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• Using Completed User Stories to Estimate Future User Stories

  - by David Kaczynski

  In Scrum/Agile, the complexity of a user story can be estimated in story points. After completing some user stories, a programmer or team of programmers can use those experiences to better estimate how much time it might take to complete a future user story. Is there a methodology for breaking down the complexity of user stories into quantifiable or quantifiable attributes? For example, User Story X requires a rich, new view in the GUI, but User Story X can perform most of its functionality using existing business logic on the server. On a scale of 1 to 10, User Story X has a complexity of 7 on the client and a complexity of 2 on the server. After User Story X is completed, someone asks how long would it take to complete User Story Y, which has a complexity of 3 on the client and 6 on the server. Looking at how long it took to complete User Story X, we can make an educated estimate on how long it might take to complete User Story Y. I can imagine some other details: The complexity of one attribute (such as complexity of client) could have sub-attributes, such as number of steps in a sequence, function points, etc. Several other attributes that could be considered as well, such as the programmer's familiarity with the system or the number of components/interfaces involved These attributes could be accumulated into some sort of user story checklist. To reiterate: is there an existing methodology for decomposing the complexity of a user story into complexity of attributes/sub-attributes, or is using completed user stories as indicators in estimating future user stories more of an informal process?

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• Facebook Stories for Retailers

  - by David Dorf

  Getting people to "like" a brand is important because it opens the door to a possible B2C relationship. Once a person likes that brand, the brand can post to their newsfeed with promotions, announcements, and surveys. At least for me, I "hide" the noisy brands and just monitor the ones that keep posts under 4 times a week. I see lots of people, especially with fashion brands, comment on postings at which point the posting is seen by their network. A metric I've heard (but not verified) is that for every person that comments, ten of their friends see the original posting. That's a pretty cheap way to communicate to potential customers in a viral way. Over at mainstreet.com they compiled the a list of the top liked retailers on Facebook as of Feb 1, 2011. They are listed below: 19,414,892 Starbucks 11,302,939 Victoria's Secret 7,925,184 Zara 7,032,398 McDonald's 6,117,222 H&M 5,400,586 Taco Bell 4,665,760 Subway 4,494,849 Lacoste 4,185,570 Hollister 3,973,181 Forever 21 So I guess the public likes their fast-food and fashion. To take this to the next level, Facebook is now displaying Sponsored Stories, which I saw for the first time on my page this weekend. I found this picture at the Wall Blog that depicits Sponsored Stories very well. Over on the right-hand column of a person's page, where they see advertisements and such, Facebook will post stories involving their network of friends and their interaction with sponsored brands. Now their "likes" can suddenly become your ads. "Jessica and Philip like Starbucks. What are you waiting for?" This is another great way to take messages viral by accessing social graphs. As usual there will be a certain level of outcry from privacy advocates, but given the other more iniquitous issues, I believe this will fall by the wayside. Retailers should consider using Sponsored Stories to increase their Likes, and thus increase their voice in the social world.

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• Latest EMEA Partner Success Stories (21st November)

  - by swalker

  Be Recognised Through Partner Success Stories You can showcase your capabilities in Oracle products and industries through partner success stories that are published on Oracle.com, and benefit from the traffic on our portal. To participate, you are required to complete a form and inform us of a successfully implemented project. If your story is selected, we will contact you for an interview. Click here to access the form and submit your success story. The latest customer success snapshots with partners being uploaded on to Oracle.com are: Robur S.p.A. Telenor LinkPlus A.S. Urals Power Engineering Company Bochemie Group Mediaset S.p.A Landbrokes Coeclerici S.p.A. IDS GmbH -Analysis and Reporting Services Teatre Nacional de Catalunya LinkPlus A.S. Scottish Water LH Dienstbekleidungs GmbH Champion Europe SpA  Metropolitan Housing Partnership McKesson Robur Learn more about our partner and customer successes by browsing the many EMEA Success Stories across all industries here.

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• Call for Customer Examples and Stories--PeopleTools 8.50

  - by PeopleTools Strategy Team

  PeopleTools 8.50 was a big release for us, and one that we think will provide a lot of value for customers. We've been having some interesting conversations with customers about this release at conferences, advisory board meetings, and technical group meetings. However, we would like to solicit some examples and success stories from you, our broad customer base. Do you have some examples of how you are using PeopleTools 8.50 and Enterprise Portal 9.1 that you would be willing to share? We would like to see some screen shots and perhaps a short blurb describing how you are using the Tools and Portal features, as well as any benefits accrued. Do you have a compelling success story? We are particularly interested in hearing about quantifiable improvements in user productivity, performance, cost savings, etc. You should be aware that these screen shots and stories will be public, and could appear in a conference presentation at some point. You will not be asked to serve as a formal reference, however. If you have some stories and examples you'd be willing share with us, please send them to this email address for the PeopleTools team: [email protected]

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• scheme vs common lisp: war stories

  - by SuperElectric

  There are no shortage of vague "Scheme vs Common Lisp" questions on StackOverflow, so I want to make this one more focused. The question is for people who have coded in both languages: While coding in Scheme, what specific elements of your Common Lisp coding experience did you miss most? Or, inversely, while coding in Common Lisp, what did you miss from coding in Scheme? I don't necessarily mean just language features. The following are all valid things to miss, as far as the question is concerned: Specific libraries. Specific features of development environments like SLIME, DrRacket, etc. Features of particular implementations, like Gambit's ability to write blocks of C code directly into your Scheme source. And of course, language features. Examples of the sort of answers I'm hoping for: "I was trying to implement X in Common Lisp, and if I had Scheme's first-class continuations, I totally would've just done Y, but instead I had to do Z, which was more of a pain." "Scripting the build process in Scheme project, got increasingly painful as my source tree grew and I linked in more and more C libraries. For my next project, I moved back to Common Lisp." "I have a large existing C++ codebase, and for me, being able to embed C++ calls directly in my Gambit Scheme code was totally worth any shortcomings that Scheme may have vs Common Lisp, even including lack of SWIG support." So, I'm hoping for war stories, rather than general sentiments like "Scheme is a simpler language" etc.

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• Scheme vs Common Lisp: war stories

  - by SuperElectric

  There are no shortage of vague "Scheme vs Common Lisp" questions on both StackOverflow and on this site, so I want to make this one more focused. The question is for people who have coded in both languages: While coding in Scheme, what specific elements of your Common Lisp coding experience did you miss most? Or, inversely, while coding in Common Lisp, what did you miss from coding in Scheme? I don't necessarily mean just language features. The following are all valid things to miss, as far as the question is concerned: Specific libraries. Specific features of development environments like SLIME, DrRacket, etc. Features of particular implementations, like Gambit's ability to write blocks of C code directly into your Scheme source. And of course, language features. Examples of the sort of answers I'm hoping for: "I was trying to implement X in Common Lisp, and if I had Scheme's first-class continuations, I totally would've just done Y, but instead I had to do Z, which was more of a pain." "Scripting the build process in my Scheme project got increasingly painful as my source tree grew and I linked in more and more C libraries. For my next project, I moved back to Common Lisp." "I have a large existing C++ codebase, and for me, being able to embed C++ calls directly in my Gambit Scheme code was totally worth any shortcomings that Scheme may have vs Common Lisp, even including lack of SWIG support." So, I'm hoping for war stories, rather than general sentiments like "Scheme is a simpler language" etc.

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• Agile: User Stories for Machine Learning Project?

  - by benjismith

  I've just finished up with a prototype implementation of a supervised learning algorithm, automatically assigning categorical tags to all the items in our company database (roughly 5 million items). The results look good, and I've been given the go-ahead to plan the production implementation project. I've done this kind of work before, so I know how the functional components of the software. I need a collection of web crawlers to fetch data. I need to extract features from the crawled documents. Those documents need to be segregated into a "training set" and a "classification set", and feature-vectors need to be extracted from each document. Those feature vectors are self-organized into clusters, and the clusters are passed through a series of rebalancing operations. Etc etc etc etc. So I put together a plan, with about 30 unique development/deployment tasks, each with time estimates. The first stage of development -- ignoring some advanced features that we'd like to have in the long-term, but aren't high enough priority to make it into the development schedule yet -- is slated for about two months worth of work. (Keep in mind that I already have a working prototype, so the final implementation is significantly simpler than if the project was starting from scratch.) My manager said the plan looked good to him, but he asked if I could reorganize the tasks into user stories, for a few reasons: (1) our project management software is totally organized around user stories; (2) all of our scheduling is based on fitting entire user stories into sprints, rather than individually scheduling tasks; (3) other teams -- like the web developers -- have made great use of agile methodologies, and they've benefited from modelling all the software features as user stories. So I created a user story at the top level of the project: As a user of the system, I want to search for items by category, so that I can easily find the most relevant items within a huge, complex database. Or maybe a better top-level story for this feature would be: As a content editor, I want to automatically create categorical designations for the items in our database, so that customers can easily find high-value data within our huge, complex database. But that's not the real problem. The tricky part, for me, is figuring out how to create subordinate user stories for the rest of the machine learning architecture. Case in point... I know that the algorithm requires two major architectural subdivisions: (A) training, and (B) classification. And I know that the training portion of the architecture requires construction of a cluster-space. All the Agile Development literature I've read seems to indicate that a user story should be the "smallest possible implementation that provides any business value". And that makes a lot of sense when designing a piece of end-user software. Start small, and then incrementally add value when users demand additional functionality. But a cluster-space, in and of itself, provides zero business value. Nor does a crawler, or a feature-extractor. There's no business value (not for the end-user, or for any of the roles internal to the company) in a partial system. A trained cluster-space is only possible with the crawler and feature extractor, and only relevant if we also develop an accompanying classifier. I suppose it would be possible to create user stories where the subordinate components of the system act as the users in the stories: As a supervised-learning cluster-space construction routine, I want to consume data from a feature extractor, so that I can exist. But that seems really weird. What benefit does it provide me as the developer (or our users, or any other stakeholders, for that matter) to model my user stories like that? Although the main story can be easily divided along architectural-component boundaries (crawler, trainer, classifier, etc), I can't think of any useful decomposition from a user's perspective. What do you guys think? How do you plan Agile user stories for sophisticated, indivisible, non-user-facing components?

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• Writing user stories for internal technical tasks

  - by John Nolan

  I am attempting to manage my projects a little better so I am looking at attempting to apply some of (eventually all) the features of scrum. Looking at user stories specifically the high level format seems to be: As a User I can Feature Description or Artifact is Doing Something How would I write "Upgrade the Database"? Is it simply Upgrade the Database? I think I am being thrown off as there is no specific actor/customer and that the customer is the IT department.

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• Scrum stories and behind the scenes features

  - by James P.

  As I understand things, the Scrum backlog is composed of a series of Stories that represent something for the end user and this is further decomposed into Features. If this is the case, where does all the behind the scenes features go that aren't really linked to a story but are still useful? For example, say I'm making an application that catalogs the contents of a hard drive. A story wouldn't require it but having an md5 hash on each file would be a nice feature.

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• BPM 11g Customer Stories & Solution Catalog & Process Accelerators

  - by JuergenKress

  Stories Everyone loves a good story on planning or implementing a BPM strategy. Everyone wants to hear how it was done before?, what worked?, what was achieved? If you have achieved success with BPM, we are very keen to hear your stories and examples of how your customers use it. We receive lots of requests from people who are thinking of using BPM to solve a specific problem or in combination with a specific technology to talk to someone who has done it before. These stories are invaluable. Drop down the details of anything you think is relevant with a bit of detail and we will follow up on it. As one good deed deserves another, we will do our best to give you stories if you need them to show that where you are going, others have treaded before. Send your stories to us using this e-mail link and we will share them among other like minded people. Solution Catalogue This summer, Oracle is launching a solution catalogue specifically intended for partners. If you have delivered a successful implementation in BPM and think it could be reused and applied again in a similar scenario in the same industry or in a similar environment, then we ware keen to know about it and will add it to the solution catalogue. The solution catalogue will showcase successful BPM solutions both inside and outside Oracle. Be in touch with us on this e-mail link and we will make sure to add your solution. Process Accelerators Finally if you have specific processes that you are expert on, you have implemented at a customer and you want to work with us on getting these productised, then we would love to know about it. The process accelerator programme is explained in the most recent SOA/BPM Community Newsletter but again feel free to contact us if you want to get involved. Good luck with BPM and let us know how we can help. Barry O'Reilly Director BPM Solutions [email protected] SOA & BPM Partner Community For regular information on Oracle SOA Suite become a member in the SOA & BPM Partner Community for registration please visit  www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Mix Forum Technorati Tags: BPM,Barry O Reilly,SOA Community,Oracle SOA,Oracle BPM,BPM Community,OPN,Jürgen Kress

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• How do I convince my team that a requirements specification is unnecessary if we adopt user-stories?

  - by Nupul

  We are planning to adopt user-stories to capture stakeholder 'intent' in a lightweight fashion rather than a heavy SRS (software requirements specifications). However, it seems that though they understand the value of stories, there is still a desire to 'convert' the stories into an SRS-like language with all the attributes, priorities, input, outputs, source, destination etc. User-stories 'eliminate' the need for a formal SRS like artifact to begin with so what's the point in having an SRS? How should I convince my team (who are all very qualified CS folks by the way - both by education and practice) that the SRS would be 'eliminated' if we adopted user-stories for capturing the functional requirements of the system? (NFRs etc can be captured too, but that's not the intent of the question). So here's my 'work-flow' argument: Capture initial requirements as user-stories and later elaborate them to use-cases (which are required to be documented at a low level i.e. describing interactions with the UI prototypes/mockups and are a deliverable post deployment). Thus going from user-stories to use-cases rather than user-stories to SRS to use-cases. How are you all currently capturing user-stories at your workplace (if at all) and how do you suggest I 'make a case' for absence of SRS in presence of user-stories?

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• Backend devs put down by user stories

  - by Szili

  I planned to slice in backend development into to the user stories vertically. But a backend guy on our team started to complain that this makes their work invisible. My answer was that at the sprint planning and review meetings we discuss backend tasks in front of stakeholders so it makes it visible, and maintaining a high quality during the project will result a slower startin pace than other teams, but we will have a stable velocity during the project. And velocity is highly visible to stakeholders. He still insist having stories like: "As a developer I need to have a domain layer so I can encapsulate business logic." How can I solve the issue before it pollutes the team? The root of the issue is that our management systematically consider backend work as invisible and call backed devs miners, or other pejorative terms.

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• New success stories for Oracle IRM and blog translations

  - by Simon Thorpe

  While we have been busy with the release of Oracle IRM 11g, we've had some customers create a few more success stories for us. These have now been added to our success stories page on this blog, quick links to them are below. Also the announcement has generated a lot of interest globally within Oracle and as such our friends in Latin America have been asking for some translated pages on the blog. So the first of these are now available in Brazilian Portuguese for both the Oracle IRM overview and the simple demonstration online where anyone can self register and experience Oracle IRM protected content. If you work for Oracle sales and would like to translate any of the information on this blog please contact us.

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• Customizing the Test Status on the TFS 2010 SSRS Stories Overview Report

  - by Bob Hardister

  This post shows how to customize the SQL query used by the Team Foundation Server 2010 SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) Stories Overview Report. The objective is to show test status for the current version while including user story status of the current and prior versions.  Why? Because we don’t copy completed user stories into the next release. We only want one instance of a user story for the product because we believe copies can get out of sync when they are supposed to be the same. In the example below, work items for the current version are on the area path root and prior versions are not on the area path root. However, you can use area path or iteration path criteria in the query as suits your needs. In any case, here’s how you do it: 1. Download a copy of the report RDL file as a backup 2. Open the report by clicking the edit down arrow and selecting “Edit in Report Builder” 3. Right click on the dsOverview Dataset and select Dataset Properties 4. Update the following SQL per the comments in the code: Customization 1 of 3 … -- Get the list deliverable workitems that have Test Cases linked DECLARE @TestCases Table (DeliverableID int, TestCaseID int); INSERT @TestCases     SELECT h.ID, flh.TargetWorkItemID     FROM @Hierarchy h         JOIN FactWorkItemLinkHistory flh             ON flh.SourceWorkItemID = h.ID                 AND flh.WorkItemLinkTypeSK = @TestedByLinkTypeSK                 AND flh.RemovedDate = CONVERT(DATETIME, '9999', 126)                 AND flh.TeamProjectCollectionSK = @TeamProjectCollectionSK         JOIN [CurrentWorkItemView] wi ON flh.TargetWorkItemID = wi.[System_ID]                  AND wi.[System_WorkItemType] = @TestCase             AND wi.ProjectNodeGUID  = @ProjectGuid              --  Customization 1 of 3: only include test status information when test case area path = root. Added the following 2 statements              AND wi.AreaPath = '{the root area path of the team project}'  …          Customization 2 of 3 … -- Get the Bugs linked to the deliverable workitems directly DECLARE @Bugs Table (ID int, ActiveBugs int, ResolvedBugs int, ClosedBugs int, ProposedBugs int) INSERT @Bugs     SELECT h.ID,         SUM (CASE WHEN wi.[System_State] = @Active THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) Active,         SUM (CASE WHEN wi.[System_State] = @Resolved THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) Resolved,         SUM (CASE WHEN wi.[System_State] = @Closed THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) Closed,         SUM (CASE WHEN wi.[System_State] = @Proposed THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) Proposed     FROM @Hierarchy h         JOIN FactWorkItemLinkHistory flh             ON flh.SourceWorkItemID = h.ID             AND flh.TeamProjectCollectionSK = @TeamProjectCollectionSK         JOIN [CurrentWorkItemView] wi             ON wi.[System_WorkItemType] = @Bug             AND wi.[System_Id] = flh.TargetWorkItemID             AND flh.RemovedDate = CONVERT(DATETIME, '9999', 126)             AND wi.[ProjectNodeGUID] = @ProjectGuid              --  Customization 2 of 3: only include test status information when test case area path = root. Added the following statement              AND wi.AreaPath = '{the root area path of the team project}'       GROUP BY h.ID … Customization 2 of 3 … -- Add the Bugs linked to the Test Cases which are linked to the deliverable workitems -- Walks the links from the user stories to test cases (via the tested by link), and then to -- bugs that are linked to the test case. We don't need to join to the test case in the work -- item history view. -- --    [WIT:User Story/Requirement] --> [Link:Tested By]--> [Link:any type] --> [WIT:Bug] INSERT @Bugs SELECT tc.DeliverableID,     SUM (CASE WHEN wi.[System_State] = @Active THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) Active,     SUM (CASE WHEN wi.[System_State] = @Resolved THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) Resolved,     SUM (CASE WHEN wi.[System_State] = @Closed THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) Closed,     SUM (CASE WHEN wi.[System_State] = @Proposed THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) Proposed FROM @TestCases tc     JOIN FactWorkItemLinkHistory flh         ON flh.SourceWorkItemID = tc.TestCaseID         AND flh.RemovedDate = CONVERT(DATETIME, '9999', 126)         AND flh.TeamProjectCollectionSK = @TeamProjectCollectionSK     JOIN [CurrentWorkItemView] wi         ON wi.[System_Id] = flh.TargetWorkItemID         AND wi.[System_WorkItemType] = @Bug         AND wi.[ProjectNodeGUID] = @ProjectGuid         --  Customization 3 of 3: only include test status information when test case area path = root. Added the following statement         AND wi.AreaPath = '{the root area path of the team project}'     GROUP BY tc.DeliverableID … 5. Save the report and you’re all set. Note: you may need to re-apply custom parameter changes like pre-selected sprints.

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• User Story or User Stories for this specific requirement

  - by Maximus

  I have to write a user story for a requirement that involves passing search filters to the same URI and retrieving corresponding results. I have 5 filters. I plan to write 5 different stories of type: As a URI user I can search by #filter1 so that I can retrieve results based on #filter1. And then a 6th story that involves searching one or more or all six filters in conjunction. Is this is a sensible route to take?

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• Inspiring Computer Science College Student Stories?

  - by funk-shun

  After watching "The Social Network", a movie about Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook, I had a productivity spike as it inspired me to learn many different languages and software. That spike has been deteriorating somewhat and I don't feel like watching the movie all over again so I was wondering if anybody had any other similar success stories/links/articles/whatever. Mainly about successes that started for people in college.

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• A starting point for Use Cases and User Stories

  - by Mike Benkovich

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/benko/archive/2013/07/23/a-starting-point-for-use-cases-and-user-stories.aspxSoftware is a challenging business and is rife with opportunities to go wrong. Over the years a number of methodologies have evolved to help make sure that things go right. In an effort to contribute to this I’ve created a list of user stories that I think should be included and sometimes are just assumed. Note this is a work in progress, so I’m looking for your feedback. I’m curious what you would add or change in my list. · As a DBA I am working with a Normalized data model that reflects an agreed upon logical model for the system · As a DBA I am using consistent names for my fields which match the naming standards of my organization · As a DBA my model supports simple CRUD operations against all the entities · As an Application Architect the UI has been validated against the Business requirements and a complete set of user story’s have been created · As an Application Architect the database model has been validated against the UI · As an Application Architect we have a logical business model that describes all the known and/or expected usage of the system during the software’s expected lifecycle · As an Application Architect we have a Deployment diagram that describes how the application components will be deployed · As an Application Architect we have a navigation diagram that describes the typical application flow · As an Application Architect we have identified points of interaction which describes how the UI interacts with the services and the data storage · As an Application Architect we have identified external systems which may now or in the future use the data of this application and have adapted the logical model to include these interactions · As an Application Architect we have identified existing systems and tools that can be extended and/or reused to help this application achieve it’s business goals · As a Project Manager all team members understand the goals of each release and iteration as they are planned · As a Project Manager all team members understand their role and the roles of others · As a Project Manager we have support of the business to do the right thing even if it is not the expedient thing · As a Test/QA Analyst we have created a simulation environment for testing the system which does not use sensitive data and accurately reflects the scenarios of all the data that will be supported by the system · As a Test/QA Analyst we have identified the matrix of supported clients used to access the system including the likely browsers, mobile devices and other interfaces to work with the application · As a Test/QA Analyst we have created exit criteria for each user story that match the requirements of the business story that was used to create them · As a Test/QA Analyst we have access to a Test environment that is isolated from production and staging environments · As a Test/QA Analyst there we have a way to reset the environment so we can rerun tests when a new version of the software becomes available · As a Test/QA Analyst I am able to automate portions of the test process Thoughts? -mike

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• Ten New Linux Distributions Inspired by News Stories

  <b>DaniWeb: </b>"I've run across ten new Linux distributions inspired by current news stories. Some, of course, are better than others and a few just have no practical use or purpose whatsoever but still are worth a mention."

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• Editor's Note: Funniest, Most Expensive, Best, and All-Time Number One Linux Today Stories

  Linux Today archives go all the way back to the very beginning in 1998. Here are a few choice stories to share, from the funniest to the most expensive LT story ever to the most popular story, which also gives a prescient peek into Apple's turn towards extreme control-freakdom.

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• Google I/O 2012 - HTML5 at YouTube: Stories from the Mobile Front

  Google I/O 2012 - HTML5 at YouTube: Stories from the Mobile Front Greg Schechter, Zoltan Szego Is HTML5 ready for production code? Of course it is. This is a look into all the different HTML5 technologies we use in live code at YouTube. We'll have a collection of tips, tricks, and best practices for HTML5 video, the track tag, getUserMedia, and more. Plus a deep dive into Mobile Video Tag development. For all I/O 2012 sessions, go to developers.google.com From: GoogleDevelopers Views: 329 10 ratings Time: 54:10 More in Science & Technology

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• Books and stories on programming culture, specifically in the 80's / early 90's

  - by Ivo van der Wijk

  I've enjoyed a number of (fiction/non-fiction books) about hacker culture and running a software business in the 80's, 90's. For some reason things seemed so much more exciting back then. Examples are: Microserfs (Douglas Coupland) Accidental Empires (Robert X. Cringely Almost Pefect (W.E. Peterson, online!) Coders at Work (Peter Seibel) Today I'm an entrepeneur and programmer. Back in the 80's a I was a young geek hacking DOS TSR's and coding GWBasic / QBasic. In the 90's I was a C.S. university student, experiencing the rise of the Internet world wide. When reading these books running a software business seemed so much more fun than it is nowadays. Things used to be so much simpler, opportunities seemed to be everywhere and the startups seemed to work with much more real problems (inventing spreadsheets, writing word processors in assembly on 6 different platforms) than all our current web 2.0 social networking toys. Does anyone share these feelings? Does anyone have any good (personal) stories from back then or know of other good books to read?

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• How to manage product backlog/user stories

  - by Andrew Stephens

  We're about to start a new project using Agile (using TFS), and I have a couple of "good practice" questions regarding the product backlog:- When we first start adding users stories, is it a good idea to put them in (say) a "Backlog" iteration, or just leave their iteration blank? Obviously when the time comes to start work on a US it would be moved into the appropriate iteration backlog. When breaking an epic down into smaller USs, would I simply close the original epic, as it's no longer required? Or should I create the new USs as children of the epic? (it's then someone's responsibility to close the epic once all child USs have been completed). Lastly, should the product backlog list all USs regardless of status, or only those that have not been started (i.e in my proposed "Backlog" iteration)? I realise these questions aren't life-or-death, but it would be nice to know how other people manage their product backlogs so we can organise things properly from the start.

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• Calling All Agile Customers-Share Your Stories at the Upcoming PLM Summit

  - by Terri Hiskey

  Now that we've closed the door on another Oracle OpenWorld, planning is in full swing for the next PLM Summit, taking place February 4-6, 2013 in San Francisco, in conjunction with the Oracle Value Chain Summit. This event is a must-attend for all Agile PLM customers. We will be holding five tracks with over forty Agile PLM-focused sessions covering a range of topics and industries. If you'd like to be notified once registration is live for this event, be sure to sign up at www.oracle.com/goto/vcs. CALL FOR PRESENTATIONS: We are looking for some fresh, new customer stories to share with attendees. Read below for descriptions of the five tracks, and the suggested topics that we'd like to hear from customers. If you are interested in presenting at the PLM Summit (and getting a FREE pass to attend if your presentation is accepted!) send me an email at terri.hiskey-AT-oracle.com with: Your proposed session title and the track your session fits into 3-5 bullets of takeaways that attendees will get from your presentation Your complete contact information including name, title, company, telephone number and email The deadline for this call for presentations is Thursday, November 15, so get your submission in soon! PLM Track #1:  Product Insights and Best Practices This track will provide executive attendees and line of business managers with an overview of how Agile PLM has been deployed and used at customers to enable and manage critical product-related business processes including enterprise quality and supplier management, compliance, product cost management, portfolio management, commercialization and software lifecycle management. These sessions will also provide details around how to manage the development and rollout of the solutions and how to achieve and track value. Possible session topics: Software Lifecycle Management Enterprise Quality Management New Product Development Integrated Business Planning ECO effectivity planning Rapid Commercialization             Manage the Design to Release Process for Complex Configured Products PLM for Life Sciences Companies I (Compliant Data Set) PLM for Life Sciences Companies II (eMDR, UDI) Discrete CPG – Private Label Mgmt Cost Management and Strategic Sourcing IP Mgmt in the Semiconductor Industry Implementing the Enterprise Training Record using Agile PLM PLM Track #2: Product Deep Dives & Demos This track is aimed at line of business  and IT managers who would like to understand the benefits of expanding their PLM footprint. The sessions in this track will provide attendees with an up-close and in-depth look Agile PLM’s newer and exciting applications, including analytics and innovation management, and will detail features and functionality that are available in the latest version of Agile PLM Possible session topics: Oracle Product Lifecycle Analytics Integrating PLM with Engineering and Supply Chain Systems Streamline PLM Design to Manufacturing Processes with AutoVue Visualization Solutions         Achieve Environmental Compliance (REACH and ROHS) with Agile Product Governance & Compliance PIM Deep Dive Achieving Integrated Change Control with Agile PLM and E-Business Suite Deploying PLM at Small and Midsize Enterprises Enhancing Oracle PQM w/APQP and 8D functionality Advanced Roles and Privileges – Enabling ITAR Model Unit Effectivity Implementing REACH with 9.3.2 Deploying Job Functions, Functional Teams in 9.3.2 to Improve Your Approval Matrix PLM Track #3: Administration & Integrations This track will provide sessions for Agile administrators, managers and daily Agile PLM users who are preparing to upgrade or looking to extend the use of their current PLM implementation through AIA and process extensions. It will include deeper conversation about Agile PLM features and best practices on managing an Agile PLM infrastructure. Possible session topics: Expand the Value of your Agile Investment with Innovative Process Extension Ideas Ensuring Implementation & Upgrade Success Ensure the Integrity and Accuracy of Product Data Across the Enterprise              Maximize the Benefits of an Integrated Architecture with AIA Integrating your PLM Implementation with ERP               Infrastructure Optimization Expanding Your PLM Implementation PLM Administrator Open Forum Q&A/Discussion FDA Validation Best Practices Best Practices for Managing a large Agile Deployment: Clustering, Load Balancing and Firewalls PLM Track #4: Agile PLM for Process This track is aimed at attendees interested in or currently using Agile PLM for Process. The sessions in this track will go over new features and functionality available in the newest version of PLM for Process and will give attendees an overview on how PLM for Process is being used to manage critical business processes such as formulation, recipe and specification management Possible session topics: PLM for Process Strategy, Roadmap and Update New Product Development and Introduction Effective Product Supplier Collaboration             Leverage Agile Formulation and Compliance to Manage Cost, Compliance, Quality, Labeling and Nutrition Menu Management Innovation Data Management Food Safety/ Introduction of P4P Quality Mgmt PLM Track #5: Agile PLM and Innovation Management This track consists of five sessions, and is for attendees interested in learning more about Oracle’s Agile Innovation Management, an exciting new addition to the Agile PLM application family that redefines the industry’s scope of product lifecycle management. Oracle’s innovation solutions enable companies to collaborate in a focused way among various functional groups (marketing, sales, operations, engineering/R&D and sourcing), combining insights of customer needs/requirements, competition, available technologies, alternate design scenarios and portfolio constraints to deliver what customers truly value. The results are better products, higher margins, greater efficiencies, more satisfied customers and the increased ability to continuously innovate. Possible session topics: Product Innovation Management Solution Overview Product Requirements & Ideation Management Concept Design Management Product Lifecycle Portfolio Management Innovation as a Competitive Differentiator

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• Four Emerging Payment Stories

  - by David Dorf

  The world of alternate payments has been moving fast of late.  Innovation in this area will help both consumers and retailers, but probably hurt the banks (at least that's the plan).  Here are four recent news items in this area: Dwolla, a start-up in Iowa, is trying to make credit cards obsolete.  Twelve guys in Des Moines are using $1.3M they raised to allow businesses to skip the credit card networks and avoid the fees.  Today they move about $1M a day across their network with an average transaction size of $500. Instead of charging merchants 2.9% plus $.30 per transaction, Dwolla charges a quarter -- yep, that coin featuring George Washington. Dwolla (Web + Dollar = Dwolla) avoids the credit networks and connects directly to bank accounts using the bank's ACH network.  They are signing up banks and merchants targeting both B2B and C2B as well as P2P payments.  They leverage social networks to notify people they have a money transfer, and also have a mobile app that uses GPS location. However, all is not rosy.  There have been complaints about unexpected chargebacks and with debit fees being reduced by the big banks, the need is not as pronounced.  The big banks are working on their own network called clearXchange that could provide stiff competition. VeriFone just bought European payment processor Point for around $1B.  By itself this would not have caught my attention except for the fact that VeriFone also announced the acquisition of GlobalBay earlier this month.  In addition to their core business of selling stand-beside payment terminals, with GlobalBay they get employee-operated mobile selling tools and with Point they get a very big payment processing platform. MasterCard and Intel announced a partnership around payments, starting with PayPass, MasterCard's new payment technology.  Intel will lend its expertise to add additional levels of security, which seems to be the biggest barrier for consumer adoption.  Everyone is scrambling to get their piece of cash transactions, which still represents 85% of all transactions. Apple was awarded another mobile payment patent further cementing the rumors that the iPhone 5 will support NFC payments.  As usual, Apple is upsetting the apple cart (sorry) by moving control of key data from the carriers to Apple.  With Apple's vast number of iTunes accounts, they have a ready-made customer base to use the payment infrastructure, which I bet will slowly transition people away from credit cards and toward cheaper ACH.  Gary Schwartz explains the three step process Apple is taking to become a payment processor. Below is a picture I drew representing payments in the retail industry. There's certainly a lot of innovation happening.

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• CIC 2010 - Ghost Stories and Model Based Design

  - by warren.baird

  I was lucky enough to attend the collaboration and interoperability congress recently. The location was very beautiful and interesting, it was held in the mountains about two hours outside Denver, at the Stanley hotel, famous both for inspiring Steven King's novel "The Shining" and for attracting a lot of attention from the "Ghost Hunters" TV show. My visit was prosaic - I didn't get to experience the ghosts the locals promised - but interesting, with some very informative sessions. I noticed one main theme - a lot of people were talking about Model Based Design (MBD), which is moving design and manufacturing away from 2d drawings and towards 3d models. 2d has some pretty deep roots in industrial manufacturing and there have been a lot of challenges encountered in making the leap to 3d. One of the challenges discussed in several sessions was how to get model information out to the non-engineers in the company, which is a topic near and dear to my heart. In the 2D space, people without access to CAD software (for example, people assembling a product on the shop floor) can be given printouts of the design - it's not particularly efficient, and it definitely isn't very green, but it tends to work. There's no direct equivalent in the 3D space. One of the ways that AutoVue is used in industrial manufacturing is to provide non-CAD users with an easy to use, interactive 3D view of their products - in some cases it's directly used by people on the shop floor, but in cases where paper is really ingrained in the process, AutoVue can be used by a technical publications person to create illustrative 2D views that can be printed that show all of the details necessary to complete the work. Are you making the move to model based design? Is AutoVue helping you with your challenges? Let us know in the comments below.

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