test is 35 questions and you need only get 24 correct. I can’t tell you what is on the test but I can say with an awesome trainer you should be able to pass it easily. Checkout my trainer at BrainTrust. No time limit is placed on the test, but you do have to finish it in one session. The test took me under an hour. Also you want to take the exam while the content from the class is fresh.

Overall getting certified in Scrum was an easy process, but I had a good bit of experience and education before jumping into the certification. While no experience is necessary for going through the training it did seem to help me. The CSM certification helped me bring more value back to my team the first day after attending training.

How to Build the case for Scrum in your Organization

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So you’ve read all the great stories about how scrum can help your team produce better results. Most of your colleagues  at other companies are using Scrum and thriving because of it. Now all you have to do is sell it to your boss. You believe management won’t buy in, so what should you do? What if you could build the case for Scrum in your organization. Startup Stock Photos
Before beginning to build the case for Scrum in your organization you need to ensure your team is on-board first.. Even if management signs off on your proposal it’s not going to work unless your team is on-board. Chances are your team will be excited because, Scrum is a team first framework  based on the idea that teams are self-organizing.

So how do you build the case for Scrum in your organization?

  1. Start sending subtle hints to key decision makers in your organization – Find articles or case studies and pass them around to those decision makers. Send an email out as a by the way checkout this article. Try leaving a copy sitting in the break room or by the coffee pot. If you really want bonus points find articles that quantify how much money the company has saved or increased revenue by using Scrum. The goal here is to get the information out about Scrum.
  2. Point out missed opportunities with your current system – Try to constructively point out opportunities your team could capitalize on under a different project management methodology. For example is there a process you could update to make your team more productive. How about problems with your last project that could have been caught earlier with a more iterative process? Do your stakeholders have a voice throughout development? The goal is to pointing out the pain points of your current process.
  3. Look for ambassadors in your company – Talk with coworkers to find others in your organizations that are sympathetic to your cause. In a large organization you may find teams that are already using Scrum. Maybe some of your team members have used it with previous employers. You might even find other project leads who have wanted to take on Scrum for their teams as well. The goal is to build a collation.
  4. Build the slides – Even though you have built your case it’s still important to reiterate the points in your meeting with management.  First show the opportunities where your team could have benefited from using Scrum versus your current methodology. Next pick a use case of Scrum turning around an organization and lead with it. Third give an executive overview of the Scrum Framework. Be open and honest about what Scrum is and is not, leadership needs to have a realistic view of Scrum. Do not over sell Scrum as if it will solve world peace. Highlight any of your competitors that are using Scrum and how they beating you with it. End with a slide about the proposed roll-out of Scrum and how it will affect the current work in progress. The goal is to create a compelling slide deck.
  5. Have the conversation – Schedule a formal meeting with the decisions makers.  Invite any of your ambassadors to this meeting but be careful about bringing the team. You want to ensure leadership has an opportunity to discuss it, without feeling ambushed. If you have successfully built the case, leadership should not feel ambushed. Many organizations are slow to make decision or will need a few more meeting like this to get change to occur in the organization.

whiteboard

Building the case for Scrum is not guaranteed to work in all cases. But laying out your case in a professional fashion will give your a higher chance for success. Some organization are not ready to make the leap to Scrum but having the Scrum conversation in a professional way will help your organisation move toward Scrum. Remember for Scrum to work in your organization you will need leadership to buy in.