After working out a development process based on Scrum for a presentation, I thought that I had really struck gold with what I had. It was agile, it was quick, it had good transparency and accountability… and then a late suggestion came that has turned my plans up-side down. It’s called WACD (pronounced ‘whacked’). This could be the future of all development… and if it is, I will look into farming or something as my next career.
Prototyping
January 13th, 2010 by Ben No comments »The creation of all great products begins with the prototype, unless you’re a genius. Certain that I am not a genius, I’ve used various methods of prototyping, including pencil sketches, storyboards, wireframes, the paper browser, mockups and the infamous napkin. A good friend of mine who is starting his own venture pointed me at this list of 10 free prototyping tools. I’ve tried HotGloo and have been satisfied, but I think I’ll take some time to try out some of the others. Enjoy.
10 Completely Free Wireframe and Mockup Applications from Speckboy.com.
Joel Spolsky on Strategy
December 16th, 2009 by Ben No comments »What isn’t surprising is that someone has written some advice on how to run a smart software business, what is surprising is that he wrote this eight years ago and it’s still holding true. Check out Joel Spolsky.
My Chili Un-recipe
October 26th, 2009 by Ben No comments »I was asked for my chili recipe today, which is a shame because I don’t have one. This is both because I never wrote it down and because every time it is different. But I do feel that I have something going, so if I were to make chili today, here’s how I’d start out.
- Cans of beans, red, black, white, navy, kidney (drain and keep the juice)
- chopped green and red peppers
- chopped onion
- pineapple chunks (optional)
- meat, like bacon, steak, spicy sausage or ground beef (or any combination of those)
- hot peppers (Anaheim, jalapeño, habenero)
- brown sugar (more than you’d think)
- chili powder
- garlic
- cumin or a packet of chili seasoning mix (optional)
- a very tangy BBQ sauce (hot and sassy, rich and sassy), up to a full bottle
Toss all of that in a Crockpot and let it cook. As for the relative quantities, I usually go for color and texture first, which might be backwards. If you’d like, use the BBQ sauce and bean juice to make it more soupy. If you’re going with spicy peppers, remember that the spiciness will take a while to show up, so don’t over do it.
In my mind, what makes a good chili is that the flavor is consistent with every bite. Of course the flavor changes with what you put in, but cooking it long allows you to make changes to the flavor.
Dan Pink on the Surprising Science of Motivation
August 28th, 2009 by Ben No comments »A friend just send me a link to another great speech from Ted. In short, Mr. Pink thinks that we haven’t learned much from science in regards to truly motivating people to greatness. From the speech:
“There is a mismatch between what science knows and what business does. And here’s what science knows:
1. Those 20th Century rewards and motivators we think are the natural part of business do work, but only in a surprisingly narrow band of circumstances.
2. Those if-then rewards often destroy creativity
3. The secret to high performance isn’t rewards and punishments but that unseen intrinsic drive –the drive to do things for their own sake, the drive to do things that really matter.”
Incentives for superior performance in cognitive and creative tasks cause poor performance.
I’ve seen this in my kids. When I challenge them to race to complete a difficult task they only become more frustrated and the rewards of victory actually stand in the way of real effort. Simplified to a common task, I can barely rein them in. Back to my life, if I have something simple to do, like dig a ditch for a sprinkler pipe, I yearn for a contest to make the menial task become challenging and rewarding. Incentives can work, but they don’t work in every instance.
Move away from carrots and sticks towards real motivators that science has shown to work.
• Autonomy – the urge to direct our own lives
• Mastery – desire to get better and better at something that matters
• Purpose – the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves
Examples of programs that increase Autonomy
• Fedex Days – You have 24 hours to deliver something.
• Google Labs. Enough said.
• ROWE (results-only work environment) – no schedules, mandatory meetings – just get the work done.
Nutty Putty a No-go
June 11th, 2009 by Ben No comments »
We took the boys caving at Nutty Putty cave the other night. 45 minutes around the lake, another 30 minutes down a bumpy dirt road and then a 10 minute hike up a hill – this got us to the proximity of the cave. Our guide couldn’t find it right off, we had to spread out and look for it. When we did we all piled in, but I was the only one that came back out. The initial opening was alright, but the opening at the bottom of that opening was tiny. Tiny, like for badgers
