Scrum brings a lot of transparency into software development projects. So what could this mean for an IT industry that is still shaped by unrealistic expectations, as the following quick survey (published in Weave magazine, issue 1.10) exemplifies?

Around 660 business customers were asked how long they thought the development of a website would take. (Tage = days, Wochen = weeks, Monate = Months).

So could Scrum have a role in contributing to starting IT projects on a more realistic and therefore productive basis? When Scrum is described as “agile/ flexible” this is meant in comparison to other development methods. Scrum allows for a flexible development and can be used to sustainably raise the quality of a software. However, like with other development methods, if the customer changes specifications in an ongoing project this will have an impact on project costs and time. The difference with Scrum is that in such cases where the project needs (user stories) are being redefined the consequences in terms of time and costs are more measurable. And what’s more measurable is also easier to adjust, and that again is flexibility. This measurability Scrum brings is therefore highly beneficial to the project.

So very similarly to making visible problems within the development team, Scrum also works that way regarding the specifications made by the customers. Detecting and tackling such problems early on boosts the quality of a project. All this requests a good deal of readiness to take responsibility for project results thus made transparent. But if the producer and the customer together weather this a whole new level of cooperation can be reached.

From what I see this hasn’t spread very far yet. To many market participants less transparency is still the modus operandi and the grey area is leveraged by all sides to shirk responsibility.

In the web industry there is still considerable lack of transparency and many market participants try to please unrealistic customer expectations rather than committing to good projects. First, this practice gets in the way of the producer being able to fully realise his knowhow about a project, the ROI is minimised. Second, any time-cost-quality-relation runs a high risk of getting busted somewhere along the way. Last, such practices negatively affect the credibility of the industry as a whole and prevent a learning curve from developing, as the customer has no chance of learning for the future but through assumptions about what went wrong. Given such practices it’s no wonder so many IT projects keep being frustrating and unsuccessful.

Conclusion

My view is that Scrum-based development can make an important contribution here, if a critical mass of producers committing to it can be reached. Not only could the overall quality of the products be boosted, but on a much more general level enhanced transparency could contribute decidedly to establishing more realistic, better-informed market practices.

We like Flash and all the things one can do with it. Our many Flash endeavours have proven to be success stories for us and our customers. Still we don’t mind the odd ray of transitory earthly glory shedding its light on our work. Be it a newspaper article or an award,  as just so happened with the as usual somewhat inscrutable ranking of this year’s 200 best Swiss websites which listed three of our works. Like every year, it left us wondering about the significance of the number 200 and the criteria that might have been applied. One thing we certainly share with the jury is the sentiment that innovation is lacking. Welcome to  a pretty faint-hearted digital Switzerland.

Be that as it may, we are happy that the only two Flash Sites spicing up the ranking of thoroughly usual suspects were forged by us robots. As we poured lots of our flashy sparks and circuit grease into both www.bkw-energielandschaft.ch and www.parlamentsgeschichte.ch (both on anthrazit.org) for our audacious customers we feel that is well deserved. And that’s the second thing we obviously share with the jury

Both websites are about providing information about  “serious” topics (energy sources and political history, respectively) in a playful and interactive way, buzzwords information design or edutainment. We took great care to build the websites as modular and adjustable as possible. While our customers have been happily editing the contents in a CMS, the websites could grow and adjust. The BKW-Energielandschaft gives a great example. The BKW-Energielandschaft has steadily been adapted and expanded. For the annual “Gurten” Open Air Festival which was sponsored by our client BKW, we added a concert stage to the landscape where in a quiz day passes for the Open Air Festival could be won. Also we brought the Energielandschaft and the quiz to the actual Festival in a console.

Meanwhile, we continue being busy with more flashy adventures!

Since the beginning of the Web, we web designers have always wished we could publish any font whatsoever on the web pages that we created. Will the Web Open Font Format (WOFF) realise this old dream?

WOFF’s strengths lie in its concept. First, instead of creating yet another technically new font format, WOFF just takes TrueType and OpenType, encapsulating and compressing them without any encryption to reduce download times. And secondly, meta information about copyright and usage can be inserted, thus elegantly avoiding complex Digital Rights Management.

The development of WOFF is on a good track. Originally recommended by two font designers, it has then been developed together with Mozilla and has already found support from many well-known font suppliers – an unofficial list even lists Adobe among the supporters. Even Microsoft – the initiator and distributor of its own proprietary Embedded Open Type (EOT) – has shown a keen interest in the development of WOFF and intends to consider its deployment.

A soon as Firefox 3.6 comes out, we will evaluate whether to make use of this technology. The support by all browsers and font provider is indispensable for WOFF to become a practical solution. The native embedding of a font is ultimately the ideal and logical approach.

Until then, we continue to embed fonts with SIFR, with our own in-house Flash solutions, or more recently with the fashionable Cufòn. These options are basically good, each one with its advantages and disadvantages, but they are all of course just workarounds.

Next Tuesday the SFUG Swiss Flash User Group meeting will take place at our spaceship in Wabern-Bern. Our latest crew member Sprog will speak about the state of the mobile products from Adobe, like Flash Lite 4 and Flash on the iPhone. And also sharing optimization tips while creating mobile Flash content. Michel Wacker will give a showcase about “Lernfragen 2.0“, an Adobe Flash based presentation layer for Moodle. Come join SFUG in the spaceship on 17 November. it starts at 7 pm. Go to Adobe Groups to find all the details.

Sprog was a contributing author for the first book about Flash on mobile devices published by FriendsOfED and has written a chapter for the book ‘Sams AIR Unleashed‘. When he stays on Mother Earth he works on the upcoming book Advanced AIR 2 book.

Is there an active game developers network in Switzerland? Commissioned by Pro Helvetia, Professor Dr. Beat Suter from the ZhdK surveyed 150 game developers and the resulting Swiss Game Design Studie 2009 shows that the respondents wished for an active game developers network. More specifically even, an IGDA Chapter.

This makes my news great news: The IGDA Switzerland Chapter is active again! The local group of the international game developers community IGDA wants to build up a network, advance careers in the area, promote professional game development and advocate on issues that affect the Swiss developer community. This Friday we will meet in the Gbanga Headquarters for the Inaugural Meeting.

After the Inaugural Meeting four more Meetings are planned in 2010. The first gathering next year will happen on 25th february 2010 here in the Nothing rocket.  As the Flash technology’s major role in Game development really can’t be doubted anymore, we thought it a great idea to dedicate it to the Flash Platform. Join the Swiss game developers network and attend the meetings!

More information: http://www.igda.ch.