Project Management: Daily Scrum

I’m a fan of Scrum…a big fan. We’ve been using the methodology on our new latest and greatest site (due for launch 1st September) and found it an invaluable tool to motivate the team (as they’re in control) and help keep those nervous business owners involved on what is going on in our development black box.

If there one thing I can recommend over everything else is the Daily Scrum. It’s my most important meeting of the day and helps us keep track of how we’re going on the project. From a Project Manager’s perspective it helps me quickly remove any constraints and let the programmers do what they do best.

I stick to the rules and only ask three questions:

• What did you do yesterday?
• What will you do today?
• Are there any impediments in your way?

The feedback from these meetings have been excellent, it’s not a top down perspective WHAT HAVE YOU DONE but a quick group huddle. It helps bond the team and keep the group discussions going throughout the day.

Technology: Incoming!!!

You maybe surprised working at ninemsn that we’re heavily involved in Microsoft software!!

The Australian online media is in a strange position with the big powerhouse media companies being so tightly associated with major tech companies (unlike the BBC for instance). Channel 7 partnered with Yahoo, Fairfax with Google (in a deal that made little sense to anyone).

With technology helping these companies be more and more of a differentiator it’s interesting to look at what new products/services are being released and how it might give it, or us, a competitor advantage.

So what am I most excited about?

• Silverlight – Right now its video capabilities beats Flash video, it also finally has a Z axis so watch 3D finally get traction on the web. Once 1.1 is released we’ll have .net framework capabilities to allow us developers to fully explore rich user interfaces.
• Photosynth – quite simply the most visually stunning software MS has built to date.
• Popfly – Still in alpha phase and built in Sliverlight, it allows for mashups and even lets you get your hands dirty in code.
• Live “cloud” – From the press releases coming out it looks like us developers are going to have a mega-sandbox.

I’ll go into these in more detail over the coming weeks. Web 2.0 is quickly being followed by webdev 2.0…could HTML one day join Netscape?

Is this thing on?

I’m a Program Manager at ninemsn looking after News, Sport and Current Affairs (Bulletin, TODAY, 60 minutes, A Current Affair).

Away from work, I’m studying for my MBA at MGSM, I have a baby son, two Labradors and a stressed out cat. In other words I’m a busy person; the same as you!

This blog is for us busy people living the life in the ultra fast world of web development. Each day my blog will cover the following categories:

• Technology

• Project management

• Time management

• MBA (study)

• Work/life balance

• General ramblings

Pictures below are from what I loving call “The zoo”