As I evaluate the approaches to Agile development practices, specifically how user stories are managed, I found a useful set of guidelines will help the team evaluate and manage their stories with consistency.  On one project I managed, there was a constant theme of minimal description.  The task that was often used by the development team was called “Dev Task”. This was a poor way of 1) letting the product owner and scrum master know the story was understood; and 2) giving the architect and the rest of the development team some insight into what was being developed and that architecture and design risks were captured. After some discussion with the development team and feedback on improvement, we settled on a “User Story Bill of Rights”.  Maybe your development team (local and offshore) is already effective, so you may want to ignore this blog. Here is how we defined it:

• The story owner should be committed to the story. The Story Owner shall verify tasks are assigned, Rally (tool used) updated, and stories defined if more information is needed.  Story owners shall be proactive, ask questions and raise issues immediately.  Story Owners shall not delay in asking for information.
• Story Owners shall take responsibility of completing the story on time.
• Story Owners shall coordinate resources (development, design, QA, SEO, operations) for all the tasks in the story.  Contact the PM when you need help with communication and have dependencies to complete your task(s).
• Make sure the proper tasks exist and are assigned with best estimates. A task called “Dev Task” does not tell the rest of the team a lot about the work being committed. “Dev Task” is not an acceptable task description once story is evaluated and work begins on the story.  More complex stories require the same development way of thinking:

• Develop a Plan - Think through the solution(s) of the story.  Demonstrate that the problem is understood.
• Requirements Analysis – If not defined well, ask for more information immediately.
• Story Task: Architecture and Design (where impacted and if applicable). Litmus Test - Is it problematic. Mentally approaching the problem. Lower complexity stories may not require this task.
• Story Task: Development/Coding - An example might be “Create C# control” or “Refactor Java Classes”.
• Story Task: Unit Test - Unit test the story in Dev.  Understand test criteria.
• Story Task: Deployment task to assign deployment ticket and notify deployment team and QA. This all depends on the deployment system you use, but the idea is to be sure there is traceability and communication to QA and environment owners.
• Story Task: QA related tasks.  QA resource to define.

This probably seems like a lot and in the spirit of Agile/Scrum a bit process intensive.  The idea is once you start using these guidelines, it should become general practice and not an overbearing set of rules.

Siding Project using James Hardie fiber board

I managed a siding replacement project at my own home. I originally planned to contract out the work, but after several quotes, I found the price of labor much too high to justify hiring a contractor. For comparison, the costs of all material for the roughly 500 square feet of siding replacement was $1500.00. The lowest quote I received for the project was $7200.00. Probably in the end, the costs came out to about even with the lowest quote. The nice part was the learning experience to replace siding. Our house was built in the early 1960s, prior to any energy conservation programs or requirements. There was spotty insulation and no exterior sheathing board under the masonite which means no exterior water barrier or house wrap. The exterior sheathing and house wrap were added prior to the install of the siding. The house wrap on the gables was a bit of an overkill since the gables have vents, but I felt more comfortable having he overlapping wrap to minimal overlap specifications just to be sure no moisture would get trapped.

I decided to go with the James Hardie siding product based on recommendations from general contractors I know and the environmentally friendly factors. I had heard people complain about cracking and having to pre-drill holes, but I only cracked one board due to negligence on my part during handling. The nailer and 6d shank nails that were recommended in a Fine Home Building article I read worked great. I never cracked the board during nailing and primed the nail heads prior to painting. James Hardie products are not as expensive as perceived. When running numbers for comparison, I found the cost between James Hardie HardiPlank Lap Siding Cedarmill was only about $250.00 more than vinyl for the square footage I had to cover and a lot more natural looking for the wood siding appearance I wanted. I decided to use the primed material since I was warned that matching the color of the painted options is difficult for a truly even look when going back and fixing dings, scratches, and covering any nail heads that were exposed.

The environmental friendly factors: Sometimes, we do not think about why a product is environmentally friendly from a full life-cycle perspective (e.g. impacts of ethanol). The key is to consider the full product life-cycle from the time the product is made (e.g. factory emissions) to the time the product has lived out its life (e.g. landfill). These factors make the JamesHardie product a winner in my evaluation. The only product in my opinion that would be truly green is the use of reclaimed lumber as a siding alternative. You can find out more about this product’s environment benefits here: Products Comparison Guide and a resource that I often use is the Green Home Guide website:

• What’s The Best Affordable Sustainable Siding Option?
• A great article for comparing fiber-cement and vinyl siding can be found in this article: Which Is Greener: Fiber Cement Or Vinyl Siding?
• For insulation materials, you can find the alternatives to the pink insulation currently categorized as a carcinogen by CA: Green Insulation Guide

I had not thought much about writing a blog to talk about my personal project management, but my wife (Christina) thought it was worthy to capture here in this blog. I had not realized that my own personal life had as much project management as my current every day projects. Here is where planning is important, not only from a corporate viewpoint, but from a personal everyday life situation, too. At the beginning of every year, Christina and I sit down and go through our shared and personal goals. Worse of all, it is a five year plan! Shared goals might be like a vacation to Zihuatanejo, Mexico while personal goals might be like my ambition to get my PMP certification or pass a Professional Engineering exam. We started our five-year plan in 2006 and can confidently say that 90% of our goals where reached. Those that did not make the cut where re-prioritized the following January or simply cut from the plan. This year, our project plans include:

• House Furnishings for 2008 / 2009: Home office / kitchen
• Landscaping (2009): Waterfall, native VA planting, organic fertilizers, steps off back deck
• Personal (2009): 5K run, PMP exam, Pole Barn design and fabrication shop
• Home Remodeling (2009): Basement railing, kitchen design and complete remodel, gas fireplace, cement board siding.
• Home Remodeling (2009): We decided that since we would stay in Northern VA for a few more years that an addition would be considered and budgeted for in 2010.
• Financial: Christina’s car paid off (2 years prior to maturity)
• Travel: Zihuatanejo/Trocones Mexico vacation (2010) and Savanna , GA is 2009
• Travel: Based on current savings for travel, Greece or Hawaii is 2013.
• Mike’s reclaimed lumber projects: solid walnut hall tree (done), living room fireplace mantel (done), walnut office desk (2009), spare bedroom chest of drawers, and end tables for basement entertainment area (2010 but low priority).

In the true spirit of Scrum agile development, forward planning for requirements and a typical WBS seem to break the rules.  In the real world, managers expect forward looking project plans for budgeting, resource expectations, and to make the traditional PMO feel good.  It is not realistic in most organizations to assume that a customer (or product owner) will be available 24-7 to provide just-in-time requirements.  Not only that, but some requirements are needed up front to understand architectural impacts and significance.I think it is best to create WBS entries for externally significant tasks to be planned that would also provide a template plan for all future projects under the current process framework defined (Eclipse Process Framework provides a way to export the process framework to XML that is easily imported in MS Project). Now you have a WBS entry for Build Feature (or Build Story or Build Use Case or whatever they use for their key unit of requirements).  For the traditional old school (uhmmm - pre-agile) stakeholders, explain that Scrum has a half day Sprint Planning <Scrum Planning Guidance>  session at the start of each iteration where the team takes each requirement assigned to that iteration and comes up with tasks to be done to build (and test) that chunk of functionality.  Those will be the context-specific children of that WBS entry that the team comes up with on the spot.  I’m sure most of those stakeholders don’t feel they need to see one WBS entry for design and another for coding and another for unit test and another for functional test. Keep an eye out for how much requirements work the team wants to do.  As my friend once told me. “Just as a physics textbook describes the way objects interact in a frictionless environment to focus on certain mathematical formulas, most Agile texts pretend that requirements can be gathered in real-time as the system is being built.  Methodologies such as XP stipulate “and this will work if you have a full-time customer available that has knowledge of every possible requirement decision and authority to make every possible requirement decision”. ”  If that were true, you could probably just sit down with that person while you were building the system, look over your shoulder, and say “what fields would you like to see, what are the rules here?”  But in real life when those people will not be sitting around the team 24×7, you’ll have to write down some requirements and – given that there is time and risk in gathering them – do so a little ahead of the game.

I recently attended the NTCA 2009 Wireless Symposium in Austin, TX.  I had the opportunity to be part of a panel to discuss “Competitive Strategies in a Wireless World“.  It was great to hear speakers cover strategies around spectrum (e.g. 700 MHz), 3GGP/3GGP2 mobile standards, Next Gen Core Network, and 3G/4G Next Generation services.  My part of the presentation was to cover areas to consider for a wireless strategy.  The presentation focuses first on the services that are being offered in addition to the 4G network, handset, Service Delivery Platform, and OSS/BSS systems to provide the services.  My presentation is available here: http://www.headspringsolutions.com/resources/NTCAWS_2009_v4.pdf.  In a nutshell, I referenced service augmentation and transparency from a subscriber’s perspective.

The areas that I took away and enjoyed the discussions were:

• 3G and 4G Services.  There were discussions on the strategy as a CDMA overlay or forklifting the entire infrastruture.
• WiMAX vs. LTE - This discussion is definitely not over.  WiMAX seems to be the choice for wireline carriers that do not currently have a mobile network (costs).  WiMAX does not require the architecture typically found in 3GPP and 3GPP2 deployments.  From a greenfield perspective, WiMAX is mostly considered while current GSM carriers are likely to upgrade to HSPA+ first, to leverage existing investment in 3G; CDMA operators are likely to go straight to LTE.
• Adding Value to your Spectrum: Spectrum utilization and bandwidth utilization.  Do you setup to sell spectrum or build it out with services.  Border and spectrum conditioning was also discussed.
• Point-to-Point 5GHz wireless networks: I heard some pretty amazing numbers on distances between P2P base stations.  One exhibitor told me that one of his clients in Kansas was getting nearly 60 miles between each point.
• NG IP Core vs. Circuit Switch challenges.  Topics included backhaul discussions (MPLS, BTS/BSS, VLAN, CLI/SNMP vs. EML/TL1, Satellite services).  Femtocell strategy to reduce increased capacity on Core Network.  As a side note, Verizon Wireless is nearing the launch of its femtocell product, based on the Samsung Ubicell design already available from Sprint Nextel (more info here).
• Multi-mode devices and chipsets:  Handoff of mobile interfaces and impacts on future devices (WiMAX, 3GPP, 3GPP2).  MIMO
• Latest news in regulatory specs and FCC items provided from a legal panel.
  • Petition to restrict carrier to handset maker exclusive arrangements; this is a tough argument given how much money big carriers provide some of the device and chipset manufacturers.  Device and chipset manufacturers will have to think about a new business model if this is supported by the FCC.
  • 4G services and Emergency (E911, CALEA, HAC).
  • FCC has been discussing ways for smaller GSM carriers with non-GPS handsets to comply with stricter E911 requirements.
  • Alltel / Verizon merger and impacts on rural markets.
  • D-block auction

I recently attended a NTCA conference in Chicago that provided in-depth discussions at on IP technologies important to rural telcos to prepare for next generation networks.  The discussion topics of interest to me were Social Networks, Web 2.0, mashups, data growth expectations over the internet, Fixed Mobile Convergence (FMC), and partnering opportunities.  After hearing the discussions around these, I still find it hard to believe that I will have a fully functional handheld device that truly supports the services defined in FMC.  FMC is supposed to be the convergence of Fixed (home/stationary) services and Mobile in one place.  FMC should go beyond just telephony and data, but include services like location based services, multi-media (e.g. video and music), and internet services.

Currently dual mode devices are great assuming you have a wifi connection.  Even the current iPhone is network blocking when I am not in a wifi mode.  I cannot talk and browse the web at the same time once I am on the AT&T network.  Having a handheld device as my demarc for services when I plugin at home (like a femtocell) is great, but as soon as I leave my front door, I leave all of those nice services behind. To truly utilize FMC and have a device that is a PC, phone, and multi-media system combined, a unified network is required to provide seamless connections as I leave or enter the different connections like, femtocells, wifi, WiMAX, 3G & 4G networks, and ATN.  Speaking of 3G (third generation like CDMA2000, UMTS, etc.), 3G and 4G are supposed to provide us with smart phones, but I still feel my phone becomes dumb once I leave my front door.  The services that I was used to at home (Fixed) seem to still be limited when mobile.  Sure we will have to give up some of the richer services enjoyed at home given bandwidth limitations when not in a hotspot, but currently the phones to not appear to provide me a seamless connection and handoff.  The devices will need to allow multiple connections and stop network blocking to only one application.  Traditional mobile networks and Rf communications are limited based on bandwidth to support these services, which will cause some additional challenges.  I cannot see a unified network with the devices to support true FMC happening in 2008.  I may be wrong given some press releases for plans in the 3rd and 4th quarters.