Premium Services Development Update

I’m going to write a straight up development update entry this week, focusing on the development team’s work to get Premium Services launched.

We are smack dab in the middle of our final Premium Services sprint. We have been focusing almost exclusively on Premium Services functionality for the last few sprints. In Scrum terms, the previous sprints were classically organized and managed: we held the typical sprint planning meeting, we prepared a sprint backlog, we estimated our tasks, and we burned down the tasks daily.

The current sprint departs from these usual Scrum activities in a several ways. First, our planning meeting was very short and consisted almost entirely of prioritizing outstanding bugs lists and a few remaining functional items. We did not estimate the items on the bug lists. We also decided not to create a typical burn down chart for this sprint, which is 2 weeks in length. Our functional backlog for this sprint is a prioritized list of items in Mantis, the issue tracking system we use. We review it each day in our stand up meeting. Our goal for the sprint is to resolve all of the high and medium priority issues found during the sprint.

Here are a couple of measurements on how we are doing so far in the sprint. The Issues Remaining count is the number of issues that are outstanding for the launch. Some of these are medium and low priority, which may end up getting pushed to the next sprint. The source control revisions count is the number of developer check in operations on that day.

	Day 1	Day 2	Day 3	Day 4	Day 5 (today)
Issues Remaining	69	66	55	56	59
Source Control Revisions	14	11	10	4	24

Our revision count yesterday was low because we spent time demonstrating the product and also because one of our developers was rewriting a major piece of code, which inhibited check in actions by other developers.

I’m very happy that the total issues remaining count didn’t skyrocket as a result of our demo yesterday.

OK, so the number of issues remaining is not regressing to zero very quickly (or at all). I am not freaking out because I believe most of the testing work has been completed already. All of the functionality has been reviewed and tested many times already. So, once we fix the current crop of bugs and issues, I think that number will quickly drop.

I continue to be optimistic that we can launch Premium Services in just over a week with a reasonable level of functionality and stability. Once again, I’m really proud of our development team and their work. They have worked really hard the past few weeks. Thanks everyone.

Thomas Klassen

Synergy within the Learning Community

Synergy (from the Greek meaning working together) is the term used to describe a situation where different entities cooperate advantageously for a final outcome. Simply defined, it means that the whole is greater than the sum of the individual parts. Although the whole will be greater than each individual part, this is not the concept of synergy. If used in a business application it means that teamwork will produce an overall better result than if each person was working toward the same goal individually. (Synergy in Wikipedia)

At the end of the National Mall in Washington D.C., just to the left of the Lincoln Memorial is the Memorial to the Korean Conflict. The theme of the memorial is “Freedom is not free.” Here, one finds the expression of American gratitude to those who restored freedom to South Korea. In addition to nineteen stainless steel sculptures that stand silently is a granite wall where a sea of faces have been etched—reminders of the human cost of defending freedom. These elements all bear witness to the patriotism, devotion to duty, and courage of Korean War veterans. They also remind me of the vast number of people that have contributed to the community that I now enjoy. Unnamed and unseen people that nevertheless have had an impact on all of us.



Across the Potomac River is the National Cemetery. Among the many memorials there, my favorite is the memorial to the Marines that depicts the raising of the flag on Iwo Jima. I love this sculpture because it represents the ability of a group of people to work towards and accomplish a goal. Raising the stars and stripes was not the goal, but it symbolizes all of the hard work, sacrifice and unity that went into accomplishing the goal.



There is great joy in accomplishing individual goals. Running a marathon, writing a book, completing a degree, and so on. These are all worthwhile and should be recognized. But I am very impressed when a group of people come together to accomplish something great, something that no single person could have accomplished on his or her own. I think that is why we celebrate team championships more than we do individual championships. Many great athletes involved in team sports could not individually bring home a championship.



The LearningZen community is starting to come together. It is still in its infancy, but it is moving forward. Internally, we have a wonderful team. Just take a look at Tanya's Guest Blog below to get a feel for what are internal team is accomplishing. But I am referring more to the community that exists throughout the world wide web. We are starting to see people add courses that are representative of many different communities. Just recently, LearningZen has seen the addition of the following courses:

• Takeoffs, Landings, and Aircraft Control: Which can be taken for FAA WINGS credit. This community of aviation professionals is poised to really start using the utility of LearningZen.
• Creating Mathematical Drawings in Microsoft Office: This course will help algebra and geometry students utilize a very common tool, Microsoft Word, to draw geometric shapes.
• USS Indianapolis - The Worst Naval Disaster in US History: This course is an amazing look at an historical event from WWII. Somebody should make a movie of this story!
• The Source of Ethics: This course will challenge your thinking on why we do what we do.
• Modesty: A great course that challenges the notion that what we read in the media is important particularly with regard to what we wear and how we look.
• Event-Driven Programming: Introduction, Tutorial, History: A tutorial for those writing computer programs for the web.
• Certified Man Hugger: And a humorous look at how men handle showing emotion and friendship.

All of these courses and more can be found in this new community. Even though the number of courses within LearningZen now stands at only 63, it is easy to see that no one person could have created all of these courses. It is an example of a community starting to come together, it is a community of people interested in sharing learning and education. Maybe we too can impact the larger community by sharing what we know and learning from each other.



Dennis Phillips, Ph.D.