We hold these every morning at 10:30am as it's a time when everyone can get into the office. Three questions are asked of each developer:

1. What did you complete since the last meeting?
2. What blocked you since the last meeting?
3. What do you intend to complete before the next meeting?

The answers to these three questions provide a snappy status update for the entire team. In particular, the second question is a direct request me me to do something.

To keep the meetings short there is supposed to be no additional discussion beyond the three questions. If needed then it should be scheduled directly after the meeting. However our meetings have recently begun to drag on as I found the "after meeting" gatherings weren't happening and I let the discussion happen in-line for fear of it never happening (a self fulfilling prophesy?).

The side affect of this is to subject everyone to a level of detail that may not be relevant to them, wasting time and boring them. So today I've asked everyone to answer their questions in 2 minutes. The benefit of a short meeting is obvious but in addition it gives people practise at concise communication.

Hopefully this should work, but if not then I'll resort to a trick I used at Sony - a two minute egg timer. Once the time runs out you have to shut up. If you have more to say then you have to e-mail everyone.

A note for self though - I must ensure the post meetings happen.

I love the mechanics of interviews, especially the "Microsoft Interview". The two best references I know of are How Would You Move Mount Fuji? and Programming Interviews Exposed. If you come for interview at Exony - be prepared for questions like these.

For a personal view of the Microsoft process, you can't beat Aaron Boodman’s account. His description of the screening process includes a telephone step with a developer where he asks you a programming question and you have three minutes to e-mail him back the solution. I think this is a great way to get some code out of a candidate before they have to come to the office.

I was just checking my stats for the week and I see that I've had 600 visits and 10,000 hits. I'd love to know who is reading this blog and why so leave a comment and let me know who you are. If you let me know why you're visiting then maybe I can taylor my posts accordingly...

When you install dasBlog in the root of a web server as I have, it's web.config is inherited by all lower level applications. This is a problem for nGalley as the dasBlog config has <httpModules> loaded. You can unload them by adding the following to the nGallery web.config:

<httpModules>
  <remove name="ControlImageModule" />
  <remove name="UrlMapperModule" />
  <remove name="CompressionModule" />
</httpModules>

This doesn't quite solve the problem though as the nGallery application still needs to be able to load the dasBlog assemblies in order to remove the <httpModules> so add the dasBlog assemblies to the nGallery bin folder.

I'm not too sure why you still need the assemblies in the nGallery bin directory - maybe someone can enlighten me.

I've installed an image gallery to store all the pictures I've taken over the years. You can find it at http://www.jamessnape.me.uk/gallery or use the link in the Navigation menu.

In an earlier post I promised to explain why I didn't remove a block for one of the devs. Well here goes...

The block in question was a customer who needed support for a new version of our product they were evaluating. This type of job should really be handled by either the support guys or our professional services people. However, the version of the product being evaluated has only just rolled off the build machine and they haven't yet had the chance to get up to speed with it.

Obviously, customers are the life-blood of any company and therefore their needs must be met by any method available. We are a small company (approximately 30 employees) so roles are not so well defined as "developer" or "support" - we have to muck in and help out with whatever may be required. If that means investing time in a customer with the potential to produce revenue then so be it.

Given these circumstances, I think its justified to divert development resource in pursuit of customer needs. One thing to strive for next time though is better training and preparation for the people supporting the product.

I have a number of days holiday I must take before the end of September or I'll lose them, so when the Yukon Beta arrives I plan to use some of them investigating the various parts of the new version along with its companion - Visual Studio 2005`. I had planned to try porting our reporting product but there would be issues with blogging and the company IPR, so I'm looking to find a smallish project I can complete in a month and write about. Ideas on a postcard please - just use the comments at the end of this article to add your suggestions.

Today was the company family day. This year it was held at Highclere Castle. Rather than talk about it, I took some snaps...

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[Edit: I've moved the photos to the album at
http://www.jamessnape.me.uk/gallery/albums/1.aspx]

Remember to backup your Analysis Server repository. Especially if you are on site and the customer is looking over your shoulder...

Fortunately, we run our systems in parallel so I was able to to resurrect it from the other side but not without forgetting to change the data source otherwise I would have processed the cubes against the wrong database.

"Show and Tell" was a success. There was plenty of cool things to see - especially as one of the developers managed to sneak in some functionality I was unaware of. There was a particularly good demo and talk about an MDX report designer using the Office Pivot table component.

One thing to change for next time will be a stricter time-box on each presentation. The whole thing was three hours, a little to long to concentrate for. So I plan to limit each one to 5 minutes and ensure everyone focuses on the key stuff.

I'm on site with a customer tomorrow so Monday will be sprint planning day.

Microsoft have announced the ISV Buddy Program - a chance to sign up and get direct contact with a Microsoft employee. This is a cool idea - and could provide benefits to both the subscriber and Microsoft. We have a similar (but much smaller) implementation in our office as each customer gets assigned a developer through their trial and presales period to help them get the most out of a potential purchase. Maybe we should extend this to a full blown buddy program? In the meantime, I'm signing up - hope I get Euan Garden, Tom Rizzo or Kent Tegels...

[Edit: Kent isn't a Microsoft employee so is unlikely to be part of the IVR program.]

Tomorrow is "Show and Tell" day. This is our take on the Scrum Sprint Review where the idea is to demonstrate the team's progress and direction to the Chickens. The review is open to anyone who would like to come and see what the engineers have been up to for the last month. The format is fairly loose - as all the developers have laptops they can take turns to plug into a projector and show what they've been up to. Individual presentations are limited to 15 minutes + question time.

The benefits are obvious: engineers get a chance to show off their work and direct feedback from the people who are dependent on their creations; Sales, marketing and management get to review progress and provide input.

There is always a little nervousness on my part because I don't do much speaking - it's up to the individual developers. Their view of the world revolves around code, architecture and designs whereas the chickens think about schedules, customers and revenue. With the two positions, there is some room for difference of opinion but regular reviews keep everyone on the same page.

So roll on the demos...