FS VENTURES

The best thing about Producteev is that you can manage each of your course sections, as well as your personal life- all with one tool!

There is a delicate balance between juggling subjects, multiple students, and professional goals on top of personal matters. Summer is over, and it's time to get back to the daily grind that is teaching. The workload seems to be ever-increasing with each passing semester, and the old-fashioned lesson planners and grade books can only go so far! Let Producteev for Education help you reclaim your life!

Simple Guide to the Path of Tranquility:

1. Using your .edu e-mail address, sign up to Producteev for Education. (Link below)
2. Once you're in, assign a 'workspace' for each of your sections.
3. Under each workspace, plot the information highlighted on the syllabus.
4. Assign due dates and reminders as needed. These can be done via e-mail and IM.
5. Add some visual appeal! Assign colored labels to each category of assignment. For example: Response Papers = Red; Research Reports = Yellow; etc.
6. Observe the activity in all your sections with one glance through the 'overview.'
7. As assignments get completed, mark them 'done.' Now onto the next project!

But wait there's more! Producteev for Education adds another layer of awesome to what it has to offer.

• Hold that Thought: Add notes to your tasks! Feel free to quickly jot down any ideas you may like to implement... before the thought gets lost in another rush of ideas!
• Sharing is Caring: Collaborate with a colleague or superior on tasks!

Now of course we won't just tell you about our amazing software, and leave you to fend for yourself! We offer videos that would help you get started with Producteev. Heck, whenever you're ready, there are additional videos available to help guide you through the basics of each feature. Once you get into the swing of it all, you will soon find that you have... (get ready for this)... breathing room!

Whether you are a school teacher, college/adjunct professor, or even a private/after-school tutor- only you truly understand the workload that goes unnoticed with your occupation.

Unlock the door to your peace of mind, and let Producteev for Education be the key. Sign up now with your .edu e-mail address, for this free premium service by Producteev! 

Recommended Reading: Producteev for Students: Breeze Through that To-Do List!

It’s getting increasingly hard to tell where one Web application ends and another begins. Everywhere you turn these days some provider of a Web application is announcing another application programming interface (API).

The latest example is Producteev, which offers a task-management application as a service. As much as Producteev CEO Ilan Abehassera  would like people to use his service online, he’s more interested in having other application providers embed Producteev inside their application services. After all, task management probably is better as a subset of another application rather than a stand-alone app.

As Web applications evolve, they are becoming as borderless as our Web sites. The average Web site today is a collection of modules delivering content from who knows where. The model is now being applied to Web applications that are taking advantage of custom and de facto industry standard APIs that essentially allow customers to customize and integrate these applications with just about any other Web application.

The rise of these new borderless Web applications will present some interesting security and data-management challenges. But what was once a relatively simple mashup concept involving the sharing of data between two applications rapidly is becoming a never-ending series of composite applications that are always connected.

From an end user perspective, this capability presents all kinds of possibilities for mass customization as part of the general trend toward the consumerization of IT. From an IT manager’s perspective, however, mass customization currently equals mass confusion.

 

There's no doubt we're seeing the rise of a new era of applications of the Web; then only real question at this point is how are we going to manage them?

If you’re a new startup or have a new product you want to launch at TechCrunch Disrupt, we encourage you to submit your company to compete in our the Startup Battlefield. Disrupt SF’s application process is being hosted courtesy of task-management startup, Producteev.

The Startup Battlefield is a tournament-style launch platform where startups demo their products and impress the audience and panel of experts over multiple rounds of competition. Experts will be brought in to mentor and judge startups on product, business models, team, design and usability and more. The final round will put startups in the hot seat where some of the most successful entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and business executives will grill them in front of the audience. Audience voting as well as expert feedback will factor into final competition scores.

One startup will emerge the overall winner and take home a $50,000 cash prize at the close of the conference, Wednesday afternoon.

Deadlines
Apply to compete in the Startup Battlefield.
Open applications will be accepted through midnight pst, Sunday, August 8.
Final decisions will be extended to applicants by Friday, September 3.

Applications will be reviewed, companies will be interviewed and offers will be extended on a rolling basis, so it’s to your benefit to submit your application as soon as you are ready for consideration. Applications may be saved in draft mode, so please do not submit an application before you’re ready for full consideration. Powerpoint slides and videos are optional to submit, but due to heavy application volumes, we strongly encourage you to submit a few slides and a short video for the best chance of moving forward with an interview. Video quality is not important, but getting a quick overview of your product is very important to us.

We expect to extend 15-25 offers for companies to launch and compete in the Startup Battlefield. The final number will be based on the applicant pool.

Startup Alley

Any company less than two years old and less than $2 million in financing is welcome to participate in the Startup Alley demo area. The audience’s favorite Startup Alley company will secure a spot into into Round One of Startup Battlefield live at Disrupt.

Yes, lots of news these days...! And we particularly like this one.

You already know that you can attach files to your tasks as a note. Pretty popular feature, because it's an easy way to manage different versions of your files, related to your tasks. By the way, if you send an email to task@producteev.com with a file attached to it, it will be automatically posted as a first note...

Back to our announcement : What if you didn't have to download those files to view them?

It's now a reality, we've partnered with Scribd (the Youtube for documents), so your files will be displayed right below the note, viewable in one click. And that's a game changer to us, makes things much easier to work on Files and comment on files without going through the painful download process.

You still have the choice though : Download or Preview.

Here is the list supported by Scribd :

• Portable Document Format (.pdf)
• PostScript (.ps)
• Microsoft Word (.doc, .docx)
• Microsoft PowerPoint (.ppt, .pps, .pptx)
• Microsoft Excel (.xls, xlsx)
• OpenOffice Text Document (.odt, .sxw)
• OpenOffice Presentation Document (.odp, .sxi)
• OpenOffice Spreadsheet (.ods, .sxc)
• All OpenDocument formats
• Plain text (.txt)
• Rich Text Format (.rtf)
• And we added Pictures (.jpg, .png, .gif...)

Click to view large

Download full size (150 KB)

So, how do you like this one?

 

 

SquarePik Adds Photos and Video to Foursquare

by rahsheen

March 22, 2010

View comments0 Comments and 0 Reactions

Foursquare has gained a lot of popularity as one of the forerunners in the location-based application race, facing such competition as Gowalla and Yelp. All of these services are basically the same, but SquarePik adds another dimension of interaction that makes Foursquare just a little more interesting. SquarePik integrates with Foursquare to provide a method for attaching photos and videos to your checkins.

SquarePik is the brainchild of Pikchur Inc. (our coverage) and 39 Inc. It is currently only available as an iPhone application, which you can get from the App Store for $1.99. SquarePik works in three easy steps:

1. Choose a venue from the list, or create one if it doesn’t exist
2. Take a photo or record a video
3. SquarePik automatically checks you in at that location

Not only will SquarePik give you the ability to add rich media to your Foursquare checkins, but it also lets you view any media that others have shared while checking in at that location. This opens up a few different and interesting possibilities. Foursquare has already created a game around their location checkins, but an individual visiting any venue could start their very own game or meme. Those visiting after the fact would see the photo/video and copy it. A real-estate agent could checkin at various properties that they manage and post media describing the details and “secrets” of that property. An artist could post media related to a live performance at a specific venue. People attending any event after that would be able to see, via SquarePik, exactly how that event went down and possibly gain the artist some new fans.

The possibilities here are very interesting and make me think of a Lokast-type system, with the ability to leave things behind for others to find. Also, combined with Zillow, this could be a powerful tool for Real Estate agents. A trusted source tells me that SquarePik may eventually grow into a “full-blown Foursquare client.” That should open up some interesting possibilities in it’s own right. The only thing I wish for is the ability to access SquarePik via the web. Pikchur and Foursquare both have web interfaces, so it’s not much of a stretch.

Category: Reviews | Tags: 39 inc., foursquare, location based services, pikchur

SquarePik Adds Photos and Video to Foursquare

by rahsheen

March 22, 2010

View comments0 Comments and 0 Reactions

Foursquare has gained a lot of popularity as one of the forerunners in the location-based application race, facing such competition as Gowalla and Yelp. All of these services are basically the same, but SquarePik adds another dimension of interaction that makes Foursquare just a little more interesting. SquarePik integrates with Foursquare to provide a method for attaching photos and videos to your checkins.

SquarePik is the brainchild of Pikchur Inc. (our coverage) and 39 Inc. It is currently only available as an iPhone application, which you can get from the App Store for $1.99. SquarePik works in three easy steps:

1. Choose a venue from the list, or create one if it doesn’t exist
2. Take a photo or record a video
3. SquarePik automatically checks you in at that location

Not only will SquarePik give you the ability to add rich media to your Foursquare checkins, but it also lets you view any media that others have shared while checking in at that location. This opens up a few different and interesting possibilities. Foursquare has already created a game around their location checkins, but an individual visiting any venue could start their very own game or meme. Those visiting after the fact would see the photo/video and copy it. A real-estate agent could checkin at various properties that they manage and post media describing the details and “secrets” of that property. An artist could post media related to a live performance at a specific venue. People attending any event after that would be able to see, via SquarePik, exactly how that event went down and possibly gain the artist some new fans.

The possibilities here are very interesting and make me think of a Lokast-type system, with the ability to leave things behind for others to find. Also, combined with Zillow, this could be a powerful tool for Real Estate agents. A trusted source tells me that SquarePik may eventually grow into a “full-blown Foursquare client.” That should open up some interesting possibilities in it’s own right. The only thing I wish for is the ability to access SquarePik via the web. Pikchur and Foursquare both have web interfaces, so it’s not much of a stretch.

Category: Reviews | Tags: 39 inc., foursquare, location based services, pikchur

Miami, Florida-based  Labotec has landed a round of funding from  Kima Ventures, a European early-stage investment fund founded by entrepreneurs and angel investors  Jeremie Berrebi (Zlio, Net2One) and  Square backer  Xavier Niel (Free, Iliad).The VC firm thus joins Kipost and FS Ventures as investors of the crowd-sourced mobile app development venture. The size of the round remains undisclosed, but we hear the amount of financing totaled just south of a seven-figure sum, so we'll peg it at in between $800,000 and $999,999.Labotec offers a relatively unique way of mobile app publishing, based on crowd-sourcing ideas from third parties. Basically, people who have ideas for mobile applications on any of the major platforms but lack the time, development skills or resources to actually build them can submit their ideas through the Labotec website. The ideas are subsequently evaluated by Labotec, and if one gets thumbs up from a committee of unnamed field experts associated with the company, Labotec funds the entire development, distribution and marketing of the app. The IP is co-owned by whoever submitted the idea ¿ targeted are carriers and handset manufacturers ¿ and Labotec.The 'Inspirer' (the person or organization that brought forward the idea for the app) doesn't pay a cent, but if the app ends up generating revenue, the first $25,000 that it makes goes to Labotec ¿ no matter how long it took to get to that point. After that, the Inspirer gets 50% of any revenue that may follow. Labotec notes that they're still testing this model and that it is subject to change in the future.Labotec says that it has received hundreds of new project ideas from 27 countries since its inception in May 2009. A total of 3 applications out of those ideas have launched (iSOS for Android, iMove2Music and FakeSMS for iPhone) and 20 are slated for release by the end of this year ¿ which basically means a lot of the submitted ideas are junk. The company says it plans to use part of the just-raised capital to hire 10 more developers of mobile apps for platforms such as iPhone, Android, iPad and BlackBerry.CrunchBase InformationLabotecInformation provided by CrunchBase

Miami, Florida-based Labotec has landed a round of funding from Kima Ventures, a European early-stage investment fund founded by entrepreneurs and angel investors Jeremie Berrebi (Zlio, Net2One) and Square backer Xavier Niel (Free, Iliad).

The VC firm thus joins Kipost and FS Ventures as investors of the crowd-sourced mobile app development venture. The size of the round remains undisclosed, but we hear the amount of financing totaled just south of a seven-figure sum, so we’ll peg it at in between $800,000 and $999,999.

Labotec offers a relatively unique way of mobile app publishing, based on crowd-sourcing ideas from third parties. Basically, people who have ideas for mobile applications on any of the major platforms but lack the time, development skills or resources to actually build them can submit their ideas through the Labotec website.

The ideas are subsequently evaluated by Labotec, and if one gets thumbs up from a committee of unnamed field experts associated with the company, Labotec funds the entire development, distribution and marketing of the app. The IP is co-owned by whoever submitted the idea – targeted are carriers and handset manufacturers – and Labotec.

The ‘Inspirer’ (the person or organization that brought forward the idea for the app) doesn’t pay a cent, but if the app ends up generating revenue, the first $25,000 that it makes goes to Labotec – no matter how long it took to get to that point. After that, the Inspirer gets 50% of any revenue that may follow. Labotec notes that they’re still testing this model and that it is subject to change in the future.

Labotec says that it has received hundreds of new project ideas from 27 countries since its inception in May 2009. A total of 3 applications out of those ideas have launched (iSOS for Android, iMove2Music and FakeSMS for iPhone) and 20 are slated for release by the end of this year – which basically means a lot of the submitted ideas are junk.

The company says it plans to use part of the just-raised capital to hire 10 more developers of mobile apps for platforms such as iPhone, Android, iPad and BlackBerry.

Miami, FL (March 15, 2010) Labotec announced today that it has secured a round of funding from major strategic partner Kima Ventures, founded by Jeremie Berrebi (Zlio, Net2One) and Xavier Niel (Free,Iliad). Europe-based fund Kima Ventures joins Kipost and FS Ventures as an investor in Labotec. The company plans to use the funds to accelerate growth in all areas of its business and to support its plans for massive scale in 2010.

Labotec is pioneering a new form of mobile applications publishing based on crowd-sourced ideas. Since its recent inception, Labotec has received hundreds of new project ideas from 27 countries. 3 applications have already launched (iSOS for Android, iMove2Music for iPhone, FakeSMS for iPhone) and 20 are slated for release by the end of the year. Labotec engages with innovators that have always dreamed to see their ideas commercialized and be given the right tools to succeed in the marketplace.

“Mobile applications are becoming a must-have for subscribers and carriers, Labotec has the potential to turn an idea into a great business” said Jeremie Berrebi, partner in Kima Ventures.

“Our goal is to produce a user-oriented portfolio of applications on mobile devices such as iPhone/iPad/iPod, Android or BlackBerry” explains Florian Seroussi, Labotec co-founder.

“Kima Ventures and its founders bring another layer of opportunities we couldn’t approach until now” says Pierre-Olivier Carles, CEO of Kipost.

According to research analyst Research2guidance, the surge in applications will be driven by a fast-growing number of smartphone users, estimated to increase from about 100 million in 2009 to nearly 1 billion by 2013. Yearly application revenues will rise from US$1.94 billion (2009) to US$15.65 billion in only four years, according to most recent research findings.

About Labotec Inc
Labotec’s mission is to select great application ideas for iPhone, iPod, iPad, Android or Blackberry, finance them, and gather the required resources together to go to market with a finished application on any Application Store.
For that purpose, Labotec has established a selection and approval process that is both simple and swift. Labotec Inc HQ is based in Miami, Florida, with an office in Toulouse, France.

About Kima Ventures
Kima Ventures fund launched in 2010 by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs. Our goal is to support and finance innovative companies with seed capital all over the world and to promotes the growth of startups, supporting them in the fastest and most effective ways.
Kima Ventures partners with the best business angels and venture, funds, and invests primarily in projects that meet a simple need and have a simple business model.

Labotec Inc
20900 NE 30th Ave Suite 603
Miami, Florida, USA
Twitter: @Labotec
info@labotec.com

PR Contacts:
Europe
Stephane Menoret
stephane@labotec.com
+33 6 77 55 01 41

US
Florian Seroussi
florian@labotec.com
+1 417 262 6006

0 Comments | Posted by admin March 16, 2010

This is a review of Producteev by Charles Lau.

In today’s Internet, we have blogs, social networks, social bookmarks, wikis, and all other sorts of webware that we can lay our hands on.  The Internet is also finding ways to make you platform independent with all the software that you are using such as office productivity software (with Google Docs), email software (with Gmail) and image editing (with Picnik).

How about managing your projects and tasks with your job?  You have been a really busy executives and managers, and you would really hope how you can make your work more efficient.

Well in fact, one of the most time-consuming tasks in your project(s) is the task of managing the priority of all the actual tasks.  You would hope to know what you need to do today, and what your staff are doing in exactly the way you wanted.  You don’t have to micro-manage them, in order to manage what they are doing today, tomorrow and the day after.  All you need to do, is to manage the actual task overview of each employee.

Introduction to Producteev

Today, I am going to talk about Producteev.  It is an intuitive and fully drag & drop-able solution to collaborate with your colleagues over shared projects and tasks.

How did I manage to find this site?  I chance upon this site through Chris Brogan on twitter.  And I thought this is quite a good addition to our world wide web!

Here’s a summary of what Producteev is:

• In a nutshell, you can create tasks for yourself or to assign to members of your team, and you can then leave comments on these tasks as your project evolves with time.
• You will be accessing to a lot of useful task-management features such as file management, reminders, a calendar and numerous third-party applications such as mobile apps, desktop and IM bots.
• You will also be able to manage both the tasks as well as to-do lists, and communicate efficiently with your team.

In fact, as you can see, it is still in beta version currently.  Even though the software is already in place, they must be still trying their very best to test the software first before they make it official.

Overview of Producteev

You will see boxes of to-do tasks on your dashboard when you log into the system.  And on every box, you will share your tasks with your colleagues, or to make it private.  You are free to create a new box whenever necessary.  (See below)

There is also a live feed section for you to find out what your colleagues have done in the tasks.  This live feed also allows you to message your colleagues, upload a file to the message, and even to message privately. (See below)

You can also upload files onto the server.  Your colleagues can also comment on it. (See below)

Any other features on top of that?

Simply said, this is what Producteev is all about.  And they surround their features to be compatible with different mobile devices.  On top of that, you can also sync Producteev with the various services such as twitter to update your tasks!

Interview with Producteev CEO

I have been able to interview the founder and CEO of Producteev.  His name is Ilan Abehassera.

When I approach Producteev, I wonder if they are going to accept my interview questions with my current startup of this blog.  Never did I knew that Ilan is a really approachable person who not only answered all my questions immediately, he even added me in his LinkedIn account.  Wow! Thanks Ilan.

Here’re the questions I have interviewed on 2 April 2009:

1) When did you start to have this idea of starting this website?
Ans: I had the idea 2 years ago, and starting working on a prototype 1 year ago. I finally decided to start a company around it on July 8, 2008

2) How long have you been working on this site?
Ans: Since June 1st 2008, so 10 months

3) What’s your vision of this site?
Ans:  ”Producteev is building the first productivity platform developed on top of the tools we all rely on every day (email, IM, mobile, desktop, outlook, gmail, google docs,…)”

Group Task Management is still a largely unsolved problem : emails or IM are used as our main tool to assign tasks to colleagues, but we can all agree those are not efficient to manage and track tasks and projects. 

=> With Producteev.com, we help you centralize tasks, projects, internal communication and files by using whatever communication service you rely on.

4) What is the server technology behind?  Why is the server able to support all of our information in terms of space and bandwidth?
Ans: We are based on the LAMP stack, with 2 servers (1 web server + 1 mysql server) 

5) How many of you are working on maintaining this website?
Ans: 3 full time 

6) Will there be any always-ongoing research to further improve the system?
Ans: Of course, we have a huge roadmap ahead of us, and just recruited a mathematician that will build a better algorithm to prioritize tasks (but sshhhh, this is a secret!)

Conclusion

First of all,  I would like to thank Ilan for the interview in this blog post.  His other two colleagues include Aric Lasry (Co-Founder and Lead Developer) and Simon Dawlat (Director Product Marketing).  They have a lot of experiences before they work on this project with Ilan.  You may find out more about them in their “about us” page.

Looks like Producteev is progressing as I have just checked Ilan’s twitter that they are employing their first employee!  Congratulations!

Producteev certainly has potential as this very simple task management can be quite complicated when it involves two or more people.  I can tell you that because I have been working in an office and most of our time is to keep our tasks insync!  We’ll see how this project is going to evolve into!

Fake SMS is out and available on the App Store

Fake SMS is one of the most succeeded app that gives you the opportunity to make some jokes to your friends. Simply create fake text conversations from fake contacts (eg : Barack Obama) or real friends.
You can create as many messages as you want for each conversation and choose the elapsed time between the reception of each one of them. You can also decide if the first message will be sent by you or the fake contact to initiate the conversation!
With this system, you can simulate a strongly credible conversation and trap your friends, family, colleagues … !
Fake SMS will allow you to avoid a party or a meeting by showing a fake text conversation with one of your parent, or let your friends think that you.

Get it here: App Store iTunes Link

Posted by admin January 15, 2010

We here @ Pikchur have been working really hard on a few things lately. The first is our joint venture with 39llc to develop a Foursquare application that allows you to check-in with multimedia.

It’s called SquarePik.

The application allows people to check-in with a photo or video. In addition, the app will show users all photos and videos dropped at a particular venue. Along with some of the expected features such as, the ability to add locations, search for locations, and view your friend’s last checkins, we hope to provide a supplementary application to the already popular Foursquare iPhone app.

The app is built on top of our new “GeoSocial” API (more on that later) and is available in the iTunes store for just $1.99

Now, our new Geo-Social API is aimed at providing developers of geo social apps such as Foursquare the ability to quickly integrate the following features:

- Multimedia check-ins (Photos & Videos)

- Pull feed of Media Dropped @ a venue

- Pull feed of Thumbnails for a list of venues.

- Allow for multimedia tips (coming soon)

Documentation for our API can be found here : http://groups.google.com/group/pikchur-api/web/geosocial-api-documentation

We also added the following to Pikchur.com:

- Landing pages with Foursquare venue badges:  http://pikchur.com/Muq

- Geo social venue specific timelines: http://pikchur.com/timeline/foursquare*368848

- Nifty venue RSS feeds:  http://pikchur.com/rss/geosocial/foursquare/368848

Well that’s it for now, stay tuned as we improve SquarePik and our Geo social API.

As always, feel free to reach us with your comments, concerns and feed back @ info at pikchur dot com

Thanks,

The Pikchur Crew.

iSOS app can be activated in case of an emergency. Just by one click on the icon, iSOS will send emergency voice, texts messages, emails, FB and twitter updates to 5 of your chosen contacts. Plus, it automatically calls 911 (112 UE) and send your GPS-positioning so that people can find you and help you easily & efficiently.

iSOS dedicated page

Get isos on Market today

As Foursquare

continues to gain momentum (both in users and with mainstream deals), a number of services are popping up to augment it. The latest is Pikchur

, a service that already lets you share you pictures on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and other services. And now they’ve added Foursquare to the mix, and built an entirely new iPhone app just for it.

SquarePik is an app that lets you check-in on Foursquare while at the same time dropping an image or video at a venue you check-in at. Because Foursquare doesn’t support media natively, SquarePik does by combining Foursquare’s check-in API with its own backend to store the pictures and record their location. Sadly, to see these pictures or videos you have to sign in to your Pikchur account (which you can do with your Foursquare credentials) on the web.

Still, it’s kind of cool that Pikchur was able to build an entirely new Foursquare iPhone app with added functionality. Some people may even prefer its look and feel as it features bigger icons and a large centrally-located check-in button. The downside is that the venue location information doesn’t seem to be as accurate as Foursquare’s actual iPhone app, and there are none of the other goodies such as seeing who else is at a venue. SquarePik also doesn’t break up check-ins by city, it just shows them all in a stream.

Pikchur is the latest service to add picture functionality on top of Foursquare. Last month, Photocheck.in started offering the same idea, but it’s slightly different in that you send a geotagged picture and it checks you in on Foursquare at the address. TweetPhoto quickly followed with an approach that is much more like Pikchur’s (but again, Pikchur’s is all about their native iPhone app).

Given Fousquare’s growth it should be no surprise that we’re seeing these new services that reside on top of it much like we did with Twitter. And while one might think Foursquare could eventually cripple these simply by adding a native photo element, that was also said about Twitter, but it never happened. That said, given that Foursquare is much more app-centric, I wouldn’t be shocked if we do see the ability to tag pictures to venues eventually.

Find SquarePik in the App Store for $1.99

.

Agile Term	Definition
Agile Application Lifecycle Management	Also called Agile ALM, Agile Application Lifecycle Management is the integrated management platform of the entire software application lifecycle, from planning to the final release. Key components of the platform include the ability to handle change management, workflow, source code management, task management, testing and bug tracking, reporting and analytics.
Agile Practices	Agile practices are procedures that are defined as being highly efficient to productivity, and include the following practices: user stories, cross-functional teams, unit testing, refactoring, continuous integration, multi-stage continuous integration, planning poker, burnup charts, burndown charts.
Agile Development	Agile development is a way of thinking about software development as expressed in the Agile Manifesto, and acts as an “umbrella” for a group of methodologies. The methodologies are based on process-centric and iterative development, where requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing, cross-functional teams. Agile development is a conceptual framework that promotes evolutionary change throughout the entire life cycle of the project and represents a new, more flexible approach to development than the traditional methods that have previously been the norm for software development.
Agile Development Life Cycle	The complete software development process including Agile practices such as user stories, cross-functional teams, unit testing, refactoring, continuous integration, multi-stage continuous integration, planning poker, burnup charts, burndown charts.
Agile Manifesto	Principles of Agile software development: "We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it. Through this work we have come to value: Individuals and interactions over processes and tools Working software over comprehensive documentation Customer collaboration over contract negotiation Responding to change over following a plan That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more."
Agile Processes	A software development methodology based on process-centric and iterative development, where requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing cross-functional teams and is collectively regarded as highly efficient to productivity. Specific processes include user stories, cross functional teams, unit testing, refactoring, continuous integration, multi-stage continuous integration, planning poker, burnup charts and burndown charts.
Agile Project Management	The process of planning, organizing, and managing the necessary resources in order to complete project goals while adhering to Agile practices.
Agile SCM Tool	Software Configuration Management tool that supports Agile Software Development Lifecycle requirements differently than requirements involved with traditional software development. These supported features and requirements of Agile SCM include feature-oriented development, sandboxing with private build before check-in, ability to revert to last good working version when integration testing fails, staging hierarchy, ability to revert and retarget changes, refactoring support and support for geographically distributed development.
Agile Software Development	Agile software development is a way of thinking about software development, as expressed in the Agile Manifesto, and acts as an “umbrella” for a group of methodologies. The methodologies are based on process-centric and iterative development, where requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing, cross-functional teams. Agile software development is a conceptual framework that promotes evolutionary change throughout the entire life cycle of the project and represents a new, more flexible approach to development than the traditional methods that have been the norm for software development.
Application Development Process Tools	Tools necessary to complete the application development process, such as Application Lifecycle Management tools, Software Configuration Management tools, Build and Release tools, security and defect tracking tools, etc.
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM)	Also called ALM, Application Lifecycle Management is the management platform of the entire software application lifecycle, from planning to the final release. Key components of the platform include the ability to handle change management, workflow, source code management, task management, testing and bug tracking, reporting and analytics.
Backlog	Also knows as "product backlog," the backlog is a prioritized list of user stories and defects in order from most valuable to least valuable for a system. Backlogs include both functional and non-functional user stories as well as technical team-generated stories.
Branching	Branching is the duplication of objects under revision control (such as a source code file, or a directory tree) in such a way that the newly created objects initially have the same content as the original, but can evolve independently of the original. Branching can take two forms, static or dynamic. In static branches, copy and label operations are used to duplicate a given branch. The duplicate then can evolve independently. With dynamic branches, usually implemented in streams, only the label operation is used, to flag the point in time that a stream diverged from its parent stream. Both branching forms support some form of merging, so that code changes made on a branch can be re-integrated into another branch, as is typical in parallel development processes.
Burndown Chart	Representation of the number of hours remaining for completion of a project; usually represented in chart form with points plotted on an x and y axis that map a downward trend of work left to do until burning down to zero.
Burnup Chart	Representation of the number of stories completed; usually represented in chart form with points plotted on an x and y axis that map an upward trend of work completed until reaching 100%.
Change and Configuration Management	Change and Configuration Management (also known as Software Change and Configuration Management or SCCM) combines aspects of both change management and configuration management to control a software development project as it evolves through the software development process. SCCM typically includes all technical aspects of the development process, such as version control, branching and merging. Additionally, SCCM includes change related activities such as issue tracking, document tracking, and process workflows that enable development teams to control the overall process.
Change Control	Process in which changes to a product or system are introduced in a controlled manner with minimal disruptions to services and cost effective solutions involved in implementing the changes.
Change Management	Change Management enables development organizations to control, communicate and respond more effectively to rapidly changing business demands.
Change Packages	Change Packages enable developers and managers to group file changes together into a logical whole and enable release managers to work at the issue or task level, while still providing developers with full access to the underlying file contents of the Change Package. Once created, a Change Package allows users to move, copy, modify, merge or revert the change package.
Collocation	Collocation refers to development teams located and working in the same location. Collocation is usually applied at the cross-functional team level.
Configuration Management	Configuration Management refers to a set of practices around storing, tracking and releasing versions of a software product. Software products that enable development organizations to perform these practices efficiently are also referred to as Configuration Management systems or Configuration Management tools. Configuration Management systems will typically provide users with a variety of features, including but not limited to source code control, issue tracking, and change set management.
Configuration Management Tools	Configuration Management tools are the tools that make possible the practices around storing, tracking and releasing versions of software.
Continuous Integration	Continuous integration, one of the foundational aspects of Agile software development methodologies, is defined by Martin Fowler to be "a fully automated and reproducible build, including testing, that runs many times a day. This allows each developer to integrate daily, thus reducing integration problems." By getting changes into the main line as frequently as possible, preferably daily, and by extending the idea of a nightly build, continuous integration helps reduce integrations problems and identify and resolve problems more quickly.
Cross-Functional Team	Team comprised of members with all functional skills and specialties necessary to complete a project from start to finish.
Distributed Development	Development teams that work on the same project but are located across multiple locations or worksites.
Enterprise Agile	The adoption of specific Agile practices in an organization that works in conjunction with other non-Agile practices. Enterprise Agile is a highly efficient and customized practice for large organizations that have difficulty making a complete transition to Agile, as well as for organizations that already practice efficient development processes.
Epic	A user story which describes a large amount of customer value and needs to be broken down into many smaller user stories.
Feature Driven Development	Feature Driven Development (FDD) is an Agile method for developing software based on an iterative and incremental software development process. The main purpose of FDD is to deliver tangible, working software repeatedly in a timely manner.
Hybrid Processes	Development process that uses both Agile and non-Agile practices in conjunction with each other and is proven highly effective for development teams
Inspecting and Adapting	Agile process where teams evaluate a project by looking, listening to each other’s feedback and ultimately improving the process or changing course.
Iteration	Microcosm of a traditional Systems Development Life Cycle (SDLC,) each of which produces working software. Iterations can be as large as 3 months but are more typically between 1 to 4 weeks. See sprint.
Kanban	Methodology that comes from Lean software development and has three main components: visual system for managing work, limits work in progress, and work is pulled rather than pushed through the system.
Key Agile Principles	See Agile Manifesto.
Lean Software Development	A programming concept that focuses on optimizing efficiencies for development and minimizing waste. According to Mary Poppendieck, 10 rules of Lean programming include: eliminate waste, minimize artifacts, satisfy all stakeholders, deliver as fast as possible, decide as late as possible, decide as low as possible, deploy comprehensive testing, learn by experimentation, measure business impact and optimize across organizations.
Merging	The process of incorporating branches back into the mainline.
Multi-stage Continuous Integration	Agile method allowing for a high degree of integration to occur in parallel while vastly reducing the scope of integration problems. Multi-stage Continuous Integration (CI) is an expansion upon Continuous Integration, where each developer works on his or her own task. As changes are made, CI is done against that team's branch. If CI does not succeed, then that developer (possibly with help from her teammates) fixes the branch. This way when there is a problem, only that team, not the whole development effort is affected.
One Piece Flow	Process in which each developer or development process works on only one piece at a time before pulling code downstream, one piece at a time, to the next process.
Pair Programming	Process in which two developers work together at a single workstation, where one is responsible for typing code and the other for reviewing each line of code as it is typed in.
Parallel Development	Parallel development occurs whenever a software development project requires separate development efforts on related code bases. For example, when a software product is shipped to customers, a product development team may begin working on a new major feature release of the product, while a product maintenance team may work on defect corrections and customer patch releases of the shipped product. Both teams begin work from the same code base, but the code necessarily diverges. Frequently the code bases used in parallel development efforts must be merged at some future date, for example, to ensure that the defect corrections provided by the product maintenance team are integrated into the major release that the product development team is working on.
Planning Poker	A consensus-based technique for estimating; mostly used to estimate effort or relative size of tasks in software development.  Planning Poker is useful for building team cohesion and for fostering self-organizing teams.
Product Backlog	The backlog owned by the Product Owner.
Product Owner	A role originating from Scrum, but has now been widely adopted independently of Scrum. A product owner manages the product backlog, addresses questions that arise during development and signs off on work results. The product owner guides the team with what should be done and when the final product should be shipped. The Scrum team then balances out the product owner’s decisions by deciding how much work should be involved in an individual sprint and estimating the amount of time necessary to complete the task.
Real World Agile	The adoption of specific Agile practices in an organization that works in conjunction with other non-Agile practices. Real World Agile is a highly efficient and customized practice for large organizations that have difficulty make a complete transition to Agile as well as for organizations that already practice efficient development processes.
Refactoring	The practice of continuously improving the usability, maintainability, and adaptability of code without changing its behavior. Refactoring makes it much easier to add new and unanticipated functionality. Refactoring has the disadvantage that it takes extra effort and requires changing the code.
Release Management	Release management comprises a broad set of activities in software development organizations that center on ensuring that software is ready to be released to customers.
Release Plan	A document describing scheduling, activities, resources and responsibilities related to a particular release.
Release Process	The software release process is the final stage in a typical software development effort, where the software product is made available for use. To ready a software product for release, the release process must ensure that all product requirements have been met, usually by executing test suites designed to exercise product functionality and correcting any defects found.
SCM Software	Software Configuration Management software is a software tool that enable organizations to perform the SCM practices of storing, tracking and releasing a product, and typically provide users with a variety of features including source code control, issue tracking and change set management, advanced configuration management, change packages, process management and integrated issue tracking.
SCM Tools	Software Configuration Management tools are tools that enable organizations to perform SCM practices and typically provide users with a variety of features, including source code control, issue tracking and change set management, advanced configuration management, change packages, process management and integrated issue tracking.
Scrum	Agile development project management framework based around sprints and is generally comprised of a Scrum Team, Product Owner and Scrum Master. The framework of Scrum leaves most development decisions up to the self-organizing Scrum team, where decisions are reached as a whole team.
Scrum Master	Person trained to facilitate daily Scrum meetings, remove impediments, oversee the team’s progress through the process and track Scrum team updates.
Self Organizing	A team, usually found in Scrum, that manages itself through various means of communication and reoccurring structured meetings. Self organizing teams solve development issues together as a whole and decide the best solution depending on the various team members.
Software Change and Configuration Management (SCCM)	Software change and configuration management (SCCM – mainframe and distributed) tools implement a set of disciplines used to stabilize, track and control the versions and configurations of a set of software items and also may include development change management, defect tracking, change automation, development release management, integrated test management, integrated build management and other related processes. - Gartner Research
Software Configuration Management (SCM)	Software Configuration Management (SCM) refers to a set of practices around storing, tracking and releasing versions of a software product. Software products that enable development organizations to perform these practices efficiently are also referred to as Software Configuration Management systems or Software Configuration Management tools. Software Configuration Management systems will typically provide users with a variety of features, including but not limited to: source code control, issue tracking and change set management.
Software Development	Development of software in a planned and structured process. See software development process.
Software Development Process	The software development process is the set of coordinated activities performed by engineers, managers and technical writers resulting in the creation of a software product. Various named software development processes are in use today, including Agile, XP, Scrum, Waterfall and Lean.
Source Code Control	Source code control is a common requirement in all modern software development projects that provides mechanisms for checking source code in and out of a central repository. This allows different developers to work on the same project, with reduced fears of lost code or overwritten changes. Source code control also implies a version control system that can manage files through the development lifecycle, keeping track of which changes were made, who made them, when they were made, and why. Finally, source code control also frequently involves the ability to group versioned files as a single release, maintain multiple active releases concurrently (branching), and join different releases (merging).
Source Code Management	Source code management refers broadly to the set of operations required to store, retrieve and version the files used to construct software applications. Development teams rely on source code management to organize the source code files for different releases of software, so that releases can be uniquely identified for testing, packaging and delivery to customers. Failure to do this properly results in poor quality releases and inefficient use of development resources.
Spike	Timeboxed investigation of feasibility via a bare bones implementation, which touches on all aspects of the full implementation.
Sprint	Scrum specific word describing iterations.
Sprint Backlog	Plan for development team to map out implementation of features for an upcoming sprint.
Sprint Planning	A meeting for Scrum Teams, Scrum Masters and Product Owners where the Product Owner describes priority features to the team. The Scrum Team gets enough of an understanding about the tasks discussed that they are able to choose which ones to move from the product backlog to the sprint backlog.
Retrospective	Meeting held at the end of every sprint review to reflect on what went well during the sprint and what can be improved upon during the next sprint. Sprint retrospectives are valued as necessary parts of inspecting and adapting, and allow development teams to plan for future output.
Sprint Review	In the sprint review, teams go over what stories were completed during the iteration and demonstrate those stories for stakeholders and the product owner.
Stand-up	Daily Meetings that are meant to quickly and efficiently resolve obstacles that any team members may be experiencing.
Story Points	Relative scale of effort required by a team to implement a user story.
Task Board	A physical or electronic board representing the state of tasks in a current sprint, often divided into "to do," "in progress" and "done."
Timeboxing	The practice of constraining the amount of time for performing any activity. Examples include iterations, spikes and stand up meetings.
Unit Testing	Tests that exercise small amounts of isolated functionality.
User Stories	Used with Agile methodologies for specifying requirements and presented as an informal statement of the requirement (usually fitting on a 3x5 index card).
Velocity	The velocity of a team is the number of story points associated with stories that are finished over a given period of time, often 1 to 4 weeks. For instance, if the team completed 8 stories that were each 5 points during a four week period, then their velocity is 40 story points every four weeks.
Waterfall	Model of a software development process in which progress flows downwards through phases of conception, initiation, analysis, design, construction, testing and maintenance.
Whole Teams	Team comprised of members with different functional skills and specialties that work together during all phases of development in order to complete a project from start to finish. Also known as a cross-functional team.
XP	"Extreme Programming," one implementation of the Agile methodology that focuses on producing the simplest coding situation for application requirements and includes practices such as pair programming, incremental design and continuous integration.

 

The Case for Project Management

Last Updated on Saturday, 15 October 2011 01:21 Written by Mike Cottmeyer Saturday, 15 October 2011 01:21

 

How far ahead should we plan? I depends on what you are building, when you need to have it done… and if you aren’t going to get done… how soon do you need to know about it. If your goal is to build the highest value features possible, deliver continuously to market, get real time feedback… you might be able to get away with planning a sprint or two out… maybe less. If your goal is to deliver a specific set of predefined features, all of which need to be done by the end of the quarter, you may want to have all three months laid out. It’s not that we wouldn’t inspect and adapt and deal with reality, it’s just that we need to know if our velocity isn’t trending such that everything is going to get done. If we don’t know how we are doing against done, we don’t know what tradeoffs we need to make along the way.

I’ve worked with several clients recently that were trying to operate as if the software they were building was emergent. It wasn’t. They were being asked to deliver a specific outcome, with a pre-defined set of time and cost constraints. For these guys, it was absolutely silly to only plan their backlog two weeks at a pop. They had no idea how they were doing against the expectations of the business. They had no idea if they were on track or not or how they should approach the business to negotiate scope trade-offs. They had no means to determine if their approach was trending toward and acceptable outcome. The reality was that they were going to work really hard, probably deliver a great working product, and still have their stakeholders upset with them.

Having a plan doesn’t mean that we have to have a death march. Having a plan means that we have a baseline to measure against. Some way to determine if we are making the progress necessary to achieve our goals. Remember that line in the Agile Manifesto? We value responding to change over following a plan?  While we value the items on the right, we value the items on the left more? The plan isn’t the problem… it’s failure to respond to change… to deal with reality that is the problem. If I have a fixed time, fixed cost, fixed scope project… I damn well better be delivering incrementally using an agile approach… it’s the only way of knowing if I’ve got a shot in hell of being successful. It’s the only way we can confidently let our stakeholders know if we are on track or not.

Not every team needs a project manager… but I think many could benefit from some really good project management. I’ve been an agile project management guy from the beginning, but I am becoming increasingly convinced that we need to be teaching teams, not just how to self-organize, but how to effectively manage delivery… product or project delivery, I don’t care which. Self organized teams need to have everything necessary to deliver an increment of value… it’s my opinion that everything necessary to deliver an increment of working product includes someone that knows how to manage risk, validate assumptions, communicate with stakeholders, assess progress against the goal, and know when things are off track. That can be the PO, the ScrumMaster, or someone else on the team… again, it doesn’t matter.

What matters is that project management is happening… no matter who does it.

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Organizational culture powerfully influences a company's performance — or at least we say so. I often hear executives reassure me that projects will get done because "we have an execution culture," or that customers will be well taken care of because "we have a culture where the customer comes first." At the same time, culture is also one of the great rationalizations for managerial shortcomings. Many times I've heard that a project was delayed because "we don't make quick decisions around here," which is the managerial equivalent of "the dog ate my homework."

But the problem with all of these statements — both positive and negative — is that they don't really mean anything. Worse yet, they can't be translated into any kind of action. At best these declarations are vague generalizations; and at worst they are misleading stereotypes.

The truth is that most leaders don't know how to develop a useful picture of their organization's culture, which is why they resort to platitudes. However when managers can better articulate the behavioral patterns that constitute the culture, they can determine which behaviors facilitate results — and which behaviors should be avoided.

For example, a large automotive parts company had just completed a merger, and the senior team — made up of leaders from both firms — struggled with making decisions. They either took too long to decide, or the decisions just didn't stick. To fix this problem, the team asked themselves some simple questions about the decision-making culture: To what extent are decisions currently made by consensus or by the CEO (on a scale of 1-10)? On that same scale, how were decisions made at your heritage company? And on the same scale, where should the decision-making process be in the new company?

Each person on the team answered these questions separately, and a facilitator consolidated them as the basis for a group discussion. When looking at the answers, the team quickly realized that the previous companies had very different decision-making cultures (one was a slow process of building consensus, and the other used open, time-bound debate with final decisions made by the CEO). The team members also had very different expectations for how the process should work. By making these differences concrete and conscious, they were able to have a constructive dialogue that led to ground rules for decision-making.

Any management team can assess its culture by asking these kinds of simple questions across a range of organizational behaviors. For example: To what extent do we reward individual vs. team results? To what extent do we share information broadly or parcel it out narrowly? To what extent do we encourage or discourage risk?

Asking these kinds of questions can smoke out the differences in expectations that people have about the organization. Not everyone experiences culture the same way, so a structured way to discuss those differences can increase alignment and the ability to take collective action. In practical terms, culture is not an intangible cloud that hangs over a company, but an outcome of the way people behave on multiple dimensions. Better understanding of these behavioral patterns — and how each person experiences them — makes it possible to decide whether to continue them or not.

To what extent do you question your organization's culture?