Three weeks ago I handed in my Bachelor’s thesis with the sonorous name “Agile Software Development in Small Projects – Methods and Techniques used in the Sendinel Project“.

This is the abstract:

In this Bachelor’s thesis we reflect on how we used the Agile software development methodologies Scrum and Extreme Programming in the project “Sendinel“. Important aspects are how we came to decisions without a Product Owner, how we managed our process without a Scrum Master and how we organised planning.

Section 2 gives an insight into the project’s background. Section 3 briefly outlines the history of software development processes and introduces Scrum and XP. In Section 4 our development process is explained in detail.

Most value for readers will likely be the possibility to reflect on their own experience with software development. Thus the most interesting part in the thesis might be Section 5: Lessons Learned.

These are my most appreciated references:

• Henrik Kniberg – Scrum and XP from the Trenches (free ebook)
• Kent Beck – Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change
• Alistair Cockburn – Agile Software Development
• Jason Fried and DHH – Rework

During writing I put an emphasis on being concise and clear. Especially the book “Revising Prose” helped me to do that. And of course the people who reviewed the thesis (thank you again).

You can download the pdf of the Bachelor’s thesis here.

Today marks two major turnarounds in my life.

Today I have handed in my Bachelor’s thesis. This means my Bachelor studies are finished now. Good bye university. We might meet again for a Master’s degree someday …

Also today I have signed a contract with SoundCloud. This means that starting in September I will be an API developer there.

Both are big news. I’m going to write more about each of them in the following days. But for now I am off celebrating!

Animation on Motivation

HACKING IS EASY! from Airwave Ranger on Vimeo.

Last weekend I attended Music Hackday Amsterdam 2010 which was as awesome as always. About 150 people came together for a weekend in some gallery/office-building in the center of Amsterdam. And most of them did awesome hacks.

Apart from meeting a bunch of great people and eating pizza I was taking it slow this time and participated in a hardware workshop by Steim. I learned soldering (inc. burning fingers) and programming Arduino (inc. liking it).

This is the outcome of the days. An Arduino-driven led-lit Noise/Tone/Cracklebox:

Thanks again to everyone who helped me along the way, especially Joep for being so patient with me.

I hope to hack a bit more in the future on this project and to publish the code and soldering plan …

I have submitted this track to the BMI + Florian Meindl Remix Competition

BMI Techno Seminar (Disko DNA Spring Remix) by DiskoDNA

The Multitoe Touch Floor Research at the HPI released this great video which displays some cool ideas regarding large touch interfaces. Last semester I have been working on a paper that outlines a music production app for that floor. You can download it here.

The Art of the Start by Guy Kawasaki Even though this excellent book focuses on start-up culture, venture capital and the like a lot of it’s principles can be applied to other things as well. It made me want to start a band again. And it is highly entertaining to read.

The Passionate Programmer by Chad Fowler This book focuses on how to be a happy person by being a happy programmer. It has put a some more perspective to my life in the tech world …

Getting Real by 37signals The book by the makers of Ruby on Rails and a bunch of awesome webapps focuses on cutting all the unneeded stuff from your process and programs to focus on the real stuff (= creating value for your customers and yourself). Some call their methods radical but I think the approach is highly feasible. But it also means cutting through a lot of corperate bullshit everybody believes is the right way to do it. The successor Rework is still lying on my table and i’m keen on reading that one as well …

The Big Switch by Nicholas Carr The books main thesis is that computer technology will become an utility just like power supply has become. It acutally is what we call “Cloud Computing” today. The book is highly entertaining and puts the current developments in an historical big picture.

Mathematics: A Very Short Introduction from Oxford Very Short Introductions I wish I would have read this book at the beginning of my studies. It shows what Math is really good for: Helping people to think.

On the second and third day we did more user research, adjusted our system with hotfixes to the latest findings and prepared everything for after our departure.

The user research was the key aspect of the whole journey. It split into two parts: Understanding how the clinic works and testing our prototypes with the people.

For understanding the clinic, we talked to the staff, observed how they work and asked a lot of semi-stupid questions. I sometimes found it hard to jump over my own shadow when we had to bug people with strange and often naive questions. But we really dug deep to get to know the processes, the culture, why and how things work …

When we tested the prototypes with the people we had two things in mind: Finding out about the general skills of the people (Can they use computers? Can they use Bluetooth with their mobiles?) and how well we designed the prototypes (Which way is best to enter a date? Which is the best means to authenticate people?). We had prepared the user research at home with several design mock-ups, process guidelines and protocol templates.

But as usual the planning was more important than the plan itself. We weren’t able to run all user tests and we abandoned the testing protocol sometimes. The important part was to get a feeling for the situtation the users are in and to create understanding.

The most important finding was, that the patients are no good at all as users of our systems since they lack even basic computer skills. People had never seen a mouse before. The problem was not our system but using a computer. I have been watching a lot participants who just stared at the screen without knowing what to do. Even after we introduced them to the input devices they had problems to understand the basic concepts (Moving mouse moves cursor, clicking activates something …)

We concluded that no patient would ever be able to use the system without guidance. Therefore we had to change the target group away from patients over to the nurses who all are using laptops to keep track of the patients data already.

Before we went to South Africa one big part of our project was the so-called “Knowledge Base” which aimed to educate people on health-related topics. In the prototype texts, pictures and videos were displayed. We even thought about extending this with videos recorded by the clinic staff which could be played automatically in the waiting room.

We will possibly drop the knowledge base in the future for several reasons. We had changed the target group from patients to nurses thus the patients will never be able to browse the content. In the user tests the patients were not reacting to the shown content in the prototypes and did not understand the benefit of looking at the material. Also the nurses told us, that the general problem with information is not the to it access or distribution of it but creating awareness for it with the people. That is best done by a person and not a machine. And thel ast thing is that there was a TV set in the waiting room which was always running but which got no attention at all from the waiting patients (unlike in Germany where everyone would have aligned to have a better view at the screen …)

All these things led to drastic changes in the system. We were throwing out big parts to concentrate on the core functionality. This was an extremely liberating process as it was decluttering to the core. We hacked some dirty fixes on-spot (Ugly JavaScript is perfect for that) and continuously deployed them for more user tests.

During the stay the technicians were able to set-up the satelite dish and the modem which connects the clinic to the internet. The dish is aiming in a very low angle at a geosynchronous satellite that is somewhere over Washington/USA. To clear line of sight one tree branch had to be cut down. At some point the internet conection was finally up resulting in all the Windows computers starting to run updates …

At the moment (read: 2 weeks after we left the clinic) the internet connection is down and we can’t access our server. We don’t the real cause for that yet but hope to be able to fix it during the next week.

So after three days in the clinic we finished up the work and left again. In conclusion we can say that the research trip has been essential for the project. We were able to test our assumptions and change the system according to the real problems of the people. I’m confident that we will be able to put the last 6 weeks of the project to very good use and to come up with an end-product that will meet the needs of the people (and give us something to write a bachelor thesis about).

[all pictures are from Thomas' Flickr Set here]

(up next is a more informal post on the more touristic part of the journey)