Darryl Booth

A Little Boast, A Little Brag

Meghan, Donald, and I were invited to speak to the Northern Cal Users Group yesterday. I got home last night and couldn't sleep.

I tried to find the words to convey the excitement that was buzzing around my head. Below is the company e-mail message that I sent the following morning.

Yesterday Meghan, Donald, and I attended the Northern California Envision User Group meeting in Sacramento. The topic was EnvisionConnect migration.

Guys, there is so much enthusiasm about EnvisionConnect. Meghan did a presentation (using Verizon’s wireless service) that blew everybody away and left them wanting more. Performance was very good.

The latest release on Rackspace (delivered last Friday) was solid.

A new client (in the final contract stage), Tuolumne County, kept audibly gasping and going on about the features that they see in EnvisionConnect but have been missing in SWEEPS. They have high a enthusiasm factor.

Nobody blinked an eye at our plans for migration and were hungry to hear every detail about the SBCEH migration. We covered what went right and what challenged us.

Thanks for making this meeting an easy one… we all drove home on a bit of a high (which might explain why Meghan missed the Shaw Ave off-ramp, but that’s another story).

Next month, public water!

Iterative Development, It's Kind of Like Painting Your Kitchen

When I train EnvisionConnect users on new features, I look forward to seeing the folks who earlier participated in the design phases of the project.

We've used prototypes and online meetings to get the designs in front of the customers very early. So, by the time the training is scheduled, the workflows should be very familiar, like an old friend.

As a general disclaimer before training begins, I usually try to say something like this:

Before we begin, a reminder that we develop iteratively. That means that the features of the workflow are delivered in smaller manageable segments. You may not see today all the features we discussed during design.

It's kind of like painting your kitchen. Coats of paints are added to the walls only after the previous coat has dried and we agree that we really do like the color, texture, etc...

Iterative Development has huge benefits for the developer and the customer. Key among them:

• The "Must Have" features get delivered first and get delivered early, because we're not waiting for all the "Should Haves" and "Could Haves" to be integrated.
• Poor design elements are exercised early, giving the designers and customers a chance to change course if necessary.
• Good design elements are embraced, clarified, and reused with greater confidence.
• And sometimes... just sometimes, the user community determines that the first iterations are sufficient. This is a well-informed decision since they've been using the working system all along.

Having painted a few kitchens, bedrooms, and bathrooms over the years, it's always a nice surprise when two coats does the job.