ProgressVisualizer – visual reporting for your Trello boards

ProgressVisualizerI’m working on a pet project I’m calling, for now, ProgressVisualizer. It is intended to be a quick and easy way to create visual reporting for Trello boards.

Trello is the first tracking tool my team finds so easy to use that we’ve largely stopped using our physical cork board. It offers simplicity, openness and doesn’t impose unnecessary assumptions. It offers an API that lets you interact with your data and webhooks which allow you to do so in near real time.

I’ve tried to follow Trello’s lead and make ProgressVisualizer easy to use. It is a tool intended for leads and managers who want burn ups, reports and other charts, don’t want to spend alot of time crafting reports for themselves, and believe they should impose as little overhead on their teams as possible.

ProgressVisualizer sample charts and reports

ProgressVisualizer sample charts and reports

ProgressVisualizer is a nights and weekends project. I don’t know what it will become. That said, it’s more than a prototype. I respect your privacy, user profile information is encrypted, and I have provided the ability to export and destroy any data collected by the site.

Right now, I’m gathering feedback and suggestions, so if you use Trello, please try ProgressVisualizer and let me know what you think.

Ruby on Rails Reading List (kind of)

A student from RailsBridge NYC asked me for a reading list. Rather than focus on Ruby or Rails, I broadened the topic to software writing and writers I look to for inspiration. Here’s my reply:

The best book on Ruby language is the The Well-Grounded Rubyist by David Black. The Ruby documentation is pretty handy, especially the API pages http://ruby-doc.org/

For the Rails framework I dive into code and rely on google searches of Stack Overflow Q&A’s and the rails docs http://api.rubyonrails.org/ for answers to specific questions I run into.

For developer practice, I’ve been reading James Shore (The Art of Agile Development), Diana Larsen (Liftoff: Launching Agile Teams & Projects) and Jean Tabaka (Collaboration Explained: Facilitation Skills for Software Project Leaders)

For inspiration, I love The Existential Pleasures of Engineering by Samuel Florman and To Engineer Is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design by Henry Petroski.

Thought leaders who helped shape my values as a developer, product person and development manager are Jeff Sutherland, Ken Schwaber, Bob Martin, and Steve McConnell.

For online training resources, my team and I are using RailsCast, ThoughtBot, RubyTapas, Code School.

Hiring a ruby on rails developer

One of our team is moving on. So we’re looking to hire one full-time, experienced developer.

At Simon & Schuster, we’ve created a small, collaborative team where people can do their best, learn in a collegial environment and get home at a reasonable hour. We work at a sustainable pace because after five years as a Ruby on Rails team we know the value of staying current, refactoring our codebase, and cleaning up tech debt.

We pair, we test drive, we retrospect, and we work as a single team with our product owners. If you want to work on a team that really does these things, contact us.

Scrum/XP/Agile team in midtown Manhattan looking for an experienced Rubyist or experienced Java/C# developer interested in learning Ruby. We are an established, six developer Scrum/XP team. We have a dedicated scrum master and we collaborate closely with our product team

Apply via StackOverflow

No recruiters, please.

Presentation: Agile Values, Innovation and the Shortage of Women Software Developers

Presentation notes: http://khj.me/KLKm0u


Judy, K.H.; , “Agile Values, Innovation and the Shortage of Women Software Developers,” System Science (HICSS), 2012 45th Hawaii International Conference on , vol., no., pp.5279-5288, 4-7 Jan. 2012

doi: 10.1109/HICSS.2012.92

Abstract: The percentage of women software developers in the U.S. has declined from 42% in 1987 to less than 25% today. This is in a software/internet marketplace where women are online in equal numbers to men, directly or indirectly influence 61% of consumer electronics purchases, generate 58% of online dollars, and represent 42% of active gamers. Women avoid careers in software due to hostile environments, unsustainable pace, diminished sense of purpose, disadvantages in pay, and lack of advancement, peers or mentors. Agile Software Development is founded upon values that challenge such dysfunction in order to build self-organizing, collaborative and highly productive teams. In a high functioning Agile practice, developers engage each other, product owners and sponsors in a shared concern for quality, predictability and meeting the needs of end users. Can Agile values and practice drive changes in the workplace to better attract and retain women software developers?

URL: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=6149534&isnumber=6148595

Innovation and collective product ownership (Agile 2007 presentation)

Jeff Patton reminded me about the product work my old Oxygen team did in 2006-2007. I dug out this presentation and accompanying paper that Ilio Krumins-Beens and I prepared for Agile 2007.

Our work anticipated the change in the Scrum Guide to consider the product owner as part of the team.

We developed an original windows software application using Scrum/XP with an onsite product owner and UX designer.

We evolved the product experience validating our assumptions using user personas and both informal and formal usability testing.

We released the product as a free Beta by the time of this presentation in 2007 and were working to build a customer base.

The lifecycle of a company (and the larger economy) doesn’t play nice with hopes and intentions. Oxygen was acquired by NBC-Universal before we were able to validate our assumptions.


Judy, K.H.; Krumins-Beens, I.; , “Ript: Innovation and Collective Product Ownership,” AGILE 2007 , vol., no., pp.316, 13-17 Aug. 2007

doi: 10.1109/AGILE.2007.49