When you are working on designing your business or a product launch, it requires the use of some of the strategic tools. It can be the SWOT, PEST or PESTEL or the BCG growth matrix. Normally work on those tools is done in a room and on a whiteboard. The whiteboard is a really great way to work and it can make people work together and create a lot of interesting content. It though has some challenges for teams that are not sitting together or are difficult to get in the same room.
With Google Wave can collaborate on creating the same result. But then you will have to use different blips for managing each cell and this can lead to some unstructed content. With the help of a gadget there can be more structure on the content. See the following video to see what the gadget is able to do.
I’m looking forward to see when the Appstore for Google Wave will be released, so it is possible to sell the gadgets and spend more time on development of the applications. At the moment the gadget is only avaible for subscribers of our newsletter. Signup to the newsletter today and get access to the gadget.
Are there any other models that you will propose we implement?
Before anything else, let’s have a short introduction about Flex. Flex is actually a software development kit released by Adobe that will let you develop and deploy a cross-platform rich internet applications (RIA) having Adobe Flash as its platform for web and Adobe Air for desktop version. Since according to Adobe Flash Player Statistics, flash reaches 99% of all the internet-enabled PCs all over the world; and that will give us the start. Now, let’s proceed to the core. I got two sides to completely turn your thoughts to consider Flex.
First, for the developer’s side, programming structure would be a concern and with Adobe Flex, coding are not that complicated since it is readable in an English like manner but of course you need to have a programmer’s logical thinking to get it going. It’s easy to integrate designs and even apply effects (as we all familiar with flash) to help improve your applications. Adobe Flex builder 3 and Adobe Flash Builder Beta are commonly used IDEs for developing Flex. Exporting and importing projects with the IDEs makes it easier to share or work on projects with the group and one thing that really bites me as a developer is the debugging feature. Debugging is your best bud to get your codes work well. When it comes to support for Flex, there are tons of tutorials available that you can research on the web and you can even start with the video tutorials from Adobe’s “Flex in a week”. So, as a developer, if you want to develop an impressive, well-presented, interactive, and functioning application, Flex is a top option. Even though there’s still some few bugs especially in flex 4 considering it’s still in beta, solutions are highly attainable.
Second, for the users’ side, presentation and functionality of the application are always been their issue. The users are the major factor to know if the application is well-developed. If the design or layout of the application is way too dull even if the functionality works well, the tendency is that the users will get bored and sometimes get confused to use the application. With Adobe Flex, great designs, interactivity and functionality can easily be binded together to create a stunning application. Users will then be interested, become familiar and the environmental cues are that understandable. Applications well-developed in Flex are always been that impressive towards the users. You can hear them say, “WOW!, NICE!, GREAT!, FANTASTIC!, WORKS WELL!”, and all other good stuff rather than “WOAH! WHAT JUST HAPPENED?” and that is really heartbreaking.
Well, if you want to experience what has been written here, you might as well try our scrum gadgets in Flex and if you have a chance please post a comment for it will help a lot. Thanks for reading and have a nice day to all!
I got a tweet from Marilyn Pratt about @CrisisCamp was using Google Wave to aid in their organization with regards to their effort in Haiti.
CrisisCamp is using both Wikis and Google Wave for their effort in collaborating with their support. CrisisCamp is about helping NGOs with supporting their technology needs.
Their main wave can be found on this link. The Goal with the Wave is:
Join camps, activities, people and learning in this effort to support Haiti. And do this synchronously and in real time.
It seems that Google Wave will provide a better helping. But it is fair more accessable than a wiki, and you can start with editing with out the hassle of wikis.
I sure hope their efforts will help save lives in Haiti.
There as been a taskboard gadget for Google Wave for a long time that we talked about in the Wave calendars first day. The idea with this gadget was to make it simple to promote ideas between users and make then able to manage the project.
On MasteringWave we have produced a new Taskboard gadget, created in flex where there is spend some more time on the interface to make it look wave-y. The gadget lets you assign users to tasks and view which tasks are unassigned.
I have created a small video demonstrating how the gadget works.
To get access to the link, join our newsletter on the right menu then you will get a link to the gadget. (I need to make some tweeks before I can send it out but it should happen within a few days).
The taskboard gadget fits very well with our other scrum gadget the Wave Planning poker gadget. Do you think there are any tools missing to create a better scrum experience.
