Dashboarding Dos and Don'ts

Nice summary on dashboard design. It's about an hour, but worth the time.

Dashboarding: The Developers’ Role in Data Analysis
http://www.infoq.com/presentations/dashboard-data-analysis

Visual display
of
the most important information needed to achieve one or more objectives
which
fits entirely on a single screen
so it can be
monitored at a glance.

(Stephen Few)

Categories of dashboard:

• Strategic (long term decisions)
• Analytical (immediate decisions, explorable)
• Operational (immediate decisions)

Don'ts:

1. too big
2. missing context
3. excessive detail
4. deficient measure
5. inappropriate visualization
6. meaningless variety
7. poorly design visualization
8. large lie factor
9. poor arrangement
10. bad highlighting
11. chartjunk
12. unattractive display

Dos:

1. simplicity - reduce non-data pixels (data-ink ratio)
2. simplicity - reduce data pixels
3. highlight appropriately (color, position, form, motion)

Books:

Information Dashboard Design (Stephen Few)

The Visual Display of Quantitative Information (Edward R. Tufte)

Push Notifications for HTML5 Web Apps (Not)

I've been helping a high school student with a senior project related to an app she is developing in HTML5. Push Notifications were desired and are of course one of the more useful aspects of having a mobile solution. Unfortunately, Push Notifications (without using a third-party solution) require a native app, at least at the present time for a broad iPhone/Android audience.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4939698/can-a-webbased-app-have-push-notification

PhoneGap may offer a solution, but I've started on a research project into alternatives for developers wanting to offer a nice Web App solution supported by a third-party Push Notifications solution. Here are some links that I've found so far:

http://airgramapp.com/

http://www.pushwoosh.com/

https://pushover.net/

There are no doubt some text messaging service options that would provide another route for a solution that requires a capability like Push Notifications. I'll append these here over time.

Culture Hacking

Ran across a couple of presentations that are relevant to building team culture, especially for virtual work groups. The first is a keynote by Jim McCarthy. I've been a long-term fan as he wrote a great book. See Pre-Agile Ideas: Jim McCarthy Videos for more. Here is the link to his keynote:

Culture Hacking
http://www.infoq.com/presentations/culture-hacking-singapore

Some interesting quotes (he's very quotable) and take-aways:

• Get women involved! Technical teams lack diversity.
• "I'm not a real historian, but I like stories from history"
• "great editorial wall of China"
• "everything you do should be art"
• "team = product"
• Feeilings are "mad, sad, glad, afraid"
• "any process will work with presence"
• Book: Flow (P.S.)

The other presentation that is full of tips for running virtual teams based on experience at InfoQ itself:

Culture and Happiness in Virtual Teams
http://www.infoq.com/presentations/culture-happiness-virtual-teams

Some interesting observations:

• "Everything in life is opt-in" (especially in a virtual team, but in general with knowledge workers)
• Especially in virtual teams, managers are really coaches
• Use of Yammer for social networking. Use is always optional -- just for organic team building.
• Use of 15five.com for 1-on-1s.
• Book: Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us
• Book: Tribal Leadership: Leveraging Natural Groups to Build a Thriving Organization
• Book: The Culture Game: Tools for the Agile Manager

Some questions from my experience:

Do daily or twice weekly (Tue/Thu) virtual standups work well when there are language barriers? Sometimes written communication is more effective.

Evils of Multi-tasking and Personal Kanban

Great presentation (30 minutes) on why multitasking is poor for productivity and how personal Kanban (and Kanban in general) works.

There is a great short exercise at the beginning of the video that illustrates the cost of context switching.

The Evils of Multi-tasking and How Personal Kanban Can Help You (by Sandy Mamoli)
http://www.infoq.com/presentations/multi-tasking-personal-kanban

Kanban in a nutshell: 1) visualize your work flow, 2) limit your WIP

I'm experimenting with a personal Kanban board made using a 30" x 20" project board:

The Pomodoro Technique is also discussed (http://pomodorotechnique.com/). I'm experimenting with a

Pomodoro App on my iPhone