Amnesty International’s Annual Report for 2009 , the definitive report on the state of the world’s human rights is now live.
Pretty smooth sailing technically this time round due to using Drupal (the same CMS we use on the main amnesty.org site and some excellent dev help from the fine, fine folks over at CivicActions (except for a worrying little last-minute technical terror of a bug that slipped through).
Really useful article on how to start implementing continuous deployment in your organization. It encapsulates a lot of the stuff I just posted on the Five Whys and Lean Startups.
I can imagine a few other things you need here, like a complete sandbox for for each dev, as well as the continuous integration server to keep testing every commit, and the cultural change is enormous but not onerous.
I think the other important thing is that this is scary. Even me at my most crazy would be a bit concerned about this. People will be worried, especially if this is something you haven’t done from the very start. You also need a culture that doesn’t punish honest mistakes. Otherwise, people will fear to deploy something in short cycles from idea to production in nothing time.
Great article from the currently totally-on-fire Eric Ries.
One of the major things we’ve learned about user stories, even if we’ve never articulated it, is about “popping the why stack.” In essence, you ask “Why ?” a number of times and, if at the end of those five whys, the answer isn’t increasing revenue, protecting revenue, or reducing costs, that feature you’re writing probably isn’t worth the time.
I never realized the idea came from Toyota where it’s practically a gospel part of their keizen process in improving quality and reducing defects.
Really liked this article (dead link) by Lifehacker’s ex-hacker-in-chief Gina Trapani on her personal business model. Basically, it’s never always about the money (unless you’re a very shallow person). Primarily about freelancing, it has a nice framework for how to split your time between the benjamins and the other important things.
How she developed it her business model:
It distills to a 30/30/30/10 business model which is interesting. I’m hoping she updates this post at some point in the future with a followup telling us how the reality tracked to the ideal and what sort of tough decisions she might have made looking at that pie chart.
I love it when entrepreneurs discuss what went well and what didn’t with their startup. 10 lessons from a failed startup is a public service to everyone who is thinking of going out there on their own, so kudos to the guys from PlayCafe for being open, transparent and honest. I disagree with those people who think there is nothing to learn from failure, and anyone telling you about mistakes you can avoid is helping you out.
Noticed for the first time in ages that my server was not set to the correct timezone since DST started. Oops. Very easy to fix on Hardy. Just ssh into your box and
sudo dpkg-reconfigure tzdata
then pick your geographical time zone.
Et voila.
DHH (of Ruby on Rails fame) at Startup School (dead link). He did a very similar presentation at FOWA Dublin when I was there this year, but this is a nicer, refined version with him side by side with his slides.
I loved his comment about there being “not enough people trying to make a nice Italian restaurant in the webspace.”
Obviously, nothing earth shattering in here, but it’s wise to keep it in mind in an environment where everyone is trying to hit one over the fence a la facebook, youtube and twitter.
I’ve had this theory of happiness (or at least what I think I need to be happy) for some time now. Long-suffering friends have had to listen to my ideas that are part-Frankl, part pseudo-science, part observation and part admission about the good and dark in my own soul. Ready ? It’s quite simple, really.
The keys to happiness are : Meaning, Belonging and Someone. No, I’m not going to expound on it here. You can buy me a beer if you want the full explanation.
Another great HBR article by P&Gs CEO on what the four essential tasks of the CEO are. Kind of interesting as I agree there are specific things which only the CEO is in a unique position to do, much the same way that corporate headquarters end up being uniquely positioned to do things the individual offices can’t.
In a sense, I’d almost paraphrase them as dividing into
I’ve become a big fan of Cucumber in a very short amount of time. Mostly, because it’s enabled us to translate user requirements quickly into step by step instructions we can then code to. Especially with the turnover in staff at AI this means that business logic, reasoning and behaviour lives in the app and can be reviewed without a lot of overly hefty documentation and such. Write code to reflect behaviour, test, deploy. Voila, app done !