I’ve been part of teams that practice Agile software development methods for quite a while now. My own team at work has been doing things in an agile manner since about 2008. Before that I was a co-founder of the Agile SIG (Special Interest Group) at work for several years, attempting to bring agile into the organization from the grassroots level. I’ve been trained for the role of Scrum Master by Ken Schwaber and Jeff McKenna. I started a group of retrospective facilitators at work as well, in the hopes of turning the organization I was part of into a more consciously learning organization. Before the job at my current company, I practiced eXtreme Programming in a startup. This is (I think) my first blog post exploring some aspect of Agile software development methods.

Over the years I’ve come to realize what it is about agile that makes it work. Agile is basically a mitigation strategy/technology that addresses the human tendency to fail at communicating effectively. Let’s look at this from the perspective of a model I learned about in high school from my language arts teacher – the basic human communication model. This model comes in various forms, but I like the one from my high school years. It’s one of the few things that have stuck with me from that time:

The Sender and Receiver in this case are people (although this model applies to pretty much any communication situation and is used in computer-communication model discussions as well). The Context on each side is complex. It’s made up of a person’s knowledge, cultural upbringing, state of mind, experience, financial situation, family circumstances, and many, many other factors. The Sender intends to convey a Message to the Receiver and the only way to do so is by Encoding the Message (in a way that the Sender hopes the Receiver will be able to Decode) and to pick a Channel for transmitting the Message. The Sender’s only way to verify if the Message reached the Receiver is by some Feedback mechanism, which actually just reverses the situation of the diagram. There are lots of ways that the communication can break down. For example, the Sender might pick an Encoding the Receiver isn’t able to Decode; the Channel might garble the Message so it becomes unrecognizable; or the Receiver might be in a Context that prevents the Message from being Decoded properly. Other communication breakdowns involve the Sender making unstated assumptions about the Receiver’s Context, the Sender picking a Channel that is inappropriate for carrying all the meaning necessary for Decoding the Message, or the Receiver not being receptive to the Message coming through the Channel.

When building software, the central thing we do is to turn ideas in our head into instructions for a computer to execute. If this were a solitary exercise, there wouldn’t be much of a problem: you have an idea; you think about how to translate it into something the computer can do, taking into consideration your skills, the computer environment, your choice of software technology stack, programming language, experience, etc., etc.; you sit down for a few hours, weeks or months to design, write code, test, deploy – and you’re done! In terms of human communication there is none, so the model doesn’t really come into play.

The trouble doesn’t start until you’re working on something that takes more than one person to accomplish in a reasonable amount of time. Unfortunately, most things undertaken in software these days are of this nature. This means several things. One, there will be human communication going on! Two, the kinds of communication will take many different forms and concern many different topics. And now we’re squarely in the domain of the communication model.

Just thinking of the number and kinds of things that will need to be communicated between people can make your head spin:

• How many features will the software have?
• What are the features?
• How will we know that a feature is done?
• What technologies will we choose to implement the software?
• What computing systems will we support?
• How will we construct the software so it is robust enough, yet easy to change in unforeseen ways?
• What are the major parts of the software?
• How will the parts communicate?
• Will the user be able to understand it and use it as intended?
• Will we be able to deliver the software on time?
• What does on time mean?

And these are just some technical questions. There are others as well, more business related:

• Will the software have value to customers and users?
• Will the customer pay for it?
• How much will the customer pay?
• Will the customer be made mode productive by using the software?
• How will we deliver the software to the customer?
• How will we know if we’re building the right thing?
• How will a customer be able to provide feedback on the software?

Pulling off almost any kind of software effort requires answers to these questions, and more. The nature of software development is one of producing ideas and mental constructs that can be turned into instructions for a computer to execute. If more than one person is involved in this activity, those ideas and mental constructs have to make their way from one person’s brain to another’s, so the people can collaborate to get the software built within some time limit. Agile software development methods bring to this process more formal opportunities for people to interact, increasing the likelihood of this communication happening  regularly and at varying levels of complexity, timescale and team composition.

Let’s take Scrum as an example. Scrum sets up a framework for communication and feedback like this (from high level/long timescale to low level/short timescale):

• At the Sprint level (usually every 2 weeks these days, but Scrum originally used 30 days) –
  Sprint planning/review meetings and Sprint retrospectives. These provide opportunities for medium-term communication and feedback on the production of a usable increment of software functionality.
• At the Backlog grooming level (usually at least once a week, but not specified by Scrum) –
  An opportunity for communication and feedback about user story details that concern upcoming sprints.
• At the Daily Scrum level (every day at the same time) –
  What happened yesterday, what will happen today, what’s getting in the way? This is an opportunity to quickly gather feedback and communicate about nitty-gritty day-to-day details.

Scrum’s official rules (found in the Scrum Guide) were recently updated (in July and October of 2011) to allow for more freedom in selecting practices and experimenting with new things. So, as of the latest edition of the Scrum Guide, Release Planning is no longer part of the official Scrum rules. If it had been, I would have argued that Release Planning and the Release Retrospective provide the highest level of overall communication and feedback loop that Scrum puts in place. Since many people still use Release Planning as a tool, I think the point still holds.

Many people mix in good technical practices as well, which add things like:

• Pair programming –
  Instant, real time communication and feedback on the construction of ideas and expression of those ideas in code.
• Continuous integration –
  Feedback on code quality, feature readiness, etc. on a daily basis or more often.
• User story estimation (part of Sprint planning) –
  Feedback and learning about what a software feature is supposed to do, how it will be implemented, what its acceptance criteria are, etc. Often summarized by a relative size called “story points” based on the Fibonacci series of numbers, which are useful because people are somewhat better at judging relative sizes than absolute sizes.

Human communication tends to break down in unexpected ways. Agile software methods give people plenty of opportunities to communicate and get feedback, helping to mitigate the breakdowns that occur in the complex context of team-based software development.

Categories: Agile, Software development
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A few weeks ago I attended Microsoft’s BUILD conference to get ready for what’s coming in Windows 8. As I was sitting in the first day’s keynotes and big picture sessions, I couldn’t help but think back on the work HP has done with its TouchSmart software and notice areas where the TouchSmart software pioneered ideas that Microsoft is now building into Windows 8 for the new Metro style of programming and the new touch-first Start screen. I decided to dig a little deeper and give you a brief tour of the history of TouchSmart and highlight some of the ideas now in Windows 8 that we put into the TouchSmart software a long time ago. I’ll put a [+Win8] marker by the ideas as I go along. Let’s get started!

TouchSmart 1, aka SmartCenter, aka LaunchPad (January 2007)

The first version of TouchSmart was not called that. It was named SmartCenter and shipped with the very first modern all-in-one touch-enabled PC, the HP TouchSmart IQ770.

This machine was one of the so-called “Dream PCs” for Microsoft’s introduction of Windows Vista in January of 2007. I’ve written about this version of SmartCenter before, so I won’t repeat much of that here.

Touch-first [+Win8]

Of course, the main point of even embarking on a project such as the SmartCenter software was that Windows wasn’t even remotely ready for touch interactions. Every app on the Windows Desktop requires the precision that the mouse pointer provides. Fingers and touch can’t hit the tiny controls accurately enough. So SmartCenter was designed with that in mind, and as a result had large targets all throughout its user interface. Here are some sample screenshots:

Note that all buttons, checkboxes, radio buttons, scrollbars, etc. are large enough to be easily tapped with a finger. Note also that, for example, the on-screen keyboard that is used for entering a ZIP code in the Weather app defaults to the correct layout, i.e. the numeric one.

Live app data in shortcuts [+Win8]

This idea wasn’t really all that new, of course. Snippets of live app data displayed in a mini-view of sorts had been introduced with Windows Sidebar gadgets and other widget-like UIs on other operating systems, but SmartCenter was the first to use live data as part of the shortcut that launches an app. You could say the shortcuts were more like mini-versions of the full app. Live data is of course hard to demo with screenshots, so here is a small video clip of the SmartCenter home screen (or start screen, if you will), showing shortcuts that update their information as time passes:

This major version of the SmartCenter software was delivered with four total releases: 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, and 1.4. Towards the final delivery of version 1.0, it became clear that a standardized way of getting the live information from the apps was needed. This became a major area of investigation and investment for the next major version of the software.

TouchSmart 2 (June 2008)

The second generation of TouchSmart software, 2.x, was introduced with IQ500/IQ800 series hardware. These two hardware models marked the beginning of the monitor-like appearance of the TouchSmart PCs. The IQ770 was a “multi-volume” chassis – these new models had a “single volume” design, supported by the “easel” style feet that were used in the follow-on generation as well.

The 2.x series of software was released in three versions: 2.0, 2.5 and 2.8.

Fixed layouts for apps [+Win8]

With SmartCenter 2.0, we introduced the concept of fixed sized layouts for the TouchSmart apps. We initially picked three: small, medium and large. You can see two of the three illustrated by this screenshot:

The Tutorials, Canvas and Calendar apps are shown in medium size, while the remaining apps are shown in small size. By tapping on an app, you would go to the large size:

This layout is purposely not called full screen, since there is a reserved area at the top of the screen for navigation, app name/time and music playback controls.

Tiles concept [+Win8]

In order to make it clear that the app representations in SmartCenter were not just icons, we decided to call them tiles, or rather “live tiles.” This term was used in the developer documentation that was produced to help other people plug their apps into SmartCenter, and so we had “small tiles,” “medium tiles” and “large tiles.” For each tile size we gave guidance about how to use it appropriately. We introduced the term “layouts” to suggest that each tile size should use a different layout of basically the same content or information. As you notice from the screenshots above, when the Weather tile is small, it shows only basic information. In the large tile, the information is more full-featured and also provides access to settings for the Weather app. The medium tile for Weather looks like this:

As you can see, this layout for Weather includes only the current conditions and the forecast for the day.

With TouchSmart 2.0, a big investment was made to produce media consumption applications: Music, Video and Photo (often shortened to “MVP”) as well as a WebCam and DVD app. The screenshot above shows other apps that were published later (Netflix and Recipe Box, for example), but that just goes to show that following development guidelines has benefits: newer apps can work with older SmartCenter versions…

Other changes from the 1.0 version include the top and bottom row of “tile scrollers” and the music playback control set (aka. “media plate”) that I already mentioned. The tile scrollers had two different behaviors, depending on how full they were. If enough tiles were present, the scroller would become an infinitely looping container. If not enough tiles were present, it would have “snap-to” endpoints.

The TouchSmart 2.0 software was unveiled at a big press event in Berlin, Germany. Several of my colleagues were invited to attend to make sure everything went smoothly from a technical perspective. The most nerve-wracking part was that the TouchSmart IQ500 was to come out of a pedestal on stage after sitting inside said pedestal for an extended period of time before its unveiling. People were not sure the thermals were designed to handle as little exchange of air as this posed. Here’s a video from the introduction to give you a better idea of what I’m talking about (skip towards 1:18 or so to see the pedestal and the TouchSmart lifting out of it):

As you can see, everything worked out pretty well. This was the biggest introduction ever made for a TouchSmart PC line. No event after that had that much effort put into it.

TouchSmart 3 (October 2009)

With the third generation of SmartCenter, we piggybacked onto the 600/300 series of hardware. The enclosures still used the easel stand design with three feet for support, and the exterior was tweaked a bit along with the screen aspect ratio (now 16:9 instead of 16:10).

Generally, though the concept was largely the same, except for the software. A big investment was made to produce more apps for the TouchSmart software suite, and this brought us apps like Canvas, Twitter, Hulu, Live TV, Link, Movie Store, Recipe Box and a bunch of others. The TouchSmart software development guidelines were augmented with more of a proper SDK with app samples, installer samples and more guidance.

New layout

SmartCenter 3.0 introduced another layout that we called wide-interactive. You see, in SmartCenter 2.x there was no way to interact with the medium sized tiles in the upper tile scroller (except for in the browser, but that’s a small detail). In this version we wanted to provide interaction with the app in the upper scroller. In order to do that properly we needed a bigger size tile and a new layout to have enough space for interaction to make sense. Here’s a screenshot of 3.0 (running on a 16:10 screen, not the aspect ratio it was designed for – so circular elements are “squished”):

In SmartCenter 3.0 the touch scrollers no longer “looped” infinitely, but each had a “snap to” end regardless of how many tiles were present; each wide-interactive tile was given a colored title bar to add a little splash of variety and visual interest. In addition, the “media plate” and other control elements on the home screen were redesigned to appear a bit lighter than before. Also, standard button glyphs were introduced for closing and minimizing SmartCenter. Oh, and the clock was moved around and given a day of the week display. Phew – at least the Personalize button stayed almost in place…

The final big change was that tiles in the bottom scroller no longer used the small layout. They were simply icons to launch the app into large layout directly. This was done to improve performance and load less stuff at the startup of SmartCenter.

TouchSmart 4 (September 2010)

Okay, so here we are, almost at the last chapter of this brief history (which is turning out not so brief after all…) TouchSmart 4.0 was introduced with the TouchSmart 310 (and 610) series of hardware. These departed from the easel-type stand and went to a single-foot design (I know there’s a better term for it, I just can’t think of it at the moment).

TouchSmart 4 didn’t see much investment in new apps, but focused on new capabilities provided by the SmartCenter framework.

Infinite Canvas [+Win8, sort of, on the Metro Start screen]

A major goal of the SmartCenter framework software had been to provide an almost limitless space for apps to live in. With SmartCenter 4.0 that goal was finally realized. Not only did the framework provide for an infinitely expanding space for hosted apps to live in, it also did away with the upper tile scroller and let the apps be positioned freely on the canvas. This is what TouchSmart 4.0 looks like after initial startup:

And once again, things were moved around on screen: The clock from lower left to lower right (and it was given a function: click to show a mini-calendar), personalize from lower right to lower left (and the word personalize removed). The “media plate” music playback controls were removed and put into the music app instead. The volume control was separated out from the media plate and put in the upper left. The bottom carousel was redesigned and had the infinite looping re-introduced (to allow for a bit of visual and interactive playfulness). Tapping a tile launches the corresponding app:

Apps can be moved around freely and the carousel shows a colored highlight for each running app:

If you look at the above shot closely, you’ll notice the Weather app in what looks like another layout. What’s happening there is not a new layout, though. It’s simply the wide-interactive layout, shrunk down to an “inactive” size. Thus we called it “shrunk layout” or “shrunk view”.

The button next to personalize in the lower left can be used if the app you’re looking for in the carousel is hard to find: QuickLaunch is sorted alphabetically:

Parallax background [+Win8, sort of, on the Metro Start screen]

Scrolling the canvas (or panning it, if you prefer) is done by grabbing empty space (with mouse or touch) and moving from side to side. To add a little visual interest to this, and to demonstrate the departure from the 3.0 tile scrollers, we added a parallax effect to the background to give you the illusion of looking into the distance on your screen. Several sets of parallax backgrounds were developed for variety’s sake, to be picked in the personalize area.

Magnets

Another major feature of SmartCenter 4.0 was the introduction of something we called “magnets”. These represent active content that originally came either from an app or from SmartCenter itself (in the case of Graffiti magnets). Magnets eliminate the need to start an app when you want to enjoy a favorite piece of content, be it a photo, video or some music you want to keep handy for quick enjoyment. Here are a few magnets placed on the canvas (they can be “pinned” so they always stay visible or “unpinned” to scroll with the canvas):

Here’s what it looks like after panning a bit (while playing the fireplace video):

You can see the pinned magnets haven’t moved and the background looks slightly different (the islands have moved at different paces to give the illusion of depth as they’re moving).

Okay, let’s see what it looks like in action:

TouchSmart 5 (September 2011)

And that brings us to the latest generation of SmartCenter (as of this date), i.e. 5.0. This version of the TouchSmart framework software was brought to market with the just recently introduced 520/420/320 series of TouchSmart PCs. The exterior of the machines has been updated once more to keep up with design trends, but otherwise the single-volume enclosure is still the chosen form.

Integration of Windows apps, desktop icons

The biggest change in SmartCenter 5.0 regards the blending of the two environments that were previously separated: SmartCenter and the Windows Desktop. This means you no longer need to exit the SmartCenter environment when you want to run Windows apps. Here’s a screenshot of SmartCenter 5.0:

Note that the Windows 7 taskbar is fully visible and that you can use it for launching apps and seeing what apps are running. The SmartCenter app carousel now has the icon highlight turned on permanently and only shows a short animated starburst as an app is launched. You also see all your desktop icons represented on the SmartCenter canvas. As you can see, the magnets overlap the desktop icons, which can be a bit of a clutter issue. No worries, you can turn off the desktop icons via Settings, if you don’t like them on the canvas. Or you can rearrange your magnets so they occupy different space:

In general, SmartCenter 5.0 attempts to bring the touch-first environment of past generations together with the traditional, mouse-centric desktop. That’s a value-proposition you don’t have in Windows 8, which is most likely not available until sometime in late 2012 anyway…

Automatic panning/scrolling

One additional thing SmartCenter 5.0 does is automatic panning of the canvas/desktop whenever an app is launched. This removes the need for you to have to rearrange app windows frequently when you want to switch from one app to another. The canvas pans automatically to make more room for every app you start. To return to an app, you just click on it in the taskbar or the app carousel. Another video might explain it a bit better:

This behavior can be turned off in Settings as well, in case it’s not useful to you. There are many, many areas that I haven’t touched on in this post, such as all the personalization and customization aspects that SmartCenter contains and how they changed over time. Or the fact that you can make your own parallax backgrounds (not documented anywhere, unfortunately, but pretty easy to figure out for enterprising souls). Or the easter eggs, oh yes…

Let me make some general remarks about the last four generations of SmartCenter: Any apps written to observe the guidelines of SmartCenter 2.0 are able to run on SmartCenter 2.0 through 5.0. A nice compatibility feature. Of course, older versions of apps needed updates as new SmartCenter functionality was introduced (or removed, as with the media plate removal in 4.0), but as you’ve seen, the Netflix app (which was published with SmartCenter 3.0) runs just fine in SmartCenter 2.0 and 5.0 as well. What’s more, if you know what you’re doing, you can have all the versions of SmartCenter 2.0 – 5.0 running on the same system. That’s how I was able to collect screenshots and videos for this post. Oh, and the technology underlying all these versions of SmartCenter is Microsoft’s Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), 3.0, 3.5, and 4.0. The various apps were written in anything from compiled-to-native-code-Python to WPF to Adobe Flash. The software development process used since about SmartCenter 2.5 is anchored in Scrum, an Agile software development framework.

This concludes my brief history of the TouchSmart software. As you have seen, Windows 8 definitely picked up a lot of the features that the SmartCenter framework pioneered: Live tiles, fixed layout sizes for apps, parallax scrolling with an expandable space and touch-first design. Until Windows 8 is available, the TouchSmart 5.0 software suite is most likely the best alternative for touch – combined with new thinking on how to add something more to the the desktop environment – that you’ll find on an all-in-one PC anywhere.

Categories: Agile, HP TouchSmart, Microsoft, Opinion, Software, Software development, Windows 7, Windows 8, WPF
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