Verosee

http://skypejournal.com/blog/archives/2005/11/verosee_skypes_groove_killer.php

Something to look at.  Verosee points to bertorello.biz.

Maybe it’s dead.  I can’t take a thousand, but I want to do the same thing.

Reading another article on collaboration software and email.

A list of common collaboration tools:

1. A Shared Tool for Discussing Project Matters — Forum/Discussion
2.  A Shared Tool for Scheduling Project Meetings and Events — Calendar
3. A Shared Tool for Assigning and Managing Action Points – Tasks
4. A Shared Tool for Storing Shared Documents – File share (needs search/ACLs)
5. A Shared Tool for Listing People’s Contact Details – Contacts/Addressbook
6. A Shared Tool for Recording and Analyzing Structured Information — Forms  & Notifications

Dicussions can be handled by email.  Mailing lists/News groups are a variation that handles this naturally.  More recent (but still ancient) software turns mailing lists into a website discussion.

Most of the rest of this is handled by Outlook.  Maybe that’s what they took the list from.  Bug trackers, Test management, Requirements, etc. are forms.  Build status, etc. is a notification.  A dashboard that isn’t a daskboard, but more like a calendar, showing a history of notifications would be nice.

The key is, that it isn’t trapped in a mailbox, or lost in a wiki, or requires logging into a web page.  Rich client interaction again, I think is key.  Browser plugins, Office tools, OS integration (file shares), Email user interface are all methods.  Pull email is good too.  An IMAP folder that you don’t have to check unless you want to (build statuses, checkins, etc.)  An email like interface but you don’t have to filter your email.  And you want to be able to search the server and get a nice detailed report (web page) or something that you can take with our or fill out offline (Documents, Version control checkouts.)  And something you can do from the browser (open a tab from the sidebar or status bar.)

Multi client capabilities are important.  A browser UI for when you’re not at your desk.  A local copy for when you’re offline.  Rich edits.  Search.  Sharing.

Collaboration Tools and Email

I’ve realized the more I get into it, that the solution I’m targeting is a collaboration tool geared towards dev and qa teams.  I want to stay out of the way, but the dashboard idea  (and web services, and rss feeds) necessitates interconnectedness.  Document management seems me the biggest problem.  That’s why wikis are both good and bad.  That’s why sharepoint works so well (as a file server.)

I read an interesting article called “The Good in Email” on what collaboration tools need in order to be ubiquitous, written by (no surprise) a collaboration software company Central Desktop.

The simple answer:  It’s ubiquitous.  And easy to use.

Their points (in summary):

1. Email  is easy to understand
2. Email  is universal
3. Email is accessible from anywhere
4. Email can be personalized
5. Email is manageable/configurable
6. Email is searchable
7. Email is in your face
8. Email just works

After the first two points, they kind of lost me (except on search), but it’s good nevertheless.  I think for the less savvy audience, the ease of understanding the metaphor “It’s like sending a letter through the postal service, except its electronic” is key.   It’s universality is why it always ends out.  But ask anyone who uses email at work via exchange about it being available anywhere.

One thing I’d like to get towards is submitting bugs, test results, blogs, even wiki edits via email.  I know we should get off exchange, but outlook has a good (enough) editor.  And it’s the search and foldering that make people want to do everything thought it.  Now, the folder synonym is good.  Shared network folders (Alfresco and Sharepoint) if they work are good.  And why not settle nothing but the richest of editors — word and excel.

Consolidation Needed

I just posted a good description of my www.one-shore.com site design process, over at my blogger blog:

http://oneshore.blogspot.com/2007/11/site-design.html

Lots of pictures. I’m pretty proud of myself, but don’t know if I’m happy with the design. The layout and content are going to be the real challenge. I need to choose a framework, but I’ll probably just start with some independent pages (PHP templates) and then use Ambivalence, since I’m used to it for klamathsystems and it’s simple and lightweight. It’s a good time to get to know cakephp as well, since I’m nominally work on the attachments plugin. I’m pretty busy, which I guess is something to be thankful for.

Kelsey said “What if we get internet and a washer/dryer today. That’d be something to be thankful for.” Indeed.

Here’s the new one shore site: http://www.one-shore.com. It doesn’t take much to be better than the last. Unfortunately there’s no content yet.

Oh yeah, I registered qa-site.com, figuring it will be the hosting site for yourcompany.qa-site.com with blog, forum, wiki, bug tracking, test cases, build status, etc. I thought I had wildcard DNS set up on godaddy, but I guess not.  Right now it just points to one-shore.

Blogroll and Links

WordPress seems to confuse Blogroll and Links widgets.  I need to find a way to sort this out.   I want one are that has a big shiny heading called “Links” and then below it I want another area called “Blogroll” (actually, “Blogs” or something else would be a better title — without the Lumberjack competition connotations”.)  The one would like to websites (for example, one-shore.com)  and the other would like to blogs (like kelseyandaaron.blogspot.com)

Is that too much to ask?  Some blogs are sites, some sites are blogs, but not all.

Also, I looked into pointing blog.one-shore.com here, looks like it costs money, or rather 10 credits, however much that is.  It’s too much.  I’m pretty tempted to write my own blog software, but I’m trying to resist.  At least I can claim istallation as “collaborative software research.”  See my last post about NIH.  And I still haven’t decided what software to use as churn.

And anyway, I’d rather do something like point http://blog.one-shore.com/aaron to here.  Or something like that.

Read an interesting article from 1996 on The Impact of Social Forces on Software Project Failure

It was written back when C++ was the standard for productivity, though particularly prescient in anticipating much “infrastructure churn” from java and web technologies.

There were five traits listed that lead to software project failure:

Trait 1: Death Through Quality
Trait 2: Infrastructure Churn
Trait 3: Disrespect for Quality Developers
Trait 4: Analysis paralysis
Trait 5: The NIH Syndrome

I’ve seen them all, particularly Analysis paralysis (but also it’s opposite.)  I’m especially guilty of traits 2 & 5 myself.
The first one, “Death through Quality” definitely caught my eye, especially since I’ve staked my career on quality assurance.

One thing I’ve realized recently, especially hitting home after this article Software Metrics Don’t Kill Projects, Moronic Managers Kill Projects, is that I’m not a big metrics guy.  I guess “all things in moderation” is the rule, because I do think metrics are important, provided you have good ones and that you understand and correctly analyze them.  I think metrics heavy is a “process smell” and that may be the reason good coders and testers don’t like them.  However, it’s one thing to say metrics don’t tell the story, and another to be in the manager’s seat and trying to judge productivity, quality, or whatever without a firsthand feel for what’s going on in the trenches.  I guess the real answer is get managers back in the trenches, and get some managers who can feel, or at least understand the work while you’re at it.

The truth is, not every manager has time to be in the trenches all the time, or even enough to get a feel for what’s working and who’s not.  So a good manager has to rely on good deputies, and that’s even harder to read than disassociated metrics.

So where do I see money in this?  My idea is, of course, to make the use of quality measuring (QA) tools easier, by outsourcing them.  Or insourcing.  I’ll readily admit to a fetish for trying out new tools, even to the exclusion of getting real work done (a cross between “Analysis Paralysis” and “Infrastructure Churn” I suppose.  But maybe that’s a sign getting into the business of trying out tools is a good career move for me.

I’d shudder as much as the next guy about moving critical business operations to an external vendor, but in truth, things like test cases, bug reports, and task lists aren’t that critical.  You don’t want a malevolent competitor or evil hacker getting ahold of the info, but truth is even if your competitor could read all your bug reports, they probably wouldn’t want to.

I think ASPs first blossomed at a time that wasn’t ripe.  There wasn’t enough infrastructure, there wasn’t enough security knowledge, and there wasn’t enough bandwidth and horsepower to do it cheaply.  You see consumers offloading everything from photo albums to recipes (to blogs) — and even businesses using outsourced tools like Salesforce and email.

What I’m aiming at is a cross between the Salesforce and the Barracuda Networks model.  Smaller businesses will probably want to start out hosted, avoiding infrastructure, and bigger ones will want to move it in-house, but making evaluations easier and providing experience on the tools they may select (all the while keeping an eye on keeping the process from becoming too heavy for the poor developers and testers.)

Need to update

I need to update this blog and get a site going.

http://one-shore.com — overall site.  Probably redirect to www.one-shore.com

http://www.one-shore.com — The main company website.  I’ll need a CMS and tools like new, articles, and links to the other parts of the site.  Also about text, products, etc.

http://wiki.one-shore.com — I think there will be a company wiki and then a separate wiki for all the open source tools such as mantis, bugzilla,  phprojekt, etc.

http://blog.one-shore.com — I’ll eventually migrate over to self-hosted.  Or maybe use this (and/or blogger) for random stuff and have an official company blog for news.  Or possibly user blogs such as http://blogs.one-shore.com/aaron

http://tools.one-shore.com  — production versions of the tools.  Used by one-shore.com.  Possibly the landing page for customers wanting to use hosted tools.  Directories such as /qa, /ecommerce, /projectmanagement, etc.

http://demos.one-shore.com  — demos of various open source tools.  Directories mirroring the live tools.

What about customer specific sites?  Will they be subdomains, directories, logins, another site?