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.

RailsBridge NYC

I am a coder and hiring manager for Rails developers. I am father of a daughter who aspires to a career in science and technology. For both reasons, I am grateful that there are programs like RailsBridge that introduce Ruby and Ruby on Rails to women interested in the technology and hopefully, a career in software development.

Bianca Rodrigues provides a nice, brief description of the RailsBridge NYC workshop June 6th.

It was great to meet other newbie Ruby developers who were going through some of the same beginner pains that I was. The workshop was a positive experience, and gave me the push I periodically need to keep myself immersed in technology. (read the entire post)

There is a large body of research and writing (including my own paper) on the fact that women are drastically under-represented in software development disproportionate to other careers in science and technology.

If you are an experienced developer, please consider volunteering. I participated as a TA and it really only took two evenings and one full day of my time to be of use to this great program. The experience of coaching is both a joy and a refreshing opportunity to see what you do through other people’s eyes.

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.