Posted by todd on February 18th, 2010

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TWG Kicks Off 2010 with Scrum!

TWG would like to formally welcome you to 2010 and talk a little bit about something we’ve decided to kick off the new year with: Scrum!

Scrum is an agile framework that allows teams to become self organizing and focus on delivering high business value.

In 2010, TWG is committed to delivering working, high business value, high quality software, faster.  This is something Scrum enables us to do.

Why Change?

While TWG has previously used plenty of agile practices, the time has come to formalize the process so that we can get all the benefits of being an agile organization.

How Is Agile Different?

Many agencies and web development companies typically insist on gathering every single requirement up front, locking them down, forcing the client to sign off, swearing that these requirements will never change.  We now know better.  Requirements will change, we learn as we go, and we will inevitably discover new and more valuable features as the project comes together.  TWG is using Scrum to build partnering relationships with our clients, so that we can see and adapt to requirements as they emerge, and deliver better and more useful websites and software.

Build Less Software…

So how do you build high value, high quality software, quickly?  Build less, but build it better!

This may seem unusual, but remember, when you start a project, application or a web site, you don’t really know what you or your users want until you get your hands on it and start playing with it.  This is normal.  So instead of trying to plan it all up front, we’re going to be working on building the things you know right now, and get them done, Done, DONE!

Nothing gets feedback better than working software, so why wait until the end of your project to see it?  Once you’ve seen it and learned from it, you can add to it, change it or even scrap it!

At TWG, we’re starting Scrum with 1 week sprints.  These are time boxed working periods where at the end, our goal is to deliver working software, as opposed to things like documents, mock-ups or in-progress features.  This is a tough, aggressive process that we’re working on, but we feel in the end it will enable us to deliver better, more valuable software, faster.

…Get more value (rather than a laundry list).

Many web development companies will work with you to look around at all the sites that are out there, collect a large laundry lists of  possible features that you might want your system to do, and then give a quote on building that.  You sign off, and the work gets started.  You wait potentially months until all the features are built, the schedule might slip two or three times, and when you finally get it, you discover you really didn’t end up with the software you really hoped for or needed.

Not only that, but while the software was being built, the market changed and some features became irrelevant or new features became more critical.  Too late to change now.  I guess you’re stuck.

What if you had your list of features prioritized in order of importance/ROI and what if you got the most important features first each iteration – say every week?  Maybe you’d find out you didn’t need to build those last few features since they weren’t all that valuable anyway, or maybe you’d find you could swap some of those less valuable ones out for new ones.  Who wouldn’t want that kind of flexibility?

What Comes Next?

This transition is a work in progress and we’re going to give you regular updates and insights into our experiences with Scrum.  You’ll get to see some of the nitty-gritty details like our task board, and burn up charts, as well as some of the struggles and discoveries we make as we go down this road.  We hope you’ll keep your eye on our blog and provide us with any feedback or experiences you’ve had.

  Posted by Andrés on February 17th, 2010

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Hump-Day: Whose website sucks less?

North 44 – One of Toronto’s best fine dining restaurants,

or
Taquerias El Farolito – Serves excellent Mexican food and has 9 locations in California.
Note: their website is a giant .gif of their menu, and the site says it’s still under construction.

Survey says… North44 sucks more!

Dear North44,
Your restaurant is divine, but your website sucks. Skip the intro, lose the flash, and show me your phone number/address within 0.25secs of my arrival on your web page.

Look what your site did to my iPhone!

Thank you,
The Internet Police

P.S. If you want a better website, call me (416.850.2500)

P.S.S. If you don’t understand what I’m talking about read this gem from venomousporridge.com

Me: (tries to visit a local restaurant’s website via iPhone)
Restaurant website: I require Flash. Fuck off.
Me: I just want to know how late you’re open.
Website: Nope.
Me: But I’m on my phone. Don’t you have a little “HTML Version” link up in the corner or something?
Website: I’m ignoring you.
Me: What if I’m on my phone because I’m out, looking for a place to eat? Didn’t that ever occur to you?
Website: Fuck entirely off.
Me: (gives up, switches to computer)
Website: Oh! Hi! What can I help you with today?
Me: What are your —
Website: Hang on, I’m loading the music. Read more…

  Posted by Vivian on February 16th, 2010

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Good clients make good design

I recently finished Chip Kidd’s The Learners, a beautiful novel set in a 1960′s ad agency. Kidd – the Brad Pitt of book designers – provides tons of graphic design gems in this book, inspiring nuggets like:

Kiddies, what makes good design is good clients. It’s as simple as that. Look at CBS–the eye. Genuis. But Frank Stanton, the head of the network, deserves as much credit as Bill Golden, who actually designed it. If the sumvabitch paying the bills isn’t on your bus, you ain’t going anywhere. But if he really lets you drive, you can gun it to the moon.

We definitely agree with the sentiment that credit for a great design can be mutually shared between the designer and the client (who has provided the designer with enough license to craft genius.) Unfortunately, unsuccessful designs are also created by both the designer and client. Articles dealing with designers vs. clients and the design process with clients place the success of a project in the hands of a healthy client-designer relationship.

Make the logo bigger? There are other possibilities.

Because the relationship between client and designer is so critical to the success of a project, we’re continually trying to come up with better ways for these key players to interact. We need to be mindful of the time, investment and even prior experience that a client is putting into the project, while at the same time pushing that client to try and step back and let us do our thing.

It’s important for us to hear the business objectives and business problems directly from clients so we can understand the reason why they are seeking something new. At the same time, we can also look to read between the lines, and dig to find solutions that the client might not realize exist.

It is far more useful for us to hear a client’s perspective such as “most of the customers who arrive on our home page don’t yet know us, and our brand is being lost on a page that is overwhelming them with content” instead of “make the logo bigger“. By stating their concern, we can provide solutions that may or may not include making the logo bigger (for example, brand presence can be increased through colour and pattern, typographic treatments, minimizing other distracting elements etc… not just making the logo bigger.) Sometimes these alternatives are better than the client’s self-diagnosed and self-prescribed treatment.

How does a designer build this kind of trust in the client to step back and not rush to solutions?

Confidence has to be one of the key motivators. Once a client feels secure that their design issues are going to be addressed in a thoughtful and intelligent way, they’re far more willing to let the process unfold. How do you inspire that kind of confidence? That’s the million dollar answer, and I don’t have it, yet. Proven experience, self-confidence, the ability to listen and give thoughtful feedback, a dazzling portfolio of staggering genius – maybe all of the above..?

We’ll keep working on it, and continue to tell our story. Communication is the key ingredient in arriving at a final product that everyone is proud of – something that fulfills business communication goals, has a rich user experience, and is visually stunning. So let’s get back to the drawing board.

  Posted by Andrés on February 10th, 2010

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Please welcome the newest TWGer: Todd Charron

The entire TWG cast would like to formally welcome Todd Charron to the team. Todd joined TWG at the beginning of 2010, and has been pivotal in helping us evolve our Agile development practices and project management system.

As a Certified ScrumMaster, Todd is ideal in leading TWG’s formal transition from “Scrum-ish” to an actual Scrum Agile Development process. Dom and I have always desired for our agile methodology to improve, but without the experience of scrum training we always seemed to stop short of ideal.

Todd has over 9-years of software development experience, and as a former lead developer, he has a terrific understanding of the dev team’s needs. We’re happy that Todd has decided to join us, and you can look forward to learning a lot more about Scrum, as Todd will be active in updating you on our Scrum-Evolution right here on this blog.

Welcome Todd, great to have you aboard!