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Ok so ive been tasked with doing "research" on building an intranet for a potential new client for my company and they want some kind of answer by Monday (like any company, they REALLY want this project).
That said, ive been doing "Reasearch" and have so many tabs/windows open that im going nuts and getting lost since my research doesn't have direction...taking in too much and need assistance.
i have 2 questions after a brief explanation.
Essentially, From my understanding, an Intranet is...well in plain
terms, a website that is offline? has a deeper framework because of
the documents that will be available(i think its for a school)and the
ppl who can access them but can also have access to the internet?
Since its for a school(not sure if its mainly for teachers or teachers
and students ) im assuming alot of documents either way.
aside form being private, throughout my research, ive read alot about file security, firewalls, and...and.. im starting to get overwhelmed.
Me myself, am a web designer/so-so developer. decent knowledge of js/jquery and php/mysql though i feel like im just getting started in the web-developer part. Good knowledge of standards HTML/css, designer tools etc...
That said, these are my questions.
1.What is actually involved in planning to create this? What tools( read CMS if possible ) can i use to create any of this. Like to make this happen what do i actually need, and need to know? what direction should i take. If you can direct me and help me close some of these 30+ links spread across my 3 monitors id owe ya lol.
i can build many things and dont mind giving it a HARD go but, this seems like a HUGE project and, im SURE that if my company takes this job, id be put on it. now i can do some of the parts of this project but not 100% sure im the right person for this. Theyre counting on me for a yes/no answer as to whether i can do it (they know its big and itll take time to accomplish) but so...with my skills posted above, am i the right person to do this? or is this more akin to an ACTUAL tried and true developer?
Thank you for your time and, any tips/links/cms info/ i mean ANYTHING that would make this easier PLEASE dont hesitate to share. i dont mind doing the research but i need direction.
i dont want to tell them "YES i can do it" and in a month or two im on pause stuck and the yes turns into a "no i cant do it"
If you have no experience in setting up networks, then you are probably not the man for the job (unless your client is willing to let you have a shot at it for the experience, on a no-win, no-fee basis). Certainly do not over-promise and under-deliver!
I deal with quite a lot of schools, and I know many of the smaller ones will use the secretary's computer as a server, with a simple Windows home network to place files in a shared directory. Its a cheap and cheerful alternative, within their own skillsets to manage.
You should also check with the govermental department with relevant oversight (Dept. of Education, I'd imagine) to see what guidlines, requirements, and grants, are available or required. There may be a specific recommended route to take here, with made to measure firewall protection provided to you.
Larger schools will have invested in proper servers, with automatic external backups in place. I'm not qualified to give advice on how to set those up however. Hopefully someone else here will :)
Best of luck!
CMS may be included as a Intranet website, but Intranet includes much more than CMS. Your best stragetic is tell your boss find a network system integrator to do this project collaboratively. Intranet involves more networking technology (L2, L3, switching, routing, firewall, wireless, etc etc) and physical instrument (ex. cabling).
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I'm sure that all of us have had to deal with telecommuters at some point in time, and I'm facing a situation now where my new project will have a "core" group of office workers and some off-site telecommuters. Not wanting to repeat past mistakes, I'd really like to know what ways people have tried in the past to effectively integrate telecommuters in an agile process, namely scrum.
My first fear is that the telecommuters will be the first ones to break the "daily scrum" routine. And, as human nature often goes, once that gets broken, it's hard to resume and get people back on track. Scrum recommends enforcing small, fun "penalties" for people missing or being late to the daily scrum, like donating a few bucks to a jar which would later be used to buy a case of beers for the end-project party or something. This is obviously something that would be difficult to enforce online.
The other big problem with telecommuters is the "out of sight, out of mind" problem. Aside from using webcams/skype/teleconferencing, what other tips do people have for keeping the team as closely knit as possible?
Also, what about dealing with telecommuters from different timezones? At the moment, we're lucky enough not to have this problem, but it's definitely a possibility at some point in the future. How have other teams dealt with this problem?
Instant messaging really helps with the "out of sight, out of mind" issue as their 'Status' (Available, busy, on the bog, etc) is visible to all. Also, by responding to messages they reinforce the idea that they're generally available.
I wouldn't worry about the Scrum meeting issue, joining a meeting via teleconf is often easier than attending in person.
Set the ground rules upfront. Don't be wishy-washy about them.
You've probably eliminated the "I got stuck in traffic" excuse for missing the meeting or whatever when they're working from home (or a satellite site) and so there's no reason to expect less out of them.
Take advantage of technology:
Use IM. We use it here and it is great for 'reaching out and touching' the guy four states away. Make it a requirement to be available via IM.
Use other tools to help break down the barriers. It'll depend on your situation.
If you're having the daily meeting, it should be clear to everyone that you're going to be asking the questions:
What did you accomplish since we
last met?
What are you going to be doing
today?
What's in the way that needs to be
moved?
Just because you can't see Matt in his cube doesn't give me a right to be lazy or unproductive and unresponsive. It's like dealing with my kids - let them know the rules and what is expected, then nobody can claim ignorance.
We have success using this tools:
Assembla for project management (source control, wiki, scrum tool)
Skype for voice communication
Google talk for im
We are team of 3 developers, in 6 time zones range.
I spent a year as the only remote guy on an Agile team. I called into a conference line for the daily scrum, as well as the planning/review meetings. I kept in contact during the day via IM/e-mail/phone.
I think it worked pretty well overall. The biggest constant drawback was not being able to see the physical whiteboard we used to track the scrum. We discussed moving to some sort of online tool to do this, but it never happened.
I was one timezone away, and I just considered it part of the telecommute tradeoff that I would work the hours that the rest of team kept.
As far as penalties for missing SCRUM - to a certain degree you should enforce this loosely, via the beer jar or whatever. But if someone is consistently missing/late required meetings, then their manager needs to address that.
The are a number of techniques that you can use - remember the purpose of colocation is to encourage collaboration and communication. A few things can help out.
If your team is all nearby - think about having core days of when everybody can come into the office. My current team allows working from home on Mondays and Fridays - and everybody comes in the office Tuesday through Thursday
For distributed teams, I have had good success with using Wikis instead of giant sheets of paper on the wall. The nice thing about wikis is that they encorage the team to edit the forms to meet the needs of the team as opposed to adapting to a more formal tool.
Another advantage of having a Wiki is each person can have their own page to share pictures about their vacations and hobbies - this makes remote people more real.
When you have a distributed team, I want to second the use of Instant Messaging that includes a status (Available, Away (grabbing a cub of coffee), Busy (in a meeting)) - these can include notes if people switch between working at home and at the office.
Webcams are inexpensive and valuable tool
Invest in a decent speaker phone (we like Polycom phones) for your group conference calls
Use tools like LiveMeeting to promote remote pair programming
A technique for doing stand ups over the phone is to have the person talking say the name of someone else in the group who has not gone yet - this keeps everyone paying attention.
For iteration (sprint) planning meetings - follow up with meeting minutes or a communication plan to make sure that everyone is on the same page. Not being colocated means a tad more documentation and intentionality on communicating.
Good luck
SCRUM and many other agile methods really do depend on physical proximity - it is hard to integrate telecommuters into any development process where integration happens frequently, but these particular processes are especially hostile to disembodied developers.
You will have to adapt the processes to the situation at hand. Video conferencing using webcams is actually very usable, and in fact yo might want to experiment with having their webcam on all the time in their cubicle/work area so people can just walk up and ask a question as they would with any other coworker.
But at the end of the day, you simply have to expect things to go differently for them - they aren't going to be able to fully participate in many processes if you are an agile shop.
-Adam
Make sure they attend the daily standup via webcam; as you said that's the first mis-step down a slippery slope. We try to have all meetings done with a RoundTable as well which really helps.
I've been doing this for two months (working in Canada with the core team in Dublin) and so far everything has been going really well.
See Scott Hanselman's writeup on his first year working remotely at Microsoft - definitely some good tips there. One Year Later.
Instead of a beer jar, the privilege of telecommuting itself could be part of the bargain for participation when required. If the team is not responsible enough to telecommute properly than they probably shouldn't be. More fun penalties for occasional tardiness could be to use a funny avatar to represent the person that is missing from the meeting.
Other methods of keeping people closely knit is using collaboration tools such as Wikis and project tracking tools such as Basecamp or FogBugz.
For differing timezones, early meetings will need to occur based on the furthest west time zone, unless one is on the opposite side of the world, which is a bigger problem. Then it will probably be based on who is in charge.
We have been able to manage daily scrums in our environment even with distributed teams over the phone.
It helps to use software such as Rally and Basecamp to manage the process.
One place I worked used Asterisk instead of a normal phone system. It worked well because when you are working from home, you simply log on, people can call your direct line number, outsiders don't need to know. Even though phone call cost are relativity trivial these days, having a 'always on' connection encourages more communication. The sound quality is better too.
For telecommuters/distributed teams, I recommend getting a decent phone - most desk phones lose the ability for folks on the other end to hear folks who are multiple feet away from the phone during a standup.
When you do your demos of working code for stakeholders at the end of the iteration, use webex or livemeeting or something to share the desktop and a camera to show the speaker so that your distributed participants can see what's going on. (Even better would be to ask your telecommuters to attend during iteration boundaries to participate in person).
I recommend getting folks together for a few weeks at the beginning of the project during the inception/kickoff phase so folks can build interpersonal relationships. It's amazing how helpful the face-to-face interaction up front can be to build a foundation for teamwork.
Use a distributed card wall. I like Mingle (http://mingle.thoughtworks.com), but I haven't used other tools, so can't comment on them.
For retrospectives, it's useful to have a proxy in the room using IM to communicate with your distributed team members... so that any comments the distributed folks have can be written onto a piece of paper (or post-it, or however you do yours).
As for your fears of "out of site, out of mind", my preference for things like this is to not create solutions for problems that have not yet materialized. If you find that your team is becoming disconnected (prime discussion points for retrospectives), then you can facilitate a team discussion on how to deal with any issues that arise. Again - the team should help identify the problem and the solution rather than having a manager or scrum master dictate solutions. Start with an assumption of trust.
Distribute Scrum requires good preparation. It is not just about the tool.
We supported many rollouts in distributed environment and there was one fundamental point - people.
The most efficient is to start with ALL people in one location. They have to meet in person so they can know each other as persons, not just someone virtual on the other side of the world. As I used to say - team members need to smell each other.
For release planning meet at one location, if possible. Change locations so you visit all of them, to have a context and understanding of culture, habits, persons. For sprint planning use video meetings, screen sharing etc. It is not necessary to travel (it would be too often).
Clear roles and team(s) organization must be established. You have to have Product Owner and Scrum Masters. You should consider if you do not want to get PO & SM as close to the team as possible. Definitely you have to get them into face 2 face meetings (it is about face, not a location) every day.
Definition of done, if agreed by the team, helps to have the same understanding what Done means. In distributed environment is a must.
You will need a good communication tools for daily stand-ups . We found usable to use Skype or Office communicator for dailies. We use audio AND chat. Especially in international environment chat allows you to understand people. Keep communication channel open after daily so team members can discuss what is necessary outside of daily report.
And, the most important, is to do regular retrospectives with all team members in all locations. Do not forget to implement ideas coming from retrospective. Teams in other locations will need a local support who will help them to implement ideas.
I work on a team of 5. We to facilitate our telecommute workplace we use:
Asana - Project and Task management
Google Talk + Your favorite IM
client (I used Pidgin)
RingCentral - VOIP Telephone
Gmail - asynchronous communication (i.e. email)
Dropbox - file transfer and
backup
Team Viewer - Screen Sharing, Training, and Presentations
Even with these tools it is easy to fall short on your process so it is important to establish some best practices for your team based on your dynamic. For example, we have two chief practices:
Communicate Often - because we are not in the same location when communicating it is easy to forget that you are working on a team. For our team, we update our tasks in Asana with comments describing ideas, obstacles, and task completeness. When immediate assistance or feedback is needed, don't wait, seek assistance via IM or email if (the person is offline).
Lean on the side of over communication - This pertains more to Asana comments and emails. However, in general we found it is better to give more information than is needed (within bounds).
My company is planning to start a forum for our software product which the clients can refer for general FAQ's, problems etc.
Right now we are planning to have:-
User manuals.
Best practices for different section's of the application
Frequently faced problems.
Forum where user can discuss issues with development team.
Any other ideas?
Edit:-
We have RSS and E-mail notification subscription to the forum.
Forum where user can discuss issues
with development team.
I don't know if this is a euphemism for "issue tracker" but if not, make sure you include a way for people to submit bug/feature/enhancement reports and track them to completion. Nothing is worse than not being able to submit a bug report or being able to submit a bug report but only into a black hole.
Communication is key.
If you add an issue tracker as suggested by Kevin, your list seems pretty ok to me.
I'd also suggest that you do not start out with too many different services that require interaction from your side (e.g. your developers) at first - I've seen (too) many good initiatives die simply because nobody in the company had enough time e.g. for regular answering of the forum questions.
In your case, I guess "best practices", "frequent problems" and the forum will all consume regular time from your dev team if you want to keep them alive and up-to-date, especially in the beginning. So I would not add more services at the beginning but make sure to get these right (and you can always add more services later on if you find that the users need them :-).
You.
Show that you care about your customers.
Many useful tips at Creating passionate users blog.
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Have any of you ever tried to run from sharepoint? I've worked with sharepoint enough to know that it is not something that interests me. My interests are more along the lines of APIs / backend / distributed development. Have any of you found ways, as consultants, to move away from sharepoint and keep learning other things of interest? I'm currently in a position where sharepoint is in huge demand and I can't quite find a way to simply step aside from it. any suggestions ?
If I infer correctly that you work for a consulting firm then find out what other kinds of things your firm works on. Learn those technologies better that the people who currently work on them for your firm, involve yourself in those projects, even if just in a hallway conversation manner, and come up with better (faster, cheaper) solutions for the problems your firm is solving.
Your options are really seem to be 3-fold
convince your boss your talents
would be better used elsewhere
convince your co-workers they want
you on those other teams
convince your company's clients that
they want you, specifically.
Learn Java, or Ruby.
The Microsoft sales model of "attach" whereby they sell a solution comprised of multiple technologies and then sell the next solution on the basis of "well you have already invested in SharePoint so you already have the skills in place and the infrastructure for this new bit of technology we have" is here to stay... it's very successful.
SharePoint is cloud computing for business who have MS shops... you avoid it by not doing C#. If you're doing C# then given enough time, your apps will need to run in the corporate cloud and you should be looking after your career by embracing it.
Just my 2p. Sorry if it's not quite the answer you wanted.
I know exactly what you mean. I think you don't mind the idea behind a product like SharePoint, but really hate the way its been implemented and how problematic it is. I know its a nightmare to work with.
As a C# developer, I cringe when I hear the SharePoint word, SharePoint is Lord Voldemort. But unfortunately it comes with the job of being a senior C# / Microsoft developer.
I say unfortunately because its likely if you're working in a corporate structure sooner or later you will end up having SharePoint in your solution. Not because its good, but because as others have said - MS use SharePoint as a Trojan horse to get and keep business.
There might be some hope with the new version of SharePoint coming out (2010). Maybe this will finally include a better programming / implementation model.
Otherwise either work for smaller companies (usually less pay, but not always), or try to play down your skills as a MOSS developer if possible. Never actively market them unless your salary depends on it. Remove the skill from your skill matrix, and turn down jobs that completely focus on MOSS. Some MOSS integration here and there you can live with. An entire solution focused on MOSS will drive you insane.
If all else fails, learn other non Microsoft languages, and within a year or 2, SharePoint will be but a faded memory.
I know lots of developers who are thinking about quitting IT because of SharePoint. I would say don't let it be the end of your career.
And finally bitch and moan, and inform managers on a weekly / daily basis, as to why you are battling in SharePoint. Let them know, and constantly remind them how bad a technology it is.
When life deals you lemons. Make Lemonade.
Seriously, if you are seeing SharePoint in such high demand, maybe working with the beast is the best idea. SharePoint is really just middle-ware. SharePoint can simply be a distribution point for your solutions (i.e., a user interface such as a web application can be hosted on SharePoint through a Web Content part). If you look at it, SharePoint may even prove useful as a document respository or small scale data store, in the form of lists.
Maybe you should turn down SharePoint contracts and accept contracts that interest you.
Depending on the market you are in you can simply tell your boss at the consulting company you work for that your not interested in doing Sharepoint projects anymore and that you'll be forced to look elsewhere if they continue putting you on Sharepoint projects. That would work around West Michigan where the developer demand is high and the supply is sub-par.
I'm, on the other hand, just starting to use SharePoint to enreach my currently boring C#-only projects. I'm starting to use it as a front-end to the distributed and complicated systems: simple configuration and customization, reporting, management, system control - looks like all this is available in this package it it's easy to make is usable by non-techies and by beginners.
I personally don't want to work with SharePoint anymore. I've worked on developing a solution for it and even went full charge with a web integration of it. I hated it.
First you have to master the awful programming model then handle all the deployments and it's not even the beginning. If you are developing a product for SharePoint, you have to debug the software itself which is a feat on it's own.
My solution to this is to be very upfront about it. I don't mind doing knowledge transfer and helping out people but I don't want to be developing/deploying SharePoint applications.
My boss get it, my friends get it.
Our latest joke come from someone who said a few months ago that it was "easy and fast to deploy application with SharePoint". The joke? "Did he just put easy/fast in the same sentence as SharePoint?"
So unless you salary would be lower because of it... downplay your skills on it and be upfront to your boss. :)
Have you ever looked at Alfresco (http://alfresco.com)?
It serves many of the same purposes as SharePoint, but does it from an Open Source J2EE application. It will leverage your existing collaboration / content management experience and expose you to a whole bunch of open source technologies.
Full disclosure: I work for Alfresco.
I've already given this suggestion to another guy...Running from SharePoint won't be difficult because technologies are similar to each other according to their structure. SharePoint is not the worst technology to be used, although it is limited in some way... Fortunately, software sphere is too wide to be afraid of not finding anything you can be interested in.
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What's the best way to close the loop and have a desktop app "call home" with customer feedback? Right now our code will login to our SMTP server and send me some email.
The site GetSatisfaction has been an increasingly popular way to get customer feedback.
http://getsatisfaction.com/
GetSatisfaction is a community based site that builds a community around your application. Users can post questions, comments, and feedback about and application and get answers to their questions either from other members or from members of the development team themselves.
They also have an API so you can incorporate GetSatifaction into your app, and/or your site.
I've been playing with it for a couple of weeks and it is pretty cool. Kind of like stackoverflow, but for customer feedback.
Feedback from users and programmers simply is one of the most important points of development in my opinion. The whole web2.0 - beta - concept more or less is build around this concept and therefore there should be absolutely no pain involved whatsoever for the user. What does it have to do with your question? I think quite a bit. If you provide a feedback option, make it visible in your application, but don't annoy the user (like MS sometimes does with there feedback thingy on there website above all elements!!). Place it somewhere directly! visible, but discreet. What about a separate menu entry? Some leftover space in the statusbar? Put it there so it is accessible all the time. Why? People really liking your product or who are REALLY annoyed about something will probably find your feedback option in any case, but you will miss the small things. Imagine a user unsure about the value of his input "should I really write him?". This one will probably will not make the afford in searching and in the end these small things make a really outstanding product, don't they? OK, the user found your feedback form, but how should it look and what's next? Keep it simple and don't ask him dozens questions and provoke him with check- and radioboxes. Give him two input fields, one for a title and one for a long description. Not more and not less. Maybe a small text shortly giving him some info what might be useful (OS, program version etc., maybe his email), but leave all this up to him. How to get the message to you and how to show the user that his input counts? In most cases this is simple. Like levand suggested use http and post the comment on a private area on your site and provide a link to his input. After revisiting his input, make it public and accessible for all (if possible). There he can see your response and that you really care etc.. Why not use the mail approach? What about a firewall preventing him to access your site? Duo to spam in quite some modern routers these ports are by default closed and you certainly will not get any response from workers in bigger companies, however port 80 or 443 is often open... (maybe you should check, if the current browser have a proxy installed and use this one..). Although I haven't used GetSatisfaction yet, I somewhat disagree with Nick Hadded, because you don't want third parties to have access to possible private and confidential data. Additionally you want "one face to the customer" and don't want to open up your customers base to someone else. There is SOO much more to tell, but I don't want to get banned for tattling .. haha! THX for caring about the user! :)
You might be interested in UseResponse, open-source (yet not free) hosted customer feedback / idea gathering solution that will be released in December, 2001.
It should run on majority of PHP hosting environments (including shared ones) and according to it's authors it's absorbed only the best features of it's competitors (mentioned in other answers) while will have little-to-none flaws of these.
You could also have the application send a POST http request directly to a URL on your server.
What my friend we are forgetting here is that, does having a mere form on your website enough to convince the users how much effort a Company puts in to act on that precious feedback.
A users' note to a company is a true image about the product or service that they offer. In Web 2.0 culture, people feel proud of being part of continuous development strategy always preached by almost all companies nowadays.
A community engagement platform is the need of the hour & an entry point on ur website that gains enuf traction from visitors to start talking what they feel will leave no stone unturned in getting those precious feedback. Thats where products like GetSatisfaction, UserRules or Zendesk comes in.
A company's active community that involves unimagined ideas, unresolved issues and ofcourse testimonials conveys the better development strategy of the product or service they offer.
Personally, I would also POST the information. However, I would send it to a PHP script that would then insert it into a mySQL database. This way, your data can be pre-sorted and pre-categorized for analysis later. It also gives you the potential to track multiple entries by single users.
There's quite a few options. This site makes the following suggestions
http://www.suggestionbox.com/
http://www.kampyle.com/
http://getsatisfaction.com/
http://www.feedbackify.com/
http://uservoice.com/
http://userecho.com/
http://www.opinionlab.com/content/
http://ideascale.com/
http://sparkbin.net/
http://www.gri.pe/
http://www.dialogcentral.com/
http://websitechat.net/en/
http://www.anymeeting.com/
http://www.facebook.com/
I would recommend just using pre built systems. Saves you the hassle.
Get an Insight is good: http://getaninsight.com/