Leave It Behind > Brian Bailey

Developer Freedom

Six Apart recently hosted a one-day hacking session for their developers. This was a chance for each member of their team to work on a missing feature or bug that he or she is passionate about. Ben Trott tells the story of how it came to be. Here's an overview of what they accomplished. The Feedburner team had a similar hackathon in July.

Why is necessary and, more importantly, why does so much cool stuff come out of it?

Any development is driven by priorities. Whenever a large project is completed, another one is always waiting for you. Every developer has a growing list of missing features and annoying bugs that they would love to take care of, but there is inevitably a whiteboard full of higher priorities.

If these things get ignored indefinitely, it begins to impact the morale of both the developers and the users. It's as if you've started to paint the living room, but the masking tape and drop cloth are still in the middle of the bedroom. Small features and minor bugs do matter, and for a substantial number of your users, they matter more than the MyApp 9.0 release you're planning for next year. Taking care of the low-hanging fruit is also a great way to show momentum, which always attracts more interest.

It's also critical to remember that developers are creative people. If they aren't allowed to express that creativity in what they do, they will soon look for other creative outlets. Imagine a writer for a newspaper, website, or magazine who never has the opportunity to propose a story or work on an article of personal interest.

Developers care about what they do. Give them opportunities to take ownership and you'll be blown away by the results.

Backpack Questions

I continue using Backpack from 37signals for a lot of different purposes, taking advantage of the excellent per-page sharing feature and the handy reminder system. In fact, right now I'm using Backpack, Basecamp, and Ta-Da Lists. Each app is outstanding in its own way, yet they all share a similar commitment to simplicity and the user experience.

I have two questions about Backpack though that I'd love feedback on. The first is a bug question. I have shared pages with a number of different people and in multiple cases they never receive the invitation email. When you invite someone to a page, you give his or her email address and the site sends a invitation. In some cases, I've invited multiple people and two people receive the email, but the third never does. Even if you delete the address and try again, it is never successful.

My theory is that it is somehow tied to whether or not the email address is already tied to a Backpack account (that has tended to be the case). I've spoken with another Backpack user who has had the same problem. Anyone else?

The second question is just a curiosity. Neither Backpack or Basecamp allow you to pay for a year at a time (whether for a discount or not). Both are charged monthly and 37signals emphasizes the benefit and ease of no long term contracts, sign-up fees, or termination fees.

I love the simplicity of this and think it encourages new customers (If I don't like it, I'm only out $24!) and long-term customers (I don't even think about paying for that. It just shows up on my credit card each month.) I'm curious, though, if customer confusion is the primary reason for this decision. It certainly saves 37signals a decent amount of complication by eliminating cancellation/refund scenarios. It would also complicate the upgrade/downgrade your account option that they make so easy.

I do wonder if this decision limits some of their potential business, primarily from corporate customers who can justify a one-time PO much more easily than an ongoing expense. In either case, the employee will be reimbursed, but no one wants to issue a check once a month.

I know large businesses are not the primary market for these tools, but I still find it to be a very interesting choice that goes against conventional wisdom. The best example of this would be TypePad, which also serves individuals and small businesses, but offers a year subscription for a small discount over the month-to-month plan.

Any thoughts on which approach is better? Is this a case where offering fewer options makes is simpler and better for everyone?

Let's Get Naked!

Shel Israel and Robert Scoble have completed their new book on business blogging, Naked Conversations! Congratulations to two terrific guys who have written what looks to be an outstanding book. Congratulations to Jim Minatel as well, the Wrox acquisitions editor who has played a big role in making this happen, and was the only one to have child in the middle of the process!

You can visit the book blog to find out more and read the chapter drafts. They've done a great job of writing the book in a very open and transparent way, including posting interview transcripts. If my small part survives the editor's pen, you'll find me in Chapter 5. I've learned a lot about blogging throughout the process and am eager to read the finished product.

The book is already on Amazon and is due out in January.

Fast

The third element of COFFEE Development is Fast. You may assume that I am referring to the speed of development, but as we build our sites, the primary focus is on the speed of the pages. We want sites that are as lean as possible and we go to great lengths to strip every last ounce of fat.

Why? It's all about the user experience. We all know what a pleasure it is to use a fast, responsive site. In this age of ever-increasing bandwidth, obsessing over 20-30K can seem like overkill, but I regularly experience painful site delays even behind our multi-T1 connection. We want our sites to be usable over dial-up. If that makes them absolutely scream on a modern broadband connection, all the better.

On our two new sites, we have reduced many pages by 50% or more, by optimizing and/or limiting graphics, writing clean code, and using various compression techniques.

It is rare in web design that the goal is to visually amaze the user. The goal above all else is for the site to serve the user, by helping them get what they want as quickly and easily as possible. They will remember that experience long after the browser art and splash pages have disappeared.

Brad has provided some great background and detail on how we build fast sites, sure to satisfy your inner geek. Visit FellowshipConnection.com for a good example of our new approach. Visit FellowshipChurch.com to see why we can't wait to get started on our next project!

Change Versus More of the Same

About two months ago, I changed the subtitle of my blog to Change Versus More of the Same. I love that phrase and it captures how I feel about blogging and so much else. Though I love stability and sameness in many areas, there is part of me that absolutely loves to be involved in something new. I crave new ideas and direction and the possibilities that come with them, though that's not always my first reaction! Of course, I had no idea what was on the horizon.

As many of you have gathered from the blogosphere, Fellowship Church has recently experienced a wave of change that has impacted many areas. In my case, the change comes in the form of Terry Storch's new role as the Campus Pastor of our Uptown Dallas location. Terry has been my friend, mentor, and manager for my entire five years at Fellowship Church, and I am comforted by the fact that only one of those roles has changed.

Let me say a couple of quick things about Terry.

The dude will mess you up.

Seriously.

I have never been around a more relentless person. Working for Terry is truly a mind-altering experience. He is constantly looking three steps into the future. Terry doesn't see limitations or weaknesses, only potential and possibilities. While you're finalizing the details on the latest project, he is whiteboarding the next two. While you're listing the reasons why one of his ideas won't work, he's wondering why it isn't done yet. While you're thinking "that's probably good enough", Terry is looking for excellence.

The last five years have constantly challenged my view of myself and what is possible. I have had to fight all of my natural inertia and learn to not settle or be satisfied, and to never put limits on what God can do.

Is it simply because he's a driven leader? That's certainly part of it, but there's much more.

Terry is the way he is because of his heart for Christ. He understand at his very core what is at stake each and every day. Once you come to terms with the lives that are hanging in the balance, and what God can do if we get out of His way, there is no holding back.

Terry is so passionate about people that I can't imagine a better person to lead the Uptown Campus. His creativity, drive, and leadership will challenge the staff and members like never before.

His vision for technology will be greatly missed. I spent these five years learning WWTD - What Would Terry Do? My instincts got to the point where my guesses were right about 90% of the time, but there was always something new - a different perspective or an option I never thought of - that threw me off.

I don't relish the thought of doing ministry without his leadership, but I know that change leads to growth. I have no doubt that God will grow Terry through this experience, and I can only pray the same for myself and all of us who've had the privilege of learning from him.

Undivided

Earlier this month, I visited the doctor. At the end of the appointment, as I stood in line to pay, I started watching the payment desk. As each patient took his turn, I noticed a pattern. The woman at the desk reported the total, took the money or processed the credit card, scheduled the next appointment if needed, and instructed each person to "have a good day." In other words, a fairly typical experience, except for one unique element - she did all of this without ever making eye contact with the patient.

Each patient shuffled out of the office without enthusiasm. Two nights later, I watched a waitress struggle to take the orders of a large table while each person refused to address her directly.

Later, I spoke with a relative who was describing a recent phone conversation. She mentioned how difficult it is to talk when you can hear the other person typing in the background.

Is there anything we crave more than someone's undivided attention?

We have perfected the art of ignoring our fellow human beings. Those we don't ignore outright, we demean by our distraction. We act as if we are at the mercy of our tools and toys - that every cell phone call must be answered, every email read, every new post consumed and commented on, and every show or sporting event experienced in real-time.

I am uniquely qualified to write about this as a founding member of the Society for the Self-Absorbed (see my January post for proof). A few months ago, I actually turned in my Blackberry in exchange for a standard phone as a small step toward trying to focus on the person in front of me.

How many times has my wife started a conversation with me while I continued my reading or watching? How many times have I interrupted a conversation to answer a cell phone call? How many times have I failed to say hello to a stranger, or even make eye contact?

Counseling and therapy are more common and popular than ever before. I think it's the most glorious answer to this unmet need. "Let me get this straight. For the price of a co-pay, I can sit in a warm, relaxed environment while a caring, intelligent person gives me his or her undivided attention for 50-minutes? And this person is particularly skilled in being in passionately curious about others thoughts, opinions, and experiences?" I honestly don't know why this hasn't replaced lunch hours.

It reminds me of Jerry Seinfeld's story of when he first learned about Halloween as a child. "You're telling me there's a night when adults give away candy for free? And I can have all I want and all I have to do is wear that?"

A simple way to tell how desperate others are for your attention is what they are willing to do for it. Did your spouse just offer to watch your favorite show with you? Did your child just offer to help you with whatever it is you're doing? Did a friend or co-worker invite you to lunch, and offer to pay?

How much would your child give for your undivided attention?

How much would your spouse give for your undivided attention?

How much would your friend give for your undivided attention?

How much did God give for our undivided attention?

Warning: Geek Crossing Ahead

Writing this series on COFFEE development has been very fun. I have received a lot of great feedback and interesting questions, which I hope to incorporate into the remaining installments. However, sometimes a more in-depth answer is required - one that is of extreme interest to a small number of people, but of only passing interest to others.

Well, now there is a place for the true geeks among us.

Leave It Behind > Code

This is a home for people who actually do web development, as opposed to those of us who just think about it.

My last post was on the O in COFFEE development, which stands for Open. In it, I wrote:

When you share your own contribution, you play a valuable role in leaving something behind for the next team who wants to grow software.

This new site is our place to answer questions, share knowledge, and share code. I use the word our because it will be a collaborative effort of the Fellowship Church Web Team. I use the word  collaborative to mask the fact that I won't be contributing anything of value other than spell check.

The first post is on how we solved the missing geocoding piece in the Google API for our recent site release. We'll post some code samples shortly.

If anyone would like to share any code or web development solutions, let me know. Whenever there's a post on the new blog I'll link to it from here.

Open

The second element of COFFEE Development is Open. The heart of open development is participating in the software community by using, supporting, and contributing shared code.

Looking through the most simplistic lens possible, there are three basic approaches to development: buy it, build it, and grow it.

Buy It

Let's say you're tasked with adding an online chat application to your site. The first group will immediately look for an enterprise chat solution with a price tag in the thousands, after all, you get what you pay for. The software may even require a consultant to configure and install the application.

Build It

The second group looks down on the first group. "A chat application? How hard can that be? My guess is two weeks to write it and a week to test." Here's a basic rule of developing an application: the final feature set will be at least 2x what you first imagined. This is not due to the dreaded feature creep (which can explode the feature set even more), but simply due to the hundreds of nasty and inconvenient details that remain long after the big picture has faded from the whiteboard.

I've learned that developers are equal parts optimistic and pessimistic. A leader's job is to discern which they are being at this exact moment and adjust accordingly.

Grow It

The third group approaches the problem with humility. They know that more than likely a solution already exists - a solution that is free and available to all. It just needs to be cultivated.

"Let's find the best open source chat solution available, learn from the successes and failures of that project, and then build on top of it."

By participating in open source development, you literally get to build on the shoulders of giants. You can learn from the code and get generous help from the community. And then, when you share your own contribution, you play a valuable role in leaving something behind for the next team who wants to grow software.

5 Links

1. What do you know? My boy loves Top 10 Lists too.

2. Phil Crissman calls it the Coolest. Acronym. Ever. Thanks!

3. Creating Passionate Users rates 37Signals on the passion scale. Survey says? 9 out of 10.

4. 30 Days is an amazing television show. Once you start watching, it's nearly impossible to stop.

5. 37Signals on the dangers of adding preferences to your app. Each preference adds a little more uncertainty to the customer experience you are selling.

Cheap

The first element of COFFEE development is Cheap. In many environments, cheap is frowned upon, but we wear it like a badge of honor. As a church, we measure every expenditure against the highest possible standard. Whereas any sane person would work hard to see their budget increase, I am thrilled when less money has to be dedicated to the web ministry. That means that critical dollars are freed up to meet other needs in the church.

Our switch to open source has had a dramatic effect on our cost of development. Despite Microsoft's generous charity pricing, free still makes a substantial difference. We previously paid for licenses for MSDN, Windows Server, SQL Server, and Visual Studio. We now use Google, Linux, PostgreSQL, and various text editors and free PHP development environments. Total cost: $0. And our speed of development has actually increased.

We recently slashed our streaming expenses in half by moving to a new provider, VitalStream, and are seriously considering reducing that another 50% by hosting it ourselves.

Many times, you simply pay money to outsource knowledge or time that you don't have. For two years, we have outsourced our web stats to a hosted service. The move to AW Stats is saving us thousands of dollars a year.

Knowledge is truly the greatest weapon against unnecessary spending. You have to know which pieces are critical and which ones aren't. This is where our new developer, Brad, has had a dramatic impact. His extensive knowledge of hardware, networking, and hosting has allowed us to host our first two sites on excellent, over-powered hardware in a quality Co-Lo facility for 25% of our projected expense.

We didn't achieve this by being cheap across the board (we invested in outstanding drives for the database server, for instance), but by being strategically cheap. As an example, we bought Dell servers, taking advantage of a free Xeon processor offer, but purchased the memory and hard-drives elsewhere and installed them ourselves. Also, our hosting facility is just a local, medium-sized, high-quality provider. They are located in a non-descript building in an industrial area and have a relatively small staff. But they are great a what they do, provide excellent, personal service, and have saved us hundreds of dollars a month.

I would much rather invest resources in first-class staff. Hire the right people with the right skills, and they will allow you to accomplish more than you could imagine, for less.