octobre 2010Monthly :

in Nouvelles et événements, Scrum

Devil’s Project

Don’t update that burndown chart
Close your eyes and stay in the dark
If the ghouls and goblins were to see
It would mean trouble for you and me

Those demons are really scary
Filling the Backlog with all kinds of stories
Scope is increasing by the hour
If they don’t stop soon, their heads they will devour

Transparency is evil when facing complexity
Mischief is easier under the cover of opacity
They hate the daylight, “it’s no fun”, they say
Turn off those lights so they can run and play

But Devil’s project is almost over
The sun will shine sooner or later
If the ghouls and goblins weren’t sacred before
Just you wait ‘til they open that door

Happy Halloween! MooHAHAHAHA!

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in Agile

New feature for fast-releasing Agile teams.

Hey guys,

as you might of seen, we’ve been seeding up our delivery cycle in the past few weeks for the kicks of it. It been pretty fun, plus a lot of you guys seem to like the frequent updates.

Next week, we will be releasing ProjectCards 2.6 which will mark our third release in 6 weeks. This release will include a new feature that will allow fast-releasing teams to set up their sprint by days instead of weeks. We’ve seen teams take this approach so far as to release every day ! We think this is awesome and wanted to support you guys with ProjectCards. While you might not go to these extremes, we’re sure a lot of you will enjoy the fact that we now support sprints of any length !

Keep up the great work and stay tuned for the release of ProjectCards 2.6.

-Nicholas Lemay

in Sécurité

La sécurité informatique, de moins en moins High-Tech

On s’imagine souvent que la sécurité informatique est un domaine très complexe. Or, depuis quelques années, les failles les plus exploitées et les plus lucratives sont de moins en moins techniques.

Le journaliste Armen Keteyian de la CBS nous le démontre facilement dans cet article que tout gestionnaire en TI devrait lire.

J’ai vu plusieurs entreprises se procurer des pare-feu à coup de dizaines de milliers de dollars, des systèmes de prévention d’intrusion encore plus coûteux…ces mêmes entreprises ne contrôlaient pas qui pouvait branché une clé USB dans leur ordinateur ni l’accès à certaine salle où se trouvait des serveurs.

Si quelqu’un se présente en uniforme de mécanicien et demande l’accès à votre salle de serveur afin de changer le filtre de l’air conditionné. Pensez-vous qu’il y aura accès sans avoir à s’identifier? Pensez-vous qu’il sera surveillé afin de s’assurer qu’il ne branche pas une clé USB dans un des serveurs?

Ce type d’attaque est appelé ingénierie sociale, et ne requière aucune connaissance informatique. Mais peut être extrêmement dommageable stratégiquement et financièrement. Pourtant elles sont relativement faciles à prévenir.

Bref, dans certains cas, la prévention de perte de donnée peut être très terre-à-terre et peu coûteuse. Imaginez vos états financiers, demande de brevet ou dossier d’employé qui peuvent se retrouver dans les mains de vos compétiteurs ou encore dans les mains du crime organisé.

in Management

Happy 2nd Anniversary Analytical-Mind

Picture by srsphotoToday marks the 2nd anniversary of my blogging hobby! It has been a fun and interesting endeavour that has allowed me to discuss various concepts with people all over the world, and within my organization. Blogging forces me to crystallize my thoughts and perspective on some important aspects of my leadership style, my coaching abilities and my personal development.

Thanks to all of you who are reading my posts and comment (in person or in writing) on the posted topics. The number of readers have tripled in the last year and the number of Twitter followers has gone from 0 to 200 - if you’re not already one of them, send me some positive vibes and start following me :)

If you like what you have been reading, don’t hesitate to link to my posts and even maybe include me in your blog roll. Thanks to those who have been tweeting and re-tweeting my posts.

If you haven’t been following my blog since the beginning, you may want to read my top 10 blog posts:

Now let’s get back to writing…

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You might be interested in these related posts:

  1. Happy 1st anniversary Analytical-Mind
  2. Gartner’s “The Current State of Agile Method Adoption”
  3. Analytical Mind has moved
in Agile

Releasing ProjectCards 2.5 !

Hey guys,

just two weeks after releasing ProjectCards 2.4 we are releasing ProjectCards 2.5. This is a minor update over 2.4 but we wanted to share it with you guys as quickly as possible. An Agile team, building a tool for the Agile community that’s doing frequent releases. What a novel idea :)

Here are the main updates this version brings :

  • The reports have been fixed for Internet Explorer. They were especially broken on Internet Explorer 8.
  • Fixed a bug in the capacity feature caused by Java’s support for Time zones. Many thanks to our friends in Europe who discovered this hidden bug !
  • Our trial period has been lowered from 60 days to 30 days.
  • Minor alignment fixes.
  • Other minor visual enhancements.(Typos fixed, etc.)

Looking forward to releasing ProjectCards 2.6 in the next few weeks. Stay tuned for more details ! In the meantime,  give ProjectCards 2.5 a try and give us your feedback !

–Nicholas Lemay

in Développement logiciel

Are your skills up to date ?

If you are a software developer and are not actively working on improving your skill set, chances are that your skills are already outdated and are part of the legacy world ;-) So, unless you are proud to stay a monkey coder, it’s a pretty smart move to stay aware of the latest trends and the modern engineering principles.

However, what I have noticed while doing technical coaching in various teams is that there are tons of motivated, intelligent developers who just do not upgrade their skills because their environment does not embrace continuous improvement. For these people, it makes a huge difference to bring them a list of important references to read.

The current trend in software development is Agile, which relies on a set of Software Engineering Practices to make a real difference.

At pyxis, we have compiled a set of book references, blogs, twitter accounts, frameworks and libraries that we consider an important part of the Technical Agile landscape. We called it the Agile Expertise Center, and even though some sections are still incomplete (yes, we do apply the release early, release often principle), it provides a good start for anyone interested in :

  • Learning more about the software engineering practices that support iterative and incremental development ;
  • Adopting a Team Skill Acquisition Strategy ;
  • Evaluating how up to date your skills are.

We want this initiative to be useful for everyone :

  • While performing technical coaching, it is of great help when people ask for books and other references
  • It is a foundation to encourage our own employees to learn more about the practices
  • It gives visibility for our clients on what kind of technical help they can expect from us

Oh, and even better, the content is released under the Creative Commons BY-SA 3.0, so do not hesitate to either contact us to add references, or fork the content to create your own expertise center.

in Ergonomie logicielle

Pour acheter cette citrouille, vous devez me fournir un code à 4 chiffres…

Imaginez la situation, vous roulez sur un petit chemin et croisez un marchand de citrouilles. Vous vous arrêtez pour en acheter une belle grosse que vous allez décorer pour l’Halloween. Vous venez pour prendre celle que vous avez choisie et une conversation comme celle-ci débute:

marchand : Vous devez fournir un code de 4 chiffres pour pouvoir acheter cette citrouille…
vous: humm!?! mais pourquoi? Je veux seulement acheter cette citrouille.
marchand : C’est pour que lors de votre prochaine visite, je puisse vous reconnaître et vous vendre une citrouille qui ressemble à celle que vous achetez cette année. Vous savez, c’est de la vente plus personnalisée…
vous: humm!?! mais je passais ici par hasard. Je ne sais pas si je reviendrai par ici l’an prochain pour acheter une citrouille.
marchand : d’accord, alors donnez-moi votre adresse postale. Je pourrai vous faire parvenir des offres spéciales sur des produits connexes à la citrouille que vous achetez aujourd’hui.
vous: hummm!! je voulais seulement acheter cette citrouille. Gardez-la, j’irai au marché près de chez moi, c’est plus simple et je n’ai pas à donner de code de 4 chiffres ou mon adresse.
marchand : mais monsieur, je tentais seulement de vous offrir une meilleure expérience d’achat.
vous: dommage pour vous parce que je ne ferai finalement aucun achat. Merci! Au revoir!

Cette situation semble absurde, mais pourtant plusieurs sites web nous la font vivre régulièrement. Le problème n’est pas de demander aux visiteurs de s’identifier (ou de fournir des informations personnelles) pour faire un achat. C’est plutôt d’empêcher complètement d’effectuer l’achat (ou l’action désirée par l’utilisateur) tant qu’il ne s’est pas identifié.

Je considère que c’est une mauvaise pratique parce que ça nuit au but premier que s’était fixé le visiteur de votre site; faire un achat d’un bien ou produit qu’il désire. Je propose plutôt de laisser le visiteur choisir s’il veut s’identifier (ou se créer un compte utilisateur sur votre site) au moment de faire son achat. Ainsi, les visiteurs réguliers ne seront probablement pas bloqués par l’idée de s’identifier, tandis que les visiteurs occasionnels (ou même unique) pourront quand même procéder à faire leur achat.

Pour quelles raisons avez-vous vraiment besoin des informations personnelles du visiteur ? Est-ce que le gain obtenu en ayant ces informations compense pour les pertes de ventes potentielles ?

Alors, est-ce que votre site facilite ou ralentit la vente de citrouilles ?

in Agile

What is the job of the president in a self-organized company?

Picture by wolfpixSince being appointed president of Pyxis Technologies a few weeks ago, I have been wondering what it means to be “the president” of an organization with a non-traditional governance model. Wanting to be successful in my new role, it is important for me to figure out what is expected of me – hence the questions about the meaning and purpose of my job - and as if the universe wanted to ensure I would answer these questions, Raphaël prompted me to describe what the new role meant for me, during a recent visit to our Paris office.
Since our organization heavily relies on autonomy and self-organization, the new role made me feel like a manager within an Agile organization. So here’s what I came up with (so far):
  • Leading the growth of the organization: working with team members and the leaders of the various communities in establishing their vision and their objectives and supporting them in achieving the targeted growth by providing an external perspective and/or some experience and skills.
  • Raising the performance bar: most people agree with setting goals and my role is to ensure that people set challenging goals for themselves and their community. Achieving a simple goal might be easy but it doesn’t make people grow, it doesn’t take them outside their comfort zone. My role is to get people to step outside their comfort zone.
  • Providing the means for people and communities to grow: wanting people to step outside their comfort zone without providing support for them to succeed would not only be unfair and unreasonable, it simply makes no sense.
  • Ensuring people operate with integrity and holding them accountable: integrity is a simple concept for me, it means to “say what you do and do what you say”. Consequently, I am taking responsibility (until the community members do so themselves) to hold people accountable for their commitments in order to make sure they operate with integrity. Imagine how powerful an organization can be if people operate with high integrity!
  • Making sure each group has defined clear protocols and plays by their rules: I personally don’t feel the need to control what people and communities are doing but I need to make sure each group has defined clear rules so the team members understand what is allowed and what isn’t. There is nothing worst than erratic rules and behaviors for people to be un-successful at what they do.
  • Committing to making people successful: it is much easier to get rid of people when they don’t meet certain expectations than it is to work with them at closing the gap. I am not saying that nobody will ever be asked to leave the organization (there are legal reasons why we might want to do so) but in the case of lower-than-expected performance level, I am committing to truly work with people so they can succeed.
  • Coaching people: it is the team members and the community leaders who are part of the day-to-day action. As a coach, my role is to maintain enough distance to properly observe the team’s performance in order to ask powerful questions that will enable the team to find alternate ways to reach their objectives faster and more efficiently.
  • Adapting my leadership style: people and communities are at different level of maturity and based on the maturity of the group, I will adapt my leadership style to provide the best level of support for their performance.

As I was defining for myself what role I should be playing, I started reading over the week-end Great Business Teams: Cracking the Code for Standout Performance.

Leaders exercise a kind of gravitational pull on their team. Their behavior sets the performance “should be” for others - Great Business Teams: Cracking the Code for Standout Performance.

The books describes the following behaviors which are important for me:

I am pretty sure I will be adding to this list as weeks go by but it seems to be a good start. Needless to say, I am not kidding myself thinking that I will have a perfect score on all these fronts but making my job description public and asking my colleagues to hold me accountable is a challenge I am ready for.

Would you add anything to this list?

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You might be interested in these related posts:

  1. I don’t believe in self-organized teams…
  2. FAQ: Communities in the context of business
  3. How can someone Join a Community? Can people leave a Community?
in Développement logiciel

Python One Liner

I keep forgetting this simple way to start a HTTP server to serve files from the current directory… Now it’s going to be here for eternity

python -m SimpleHTTPServer

Then point browser to http://localhost:8000

This blog shall become an extension of my brain…

in Nouvelles et événements

Pyxis et AFI annoncent leur partenariat

Pyxis Technologies, leader en approches Agiles, et AFI, chef de file en formation, mettent en commun leur expertise et leurs ressources afin d’offrir aux équipes de travail de leurs clients des cours de formation Agiles de pointe donnés par des professionnels du développement logiciel Agile.

« Nous sommes ravis de pouvoir offrir, grâce à notre partenariat avec AFI, un accès facilité à nos cours de formation, et ainsi aider plus d’acteurs du développement logiciel dans leur apprentissage des méthodes Agiles. » a affirmé Martin Proulx, président de Pyxis Technologies.

« AFI est heureuse de bonifier son offre de services de formation de pointe par cette alliance avec les spécialistes de Pyxis, et ce, pour le plus grand bénéfice de nos clients respectifs. » a pour sa part déclaré Marie-Pier St-Hilaire, présidente d’AFI.

Méthodes Agiles : des méthodes éprouvées

Une étude publiée par Forrester en janvier 2010 affirme qu’actuellement 35 % des entreprises utilisent des méthodes Agiles. Selon le cabinet Gartner, d’ici 2012, c’est 80 % des projets de développement logiciel qui seront réalisés à l’aide de méthodes Agiles. Scrum est la méthode Agile la plus répandue (11 % des entreprises l’utilisent) et celle privilégiée par Pyxis Technologies dans le cadre de ses cours de formation.

À propos d’AFI

Chef de file en formation, AFI (www.afiexpertise.com) est également un leader en transformation organisationnelle et en gestion du changement depuis 1997. Elle offre au-delà de 900 cours de formation en technologies de l’information, en bureautique, en gestion de projets, de même que pour le développement des compétences en habiletés relationnelles, de gestion et orientées pour Web 2.0. En plus de ses bureaux de Québec et Montréal, elle est en mesure de desservir sa clientèle partout en région grâce à son réseau de partenaires. AFI accompagne également ses clients dans leurs projets structurants et propose des services-conseils spécialisés adaptés à leur réalité.

Voir le communiqué.