Week 2 (Part 1) - Experimentation, new releases and trips
So week two of being a Creative Director draws to a close. Its been a busy week, not necessarily for me but definitely for the social networking scene. I thought I would take a few moments to tell you about some of the things that have been happening and explain a little about the tasks I have been doing.
This comes in two parts:
As part of my new role I have agreed to myself that I will spend at least five hours a week evaluating new technologies exploring new ideas with a view to identifying which of them can benefit Synovate and the IBM SPSS Data Collection community at large. So Monday was the first day that I got chance to do this. It all started with the delivery of four new books.
Transitioning from Waterfall to Agile
SPSS is almost as pure Waterfall in its development model as you can get. 18 month development cycles based on a 12 month release cycle with Roadmaps, Mini-Business Requirement Documents, Full Business Requirements Documents, Functional Design Documents, Technical Design Documents. Commitments on what is being released 12 months before release and a three month Beta phase. This will not be suitable for my new team which will be far too small to bear the burden of a similar model.
I am, consequently, moving to an Agile model, probably based around the principles of Extreme Programming (XP). I have never really worked in a pure Agile environment although I have been involved in many discussions about it and track the thoughts and thinkings of a number of firms that use it today (Balsamiq and 37Signals).
The first step was to order some books from Amazon and start reading. I have already returned the Agile Coaching book (I did not really want to buy it but forgot to take it off my selected list). The other three seem to give me different perspectives on the same concepts and blend quite well together.
Within days of starting to read them I was involved in a number of discussions between a small software company and an Information Systems (IS) department of a large one. The IS representative kept asking for detailed plans while the small team (running SCRUM) said we are agile we do not have those types of documents. I sat on the fence between the two balancing up the needs of one side with the capabilities of the other. Neither was right, the small team were not really agile, they were haphazard. Their design/development methodology was not testing based and their estimating was wild and inaccurate. It is going to be an interesting journey and I hope to follow the recent trend of transparent development to tell you all how I am doing.
The second area of development for me is HTML 5 and CSS 3. Though not yet mature these technologies are definitely gaining traction and I am now taking off my shoes and jumping into to the excitement to see where it takes me.
HTML 5
There has been a significant amount of noise about HTML 5, especially in relation to its value vs Flash. Apple's launch of iPad (with its lack of Flash support) closely following Google's launch of the Nexus One (with its lack of Flash support) has gotten people to thinking that the end is nigh for Flash. for example Robert Scoble described Google as Adobe's last chance at salvation in Can Flash be Saved?. Robert's attitude is not unique, many outside of the Flash developer community poor scorn on Adobe's long term future. From my perspective I think that the future is far from clear and Adobe is far from doomed (or should I say Flash). Many of these nay-sayers seem only interested in the web through a PC or their mobile phone (or slate) but they forget their TV completely and yet the Internet is definitely leaking onto this ubiquitous (I really hate that word) device as shown by Adobe's set to box agreement and Seemic's launch of Look (its new Twitter interface for non-Twitter users).
Alongside the need to learn HTML 5 I am going to need to improve my technique for handling different browsers. IE definitely does not support HTML 5 (unless you install the Chrome IE plug-in. So it will be necessary to develop a multi-browser capacity that exceeds my current techniques for handling Firefox vs IE in CSS issues and JavaScript issues. Consequently I am also building up my knowledge of two concepts: Graceful Degradation and Progressive Enhancement (A brief explanation). I will probably start with my own website which I now need to update following my move to Synovate.
Once I have an idea of how I am going to do this work I will start to blog about it so that you too can learn these new principles.
So, there has been a lot of reading and listening this week, a modicum of talking and relatively little action. This has been partly caused by dear Dell who have failed to deliver my new Laptop (ordered 35 days ago) and are threatening to not deliver until the 22nd. We are now debating whether to change to another machine so I am going to have to rely on my own technology for a little while longer.
Its late on Friday and so I thought I would leave you with a small chuckle that I stumbled upon via twitter (nice link to my next post) enjoy
