World Of Goo Sales

World Of Goo Sale Offers Fascinating Results | Rock, Paper, Shotgun

2D BOY have published details of their World Of Goo First Birthday experiment. Offering the game for whatever price people wanted to pay (previously it was $20), this meant people could get a copy for as little as $0.01 or as much as fifty million squillion space dollars. (I believe that’s the upper limit.) Originally this was intended to last for a week, but has now been extended to 25th October. And being a rather open sort they’ve announced how many copies they’ve sold so far, and indeed how much people have been paying, along with much more. It’s an unprecedented amount of detailed sales information. Its significance shouldn’t be underplayed.

In the last week there have been approximately 57,000 sales of the game. Which is a pretty stunning number.

German National Gamers Survey 2009

GAMESINDUSTRY.COM | Graphs Germany

German National Gamers Survey 2009 | Graphs
Please find below all freely available graphs of the German National Gamers Survey 2009 as part of the Today’s Gamers series of surveys in UK, FR, DE, NL, BE and US:

Free chapters of Mike Cohn's book about agile planning and estimation

InformIT: The Purpose of Agile Planning > Chapter 1: The Purpose of Planning

Estimating and planning are critical to the success of any software development project of any size or consequence. Plans guide our investment decisions: We might initiate a specific project if we estimate it to take six months and €1 million but would reject the same project if we thought it would take two years and €4 million. Plans help us know who needs to be available to work on a project during a given period. Plans help us know if a project is on track to deliver the functionality that users need and expect. Without plans we open our projects to any number of problems.

InformIT: An Agile Approach to Estimating and Planning > Chapter 3: An Agile Approach

An Agile Team Works As One

Critical to the success of a project is that all project participants view themselves as one team aimed at a common goal. There is no room for a “throw it over the wall” mentality on an agile project. Analysts do not throw requirements over the wall to designers. Designers and architects do not throw designs over a wall to coders; coders do not throw half-tested code over a wall to testers. A successful agile team must have a we’re-all-in-this-together mindset. Although an agile team should work together as one whole team, there are a number of specific roles on the team. It is worth identifying and clarifying those roles that play a part in agile estimating and planning.

Developers should 'incentivise fans to market for you'

Developers should 'incentivise fans to market for you' | Game Development | News by Develop

The solution was to present the player with an opt-in page upon registration to use their Twitter account to tweet game updates. For each action that they permitted to be tweeted, the player gained an additional 1 per cent to income.

"There were people that turned it off," said Abad, "but early on most people switched them all on, and that was a really good way for us to get the word out - by building into the gameplay mechanics incentives for them to market it for us."

Microtransactions: will pay for power-ups and self-expression, but not for new content

Free to play gamers will pay for power-ups and self-expression, but not for new content | Games Brief

The survey of 2,425 respondents identified that free-to-play web games generated the highest revenue ($75 on average) and that virtual currencies were the most popular purchase. But the report unveiled a number of valuable insights into what works and what doesn’t in the world of microtransactions.

20% Discount code for GDC Austin 2009 at icopartners

ICO Partners » Blog Archive » GDC Austin 2009: get your 20% discount code here!

Head over to the icopartners blog to get it.

Tomb Raider: Underworld post mortem

Gamasutra - Features - Postmortem: Crystal Dynamics' Tomb Raider: Underworld

Very interesting article, mostly because Eric Lindstrom mentions a couple of good examples of anticipated risks which nevertheless became reality, regardless of mitigation efforts.

"It is particularly interesting to note that much of what went wrong in development involved pitfalls that we anticipated but still fell into despite our efforts to avoid them. It's important to note that most postmortems talk about "What Went Wrong" and not just "What We Did Wrong" because sometimes you make mistakes, but other times you suffer from acts of god and do your best to cope.

A Game Developer article last year ("What Went Wrong?" December 2008) specifically questioned why game development seems to make the same mistakes over and over. In light of that, some of the "wrongs" will be discussed in terms of how our methods to avoid known issues fell short."

Microtransactions and flash games

Gamasutra - Features - Generating Cash For Premium Flash

A couple of useful comments about flash games and how to use microtransactions for monetization. Common sense is yet again very helpful.

"Done correctly, games designed with microtransactions in mind need not infuriate gamers. Harris recalls that his team was careful to build a complete game for those who just want to play -- and beat -- the game for free.

"You can go through all 30 levels of SAS without paying a dime," he says. "We believe that to be very important. And people who don't mind forking over a few dollars for extra content can go to the premium license tab and buy some kick-ass guns, the ability to regenerate health, and even something called 'guardian angel' which lets you continue from where you died."

Definition of impediments in SCRUM

Scrum Impediments

Laszlo Szalvay of Danube talking about "impediments" in the context of Scrum:

"In the Scrum method of agile development, a scrum impediment is defined as anything that stands in the way of a team's productivity. This can literally be anything, from a team member who isn't pulling his or her weight to an uncomfortably warm team room. But if it's keeping the team from working at optimal efficiency, it's an impediment.

Luckily, Scrum dedicates an entire role to the resolution of these impediments: the ScrumMaster. The ScrumMaster works in a variety of capacities, such as helping the Product Owner prepare the backlog or radiating Scrum artifacts, but the primary responsibility of a ScrumMaster is to remove scrum impediments and facilitate a highly performing team. To help the ScrumMaster achieve this, the team is responsible for communicating what barriers are impeding their progress. This occurs each day in the daily Scrum, when team members report on their accomplishments for the past 24 hours, goals for the next 24 hours, and what scrum impediments stand in their way. This systematized feedback loop ensures that a ScrumMaster always knows what is keeping the team from success and work to remove them."

Localisation of games

ICO Partners » Blog Archive » Localise and shine: it may be easier than you think

A nice article by Thomas and Diane which covers all aspects of localisation. Its impact on the localisation of the game content, Customer Support and community management.

Case Study: Fully Distributed Scrum

Fully Distributed Scrum - Agile2009, Schoonheim & Sutherland, Xebia India TBD case | Xebia Blog

Guido Schoonheim shares a case study about "fully distributed scrum". The study describes a project which involved 200 developers, located in India and the Netherlands. You can find the slides at the end of the article, interesting read.

"What is Fully Distributed Scrum?

Offshoring classically is performed in a waterfall process fashion, meaning that one party writes specifications and chucks them over the wall to the other party who then chucks a software product back after a period of time. When evolved to Agile software development, this is the last thing you want to do. However you do need to deal with the distance between your local staff and your talent in an offshore location.

The only way to get the benefits of both Agile development (hyperproductivity with high quality and motivated people) and the benefits of offshoring (lower costs, availability of talent, up/downscaling with no risk) is to apply Agile to the offshoring dilemma. Xebia has made this the core practice and differentiator of our offshored development"

Scrum FAQ

Scrum for Team System - Process Guidance

A good FAQ, should work nicely in combination with "scrum in 5 minutes" by Jeff Sutherland if you want to intend to introduce SCRUM to a team or manager/director who is not familiar with SCRUM yet. Good questions, good answers.

"This Scrum FAQ section contains a transcript of Ken Schwaber answering commonly asked questions about Scrum."

SCRUM training: games and exercises

The Agile Playground | Agile 2009

Tobias Mayer shared some games and exercises at the Agile Conference 2009 which aim at providing a deeper understanding of agile dynamics and principles. Maybe something useful for your next SCRUM workshop?

Help for Product Owners: Prioritizing the backlog

First Things First: Prioritizing Requirements

Karl Wiegers provides some advice on the topic of prioritizing the backlog and he throws in a spreadsheet for free as well:

"Customers are never thrilled to find out they can’t get all the features they want in release 1.0 of a new software product (at least, not if they want the features to work). However, if the development team cannot deliver every requirement by the scheduled initial delivery date, the project stakeholders must agree on which subset to implement first. Any project with resource limitations has to establish the relative priorities of the requested features, use cases, or functional requirements. Prioritization helps the project manager resolve conflicts, plan for staged deliveries, and make the necessary trade-off decisions."

You can find his spreadsheet here.

Estimations: storypoints vs hours

Refactor Your Mind » complexity

Another good posting of Tick Tonoli regarding the reoccuring topic of estimating by using abstract storypoints vs hours. I rarely managed to get the point across, maybe his explanation works better:

"During our estimation (still doing hours effort estimation) we were trying to define the tasks necessary for a story to be completed, however the story had a “task A” that would lead to several “task B’s” that were known, however no-one could (and neither should they be expected to) estimate the hours effort on the “task B’s” simply because the input from “task A” was critical to the timing! Now you’re stuck with tasks that are KNOWN, but cannot be TIMED. And then the light went on and I realized why estimation with time was so bad…You may KNOW everything you need to do (the complexity), however you may not necessarily know how LONG everything will take (the effort), in other words, you know COMPLEXITY but you cannot measure the EFFORT. It now makes sense…"

Game developer locations

For those who are looking for a nice index of game development related companies which are located in the UK:
UK game developer locations

And here is global map of "all" game development studios:
http://www.gamedevmap.com

Affinity Estimation-when there are a lot of stories to be estimated

I came across Rick Tonoli`s Blog and found a couple of very interesting articles. Still working my way through his postings, i'll praise him later in a separate article after covering his and other opinions on the topic of "affinity estimation". I didnt apply it myself, but it does sound like a good approach to get a high level estimation done without wasting too much time.

He is refering to Kane Mar's blog who in return references to Jukka Lindström who posted his comment here. I would love to test it as it sounds very intuitive. A might be more suitable for a pretty senior team, but then again, what isn't...

Here is Kane Mar's comment on it:
"We started by reading out each Story to the entire team. Lowell then asked us to arrange the stories horizontally on a wall in order of size, without talking. We placed the largest stories on the left and the smallest stories on the right. This only took a few minutes. We were then given a final opportunity to make adjustments to the ordering, again without talking.
 
...
Finally, “Affinity Estimating” helps make estimating a positive experience rather than a confrontational one. The next time you have a need to estimate a large number of User Stories, consider trying “Affinity Estimating."

Sounds like it could also be an interesting tool for team(member)s that struggle to speak their mind or or have problems with confrontations. Ball-parking new projects should/could be simpler as well.

You can find a more detailed description about how it works here.

Scalability: best practices

13 Scalability Best Practices | High Scalability

The guys at http://highscalability.com released a list of 13 best practices about scaleability, check out their website if you want to know more about it and check the comments as well. Here are their top three:

AFK Partners has release what they feel are the Best Practices for Scalability:
1. Asynchronous - Use asynchronous communication when possible.
2. Swim Lanes – Create fault isolated “swim lanes” of hardware by customer segmentation.
3. Cache - Make use of cache at multiple layers.

Dealing with Conflict Avoidance Teams

Agile Blog: Role of Scrum Master - Dealing with Conflict Avoidance Teams

Have you come across teams where only a few speak and the rest listen ?

Have you seen any of your team members not sharing their thoughts or participating well during Scrum meetings, retrospectives or other activities ?

Have you come across any team where there is no conflict ?

Silent Teams
The teams where you don't see conflict, I would call them as "Silent teams" for the sake of this article are silent in speech, but not really silent in their mind. The people in this teams are like any other people but all their questions, frustrations, arguments everything is going only in their mind. They never speak up or discuss things in front of a group, especially if their ideas conflict with others. But there are chances that they go and share their frustrations with some one closer to them in the team during the cafe breaks or with any other close friend.

READY and DONE in SCRUM

The Definition of READY | Xebia Blog

Defining READY

READY is defined by the Definition of READY. It is similar to the Definition of DONE, but with the following differences. Whereas with the Definition of DONE the "supplier" is the Team and the "client" is the Product Owner, it's the other way around with the Definition of READY: the Team is the "client" and the Product Owner is the "supplier". Even though I will detail the Definition of READY later, in the end it boils down to one statement: READY is when the team says: "Ah, we get it".

Even though you can put any precondition in the Definition of READY, the need for a good backlog overshadows all other considerations, so you'll definitely need to address two items: readiness of User Stories, and readiness of the Backlog.

Agile/Scrum and why it works for web user experience

Seven Reasons Why Agile And Scrum Works For Web User Experience | Usability Counts | User Experience, Social Media

I’ve seen Agile work well for products that require constant improvements, but it’s hard to adapt it to a new development unless you have some time to adjust the process while people are learning. Short projects of less than a month make it hard to do a scrum-like process. I can’t imagine using Agile for a hardware-based product.

But for the web where everything is changing, it’s great.

agile best practices | offshore best practices | distributed Scrum

Ignite Outsourcing :: Israeli Scrum conference | agile best practices | offshore best practices | distributed Scrum methodology

When Scrum was first conceived, back in 2001, distributed software development and global teams where not as common as they are today. In this lecture, Aviram Eisenberg elaborates the main contradictions between Agile best practices and offshore best practices, and how can they be combined to create a successful distributed Scrum development methodology

How is your day going so far?

Coconut Revolution (Bougainville: Our Island, Our Fight)

This is an incredible modern-day story of a native peoples' victory over Western globalization.

Sick of seeing their environment ruined and their people exploited by the Panguna Mine, the Pacific island of Bougainville rose up against the giant mining corporation, Rio Tinto Zinc. The newly formed Bougainville Revolutionary Army began fighting with bows and arrows and sticks and stones against a heavily armed adversary. In an attempt to put down the rebellion the Papua New Guinean Army swiftly established a gunboat blockade around the island.
But with no shipments allowed in or out, how did new electricity networks spring up on the island? And how were the people of Bougainville able to drive around the island without any source of petrol or diesel?

Watch as the world's first eco-revolution unfolds within the blockade. A David and Goliath story for the 21st century. A multi-award winning documentary

Behaviour-Driven Development

BehaviourDrivenDevelopment - Behaviour-Driven Development

Behaviour-Driven Development (BDD) is an evolution in the thinking behind TestDrivenDevelopment and AcceptanceTestDrivenPlanning.

It brings together strands from TestDrivenDevelopment and DomainDrivenDesign into an integrated whole, making the relationship between these two powerful approaches to software development more evident.

It aims to help focus development on the delivery of prioritised, verifiable business value by providing a common vocabulary (also referred to as a UbiquitousLanguage) that spans the divide between Business and Technology.

It presents a framework of activity based on three core principles:

1.Business and Technology should refer to the same system in the same way - ItsAllBehaviour
2.Any system should have an identified, verifiable value to the business - WheresTheBusinessValue
3.Up-front analysis, design and planning all have a diminishing return - EnoughIsEnough

Beyond Test Driven Development: Behaviour Driven Development

Beyond Test Driven Development: Behaviour Driven Development

Google TechTalks March 17, 2006 Dave Astels Dave Astels (co-author of "A Practical Guide to eXtreme Programming" and author of Jolt Award winning "Test-driven Development: A Practical Guide") has over 2 decades of experience in the software field, most of that involved with object-oriented technologies and techniques. Dave has been studying, practicing, teaching, evangelising, and coaching XP and Agile Processes since 1998. Dave's experience ranges from embedded process control systems to consumer products (both consumer electronics and shrinkwrapped software) to energy trading systems. Dave is an independant software consultant specializing in the areas of agile process, programming practices, and object design/architecture. Dave is one of the thought leaders in the area of TDD, and now BDD. ABSTRACT Test Driven Development (TDD) has become quite well known. Many developers are getting benefit from the practice. But it is possible that we can get even more value. A new practice is getting attention these days: Behaviour Driven Development (BDD). BDD removes all vestiges of testing and instead focuses on specifying the behaviour desired in the system being built. This talk will be focus on Ruby and will introduce a new BDD framework: rSpec. The ideas, however, are language independent.

The Brain that changes itself

Amazing video about the capacity of the brain to "rewire" itself. The player is quite simply shite, but it is definitely worth watching. You can find the video here.

high quality free people search engines

25 Free People Search Engines to find Anyone in the World | FinderMind

high quality free people search engines to help you reconnect with friends, family, school friends or any other person from your past.

Illegal downloads and dodgy figures

Bad Science: Illegal downloads and dodgy figures | Ben Goldacre | Comment is free | The Guardian

You are killing our creative industries. "Downloading costs billions," said the Sun. "MORE than 7 million Brits use illegal downloading sites that cost the economy billions of pounds, government advisers said today. Researchers found more than a million people using a download site in ONE day and estimated that in a year they would use £120bn worth of material."
...

So where do these notions of so many billions in lost revenue come from?
...
The report was commissioned by a government body called Sabip, the Strategic Advisory Board for Intellectual Property. On the billions lost it says: "Estimates as to the overall lost revenues if we include all creative industries whose products can be copied digitally, or counterfeited, reach £10bn (IP rights, 2004), conservatively, as our figure is from 2004, and a loss of 4,000 jobs."
...
I hunted down the full Ciber documents, found the references section, and followed the web link, which led to a 2004 press release from a private legal firm called Rouse who specialise in intellectual property law. This press release was not about the £10bn figure. It was, in fact, a one-page document, which simply welcomed the government setting up an intellectual property theft strategy. In a short section headed "background", among five other points, it says: "Rights owners have estimated that last year alone counterfeiting and piracy cost the UK economy £10bn and 4,000 jobs." An industry estimate, as an aside, in a press release. Genius.
...
In any case, that's £175 a week or £8,750 a year potentially not being spent by millions of people. Is this really lost revenue for the economy, as reported in the press?
...
Oh, but the figures were wrong: it was actually 473m items and £12bn (so the item value was still £25) but the wrong figures were in the original executive summary, and the press release. They changed them quietly, after the errors were pointed out by a BBC journalist.

I asked what steps they [Sabip, note by sambris] took to notify journalists of their error, which exaggerated their findings by a factor of 10 and were reported around the world. Sabip refused to answer questions in emails, insisted on a phone call, told me that they had taken steps but wouldn't say what and explained something about how they couldn't be held responsible for lazy journalism, then, bizarrely, after 10 minutes, tried to tell me retrospectively that the call was off the record. I think it's OK to be confused and disappointed by this. Like I said: as far as I'm concerned, everything from this industry is false, until proven otherwise.

How Pirates Shook European Politics

How Pirates Shook European Politics

With 7.1 percent of the vote, the Swedish Pirate Party has shocked its critics and secured a seat in the European Parliament. The Pirates received more votes from those under 30 than any other party in the European elections yesterday, and this was celebrated with pints of rum and loads of pirate chants.

Code_Guardian

Code_Guardian
by Cee-Gee-Productions

Phill Harrison no longer director of Atari

Harrison out as Atari president // News

"Because of a shift of business operations to the US, Phil Harrison will move from the role of president to that of non-executive director of the group. As all board members, he will continue to assist, support and guide the company's strategy," said Atari.

Atari just recently announced net losses of 226 million€ for last year.

The limits of microtransactions

Tobold's MMORPG Blog

In the battle of business models for MMORPGs the monthly flat fee subscription model has one decisive advantage: It is extremely simple to understand, and has only one variable, cost per month. A statement that a particular game is going to be Free2Play and financed by microtransactions is not really telling you much; there are lots of parameters on what exactly is for sale, and how much it costs.

"Intellectual property is dead" by Eric von Hippel, Professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management (2007)

EndOfIntellectualProperty < Main < Reprap

"The whole concept of intellectual property is only stable when copying is difficult and legal penalties mean significant losses for those who would copy. Make copying easy and undetectable (as computers have for music) and the very idea of intellectual property starts to fade.

But creativity doesn't fade with it. There is now an outpouring of music all over the whole world unmatched since that in late eighteenth century Vienna. This is happening because the same technology that is eliminating music copyright allows anyone to make music and to try to find an audience for it. Most musicians don't compose because they have rationally calculated that it is a good way to get rich, they compose because they are driven by an inner compulsion. And an inner compulsion is exactly what you'd expect from an evolutionarily-selected mating trait."

I recommend reading the entire article...

DubFX- Street performance

Beatbox Dub FX 10/10/2008 'Love Someone' (aka part 2)

Btw, DubFX will be at the Glastonbury Festival in 2009.

Prototype Xbox 360Gameplay - 3 Minute Gameplay

More Prototype Info

2008 Game Developer Salary Survey

Gamasutra - News - 2008 Game Developer Salary Survey Reveals $79,000 Average Income

Programming: programmers are the highest paid talent next to high-end businesspeople, with an average annual salary of $85,024. Experience pays in this role, as those with greater than six years of experience earned 26% more than the average annual salary.

Art & Animation: artists – averaging a $69,532 salary, nonetheless, 28% of art directors reported lower salaries than the previous year. But these more experienced, higher status artists also tend to earn at least 35% more than those with less experience and lower title.

Game Design: averaging $67,379, design positions sprouted an average $3,730 over last year. As with many roles, region makes a difference, given that West Coast designers make on average $8,283 or 12% more than the rest of the game designers in the country.

Production: of all the game development disciplines, production – with a salary average overall of $82,905 – is the most welcoming to women, with 21% of the workforce made up of females – more than twice the industry average. The discipline as a whole saw a strong $4,189 bump from last year.

10 Game Design Process Pitfalls

Gamasutra - Features - 10 Game Design Process Pitfalls

Game designer Fisch looks into the process of making games, suggesting the ten biggest reasons why a game's production doesn't end up working out quite as hoped, and possible fixes for those issues.

Optimize Your Pipeline Through Usability

Gamasutra - Features - Game Tools Tune-Up: Optimize Your Pipeline Through Usability

There are probably tools in your pipeline that could benefit from usability techniques, but as a developer, you'll want to know which tools would benefit the most before investing in them.

In this article, I'll discuss how to find the bottlenecks holding up your production, measure the usability of your tools using proven techniques and streamline your entire development process.

Scrum Checklist

Scrum checklist - Henrik Kniberg's blog

"The main target group for this checklist are teams that are relatively new to Scrum and likely to get many things wrong.

Each item is tagged by priority. I consider the priority 1 items to be pretty fundamental, I'd hesitate to even call it Scrum if a company hasn't implemented all those items (or at least has good reasons not to).

When helping companies implement Scrum I normally start by ensuring that all priority 1 items on the checklist are implemented (or intentionally skipped) before even considering priority 2 and priority 3."

...

Independent Games Sales for 2008

Independent Games Sales: Stats 101

A presentation for the Indie Games Summit at Game Developers Conference 2009 by Simon Carless.

View more presentations from simoniker.

Publisher side product owners

Agile Game Development

"Product owners for a video game project using Scrum are usually a member of the development team. The reason for this is that unlike projects outside the game industry, product owners are needed to provide a much higher level of subjective feedback. Does the control of the player feel right? Is a mechanic “fun enough”? This feedback requires daily engagement with the team.

However, in some cases the publisher will require that product ownership be placed in the hands of someone on their staff. This could be an executive producer or someone who works directly with a licensee. In some cases this makes sense. If a licensee wants to maintain oversight or the publisher wants to make sure that their franchise is well tended, then product ownership at the publisher level makes sense.

Unfortunately this usually means that the team loses the day-to-day involvement of product owner. This can lead the project down bad paths. These projects can lead to “iterative and incremental death marches” when there is a reckoning between what the game provides and what the license or franchise owner sees much later.

A solution is to divide up the Product Owner roles..."

Developmag: The 2009 UK Games Development Salary Survey

The 2009 UK Games Development Salary Survey | Game Development | Interview by Develop

Earlier this year, games industry professionals that read developmag.com and mcvuk.com were invited to take part in an extensive salary and career survey. 528 people, from all sectors of interactive entertainment, took part. Here, Michael French analyses the answers given by developers…

Risk Analysis & Risk Management

Project Risk Analysis Techniques - Risk Management from Mind Tools

Evaluating and Managing the Risks You Face

Almost everything we do in today's business world involves a risk of some kind: customer habits change, new competitors appear, factors outside your control could delay your project. But formal risk analysis and risk management can help you to assess these risks and decide what actions to take to minimize disruptions to your plans. They will also help you to decide whether the strategies you could use to control risk are cost-effective.

Links to lecture notes for courses in game theory and applied game theory.

Lecture notes in game theory -- Game Theory .net university course notes

SCRUM Part 2

Control Chaos

ScrumBut

Many organizations have adopted Scrum. However, when they use Scrum, they run into ScrumButs. ScrumButs are reasons why they can’t take full advantage of Scrum to solve the problems and realize the benefits An example ScrumBut is (The Daily Scrum meetings are too much overhead) (because the team members don’t need to meet so often) (so we only have them once a week, unless we need them more often)

.In this limited attendance workshop (10 maximum), people who are accumulating ScrumButs will work with Ken Schwaber and other selected Scrum guru’s. They will identify their highest priority ScrumButs and learn how to systematically address and resolve them. While doing so, the attendees will learn how to assess the impact of a ScrumBut on the organization and quantify its damage. Attendees will also learn how to turn ScrumButs into actionable user stories that can be resolved using Scrum.
Attendees are expected to bring some of their highest impact ScrumButs to the workshop. Several will be worked on, including identifying how they were identified by Scrum, measuring their impact, and creating plans and techniques for resolving them. War stories of what these ScrumButs have done to other organizations will be shared. At the conclusion of the workshop, attendees will know how to identify, write-up, and resolve ScrumButs.

scrum primer - Google Search

THE SCRUM PRIMER

Scrum Methodology & Agile Scrum Methodologies

The Scrum methodology of agile software development marks a dramatic departure from waterfall management. In fact, Scrum and other agile processes were inspired by its shortcomings. The Scrum methodology emphasizes communication and collaboration, functioning software, and the flexibility to adapt to emerging business realities — all attributes that suffer in the rigidly ordered waterfall paradigm.

SCRUM Prep Part 1

InfoQ: Jeff Sutherland on Scrum and Not-Scrum

Jeff Sutherland on Scrum and Not-Scrum

Interview with Jeff Sutherland on Oct 24, 2007 07:26 AM

Scrum Breakfast

Most provocative was his proposal to modify the 3 questions of the daily Scrum:

1. What did I finish since yesterday's meeting?
2. What was particularly helpful?
3. What will I finish by the next meeting?
4. What do I need in addition or differently to accomplish that goal?
5. When was that help available previously?

A short version of the presentation is available for download. More information is available from www.korn.ch. Pictures are available on flickr (Thank you Marcello for finding a camera and taking the pics!)

Scrum Log Jeff Sutherland: What to do when Sales guys are Waterholics ...

What to do when Sales guys are Waterholics ...

Here is today's best question in my long list of emails. The Sales guys don't want Scrum in a company because they think they can't commit to the customer to close deals.

A ScrumMaster's Checklist | Danube

A ScrumMaster's Checklist
Submitted by MichaelJames on August 13, 2007 - 5:09am.

An adequate ScrumMaster can handle two or three teams at a time. If you're content to limit your role to organizing meetings, enforcing timeboxes, and responding to the impediments people explicitly report, you can get by with part time attention to this role. The team will probably still exceed the baseline, pre-Scrum expectation at your organization, and probably nothing catastrophic will happen.

But if you can envision a hyperproductive team -- a team that has a great time accomplishing things no one else can -- consider being a great ScrumMaster.

A great ScrumMaster can handle one team at a time.

We recommend one dedicated ScrumMaster per team of about seven, especially when starting out.

If you haven't discovered all the work there is to do, tune in to your Product Owner, your team, your team's engineering practices, and the organization outside your team. While there's no single prescription, I've outlined some things I've seen ScrumMasters overlook.

Scrum Alliance - Being an Effective Product Owner

Being an Effective Product Owner
by Roman Pichler | 23 Apr 2007

Related Articles

* Leadership Reading List by Bob Schatz, Bill Wake, Alan Shalloway, Tom Mellor
* The Manager's Role in Agile by Lyssa Adkins, Michael Spayd
* Two Tips to Help Product Owners with Release Planning by Lyssa Adkins

More Related Articles…

Tags: Scrum Roles | product owner

When I met Paul, a first-time product owner on a new project, the first thing he asked me was, “What do I really have to do and how much time will it require?” Even though Paul had attended a Scrum introduction a few weeks back, he wanted to double check his responsibilities. He was worried about the time commitment he had to make and the support he would get from his boss.

Helping product owners like Paul getting started is rather the norm for me. In most organizations that I have worked with, product owners are strapped for time, are often not aware of their responsibilities, and are unsure how they should best transition into their new role. Sadly, I have also met many product owners on Scrum projects who resembled more a business sponsor briefly stopping by at the sprint planning and review meeting or an on-site customer interacting more frequently with the team but leaving it to the ScrumMaster to guide the team.

Scrum Alliance - Being an Effective Product Owner

Being an Effective Product Owner
by Roman Pichler | 23 Apr 2007

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Tags: Scrum Roles | product owner

When I met Paul, a first-time product owner on a new project, the first thing he asked me was, “What do I really have to do and how much time will it require?” Even though Paul had attended a Scrum introduction a few weeks back, he wanted to double check his responsibilities. He was worried about the time commitment he had to make and the support he would get from his boss.

Helping product owners like Paul getting started is rather the norm for me. In most organizations that I have worked with, product owners are strapped for time, are often not aware of their responsibilities, and are unsure how they should best transition into their new role. Sadly, I have also met many product owners on Scrum projects who resembled more a business sponsor briefly stopping by at the sprint planning and review meeting or an on-site customer interacting more frequently with the team but leaving it to the ScrumMaster to guide the team.

scrum product owner checklist - Google Search

Scrum checklist.mmap

Henrik Kniberg's blog

Henrik Kniberg's blog
Lean and Agile software development

InfoQ: Scrum and XP from the Trenches

Posted by Henrik Kniberg on Jun 27, 2007 01:18 PM


The tricky part to agile software development is that there is no manual telling you exactly how to do it. You have to experiment and continuously adapt the process until it suits your specific situation.

Strategies for Implementing Cover Behaviors

Strategies for Implementing Cover Behaviors — AiGameDev.com

 September 3rd, 2007 | Combat | Alex J. Champandard

Whilst catching up with recent discussions about game AI on the web, I stumbled on this thread about cover. Implementing good combat behaviors using cover isn’t always straightforward, but game developers often use the same tricks to solve this problem…

The Google Guide to Infuriating Your ISP

The Google Guide to Infuriating Your ISP | TechWatch | Fast Company

By: Chris DannenThu Jan 29, 2009 at 6:44 PM

Google [GOOG] has launched a new website in cooperation with a pair of nonprofit organizations. It does two things: it analyzes your network connection, and it makes companies like Comcast [CMCSA] and TimeWarner [TWX] wish that Google be wiped from the earth.

Hack Vista to Browse at High Speeds

Hack Attack : Hack Vista to Browse at High Speeds | dailyApps

Before I give the solution, let me explain the problem in a bit more detail… It all comes down to Vista’s “Auto Tuning” feature. Turns out that this feature isn’t compatible with many routers and networking devices(including mine). Means the feature that was supposed to be a boon turned itself into some sort of a bane.

China re-enacts anti-addiction gaming laws

New York MMORPG Examiner: China re-enacts anti-addiction gaming laws

The ultimate source for airplane seating, in-flight amenities and airline information.

Airline Seating Charts, Best Airplane Seats - SeatGuru

6 Words That Make Your Resume Suck

squawkfox » 6 Words That Make Your Resume Suck

So how do you write a wicked resume without the suck? How do you turn the wrong words into right? To help you land the job interview, here’s how to spin the 6 sucky resume words into skills that sizzle.

How to Fail

How to Fail: 25 Secrets Learned through Failure | Unstructured Thoughts by Taylor Davidson

September 23rd, 2008

I started to write about the keys of success for entrepreneurs and startups, but as I wrote I realized that while I’ve seen companies fail, projects flounder and ideas die, I’ve had little first-hand experience with success. My ideas on the keys to success remain just that: ideas.

Action Words for Your Resume

Action Words for Your Resume

FlowingData

About | FlowingData

FlowingData explores how designers, statisticians, and computer scientists are using data to understand ourselves better - mainly through data visualization. Money spent, reps at the gym, time you waste, and personal information you enter online are all forms of data. How can we understand these data flows? Data visualization lets non-experts make sense of it all.

Angels Den

Angels Den: Helping you find Business Funding & Angel Investment from Business Angels or Angel Investors

Angels Den offers a service for two types of people: those who are trying to obtain business funding and small business finance – and those private investors (the business angels) looking for exciting business ideas to invest in.

A Discussion On MMOs

gameslol

January 14th, 2009

I recently recorded a new Idle Thumbs UK podcast with James Spafford, in which for the first 40 minutes or so we talk about the MMO genre. I love MMOs because they arguably have the most potential of any game genre, but I’m sometimes frustrated when certain aspects of MMOs seem limited, repetitive or aren’t capitalizing on the unique properties of the genre. We discuss a variety of MMOs including World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King, Star Wars: The Old Republic, EVE Online, Ragnarok Online, Planetside, and more. If you are interested in MMOs or online games in general, you might enjoy listening to our talk.

Consumer Warfare

Consumer Warfare

How to deal with unwelcome mail and telephone solitications

Iranian Aids doctors tried in closed hearing

Iranian Aids doctors tried in closed hearing

Disclaimer: I normally don't quote entire articles, but due to the importance of the topic i will.

RR

01/09/09
Iranian Aids doctors tried in closed hearing
Source: Amnesty International

Brothers Arash and Kamiar Alaei, two Iranian doctors, detained without charge for six months, are awaiting the verdict of the unfair trial they faced in a closed session before a Revolutionary Court in Tehran, Iran on 31 December 2008. Specialising in the prevention and management of HIV and AIDS, they have worked for nearly a decade on HIV and AIDS programs in Iran, notably those addressing harm reduction aimed at injecting drug users.

A Muslim medical student speaks at a vigil for the Alaei brothers, at the Iranian mission to the UN in September 2008
© Jonathan Hutson, PHR

Amnesty International fears that they are prisoners of conscience. Despite repeated calls from international bodies and by the organization and its worldwide membership, for the brothers to be released unless charged with an internationally recognizable criminal offence, the Iranian authorities responded by unfairly trying them.

In a press conference on 30 December 2008, Iran's spokesperson for the judiciary, Alireza Jamshidi stated that the Arash and Kamiar Alaei faced charges of "acting against national security through cooperating with America", "propaganda against the system" and "membership in groups hostile to the system".

One of the charges appears to be Article 508 of Iran's Penal Code. It allows up to ten years' imprisonment for "cooperation" with an "enemy government", though the Penal Code is silent as to what constitutes "cooperation" or what is meant by an "enemy government".

Amnesty International has repeatedly drawn attention to the catalogue of vaguely worded articles relating to association and ''national security'' in Iran's Penal Code. These prohibit a range of activities, such as those connected with public discourse, and, as in this case, contact with international bodies.

The prosecution is said to have cited the brothers' participation at international AIDS conferences as part of their scheme to foment a so-called "velvet revolution" against Tehran.

"Contacts with international public health and academic bodies to share knowledge and ensure that HIV and AIDS sufferers obtain the best treatment possible should be acknowledged not criminalized," said Drewery Dyke, Iran researcher at Amnesty International.

The conduct of their one-day trial did not meet the most basic fair trial standards. The prosecutor was said to have refused to disclose in court some of the charges faced by the brothers, so that their lawyer, Masoud Shafie, did not know all the charges they faced in order to prepare an effective defence; he was not allowed to review all the evidence nor reportedly given adequate opportunities to refute the prosecution's case.

Jonathan Hutson, a spokesperson for Physicians for Human Rights stated that "The publicly announced charges were unfounded, politically motivated and illegitimate; […] they were not guilty of crimes. They were practicing good medicine."

At the time of the trial, the brothers had been held five months longer than what is envisaged in Iran's Code of Criminal Procedures allows. Article 33 of the Code calls for cases to be settled within one month of arrest, and although temporary extensions to the detention order are allowed; it is not clear in the brothers' case that the detention orders were, as required, documented, nor whether they had the opportunity to challenge the order.

Who are the Alaei brothers?
Dr Arash Alaei was arrested by Iranian security forces on 22 June 2008.The following morning, they escorted him to his mother's house in Tehran, where they arrested his brother, Dr Kamiar Alaei They also seized documents belonging to the brothers.

Kamiar Alaei is a doctoral candidate at the State University of New York (SUNY) Albany School of Public Health in Albany, New York. He was due to resume his studies there last September. He holds a Masters degree in Population and International Health from the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston.

Arash Alaei is the former director of the International Education and Research Cooperation of the Iranian National Research Institute of Tuberculosis and Lung Disease.

Since 1998, the Alaei brothers have been working on HIV and AIDS treatment and prevention programs, particularly focused on harm reduction for injecting drug users.

The brothers' work with drug addicts and prostitutes in Tehran featured in a 2004 BBC television documentary, Mohammed and the Matchmaker, in which Kamiar Alaei said: "We face a huge potential HIV problem in Iran, and in order to start to confront it we need to talk about the root causes […] Many people are still afraid to talk about it. Some people with HIV are ostracised and stigmatised, and they are often very isolated."

In addition to their work in Iran, the Alaei brothers have held training courses for Afghan and Tajik medical workers, and have worked to encourage regional cooperation among 12 Middle Eastern and Central Asian countries.

Their efforts expanded the expertise of doctors in the region, advanced the progress of medical science, and earned Iran recognition as a model of best practice by the World Health Organization.

Iran's response to HIV and AIDS – pioneered at least in part by the brothers - has been accorded international respect, particularly the preventative measures promoted by Arash and Kamiar Alaei,

According to the 2008 Report on the Global AIDS Epidemic (published by UNAIDS on 29 July 2008 and available at www.unaids.org) "the… support for needle exchange projects in countries such as the Islamic Republic of Iran… serve as clear examples of courageous, visionary leadership in the response to HIV".

However, the government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, which took office in August 2005, has started to remove its support for such centres.

Over 3,100 doctors, nurses and public health workers from more than 85 countries have signed an online petition demanding their release. The petition can be signed at http://www.iranfreethedocs.org.

7 Almost Unknown Google Search Engines

7 Almost Unknown Google Search Engines You Should Use | MakeUseOf.com

we are going to cover 7 almost unknown specialized Google search engines that can be used for specialized consumer and academic research.

The AI Depot

Artificial Intelligence Depot

The AI Depot is a website dedicated to helping you solve problems using artificial intelligence. Less hype, more results! Over the decades, AI research has provided numerous techniques for making real-world software more intelligent.

The Gamer's Bill of Rights

The Gamer's Bill of Rights | Edge Online

# Gamers shall have the right to return games that don't work with their computers for a full refund.
# Gamers shall have the right to demand that games be released in a finished state.
# Gamers shall have the right to expect meaningful updates after a game's release.
# Gamers shall have the right to demand that download managers and updaters not force themselves to run or be forced to load in order to play a game.
# Gamers shall have the right to expect that the minimum requirements for a game will mean that the game will adequately play on that computer.
# Gamers shall have the right to expect that games won't install hidden drivers or other potentially harmful software without their express consent.
# Gamers shall have the right to re-download the latest versions of the games they own at any time.
# Gamers shall have the right to not be treated as potential criminals by developers or publishers.
# Gamers shall have the right to demand that a single-player game not force them to be connected to the Internet every time they wish to play.
# Gamers shall have the right that games which are installed to the hard drive shall not require a CD/DVD to remain in the drive to play.

2008 Stock Market Returns from Six Continents

Frugal Bachelor: You thought the Dow did bad? Check out the 2008 Stock Market Returns from Six Continents.

Rank Country Index Return
1 Mexico Bolsa -24.23%
2 South Africa ALSI -26.28%
3 UK FTSE 100 -31.33%
4 USA DJIA -33.82%
5 Switzerland SMI -34.19%
6 Canada S&P/TSX -35.38%
7 South Korea KRX 100 -38.39%
8 USA S&P 500 -38.47%
9 Spain IBEX -39.11%
10 Germany DAX -40.22%
11 USA NASDAQ -40.56%
12 Brazil Bovespa -41.22%
13 Australia S&P/ASX 200 -41.29%
14 Japan NIKKEI 225 -41.54%
15 France CAC 40 -42.64%
16 Taiwan TAIEX -45.93%
17 Hong Kong Hang Seng -47.93%
18 Singapore Straits Times -48.86%
19 India SENSEX -51.44%
20 China SSE -65.42%
21 Russia MICEX -67.20%

2008 Stock Market Returns from Six Continents

Frugal Bachelor: You thought the Dow did bad? Check out the 2008 Stock Market Returns from Six Continents.

Rank Country Index Return
1 Mexico Bolsa -24.23%
2 South Africa ALSI -26.28%
3 UK FTSE 100 -31.33%
4 USA DJIA -33.82%
5 Switzerland SMI -34.19%
6 Canada S&P/TSX -35.38%
7 South Korea KRX 100 -38.39%
8 USA S&P 500 -38.47%
9 Spain IBEX -39.11%
10 Germany DAX -40.22%
11 USA NASDAQ -40.56%
12 Brazil Bovespa -41.22%
13 Australia S&P/ASX 200 -41.29%
14 Japan NIKKEI 225 -41.54%
15 France CAC 40 -42.64%
16 Taiwan TAIEX -45.93%
17 Hong Kong Hang Seng -47.93%
18 Singapore Straits Times -48.86%
19 India SENSEX -51.44%
20 China SSE -65.42%
21 Russia MICEX -67.20%