tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-63545101762984602112011-11-25T09:44:02.430-06:00Marjorie Priesnoreply@blogger.comBlogger461100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6354510176298460211.post-30523256894739974642011-09-10T16:10:00.002-05:002011-09-10T16:15:40.607-05:00

I don't generally think of myself as a project manager, or agile project manager, although others have referred to me as that. "Project Enabler" is more how I see what I do. But recent events (Groupon acquires Obtiva), have caused me to start talking about the role and talking, of course, leads to thinking.List-making is one technique for examining thoughts. I made a fairly long list of

Marjorie Priesnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6354510176298460211.post-29039833315038254902011-08-05T06:55:00.006-05:002011-08-08T07:27:54.989-05:00

Our iteration planning meeting (IPM), like many, is not really a planning session but a status report and demo for managers and SMEs who are generally mostly disconnected from day-to-day development and support. Team leads provide information and our PM assembles the slide deck and gives the presentation. In a recent retrospective we talked about how for two weeks in a row, the only questions

Marjorie Priesnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6354510176298460211.post-83299767529254090662011-07-31T20:04:00.005-05:002011-08-01T06:12:06.330-05:00

My partner and I saw "Cowboy & Aliens" this weekend. Big-effects movies are a fun summer thing to do when it's 90 degrees Fahrenheit outside.Part of the storyline turned on a few scenes that have really bothered me. Not "bothered" in a gory or sexist or gross-out way but bothered me due to the serious disconnect they illustrate about our social situation.The scenes I'm talking about have to do

Marjorie Priesnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6354510176298460211.post-14322415065824638292011-04-08T11:06:00.004-05:002011-07-31T20:04:12.580-05:00

In the course of thrashing over search results for our eCommerce site, a stakeholder suggested that we look into "context-sensitive" search. Now what did they mean by that? What is context? "Context" is nothing more than the words and phrases in the user's mind when they are searching. It's the motivation for and the desired outcome of a search. How do you deduce that when you're handling

Marjorie Priesnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6354510176298460211.post-27914603207423160512011-03-13T11:35:00.004-05:002011-04-08T12:18:55.603-05:00

My most recent project has taken an interesting turn into keyword search. We're using SOLR for our search engine and the philosophical question on the table is how to fine-tune it or do we fine-tune it? That is, we are in a tug-of-war over whether the most prominent results should be the products management wants to feature and also, if the results are inherently flawed because some other things

Marjorie Priesnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6354510176298460211.post-76828258879499275492010-06-29T07:10:00.001-05:002010-06-29T07:12:47.895-05:00

Speed TalksFive-minute speed talks were one feature of the conference. The concept was good -- an open invitation to submit a presentation with a panel of judges to select the best. The results were spotty; all of the presentations had good production values but about half of the topics were trivial (to me). Here are my notes on three of them: "Adventure Research" - ask a not-entirely together

Marjorie Priesnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6354510176298460211.post-78802322797224611702010-06-02T16:52:00.002-05:002010-06-16T22:35:30.323-05:00

The afternoon of the second day seemed to carry the most value for the attendees, based on the coffee break buzz. Three speakers focused on design research activities outside of the US - primarily projects in China, India and the African continent. Two of the three speakers talked about getting past cultural barriers and stereotypes. The third speaker gave a concrete framework for evaluating

Marjorie Priesnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6354510176298460211.post-746103446987794842010-05-21T07:30:00.027-05:002010-05-21T10:46:27.717-05:00

The second day of the conference had a much better sense of theme and structure than the first. The morning focus was on the use of technology in design research and the afternoon talks covered design research activities in Asia and developing countries. This post will cover the technology topics of the day.Kim Erwin: Discussed how online tools were allowing design research to change. Traditional

Marjorie Priesnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6354510176298460211.post-53740815608306509472010-05-15T18:11:00.042-05:002010-05-21T10:53:27.454-05:00

Each day of the Design Reference Conference included five minute speed talks and Day One also included planned table topics for lunch but I will come back to those features in a separate post.Meanwhile, the second half of Day One continued the grab-bag feel from the morning -- one of the two case studies, one of the two big-name thinkers with their POV, two presentations of a more practical "(how

Marjorie Priesnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6354510176298460211.post-64322070302259109322010-05-14T14:00:00.000-05:002010-05-14T14:10:15.458-05:00

Day One of the Design Reference Conference seemed a little disjointed. The majority of the schedule was skewed toward opinion or state of the industry talks by leading personalities with a few case studies and research how-to talks thrown in. Some of these felt more like advertisements for the presenter's design firm than real knowledge-sharing. In retrospect, I could have voted for throwing out

Marjorie Priesnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6354510176298460211.post-67562332391395735022010-05-11T20:38:00.025-05:002010-05-14T13:52:14.447-05:00

Every year in Chicago, the Institute of Design, the home of the New Bauhaus in America, hosts several spring and fall conferences. I have been attending most of them since about 2006. This year, the spring conference focus is on the future of Design Research.Monday was a day of elective workshops with the formal conference happening on Tuesday and Wednesday. I decided to attend the workshop

Marjorie Priesnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6354510176298460211.post-71177454007124994262010-04-24T07:01:00.005-05:002010-04-24T07:20:18.049-05:00

I'm reading The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything by Ken Robinson, PhD. On page 117 of the paperback there is a discussion about communities of interest and what makes for genuine science. Since computing is one of the sciences, I thought it the best short argument for Open Source one could make. Robinson quotes from Michael Polyani:"Scientists, freely making their own choice

Marjorie Priesnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6354510176298460211.post-32455423403255189112010-04-20T17:10:00.028-05:002010-04-24T18:28:25.843-05:00

My last post described a mis-guided, but ultimately interesting walk in search of 80 Foot Road. I had just passed a neighborhood mosque and I kept thinking about the little map from the hotel guidebook. If the fork to 80 Foot Road was not coming up shortly, then I had already passed it though I couldn't see how that could be as there weren't any street signs saying such. Still, according to the

Marjorie Priesnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6354510176298460211.post-24119057169334990552010-03-11T16:43:00.000-06:002010-03-12T15:41:10.255-06:00

In a recent blog post, Innovation in the Enterprise, my friend Sumeet Moghe raised the question, "Is too much experience a good thing?" He speculates that "...increasing experience in a company eventually stifle[s] innovation".I agree the observation is valid; established enterprises are generally less innovative, relatively speaking, than start-ups. But is the general experience level of the

Marjorie Priesnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6354510176298460211.post-39313999832868324202010-03-10T21:02:00.000-06:002010-03-10T21:02:00.261-06:00

My Bangalore explorations ran into a wall after that weekend in Bannerghatta. the The preliminary outings and introductory classes of ThoughtWorks University (TWU) were over and the students and trainers alike were digging into the hard stuff. My week days generally ran like this: 7:30-8:00: get to the Royal Orchid (a very nice hotel behind the Diamond District) around 7:30 for breakfast, class

Marjorie Priesnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6354510176298460211.post-22476948056070284892010-02-11T00:35:00.000-06:002010-03-31T16:20:52.046-05:00

After the bus trip, arrival at Bannerghatta seemed a little abrupt, most likely because I had the mistaken idea the bus stop was associated to a hotel when really it stopped at a parking lot outside the formal zoo with a cafe pavilion across the way in the other direction. The lodge van was already there to pick me up.It was a about a 15 minute drive winding uphill into the forest. At two points,

Marjorie Priesnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6354510176298460211.post-83611331726095447542009-11-03T22:50:00.000-06:002010-04-05T09:10:57.774-05:00

My main goal in understanding the Bangalore bus system(s) was to find an easy and cheap way to get out of Bangalore. Between Lal Bagh, Cariappa, and Cubbon Parks, I felt like I had pretty much explored all of the serious birding territory inside the city boundaries. So far, the drainage canal behind the Diamond District was turning out to be my most productive spot – given the distance to cover

Marjorie Priesnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6354510176298460211.post-21370568162302308122009-08-22T01:11:00.000-05:002010-04-05T09:08:52.250-05:00

I don't know why it seemed so surprising to find out there was horse-racing in Bangalore, after all, on the Bangalore walk, we learned that the city had been a major center of British operations in India and the Brits do like horses.Anyway, in a weird twist of fate, the very next morning after Venu pointed out the track to me on the bus, the newspaper's headline story was all about the racetrack

Marjorie Priesnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6354510176298460211.post-87139727303509154102009-08-22T01:09:00.001-05:002010-04-05T09:08:28.286-05:00

Our third weekend outing with the TWU students was a trip to Mascal. At the time, June 2009, nobody could really say what Mascal was, except that it was an outdoor adventure day at a super-secret village that didn't show up on any map. If we googled it, all we got were two links from other TWers blogging about their TWU experience with a few photos. But today, a Google search turns up a little

Marjorie Priesnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6354510176298460211.post-89695531295852949642009-08-22T00:19:00.000-05:002010-04-05T09:08:00.118-05:00

In my last post, I talked about visiting the Bangalore Palace. But actually, before that happened, I did a little Saturday revist of MG Road and Commercial Street with the TWU (ThoughtWorks University) students.At the time, TWU was heading into its second week. After the first week of classes, we held a retrospective (an essential feature of agile software projects) and the students decided they

Marjorie Priesnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6354510176298460211.post-61463441760179806572009-08-16T18:45:00.000-05:002009-08-18T06:01:24.817-05:00

It just occurred to me that, although it's very comfortable to write one of these posts once a week or so, at this rate I'm still going to be writing about Bangalore at Christmastime (December). There is just so much to say and share about India. So I better start blocking out some writing-time every evening until I finally unload all my best memories.For example, thinking about Cariappa Park and

Marjorie Priesnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6354510176298460211.post-35586373624992585042009-08-03T22:22:00.001-05:002009-08-09T19:32:55.132-05:00

As I mentioned in my last post, Cariappa Park turned out to be a little bit different from Lal Bagh or Cubbon Park. The guidebooks list it and you can see it on some maps, too, but it really didn't get my attention until I rode past it in a rickshaw. It looked really wild and green, like a forest not a park. Interesting. I put it in the mental files to investigate.The next weekend turned out to

Marjorie Priesnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6354510176298460211.post-28654586470437699862009-08-03T21:51:00.000-05:002009-08-04T17:08:47.378-05:00

Before I forget anything about them, there were two other large public parks in Bangalore that I visited. Cubbon Park was a recommendation from my friend Jake, another trainer. Cariappa Park was mentioned in a guidebook but forgotten by me until I passed it on an auto-rickshaw ride to Cubbon Park.Unlike Lal Bagh, Cubbon Park is not promoted as anything but a public greenspace inside the city. No

Marjorie Priesnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6354510176298460211.post-75828146678675786042009-07-22T13:19:00.000-05:002009-07-23T02:54:52.764-05:00

I was going to continue to write about public parks but that can wait. It's time to talk a little about food. Bangalore has turned out to be like Chicago, a great cosmopolitan melting pot of world cusines at affordabale prices in homey atmospheres. Too bad the demands and lunchtime buffets of TW University have generally kept me off the street at suppertime.You can get good versions of just about

Marjorie Priesnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6354510176298460211.post-37370997940156706252009-07-14T11:29:00.000-05:002009-07-22T13:11:39.941-05:00

If you come to the east/south gate of Lal Bagh, the Peninsular Gneiss is on your left and an Oriental Garden is on your right. There's a main boulevard in front of you which you can imagine bisects a clockface from 6 to 12. This boulevard is where all the action congregates. On the left, on my first vist, appeared to be a series of green food stalls and lots of people buying snacks. Actually,

Marjorie Priesnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6354510176298460211.post-45516786485047366042009-07-06T12:07:00.000-05:002009-07-06T14:34:51.021-05:00

Wikipedia and the India guidebook I consulted before traveling, describe Lal Bagh as a botanic garden. The mere fact that I am writing this post probably indicates that I beg to disagree with that description. Let me tell you about it.First, the Wikipedia entry is a good source for history and the current tree-cutting situation. The photos shown and linked there tell a true story, but not all of

Marjorie Priesnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6354510176298460211.post-79709469030950078572009-06-28T13:31:00.000-05:002009-07-14T11:29:24.180-05:00

I've been in Bangalore for eight weeks now and except for the auto-rickshaw adventures, I've hardly described more than my first weekend. So this post is all about catching up, except, I hardly know where to get started.First thing though, I know I'm not going to talk about ThoughtWorks India or TW University right now. That can wait. Second, I do know that I want to tie up some loose ends from

Marjorie Priesnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6354510176298460211.post-21782913313955935242009-06-18T10:54:00.000-05:002009-06-21T12:14:49.119-05:00

By now you must be able to tell that I'm a farly hard-headed person who likes figure out my own way of doing a thing (or throughly tracing every path on my own until I prove to myself I have no clue what I'm doing.) This must be true because the very next free weekend, I called Arif, the driver who had taken me to Lal Bagh and back without going shopping. This time, I wanted to go to Sankey Tank,

Marjorie Priesnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6354510176298460211.post-49363945386231017732009-06-12T11:57:00.000-05:002009-06-13T01:00:26.427-05:00

Having had two successful afternoons using auto-rickshaws, I thought I had it made for transportation in Bangalore. That's like thinking you are having fun in Las Vegas but you've only just arrived in the casino.I still hadn't gotten the kitchen things I wanted so on my next free afternoon, I called Arif, the driver who had taken me to Lal Bagh. He was out of town for a wedding, so I called Mr.

Marjorie Priesnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6354510176298460211.post-4458993762356660342009-06-07T11:27:00.000-05:002009-06-07T12:59:02.142-05:00

The auto-rickshaw is an interesting cross between a tricycle, a golf cart, and a horse carriage. It has three wheels, a two or three stroke engine, open sides and a hard seat in the back that can hold two or three adults, and a driver in the front who usually can't speak whatever language you speak, except for the words "shop" and "shopping."There are thousands of them in India, all with the same

Marjorie Priesnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6354510176298460211.post-44379026114915149202009-06-01T20:42:00.000-05:002009-06-07T11:26:13.155-05:00

Before reading any further, you might want to check out the builder's on-line brochureware for the place.The Diamond District is like a medieval walled city. It’s an irregular elliptical shape with five guarded gates; thee gates have little guardhouses. Two office buildings anchor one end of the complex and front on Old Airport Road (the road I came in on). Residential buildings make up the rest

Marjorie Priesnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6354510176298460211.post-40754752572358834782009-05-28T12:00:00.000-05:002009-05-30T00:44:23.898-05:00

What a relief, in my apartment and "home" at last! I just crashed and slept until about 2 PM Bangalore time Saturday, that’s about a 12 hour nap. By then, it was too far into the day to feel ambitious so I decided to just unpack, assess the apartment and get a feel for what’s inside the Diamond District, plus figure out what to do about food (I had packed a few emergency rations like tuna and

Marjorie Priesnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6354510176298460211.post-36298626711281490722009-05-23T21:43:00.000-05:002009-05-23T22:21:18.922-05:00

There I was, in Bangalore at about 2 in the morning, without an apartment, with all my luggage in a car parked in front of an office building while the driver and I are in an elevator going up to the ThoughtWorks office. It is a short ride, since ThoughtWorks' main office is on the second floor. The elevator door opens and the place is almost pitch black except for a small night light across from

Marjorie Priesnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6354510176298460211.post-81307975894481645352009-05-20T14:25:00.000-05:002009-05-23T00:31:15.095-05:00

Flying to Bangalore from Chicago is a long flight -- about 20 hours including the connection time in Paris -- but not too bad if you 're comfortable sleeping on planes. I had the good luck to get a good price on an Air France flight. Flying Air France is very nice. They pour you a little glass of champagne for starters and it doesn’t cost $6 and not even $4; it’s free! (Although I think it’s

Marjorie Priesnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6354510176298460211.post-89756210073964960562009-05-16T08:20:00.000-05:002009-05-16T09:00:45.094-05:00

First, I just want to mention that I haven't posted anything for a month because I've been really distracted with my current assignment, which is three months in India (Bangalore) to be a trainer for ThoughtWorks University -- an intensive six week introduction to consulting and software development the TW way for entry-level new hires. I'll start blogging about that in my next post. But now,

Marjorie Priesnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6354510176298460211.post-76530165267059778642009-04-14T16:53:00.000-05:002009-04-14T20:58:16.613-05:00

Not too long ago, I was on a review team to look at an RFP (request for proposal) that had, more or less, come in over the transom.*The project had its interesting points. The basic functionality was essentially an operations tracking application for custom jobs -- when did the job come in, who touched it last, what did they do with it, what is the current status, has it concluded and left the

Marjorie Priesnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6354510176298460211.post-15108627568874319622009-04-07T23:28:00.000-05:002009-04-07T22:33:56.421-05:00

A while ago, a friend and I were comparing experiences on our projects. She talked a little about one of her key stakeholders and said, "He asked me how could he get more throughput out of his team. I didn't know exactly what to say."Throughput, eh? The word calls to mind network traffic and bits and bytes of data streaming over cables or fiber optics. It's not too far of a jump to extrapolate

Marjorie Priesnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6354510176298460211.post-22062619573231265942009-04-03T13:07:00.000-05:002009-04-03T13:09:50.312-05:00

Last night Paul, my long-time partner, and I had dinner at our local Irish pub. The last of the NIT championship game was on the big screen followed by the NCAA 3-point championship.Now, the 3-point championship doesn't mean that much. Mainly it's a way for players whose teams didn't make the Final Four to get a little more publicity for their schools and get a little more personal attention from

Marjorie Priesnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6354510176298460211.post-12508136612168428702009-04-01T20:47:00.000-05:002009-04-01T21:11:41.425-05:00

I think that in America we recognize there's a benefit to the intersection of business and technology and many of our leading universities assemble programs that attempt to foster a path between science/technology and management but we are generally late to the party when it comes to understanding design and innovation. Now, from the Financial Times of March 29, 2009 comes this piece of news:"

Marjorie Priesnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6354510176298460211.post-6741658707881449622009-03-31T18:30:00.000-05:002009-03-31T16:25:10.287-05:00

So now we are at Question 3:Do the UI stories count as "done", even when no software has been written?"Count" is the operative word here. Do we mean "count" as in "keep track" or "tick off on a list" or do we mean "count" as in adding up some numbers and coming to a conclusion about actuals vs. estimates?The purpose of saying a story is Done, is to have a means of measuring the team's velocity --

Marjorie Priesnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6354510176298460211.post-50048061705953253992009-03-27T16:26:00.000-05:002009-03-28T09:25:45.112-05:00

In my last post, I started to cover some ground on how Agile and UCD can fit together. These postings come from a discussion on agile usability in which Robert Biddle of Carleton University, asked me three very good questions.Q1: are the UI designers and programmers within the same team but do different kinds of tasks, or do they do both?Q2: what are the UI stories (or backlog items) like,

Marjorie Priesnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6354510176298460211.post-49322333489338148882009-03-24T18:33:00.000-05:002009-03-28T09:26:11.669-05:00

I'm a member of an agile usability discussion group. There has been a lot of discussion lately about how and whether designers and UCD people can work within an Agile project. There is a lot of concern that methods and aproaches may not mesh -- that Agile starts developing and releasing stuff long before the designer can complete their diagnosis of the problem and create an effective solution.for

Marjorie Priesnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6354510176298460211.post-14215059293938221742009-03-18T16:35:00.005-05:002010-04-05T09:28:54.454-05:00

Last month, the Financial Times ran an excellent editorial about government and business activities that exhibit the Great Leap Forward syndrome.The author, economist John Kay, uses the example of Mao Tse-Tung's attempt to restructure China's economic base to illuminate why large-scale software projects also, often end in failure."Great Leap Forward syndrome begins with an aspiration to remedy

Marjorie Priesnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6354510176298460211.post-71580090462008007542009-03-11T15:59:00.000-05:002009-03-28T09:28:29.307-05:00

Here's a little self-promotion:Martin Fowler had a very nice write-up about my last project, the one that's still going without me. He said, "It's a favorite of mine because it exhibits an important property of my preferred view of software development: a long term support of a business function enabled by a well-designed code-base. The fact that they are still adding useful business value after

Marjorie Priesnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6354510176298460211.post-43731952514512272512009-03-09T13:59:00.000-05:002009-03-13T15:16:07.446-05:00

In my first post, I talked about being "on the beach", in-between projects. When you're on the beach you get a lot of time to reflect about what you want to do next. That's because just about everybody you see will ask you two kinds of questions: "Are you on the beach?" or "Are you still on the beach?" And then, "What do you think you'll do next?" or "What do you want to do next?"For example,

Marjorie Priesnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6354510176298460211.post-11569518959933833532009-03-06T16:04:00.000-06:002009-03-28T09:29:56.121-05:00

Hi. I'm Marjorie Pries and this is my first blog post. I'm a business analyst / project manager / iteration manager / utility player (honest, my business card says, "Utility Infielder" ) for ThoughtWorks, Inc. in Chicago.I've been in software development since 1992 and I've been with ThoughtWorks since June 2000. Today, I'm "on the beach." That means I'm in-between projects ... non-billable ...

Marjorie Priesnoreply@blogger.com2