HL Arledge

2008 Decade Conference a Resounding Success

Tabulating the early results, it seems the 2008 Decade Software User Training Conference was a resounding success, and I especially want to thank Peter Lucas and Sandra Sanchez for making it that way.

Of the conference participants who turned-in their post-conference questionnaires, over 99% said that the classes they attended were structured well, included useful material, and were presented well.

In the written comments, many said that this was our best conference yet!

My favorite quote said...

“Class presenters were much more interesting and knowledgeable than in the past.”

This was important to hear, as everyone on staff was committed to making that happen this year, and we are proud to have made strides in that direction.

Were there complaints? Of course, there were. You can never please all of the people all of the time. Two-thirds of our open forum panelists canceled at the last minute, and the Radisson Hotel had a problem controlling their flies, but by far, the complements exceeded the complaints, and everyone walked away smiling.

Next week, I'll be spotlighting some of the conference presentation teams and discussing the specifics of those presentations, but today I wanted to take a moment and thank the unsung heroes of our conference.

IT Wiz and Documentation Guru Peter Lucas and the company president's right arm, Sandra Sanchez are the glue that hold these events together. Too often, we forget to tell them...

"Thank you!"

And on that note, I want to thank all of those who attended and provided their feedback. We certainly couldn't improve without your input.

Thanks a million!

Preparing for the Decade User Training Conference

Everyone, I apologize for not writing much these last few weeks, but everyone here has been preparing for our annual user conference, next Monday and Tuesday.

I will tell you all about it next week, but in the meantime, I thought I'd show you a picture of some of the staff ready to go for the conference.

I think one or two of them might be a bit nervous. What do you think?

Pictured (from left to right) are Nicki Bradford, Jerad Little, me, Cynthia Hill, Art Amezcua, Mark Harmon, and Patrick Glaspey.

Grizzlies lost last night, but our team won!

Last night, Decade Software teams from all departments gathered their families and made another trek to Chukchansi Park for an all-you-can-eat BBQ outing.

The Fresno Grizzlies lost to the Portland Beavers, 4-2, but the July temperatures were lower than expected, allowing a good time to be had by all.

I wanted to thank Kevin for funding the event and to thank all who attended for coming out and supporting the DSC team.

Thanks! It was a blast.

Blues, Brews, and Barbeques this weekend

Some of my team will be joining me tomorrow at the Engelmann Cellars winery for Fresno's annual Blues, Brews, and BBQ festival.

They'll start serving at 11:AM, and the first band hits the stage around 1:30 in the afternoon.

If you haven't been to one of these before, you should check it out. It's a great time, and the weather this weekend is expected to be perfect.

Decade Software inspects restaurants in Canada

This morning, I am meeting with our sister company in Canada. The team there is taking first steps to migrate HES customers to EnvisionConnect.

As Developer Mike Vea and I prepared for the meeting, it considered that some of you may not yet heard of Decade Canada.

Here's the scoop as recounted on their web-site...

"In November 2003, Decade Software Company, LLC incorporated a Canadian subsidiary company called Decade Software Canada Ltd.

The Environmental Health software assets known as the Hedgehog Environmental Systems (HES) software were purchased from Procura along with the rights to the existing contracts.

The Hedgehog Environmental Systems software was originally developed in 1993 by Neil Grinwis of Hedgehog Systems. Neil was recruited to run the Canadian company and to continue servicing the Canadian Environmental Health customers."

Today, we are comparing business rules between the two products to ensure that HES customers have all they need before the move to EnvisionConnect.

Growth is always exciting for us. I'll keep posted on our progress.

Do Scrum Teams need their own Heisman Trophy?

Yesterday, I listed the problems Scrum can solve for you.

I talked about the requirements for structuring a solid team, including the establishment of clear, prioritized goals, but I stopped short of discussing rewards for achieving those goals.

All teams get rewards. The title of this blog represents one of the most famous of collegiate football rewards.

Full disclosure: Since I am not a big football enthusiast, I did not even know what the Heisman Trophy was, until the auctioned off OJ Simpson's.

In our early days in Scrum, we treated developers and wives to dinner when a Sprint was successful; we provided pizza at planning meetings; and after meeting our biggest goal of last year, we gave everyone on the team an extra week's vacation—one they all took at the same time!

Awhile back, I became concerned that team goals would not continue to mean as much if we did not continue to provide such rewards.

I was right and wrong at the same time.

Intrapreneurs, Golden Children, Bobble-heads, and Ding Day

Someone recently said to me...

"HL, you'll never understand how stressful my job is. The boss treats you differently than he does me. You turned this company around. You are his Golden Child."

That last statement left me speechless—at least for a minute or two.

I never thought of myself as an Eddie Murphy type, but I have seen myself as sort of an intrapreneur. That is someone within an organization who behaves like an entrepreneur—someone who is always thinking beyond "that's the way we've always done it", pushing the envelope, trying and testing new processes until something is proven to work.

In a Scrum world, intrapreneurs are required, but in many offices, intrapreneurs are considered Satan's offspring and must be destroyed.

Said another way, some intrapreneurs are supported by management and some are not. It all depends on the culture within the organization.

This understanding and supportive culture was not always the dominant culture at Decade Software. There was a time when management was not trusted by the workers and vice-versa.

Most new ideas from employees were shot down before ever reaching the ears of upper management, and ideas from upper-management were seen as ridiculous, because employees were seldom told why something had to be a certain way.

In such an environment, employees had to leverage Kevin's open-door policy to discuss such ideas—and risk offending a more immediate manager or coworker—or the employee could be creative and send broadcast e-mails to all concerned.

That last option usually got you into trouble.

Real Development Teams don't cut corners

I am a firm believer in not discussing anything in an employee evaluation that hasn't been discussed earlier.

I have monthly one-on-ones with my team to ensure that this is the case. My goal is to always know the pulse of my team and to identify and correct problems before they have time to grow.

Yesterday, I was in such a meeting, and one of my team said...

"It was crunch-time. I had to finish, so corners had to be cut somewhere."

I wanted to say...

"Did you miss every meeting we've had for the last couple of years?"

Instead, I said...

"I'm sorry if I never communicated this to you, but we don't have to cut corners here."

Serenity Clock and the Lost Defects of Doom

Our Quality Assurance Engineers have been integrated into our Scrum teams now for over a year.

For the most part, this integration has improved quality by leaps and bounds, but like others learning the ways of Scrum, our QA Team admitted just this week to still harboring a few die-hard habits and fears.

In a Scrum world, a meeting of retrospective follows the end of every sprint, and in that meeting, all problems and mistakes are identified and potential avenues for improvement are explored.

Eventually, through this incremental process improvement cycle, both process and product become more refined.

The one thing you don't do is to try and solve problems before they are proven to exist. Unfortunately, this way of thinking is completely counter to the historic QA mindset.

That traditional mindset reminds me of Indiana Jones.

Indy tackles a problem head-on, expecting the worse, and improvising as he is attacked. When sent into a cave to retrieve some artifact, he knows he must explore every tunnel, even if he knows exactly which cavern holds the item. If he doesn't do this, some giant boulder or tribe of cannibals may come out of that tunnel and the movie will end early.

Our QA team—Dave Blanton and Serenity Clock—dream of similar adventures.

Decade Software is a living, breathing entity

I don't usually regurgitate post verbatim, but these thoughts from Anna Farmery are well worth repeating...

"Business exists because of humans—because humans establish them, because humans run them, because humans buy from them.

I think if we change our mindset from a business as an entity to business being human it can have great benefits

1. Care about it's health by checking on its heart and soul is fit and well - engagement surveys, sessions with people, feedback
2. Care about its vision by constantly ensuring that it's vision is clear.
3. Care about its "blood pressure" by listening and searching for pressure points that need to be released.
4. Care about its "teeth" by ensuring that the targets are stretching, that they are motivating people to push on...
5. Care about its hearing by ensuring that the lines of communication are working well.
6. Care about its mind by ensuring that information is being shared, that people are encourage to develop their thinking...
7. Care about its beliefs and values to ensure they are being respected.
8. Care about its mobility - can it act quickly?

A business is so much more than a corporate entity - it is a group of people who want to achieve their dream, it touches peoples lives in the community, in the world."