Comment on Why the chaos in media might be a good thing by rick

Mathew, One point I don't see many people addressing is not only the overabundance of content, but the lack of diversity in that content. I'm 53 (aieee...) and when I was a kid there were 3 networks, 2 daily papers and various weekly and monthly magazines. If you followed the news would thus had 5 choices for local news (3 TV and 2 papers) and you got the news when THEY delivered it. National news? 3 network news programs. In depth analysis? Usually the Sunday paper or weekly magazines like Time or Newsweek. Special interests? Monthly magazines. My point is that a lot of the people running news organizations grew up in similar environments and still seem to assume that their news program is the sole source of someone's news so the national media all repeat the same handful of stories, the local sources repeat national and world events that aren't remotely local, and none of them ask who the heck their market is and what their focus really should be. My local news should be the best source of news about where I live. Cover larger stories if they have direct, relatable effects locally. Drop world and national news entirely unless there's something HUGE happening. Local papers should dig deeply into issues around the region and provide depth that the TV stations can't because of time restrictions. National news should skip wasting time telling me what the stock market did - anyone remotely concerned with that will have that information. None of this is to push aside operational issues like choosing more efficient CMSes etc, but those are playing at the edge. The real questions every news organization needs to ask itself are "Why do we exist? Why should anyone pay any attention to us given the hundreds of sources of information out there?"

Comment on Why the chaos in media might be a good thing by rick

Backlink: http://gigaom.com/2011/07/10/why-the-chaos-in-media-might-be-a-good-thing/#comment-638146

Why the chaos in media might be a good thing

Everywhere around us we see evidence of chaos and upheaval in the media industry — newspapers laying off staff and even closing, advertising revenues continuing to decline, and so on. What can be done about this state of affairs? Media analyst and journalism professor Clay Shirky says not only is there nothing that can be done about it, but it may actually be a good thing, because it will help spur innovation. Let’s hope he is right, because there is plenty of chaos to go around.

Why the chaos in media might be a good thing

Backlink: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OmMalik/~3/G2UxspPzyCE/

Comment on Transfer Applications from iPhone to iTunes by Chaos

A simple process made extremely difficult! Thanks

Comment on Transfer Applications from iPhone to iTunes by Chaos

Backlink: http://gigaom.com/apple/transfer-applications-from-iphone-to-itunes/#comment-548049

Enter the Scrum: From Development Chaos to Agility and Control

By Mathew Schwartz

Software developers, behold the Scrum.

Not a rugby aficionado? The term means the mass of interlocked players - tough lads, fearless lasses - facing off against their opponents when play restarts, each trying to kick the ball back to their side for possession. Think order out of chaos. Some bleeding may result.

Minus the cuts and bruises, the Scrum development methodology is similar. Scrum calls for a single, cross-functional group, ideally with 10 people - including business stakeholders, multitalented tech folks and a ScrumMaster playing project coordinator - all located in close physical proximity. Together they focus not on tools or technologies, per se, but business results.

To do that, Scrum employs sprints - originally four  weeks long, now typically two weeks in duration. Each sprint is a plan to deliver fully working, tested and implemented code. For every sprint, the team together decides which capability has top priority, creates a plan, delivers, then reviews what it's done.

Time to Sprint

Benefits to this "controlled burst" approach include delivering more relevant software, lowering business risk and creating more satisfied coders. "Every two weeks we get the chance to improve what we're doing, and we can do it with the customer," says Alan Atlas, a certified ScrumMaster trainer and agile development coach with Rally Software in Boulder, Colo. "No longer do we have to spend two years to see if something we build will work."

Hierarchy? Stuff it. Scrum teams self-organize. Waterfall approach? Don't bother. What if the customer requests change? Of course they will, so build in a mechanism for change requests and reassessing priorities.

What if the business request doesn't work? "We're very quickly able to tell the business whether it's viable or not, or whether it's something they need to rethink," says Adam Monago, VP of client service for ThoughtWorks in Chicago. In other words, the two-week Scrum sprint was still time well spent.

The Scrum Rush

Scrum isn't news to many businesses. Indeed, according to a 2009 survey conducted by Tom Grant, senior analyst at Forrester Research in Cambridge, Mass., roughly one in three software development teams used at least some kind of agile development - an umbrella term that includes Scrum, Crystal Clear and Extreme Programming (XP), Crystal Clear, lean and now kanban.

"Though Scrum is clearly, by far, the most commonly adopted," says Grant, "it's important to stress that what teams are doing is a mixing and matching exercise."

Why mix and match? One reason is to augment Scrum with software engineering best practices. For that, Monago at ThoughtWorks says many organizations also embrace XP, which emphasizes test-driven development ("only write the code you need"), continuous integration (build and link code regularly to prevent costly errors) and refactoring ("constantly tweak the code and make it prettier").

Developers Play Ball

If you build Scrum teams, will developers sign on? "Done well, Scrum seems to speak to a large portion of the high-tech development community," says Rally's Atlas. Points in its favor include empowering teams, letting people see their direct impact on a project, keeping people cross-skilled and thus marketable, and reducing paperwork to a minimum.

But Scrum does have pitfalls. "Lots of organizations leave a lot of money on the table by not going all the way," says Atlas. "There's a great deal of difficulty and discipline involved to get past 50 years of organizational memory about how we're supposed to do projects." Indeed, everything from management and support to HR systems and compensation require rethinking.

Get Scrum Savvy

When it comes to mastering Scrum, either as individuals or organizations, experts recommend studying the fundamentals, but also bringing a coach onsite for the first few months to help put Scrum theory into practice, starting with one team. Pick an important - but not the most important - project. Do it well, start to turn heads, then expand the Scrum rollout.

Remember that Scrum isn't dogma, but a lightweight, flexible mindset and framework focused not on tools and technologies, but business results and short project phases planned and executed in two-week bursts. In other words, practice Scrum well, and what looked at first like chaos turns out to imbue software development speed, flexibility and control.

Mathew Schwartz is a technology writer based in Pennsylvania.

Post originale: http://career-resources.dice.com:80/articles/content/entry/enter_the_scrum_from_development