Security Concerns Lead To New Forum Plugin

I had originally implemented Fredrik Fahlstad’s wp-Forum plugin to manage my forums. Shortly after implementation, a security alert was issued. I waited a few days to see if an update were forthcoming, but after receiving no news, I determined that my best course of action was to replace the plugin.

Fortunately, a very worthy forum plugin was readily available - Yellow Swordfish's Simple Forum by Andy Staines. Besides being an elegant solution for providing a forum from within WordPress, Andy has been very active in supporting the plugin. Security alerts are immediately addressed, the feature set continues to evolve, the application has an incredible amount of control from the administrative pages, updates are easy to perform (single click), and the administrative pages are as elegant as the end-user interface. I think I would have changed anyway!

WordPress 2.5 Update Leads To New Visual Editor

When WordPress 2.5 came out, I tested it on my development box. The only plugin which did not work with it was wp-SuperEdit. I loved that tool, but the author stated that it was quite possible there would be no further updates due to the significant changes in 2.5. I therefore switched to the TinyMCEAdvanced plugin....at least temporarily. The good news is that Jess Planck has been working on a rewrite to wp-superEdit for 2.5! I can do my work with the TinyMCEAdvanced plugin, but it has this annoying problem of showing the text box as too wide and sliding behind the WordPress controls on the page. I'm looking forward to going back to wp-superEdit in the near future!

NextGEN Gallery - Slideshows!

I had created what I thought was a very attractive, functional home page using one of the WPRemix templates as shown below.

While helping a friend put together a WordPress site for Women's Motocross Racing, I researched plugins to provide a slideshow in their header.

The best I found, in terms of compatibility and performance, was the NextGEN Gallery from Alex Rabe. After following David Potter's excellent tutorial, we had it functioning in the header of their site. I then turned to one of my commercial sites with the intent of replacing my own home page (see above). What I came up with was a new look entirely:

The new home page uses eight images in a slideshow administered by the NextGEN gallery and slideshow plugin (required for a slideshow). The new home page is clean, simple and direct. It was easy to take another of the WPRemix templates, fill in the three blocks at the bottom and replace the body with the NextGEN code. It will be interesting to see how prospective customers greet the new format!

iBeginShare

I personally dislike seeing a lot of icons for social bookmarks at the end of each post, but I do like to offer alternatives for the end-user, such as e-mailing the post to a friend. I wanted a plugin that would allow me to do everything I wanted from one control and I found it in David Cramer's iBeginShare.

iBeginShare puts a button at the end of each post.

This button is unobtrusive, does not detract from the post or the page and hides a lot of functionality. When a user clicks on it, a dialog is drawn over the post. Initially, the end-user is presented with options for social networking sites.

Notice the tabs across the top. To me, this was a simple, elegant solution to offer the end-user with options for each post. If they so desire, they may e-mail the post to a friend or colleague.

iBeginShare satisfied my requirements with nothing more than the first two tabs, but installation brought additional welcome features. The user can click the MyComputer tab and download the post in Word or Adobe's PDF.

Finally, and quite unexpectedly, iBeginShare allows the user to print the post.

At the End of the Day...

It's time to put my feet up and count my blessings again. I plan on two more posts on the subject of upgrading my WordPress e-commerce site. The first will detail the remainder of the plugins I'm employing which are visible to the end-user. The second will detail the plugins I have found useful for administering the site. Until then, I hope you can put your feet up and count your blessings too!

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1. You want to make a living from your online sales, not just a hobby that brings in some additional money (although much of this still applies)
2. You are establishing your first online store using WordPress

Hits != $$$

Many people looking to WordPress as their e-commerce platform do so because it blends the capability of selling with that of blogging. Blogging can be an effective means of promoting your product and should be a tool in any entrepreneur's toolbox. WordPress' flexibility with the multitude of free themes and plugins makes it perfect for blending the activities of promoting, selling, and supporting products. However, there is a fundamental difference between blogging (or promoting) and selling - the metric by which success is measured is not the same for both!

When blogging, you're looking to build an audience. You want to see stats with lots of unique visitors, a high number of page views, and an rss feed with thousands (or tens of thousands) of subscribers. On an e-commerce site, promoting your product, that won't pay the bills! You can try to sell ad space, but that can dilute your message, detract from your product, and confuse your potential customers.

Hits Are Not Equal To Sales

When selling through a WordPress platform, the metric used to measure success is the same as every other business; money. You can talk all you want about hits, visitors, page views, and conversion rates, but only the latter matters. You may be capable of presenting an online store front for basically no cost through free WordPress themes and plugins, but you still must pay for Internet access and bandwidth, domain names, hosting (be it self where you pay for electricity, hardware, licenses, etc. or remote), etc. The bottom line truly is the bottom line - revenue derived from your sales is the only thing that counts. It alone will keep you from eating buttered macaroni.

The advice here is to pay more attention to your prospective customer base than your fan base. The trick here is to know when you're moving fans to customers and not simply educating the world (which isn't a bad thing, but also isn't your goal here). The information you need will be in your website access logs and that will require you to do more than install the WordPress stats plugin. Woopra has a sexy interface, but you may need to go even deeper. If your site is hosted, see if AWStats or any other analytical tool is available to you. You will also need to gather information from your visitors in the form of polls, forms, etc. If visitors aren't buying, you need to figure out why - as fast as you can. Blogging more may actually hurt more at that point by adding to the confusion. If your hits (page views or visitors) are high but your sales are low, stop doing what you're doing. Listen to your stats and your visitors, then refine your approach until the $$$ are soaring as much as the hits!

WordPress != Guaranteed E-commerce Success

There is no magical combination of theme + plugins that will guarantee the success of your online store. You must market and sell your product. It's hard work! You will need to be flexible, try new plugins, perhaps change up your theme. After six months of using the default WPRemix Home Page #1 template, I just changed up the format by introducing the NextGEN Gallery plugin and a slideshow on the home page. I've gone from presenting a lot of information, to a far simpler home page. I have also changed up the plugins (and will write about the changes soon). Some of the changes were done because of security concerns, others because of a lack of support, and still others because they offered a solution to an emerging need.

The advice here is to be prepared to nurture your entire site, not just your blog. That takes time, effort and money (you do donate to the authors gracious enough to provide their themes and plugins, don't you?!). While WordPress is a great platform for e-commerce, it's just that - a platform. It's up to you to put in the effort to make your store a living, growing concern. WordPress and the careful selection of plugins can work to make your efforts to earn your living from the Internet easier in many ways, but it doesn't eliminate all the work. Come prepared to do what is necessary, make certain you have the time to contribute to the effort, use care in choosing your theme and in particular your plugins, and be flexible; listen to your prospective customers (separated from your fans), tweak your offering, rinse and repeat.

Go for it != Don't quit your day job

I'm not one to tell people, "Go for it!" without the word of caution, "Don't quit your day job yet!". It is certainly possible to make a living offering the right services or products via the Internet, but the babies need food, Momma needs new shoes, and then there's the cost of living. The advice here is to proceed with caution. Know your "tipping point" before you reach it.

At the End of the Day...

At the end of the day, when you have a chance to catch your breath, count your blessings not your money! Count your money during the "work day" - which leads me to a very important point; with the allure of global reach from your desktop, the ease of implementing WordPress, and the potential for riches, it's very, very easy to lose track of time and your work-life balance. Don't.

You should have several "tipping points"; the point at which it's ok to slow down because the sales sustain the business, the point at which it's ok to take the vacation - to be absent for more than a few hours or days, etc. At the end of the day, what matters most is your health and your relationship with others. Give it your best, then give it a rest!

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I really enjoyed the simplicity of writing a post, pushing Publish and knowing that the insertion of the new content, site navigation and RSS announcements were taken care of for me. But keeping two separate sites for each product was not something that I wanted to continue doing for very long. While I could do the blogging with the Java Servlets, I'm not a big fan of reinventing the wheel and WordPress certainly had that well covered. But using WordPress as an e-commerce site left me concerned about the maturity of the process (not the product, but the process of transactions with third-party gateways, interfacing with customers rather than casual visitors, etc.).

After a lot of research, I chose to make the move to WordPress using a third-party premium theme (wpremix), and several plug-ins:

• Instinct's wp-eCommerce
• Fredrik Fahlstad's wp-Forum
• Andy Staines' Download Counter Lite
• Bluesome's execPHP
• Funroe's wp-SuperEdit

There were also a few utilities that I considered indispensible:

• Clicky Web 2.0 Analytics
• ClustrMaps
• HiStats
• FeedBurner

Before we get too far, you should know that I have NOT been paid by any of the third-parties referenced in this post nor am I an "affiliate" or an any other way associated with them. I am a user of the products only. I am writing this in the hopes that others will not feel the trepidation that I did in making the move to use WordPress for e-commerce. I have thought of consulting with others who are interested in using WordPress in this manner, but I have not done the market research necessary to know if this is something I will pursue. That, however, would be about the extent of any commercial interest for this post should I decide to do so.

WPREMIX Theme

I chose the WPREMIX theme from R. Bhavesh because of the many pages contained within the theme. The fact that I could rotate through a few different home pages was very attractive, but more than that, the sub-pages offered a lot of ideas. The general feel of the theme was very relaxing. I was very, very happy with the results and you can see them below.

I think you can appreciate the immediate and impressive impact! It was worth every penny of the premium theme. Why premium and not a free theme? I would have chosen a free theme if I had found one that I liked. I've reviewed hundreds of free themes, downloaded dozens, setup a test site where I tried out the theme, but never found one that could do all the things I wanted. WPREMIX provided design ideas others did not and that was the critical factor for me.

I spent quite a bit of time figuring out what templates required changing, how best (IMHO) to change them, what the styles were and how to leverage the package. After coming up with my navigation bar and general style, the second site took only hours to convert. I highly recommend the WPREMIX package for anyone looking for design ideas!

The Plug-ins

Just as important as the theme that I selected were the plug-ins - at least in my opinion. In my limited experience with WordPress, it's been obvious to me that the more plug-ins, the longer the load time. Additionally, conflicts between the plug-ins became more annoying as I tried to enhance the capabilities of the blogs. For the e-commerce sites, I wanted to limit the plug-ins as much as possible. I narrowed the list to only that functionality I felt was truly needed.

wp-eCommerce

Obviously, if I were trying to sell something, I needed the capability to handle sales transactions. The wp-eCommerce plug-in appeared to be robust, but simple. It also appeared to have a very large group of users, was well supported judging from the forums and the releases and I chose to implement it. My initial tests showed that there was an issue with transactions with PayPal when a transaction was canceled before it was completed on the PayPal site (i.e. no warning is provided that the transaction did not clear). My workaround was to ask customers to await final delivery until confirmation from PayPal was received. In the meantime, they could continue using a fully functional evaluation version, so I felt I could live with this for now.

I was very impressed with the ease of setting up products. I appreciate the widget for users to see their cart, the ease with which I could reference the products from other pages, etc. The plug-in isn't as sophisticated as the Zen Cart shopping cart in the old application, but I can live with it! I did not take a screen shot of the old site's store interface before I replaced it, but the following is the new. Personally, I like it! You'll need to click on the image to see it properly.

wp-Forum

One of the features that the old site offered was forums for users to comment and exchange ideas. I didn't want users and prospective customers to have to view every post to find user comments and I certainly did not want users creating their own posts to begin discussions. Finding the wp-Forum plug-in was a very welcome discovery!

It's very easy to setup the structure of groups and forums, but the best feature was the multiple skins. The Web 2.0 skin fit in very nicely with the WPREMIX theme as shown below.

Download Counter Lite

I have numerous files that can be downloaded from one of my websites (70 at the moment). I like to know how many times each has been downloaded and the wp-downloadcounter plug-in from Andy Staines provides a very elegant and easy to implement interface that does this for me. I use the Lite version because it works with the .zip files I provide. Andy has an Advanced version which allows many, many different file types. However, it also requires a rigid structure of folders under a "downloads" directory. I was unable to get my host, LunarPages, to work with the Advanced version to password protect some of the files as I require, but fortunately the Lite version works perfectly for my needs!

execPHP

Another feature I find useful is an email notification when an event occurs on the website. This requires that I either create a static page with the appropriate php code or use embedded php code within a post. I understand there are some concerns with using the latter, but I also appreciate the ease with which I can accomplish what I need to have done. execPHP allows me to accomplish this particular task. I have to disable it to use some of the admin features of the wp-ecommerce plug-in, but as I don't anticipate making changes to the shopping cart frequently, I can live with this.

wp-SuperEdit

The built-in WordPress post editor frustrates me. I've programmed for 27+ years and when I use a div tag, I expect a div tag, not a paragraph tag substitution. I couldn't do much without the wp-superedit plug-in which allows me to use the div tag properly.

The Utilities

Clicky Web 2.0 Analytics

I'm sure most people are familiar with Google's Analytics and wondering why I'm not using them. I have used them, but then I found Clicky Web 2.0 Analytics. I like Clicky far better. For one thing, they provide RSS feeds that allow me to easily keep an eye on visitors, searches that others used to find my sites, etc. I find it not only very useful but appreciate not having to go to their site to see the details.

ClustrMaps

Seeing a map with red circles of where site visitors come from isn't too practical in terms of SEO or marketing, but it is cool to note the global reach of a simple site on the Internet. There are a number of possibilities out there, but I chose ClustrMaps because I can easily display a small map and it links back to a site that provides the larger numbers. My sense is that it makes visitors feel more comfortable knowing that a lot of others from around the globe have given the site and its products a try.

HiStats

HiStats is a new service that I've started trying out. The thing that is attractive to me is that they have a variety of charts that appear to present visitors and page views in a manner that could prove valuable.

FeedBurner

I use FeedBurner for managing subscriptions to all my RSS feeds. I appreciate their ability to provide the feed in a number of different options and their tracking of subscribers. The RSS feed that I can pull down from them for monitoring activity is appreciated as well!

Conclusion

While some of the plug-ins are still maturing, there is no doubt in my mind that WordPress can be leveraged very effectively to provide an elegant e-commerce solution for anyone doing business on the Internet.

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This is a principle behind the Agile Manifesto. The Agile Manifesto itself states, "Through this work we have come to value: Individuals and interactions over processes and tools." Individuals and interactions is exactly what we had - a few of the former and a lot of the latter! In a perfect world, we'd all co-locate, someone would get my Diet Coke and rub my shoulders and....well, they didn't specify the kind of interactions!

"Through this work we have come to value: Individuals and interactions over processes and tools. - The Agile Manifesto"

What Others Are Saying

Jeff Sutherland, co-founder of Scrum, wrote an article with Peter Valhansky and Anton Victoroy for the Agile Journal, Hyperproductivity in Large Projects Through Distributed Scrum. In the article, the authors state that one of the"new best practices" is to have "no distinction between developers at different sites on the same team".

There are two critical points in this one statement; "different sites" and "same team". You do not have to be co-located to be on the same team! Everyone was equal despite someone having more familiarity with a particular topic, or a longer background in the field, or better subject matter expertise, etc. We were a team, with no "I". If you are to be agile across long-distances, you must work to break down all barriers and form a team that behaves as-if it were co-located. As ScrumMaster, it was my job to ensure that everyone respected each other as an equal team member. To that end, I have a golden rule for the teams I lead: "You may critique anything, but you may never criticize anyone." In other words, don't make it personal!

"You may critique anything, but you may never criticize anyone!"

Scott Ambler, with thanks to Erich Gamma, John Kellerman, and Ian Skerrett, describes the Eclipse project in "Imperfectly Agile: You Too Can Be Agile!" for Dr. Dobb's Portal. He points out that the Eclipse development team has "managed to successfully deliver six major releases over the years" and that "it has done so on time, every time, by following an agile process." Sounds successful, right? Now, consider that, according to the authors, the Eclipse project is "comprised of 10 projects, with 23 subprojects, and 262 committees working for 15 different companies in 12 different countries". It can be done on a very large scale!

Over on the Agile Software Development blog, a member by the name of Vaibhav posted the article, "Distributed Agile Development -1: Reinterpreting the manifesto". In his post, Vaibhav points out that "the manifesto was put together in 2001; a long time ago by software industry standard." The article goes on to point out that "offshore development (the primary scenario for distributed development) was beginning to gather momentum, but most such development occurred using the traditional heavy-weight development methodologies." Vaibhav gets to the crux of the matter by asking, "How do such teams cope with being almost totally against the spirit of one of the principles of the Agile Manfesto?" Geographically dispersed teams encounter different issues the further the geographic dispersement is. Our team had no communication problems whatsoever. I have heard horror stories about US companies that have contracted with Russian firms only to sever the relationship and find all the class and method names in Russian after taking over the code base. I've also heard the stories of two and three hour meetings every day between dispersed teams just to review code and work out issues that arose because of a misinterpretation of earlier communications (i.e. specs). No one said it might not be difficult, but a large part of being agile is to constantly inspect and adapt. As the ScrumMaster, I always tried to keep the bigger picture in mind and inspect the team's environment working to minimize distractions and disruptions. I tried to let the team focus on the Sprint tasks and jealously guarded them from outside interference while at the same time inspecting their inner workings to see that we were doing everything possible to be moving in a positive direction towards our many goals. The process of inspection and adaptation is never ending and being geographically dispersed only adds to the complexity that you must work to simplify!

Martin Fowler wrote about the pain offshore development inherently brings with it in an article on his website entitled "Using an Agile Software Process with Offshore Development". In the article, he points out "the weak spots of offshore development come from culture and distance with the business. Because agile development works best with close communication and an open culture, agilists working offshore feel the pain much more than those using plan-driven approaches." He concludes his thought on this by saying, "but it's still less pain than the plan-driven methods themselves!" If I interpret this correctly, he is stating that while there is definitely some pain associated with a geographically dispersed team that a co-located team would not experience, it's not only acceptable to use agile methods in a geographically dispersed environment, but preferable!

Distributed vs. Dispersed

One thing that has interested me about the above perspectives is the intermingling of "distributed" with "dispersed". To me, these are two distinctly different scenarios. Dafydd Rees appears to agree with my interpretation (or I with Rees) in the article "Distributed Agile Development" on i.t.wales.com. In the article, Rees points out the definitions of Distributed development and Dispersed development:

"Distributed development: This usually means co-operation between several teams located at different sites."

"Dispersed development: Dispersed development refers to individual developers located separately, working together over a network."

I would have reworded the definition for Dispersed development to something like "refers to geographically dispersed developers working together as a team." What I have been examining in this post then is not a distributed development environment, but rather a dispersed development environment.

In my opinion, dispersed development refers to geographically dispersed developers working together as a team. Therefore, dispersed agile development refers to geographically dispersed developers working together as an agile team.

Co-location, While Desirable, Is Not Absolutely Necessary

Yes,physically being face-to-face is the most desirable means of communication. However, it is not absolutely necessary in order for an agile project to be successful. There are many, many organizations proving this today. What I am looking forward to is the realization by large organizations that onsite presence of the developer is not necessary! After all, if you can make it work across continents, then you can make it work - period.

The productivity on our small team shot through the roof when I sent them all home. They knew it was a privilege, not a right, but more importantly, they knew that the company truly valued them to show them that kind of trust. Believe it or not, there was a significant reduction of distractions (these are professionals with "real" home offices) and they were able to focus in like lasers on their tasks. Now, make no doubt about it, there were things we would have done differently, but co-locating the team is not one of them. No one could argue with our success!

It took a lot of work from me as ScrumMaster to make sure the company as well as the customer were comfortable with the arrangement, but once both saw that the productivity was not dropping off but continuing to increase over time, they were on-board with the arrangement. I took it to be my responsibility as ScrumMaster to ensure that the company and the customer knew on an ongoing basis the continuing high-level of productivity that was coming from the team. I know at least one of my trainers from my Certified ScrumMaster course would argue that this was outside the role of ScrumMaster, but as I'll post later, I believe the ScrumMaster serves all the needs of the team, not just the easy ones or the ones they're best prepared for. I believe the velocity of the team has as much to do with the ScrumMaster's ability to serve the team's needs as it does with the capabilities of the team members! In the case of a geographically dispersed team, the ScrumMaster is a busy individual!

So, the next time someone tells you they're doing distributed agile development, please correct their misuse of "dispersed agile development". And, the next time someone tells you that you can't be agile if you're dispersed....give them some body language to help them understand that you can indeed do dispersed agile development!

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While I do have experience in what did and did not work for my situation, I was having a difficult time trying to find the right way to employ Scrum. I was looking for the right methodology, the proper technique, the right tools, the best framework; in short, all the wrong things.

What is Scrum anyway?
After meeting Victor Szalvay, CTO and co-founder of Danube, who was one of the trainers at my certification class, I started following his blog. In a recent post,Victor called attention to Ken Schwaber's definition of Scrum. Ken's point is that: "Scrum is really simple, barely a process, more a framework. The hard work in using Scrum is fixing the things that it exposes, actually inspecting the things that it makes transparent and adapting to optimize the results and the organization that produces the results."

It Doesn't Take An Einstein To Figure This Out
As Einstein said, "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler." Scrum itself is very simple. Yellow sticky notes and, as proven by the second trainer at my class Tobias Mayer, black electrical tape are about the only tools you need to Scrum. You can start simple, with four columns on a wall, board, or paper; the Backlog Item, the tasks of that backlog item, the work-in-progress, and what's been completed. In other words, Item (e.g. Use Case or Story), Tasks, WIP, Done. Go Scrum!

The Hard Part of Adopting Scrum
If Scrum is really that simple (and it really can be), then why isn't everyone doing it? The reason is again a simple one: The results which come in implementing Scrum can be really, really, really painful. How is it that such a simple process can produce so much pain? I believe it's another simple answer: Empowerment.

When you empower a Team to do whatever it takes, to make their own decisions, to remove all obstacles from the path to their goals, to set them free to do their work, you're going to feel the pain for awhile. It may be in the form of great discomfort at "letting go" and "second guessing". I know that pain personally. I used to be a by-the-book, and I mean a large book, of standards. I used to personally eyeball every line of code. I would sit on meetings and make the decisions because I felt there needed to be a one-voice, centralized responsibility and control, consistency, etc. After a very ugly and bad dose of being on the wrong side of that for almost two years in a contract, I came away with a very different perspective. On my most recent job, I took the point, but in a very different way.

My job is now to facilitate, to see that the Team has everything they need to get achieve their goals, and to remove any and all obstacles as quickly as possible. The daily decisions of implementation are theirs. I even took another step in empowerment recently by turning over every administrative password to every server to every team member. They need the flexibility to get their jobs done. Has there been pain in implementing this process? Absolutely! Would I willing go through the process again if I had to? You bet, no questions asked, in a heartbeat!

I'm currently managing several Department of Defense (DoD) contracts in my work at MTS Technologies, Inc. This Team, in just under two years, has built a robust, open, flexible, extensible Medical Knowledge Management System for the Navy and Marine Corps (NMKMS or NavMedKMS). There are still a lot of political hurdles and challenges, but we have made a significant contribution! The system is currently staged with the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force and the Army recently stepped up and requested the system for their own evaluation and use in-theater operations. As the Army put it after their initial evaluation, "you just put us two-years ahead of our own schedule." Would we have received that praise if we had not empowered the Team? Perhaps, but considering that there are several other initiatives who have done this or tried to do this in a centralized fashion without using Scrum, I honestly do not believe we would be where we are today.

Pain free Scrum
Now that I look at the Team's progress and Ken's statement, I can state without reservation that the pain is not in the Scrum process. The pain associated with Scrum is in dealing with the issues exposed by empowering a team to do whatever it takes to accomplish their job. Scrum itself is painless and once you've been through a few Sprints, the pain greatly diminishes as others begin to understand what to expect and productivity can go through the roof. It's well worth the effort, IMHO, to implement a Scrum process. Once you've empowered individuals to come together as a team and stood behind them with full and unwaivering support, there's nothing they cannot or will not accomplish! In a few short Sprints, you can be relatively pain free and Scrumming with the best of them!

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Estimating work has always been painful for us. How accurately can you estimate the number of hours you expect something to take before you've had an opportunity to fully investigate what's involved? You don't; you take a SWAG (simple wild assed guess). I've always wondered where the value is in that. Pick a date, any date! Pick a number, pull it out of the air -- there, that's our target! I've been on way too many projects that use this as their method of estimation.

The first idea to come to light from my training session was that estimations really didn't matter. In the end, you're either done or you're not. It's simple; binary - 0 or 1, true or false. You don't get partial credit for being "almost there". You're either done or you're not. So, in the daily scrum where you're using a board, what you want to see is someone move the tasks they took on the day before from the work-in-progress column to the completed column. Now that's exciting to me! You can easily see progress, you can see the team stay motivated to make things happen and it's simple to see impediments. All it takes is breaking backlog items down into tasks that take no more than a day.

No task too large...
Is it possible to break everything down into tasks that take no more than a day? Sure, albeit some backlog items may have many daily tasks, you can still break down what you expect to do into a day. So, at the planning session, you create entries for each day you expect to spend on a backlog item. By striving to be specific in what you're going to accomplish with each task, you can break a product backlog down. Some tasks will not take a day - that's fine too. The goal is to break this down into manageable pieces whose completion convey the progress of the team. That way, without much effort, you can get a realistic sense of where a project is at any point in time. Each day, a team member can sign-up for one of those tasks and the following day, they can move the task to completed or identify the impediment which can be quickly dealt with.

We implemented this upon my return and I've been very pleased with the results. It's challenging to get the daily tasks accurate at times, but it's great to see the team step up and help someone out when their daily task can't be moved because it's too big or needs additional definition.

Visualizing Progress with Scrumworks
Where Scrumworks helps with this is in it's Scrum Details window. What we've gone to is a daily scrum where the ScrumMaster opens the Details window. Each team member is then capable of marking those tasks they signed up for as completed or done. With the hours at zero, and the attribute set to not show completed tasks, everything completed falls off the list. Now we can focus on the remaining tesks. These are all "unspecified" for the point person. Each team member then signs up for what they will complete that day. Now, we have a list of what will be done by the next day's scrum and we have all tasks that remain (the unspecified point person). Simple, elegant, and very meaningful. With the binary system (0 or 1), we can see immediately how many tasks remain which we expect to take a day or less. This is very helpful in determining as we move through the Sprint where we stand in the burn down. Again, a very useful and now easy to see and understand metric!

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