A few weeks ago, I posted a request for help finding good Scrum resources.  My post contained a great video of a Google Tech Talk on Scrum.   

At the time, we were still just investigating the methodology. mSpoke has always applied agile methods of software development - but after some investigation we decided to start using scrum as a framework. I ended up drawing the short straw and being appointed ‘Scrum Master.’  Therefore, I’ve ended up reading quite a bit on the subject over the last few weeks.  After I get a little more experience, I hope to post some observations from mSpoke. 

In the meantime, here are a few additional particularly helpful resources.  The most helpful was the book “Agile Software Development with Scrum” by Ken Schwaber & Mike Beedle.   This book has become our guiding reference as we applied the methodology.  It is such a quick read that everyone on the team has read it.  I also have quoted repeatedly from it as we’ve been approaching different points in the process.

In addition to ‘the book’, I would also recommend a few additional resources:

The scum development & scrum management wikipedia entries.  I like the approach the wikipedia community has taken by breaking these into two separate entries.  While it certainly many of the themes overlap between applying the methodology to managing a software project & using it for development, it is nice to see the topics broken out separately. By the way, the book I mentioned earlier by Schwaber & Beedle is focused on ’scrum development’ as defined by wikipedia.  However, the Google Tech Talk is probably more focused on ’scrum management’.

In addition, there is a wonderful 90 page PDF put together by Henrik Kniberg on “Scrum and XP from the Trenches.”  While Henrik certainly doesn’t spend anytime prescribing the best ways to apply scrum, his overview does provide an exhaustive descriptive case study. 

Finally, there is a great site ‘Scrum Alliance’ that has a nice set of resources & you can find hundreds of resources by looking at items tagged by del.icio.us users as ’scrum’.

Hopefully this is helpful.  If you’re considering using scrum at your software company - feel free to reach out via LinkedIn or email [profitablesignals at gmail dot com] to discuss more.

There was a fascinating research report on Tagging, released yesterday by Pew Internet & American Life Project.

The research showed that 28% of internet users have tagged content & 7% do it on a ‘typical day.’ 

Additionally, there was a great quote in an interview with David Weinberger at the end of the report:

Q: Why do you think Internet users are drawn to tagging?

Weinberger: It’s really useful. Compare your traditional computer system to organize your digital photos to using a tagging system. Instead of having to stick a photo into a single folder — say, “trips 2006” — you can easily tag it as “Italy,” “anniversary,” “sunset,” “mountains,” and “no kids.” You can assemble instant virtual albums of all your anniversary photos, or all your photos of all your trips to Italy, etc.

There’s an altruistic appeal to tagging as well. Tagging at public sites can give you a sense  that you’re adding to a shared stream of knowledge. At del.icio.us, or other such sites, tag a page “robotics” and you know that it’s automatically added to the list of pages tagged  that way, so anyone else interested in that topic can find it.

While this is definitely the subject for a future post, I continue to be fascinated by the energy users apply to tagging content.  It will be a great day (and I believe inevitable one) when this same energy can be applied to more than simply retrieving content.  However, you have to admit we live in a read/write world!

Last week I did a quick scan of authentication support in various RSS readers.  Interestingly, I was surprised to see that the many RSS readers don’t support authentication of feeds including:

• Google Reader
• Bloglines
• Rojo
• Pageflakes

This reminded me of a quote I read in a recent eWeek article RSS Offers Relief from Enterprise E-Mail Overload.  While the article in general is very positive, explaining the obvious benefits of a company migrating information distribution to the RSS from eMail.  eWeek columnist Stan Gipson points that one of the challenges P&G has has had in deploying enterprise RSS is:

Microsoft SharePoint Server and Outlook don’t support authentication in RSS for client systems.

I know that the major RSS players (NewsGator & Attensa) have feed readers as well.  However, it seems one of the benefits of RSS is that you get to choose the reading environment that fits your style best.

Bringing me back to the list of readers I began with.  If we are going to see widespread RSS adoption in the enterprise, the major RSS readers to support feed authentication.  I don’t think we’re going to send out sales projections & company financial reports via RSS without first securing the feed they are circulated on. 

I found today’s article in ClickZ very interesting.  A few notable quotes:

“One thing we’re looking for as an agency is how do we get it all to a common denominator so we can concentrate on…strategies,” said Andreas Roell, president and CEO of agency Geary Interactive. “Google doesn’t allow us to [use] well established technologies.”

and

Today, Google commands roughly 60 percent of U.S. searches and can therefore insist marketers use its proprietary campaign management dashboard. And marketers by and large adore it. On the other hand, for inventory in its AdSense network, the search wunderkind faces a long uphill battle if it really hopes to achieve a comparable marketshare, especially when competing ad networks like Advertising.com, ValueClick and Blue Lithium are all too willing allow third party trafficking and reporting.

and the kicker

“We’d love to have them [as partners for branding campaigns],” said David Smith, CEO of media agency MediaSmith. “But they’re going to have to listen to what the agency wants, not what they’re trying to sell.”

I’m sure Google will adapt, but this does seem to be a chink in the armor. 

It has been a few months since I read The Long Tail.  However, Chris Anderson’s thinking has influenced me greatly. 

However, it came to life again over the weekend.  I setup my wife with her very own RSS Reader.  She is a pilates instructor and very interested in natural health food.  Therefore, the feeds I read regularly both from MSM and blogs / niche sources aren’t that relevant for her.

After spending about 30 minutes searching around the web, I was shocked at the quality of content I was easily able to discover.  Then it hit me - this is a perfect example of different ‘Long Tail’ content.

Today, on a Buzz Machine post, I read about the Davos Conversation project. This is a really interesting project put together by a number of the great new & mainstream media companies (BBC, BuzzMachine, Guardian Unlimited - Comment is Free, The Huffington Post) & powered by the Daylife platform.

I spent a little time today checking it out.  So far, I’m really impressed. In his post, Jeff Jarvis, sums it up:

The WEF annual meeting has been a closed session for the world’s machers: an exclusive list of 2,000-plus heads of state and of corporations. But they have been quite serious about opening up the conversation into and out of Davos. Indeed, the theme of this year’s confab is about the shifting power equation and the tools used for the Davos Conversation page are very much a catalyst of that change. This is how I got involved in this, advising on the project and blogging there. I hope some substantive conversations begin here. We’ll see.

So far, I’m really intrigued. It should be interesting to see how / in what way this effects the Davos conversation.  You can also check out a great You Tube video Jeff did as an invitation to participate.

Some time ago, I speculated that Brad Feld might be leaving Mobius.  At the time, most of the world was waiting for an iPod announcement.  I said:

I can assure you of one thing - what Brad Feld does will shape the future of the Internet more than a Video iPod any day!

While the iPod announcement just happened - the iPhone.  And interestingly, I just saw the that Brad he is now at the Foundry Group.  I would still say the same thing.  This group of VCs will probably impact the internet more than the iPhone does.  Bring it on fan boys!

I don’t know if I missed the announcement or not. Interestingly, if this is public information - he has not updated his blog’s about me.

I started a post sometime ago from 30k feet on a Jet Blue flight to JFK.   At the time, I was struggling to come up with anything of value to say other than “I REALLY LOVE FLYING JET BLUE” with the picture of the seat back in front of me.

However, since I wasn’t sure how meaningful that would be to my readers I never finished.  Today Fast Company First Impression pointed back to a story from May of 2004 where they interviewed David Neeleman. 

David’s quote sums it up:

You have to remain focused on your people. That’s the key to great service. I want our crew members [JetBlue lingo for employees] to feel that they’re important and that we’re on a mission together, to put humanity back in air travel. That’s where a strong culture comes in. Hopefully, it makes them feel this is the best job they’ve ever had. If they like coming to work, that gets passed on to the customer. It all starts with hiring, though. We had over 100,000 people apply here last year, and we hired 1,700. We’re highly selective. We want crew members who like people, not just certain people.

I’ve never created a Wikipedia Entry before.  This morning when doing some research, I realized that Wikipedia doesn’t contain an entry on BT.

Therefore, I’ve created an entry here - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_Targeting

As I’ve mentioned in a post a few weeks ago, I have partnered with the Newspaper Association of America to begin doing research on Next & Best Practices for Newspapers regarding their RSS Strategy.

The NAA has begun to go public with this information.  Here is a link to the Project Page with links to my first column & an initial report.  At this point, we’ve only released phase 1 - which is focused on secondary research.  You can read the first report or see some of the sources we used.

Coming soon — we have surveyed leaders at almost 80 newspaper publications & done almost a dozen interviews with thought leaders.  This information will be contained in an upcoming report.  Please contact me at sammirati@mspoke.com if you’d like to be considered for an interview.

Also, feedback is always appreciated on the reports as they come out!

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Update: Link to the project page was incorrect.  Thank you for catching it.