Disqus - Latest Comments for ndintenfass

Re: The language of agile is broken

ndintenfass — Sun, 22 Jun 2014 23:55:11 -0000

Mark -- totally agree that agile thinking is not a subtle change on existing systems. But, I think you underestimate the importance of the words in helping people change their mental model. I have worked with many teams where the words end up creating misunderstandings right off the bat and/or create bad expectations of what is expected when a team is "agile" in the first place. The vocabulary we use, especially when first trying new practices, shapes how we think about what we're trying to get done, and I've spent too many hours trying to work against the inferences of these words to think it doesn't matter.

Re: The language of agile is broken

ndintenfass — Sun, 22 Jun 2014 23:52:01 -0000

Matt -- thanks for your thoughtful reply. Pivotal is certainly well-known for their tight processes, and I have no doubt that "velocity" and the like are not problems on your team. Pivotal is also famous for having a mindset of the One True Way to build software, and it has built a very successful practice around that way. Many teams are simply not equipped to take on the Pivotal way, nor do I think it's as universally applicable as some inside Pivotal seem to think it is.

The article was less about teams already expert and adept and more about how the common vocabulary of agile practices causes more harm than good when new team try to adopt the new mindset.

I'm glad your team has a healthy dynamic with you, but at Pivotal you likely don't face the kinds of pressures many teams face to make that number as high as it can be regardless of what the Right Thing is. For instance, perhaps it's worth spending some time recovering from technical debt, or cleaning up annoying but heretofore low-priority bugs. Perhaps some of the team is spending a couple weeks doing research or helping a team that has an urgent need. All such things will cause velocity to fall, and that's fine as long as velocity is taken for what it's meant to be -- a way to estimate what a team can do over a known amount of time. I have seen Velocity create much more badness than goodness, and it's not usually because of the interaction between a product person and the team but more because of how the broader organization, especially management a level up from the team. It's not about whether a team should or should not go quickly and push itself, it's about velocity being a way to create reliable estimates of what can get done and as a general measure of regularity over time. It goes badly when velocity ends up being seen as something we should try to make go "up and to the right" (which is the natural temptation for a business metric).

I'm very familiar with the word "pipeline" in the context of engineers, but I don't see that as an impediment in this case. Few opportunities for meaning collision given the context.

I think "release" instead of "sprint" is great if you truly release on each cycle, but many teams don't operate that way (either releasing less often or these days some teams release more often). I have counseled many teams to separate their production cycle from their release cycle, as I think they are two different concerns. The bigger issue is getting people into a mindset that focuses on rhythm, steadiness, and throughput rather than a furious race to a deadline.

Re: Google Glass and B2B Applications

ndintenfass — Fri, 30 Aug 2013 04:26:11 -0000

Apropos: http://qz.com/119692/the-re...

Re: Google Glass and B2B Applications

ndintenfass — Fri, 23 Aug 2013 18:23:12 -0000

Makes a lot of sense -- I wonder, though, if it can find an audience without the support infrastructure one might expect from 'business technology' companies. iPad has made its way into lots of businesses because it was already becoming accepted and ubiquitous among certain demographics, but Glass remains risky technology for all but the most daring of businesses to adopt. Also doesn't seem like Google is geared up to address that kind of sale, but they could adopt quickly if there's traction -- but will it be a big enough deal to warrant their attention given how big Glass needs to be to be considered a success at Google Scale?

Re: Location Sharing In a World of Many Options and Apps

ndintenfass — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 14:02:58 -0000

Agree on the distinctions between logging/notifying and wide/narrow groups (begging for a 2x2 graphic!). The Apple "Find Friends" app has filled a niche for me not really covered in your post -- letting the tiny group of people who may need to know where I am all the time know where I am. Right now that's just 2 people, but before it we had tried Glympse and Latitude and a couple others, and they were all cumbersome, at best. Foursquare acts as the log for me, though I find I only actually check in these days when I can think of at least one person that would be interested to know that I'm at a give place (often a different person depending on the place). By the way there's a nice iOS app called Checkie that makes Foursquare checkins extra simple. I never cared for using Facebook or Twitter for location sharing, as that feels like an overloading of what those services are for (and seems like noise to most of the people who follow me there). When I first started using Path I was being more active with pure location sharing, but after a while I found that only when I had a good picture to share did I bother putting in the location. As I've played with Vine it has been interesting to note when I do and don't want to add the location (usually when the location would provide some context to the viewer of the video). Off to download Twist now...

Re: 3 Questions about Subscription Commerce

ndintenfass — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 16:33:12 -0000

You seem to be focused (for the purpose of this post) exclusively on consumer subscriptions, and in those situations it seems to come more down to the relationship someone has with the thing they are buying. In other words, do you experience the thing as part of the rhythm/flow of your life, or do you experience it as a momentary indulgence/necessity.

In the case of something like Netflix it becomes more of a lifestyle choice to always have some entertainment you've chosen in advance at the ready vs. the ability to have to choose and buy a la carte. In that particular instance the subscription model was less a decision about revenue model and more a necessity for solving the original pain (late fees and trips to the video store). But, now that streaming dominates their business the question of individual purchases vs. subscription becomes more substantive of a choice. For me, Netflix's primary value is being able to show my kids 22 minutes of ad-free TV that I can help them select any time I want to -- that has become a part of the rhythm of our life such that I can't imagine not having some kind of subscription-based content option like it (and none of the Netflix competitors have come close from what I've seen in terms of ease/selection).To your point about how many areas are even suitable for subscriptions, the interesting innovations will be finding areas people never thought could be experienced as a continuous experience and turn them into that (an obvious example is the companies that have turned fashion/accessories into subscription models). Another dimension to that is tribal membership -- will there be areas where being a member of the tribe by virtue of the subscription bring additional, less tangible benefits in terms of identity/ego (Amex has long tried to create such intangible benefit up the chain of their brands).

Also ripe for innovation is taking products that are expensive today and finding ways to build in subscriptions as a subsidy to lower the friction to initial adoption. For instance, there has been talk for years about how to make cars more like cell phones, where creating the relationship up front generates a huge lifetime value. That happens to some extent with cars in terms of buying parts and service after the initial purchase, but this is an area we're likely to see some big shakeups in terms of buying models. Similarly, as more and more devices in the home become "smart" and connected these dynamics can kick in. Seems likely Apple will soon do something with TV that is more akin to the way they sell iPhones than anyone has ever imagined with TVs -- fundamentally changing the lifetime value calculation of selling a good through subscription-style relationships could change a lot of product categories where today we stop being a customer the day we bring something home.

Re: Un-human Experience

ndintenfass — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 17:43:03 -0000

Don't get me wrong - I'm all for tracking various metrics and finding ways to improve the things that drive your business (clicks and other engagement measures), but it's very easy to lose sight of the impact your changes have on the relationship with the people using your product if you think only about how to make the numbers get better -- I think a lot of the state-of-the-art techniques in virality and gamification come from optimizing short-term improvements in metrics at the expense of long-term loyalty and brand value.

Re: http://bplawler.tumblr.com/post/7586371762

ndintenfass — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 21:10:17 -0000

On the other hand, here you are not there any more, and had you spent the time to pay down your technical debt, would it have made a difference? Seems the "problem" is more about incentives and personal ownership.

Re: http://bplawler.tumblr.com/post/7021290672

ndintenfass — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 14:15:30 -0000

Amen.

Re: http://bplawler.tumblr.com/post/6618905843

ndintenfass — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 16:45:25 -0000

From what I've seen that may have been true in the early days of Rails - people got fixated on the scaffolding demos, for instance. But these days plenty of maturing, complex sites are successfully using Rails without it becoming a nightmare of spaghetti exceptions. The time to market is, of course, also a major factor in the decision, but more important than that is the community that has formed to create a rich set of gems that can be used for all manner of things. Add on top of that a service like Heroku, strong testing frameworks, and clear community conventions and you have the makings of something far more powerful than just a whiz-bang set of default behaviors.

Re: Photo Essay: Hot Air Ballooning in South Africa

ndintenfass — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 22:42:49 -0000

Sublime

Re: foursquare is a game, not a location app – and that’s why it works

ndintenfass — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 14:00:02 -0000

The risk of such overt game mechanics is they get old -- if you look at your typical casual game life-cycle it doesn't last (though who am I to tell YOU about casual games ;). That's one reason the successful casual game companies keep pumping out new games in a "Studio" model rather than banking on any one property. Will people still want to be the mayor of a location a year into using foursquare? Can foursquare continue to introduce new game elements to keep it fresh?

The other issue with a "game" is it creates a fairly specific audience -- those who want to "play a game". When I first started using foursquare that seemed immediately limiting to me - I knew large portions of my friends/network would not want to engage given the explicit gaming nature of it. I suppose, though, that makes for a more passionate user base which could compensate for the smaller overall footprint.

Based on the rankings I see in the app it seems there is a small, though dedicated, group using it in San Francisco (measured in 4 figures near as I can discern). Will be interesting to see if it can break out to the mainstream.

Do you think it has both staying power and broad appeal?

Re: Three Blog Posts In Progress – Advice for Generalists, Why Marketplaces Rule, and Why Video is Tough

ndintenfass — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 22:22:06 -0000

I'm still trying to figure out the answer to #1 ;)

Online video is still very much in the "one of these days" mode -- people draw the curve of online attention vs. online spend and feel there is inevitable massive growth. At the same time we see consumers increasingly willing to pay money in various ways for premium content. The monetization channels for video are just now starting to feel like they have a path to "maturity" -- and many of them are just getting started (even Google's efforts are fairly new), and the media buyers are notoriously slow to adopt. In short, it simply takes time to get the buyers comfortable with any new format, and the confounding influences of all the talk of new ways to measure engagement and rapid pace of change relative to the previous several decades create a lot of friction to rapid growth, but much of that could credibly be said to be "almost over" in terms of making the transition. If you buy that, online video is poised to be a substantially bigger market in just a handful of years.

"Marketplace" seems to be defined very broadly here -- look forward to hearing where you draw the distinctions.

Re: Solving the Twitter Business Model Problem – Your Guess is Probably Better than Mine

ndintenfass — Wed, 28 May 2008 14:12:42 -0000

And yet conventional wisdom seems to persist that consumer Internet companies shouldn't bother to worry about a business model in the early days...