In this presentation we look at the similarities and differences that a PHP developer will want to keep in mind when adding Rails to their toolbox.

In this interview at Big LAMP Camp in Franklin, Tennessee, Marcus Whitney talks about his experience coordinating the first Enterprise LAMP Summit, and Big LAMP Camp. Both days were excellent and well attended. And don’t let the name fool you. I spoke at Big LAMP Camp about Rails, and Python was also represented along with the heavy dose of PHP, MySQL, and PostgreSQL (our database of choice).

Visit the Enterprise LAMP site for the awesome speaker list that Marcus lined up for both conference days.

When you see employees as people rather than resources, your view on what information they should have access to changes, and the barriers to communication can be broken down.

Product Backlog

The first thing we did is move the product backlog to it’s own tab. With the product backlog being located on the project planning page, it was too small to work with, especially for larger projects. Also, we made the expand and collapse links show and hide the acceptance criteria. We also made the number of story points on a user story more pronounced. The product backlog is now the place to create new user stories, and sort them in priority order by dragging them into place.

Pop-Up Forms

And speaking of creating new things, inline forms were great for quickly creating anything new, but they tended to get in the way. So we’ve replaced all the inline edits with pop-up boxes. This makes it easier to see what you’re working with when you create new things or editing existing ones.

Project Planning

With the product backlog moved to it’s own tab, the project planning page is now all about planning your releases and sprints. Drag and drop user stories inside a sprint to be sure that everyone knows what the priorities are.

Also easily move user stories back to the product backlog, or edit them right there.

Adding User Stories to a Sprint

Adding user stories to a sprint is now even easier too with a pop-up that provides a list of all user stories from the product backlog. Simply check the ones you want and add them to the sprint. Watch out for adding more story points than your velocity allows for.

Sprint Backlog

Create tasks for user stories directly in the sprint backlog. No need to go to a separate sprint planning page any more for that.

Updated Project Navigation

And to compliment all of the new goodies, we’ve update the project navigation so you can quickly get to the information you need.

Markdown Support for Acceptance Criteria and Task Descriptions

We’ve added markdown support for formatting acceptance criteria on user stories, and descriptions on tasks. This should make all that text much easier to read. This will work for all new user stories and tasks.

And What’s Next?

We’re proud of this major update to Scrum’d, and are not going to rest on our laurels now. You’ve given us a ton of feedback and we have a huge list of features we want to add. Look for things like multiple admins and read-only user accounts (a.k.a. “the chicken” role) to come soon.

We Want Your Feedback

We want to know how you like or don’t like scrum’d. Please let us know in comments here or on our support site if you’re a user. We’re listening.

With trust broken, employees seen as resources, and customers viewed as invoices, business is broken. Social media has given the consumer a much louder voice, who is demanding a new way of being from business. It is time for a new business manifesto.

Step 1: Use Disqus or another social commenting system. If you use WordPress, there’s a plugin for that. The great thing about Disqus is that I automatically get emailed comments on posts I’ve commented on. If you don’t go with Disqus, at least add something that allows readers to subscribe to follow-up comments. And yes, you guessed it, there’s a WordPress plugin for that.

Step 2: Add a retweet button. If I read a post I like I want to share it with all my friends. Again, if you are a WordPress user, there’s a plugin that makes this super easy. And for even more sharing goodness, use an AddThis button. You get all sorts of analytics goodies with it too.

Step 3: Stop moderating your comments before the fact. That’s what systems like Akismet are for. Disqus is also doing an awesome job of filtering spammages for us. Yay, no more spammages. Those people annoy me anyhow, even if they do have funny titles on their posts.

And for those of you who don’t have commenting turned on for your publicly available articles and posts, you’ll get no link love from me.

Any other tips?

In the fast paced world of a continuous flood of information – Twitter, Facebook, and more – take time out to remember what’s important.

For the past three months I have had the great fortune of working with the awesome team at NFi Studios here in Orlando. As one of our ADS Skirmish clients, I’ve been helping them implement Agile deeper into their organization, and laying the groundwork for them to scale their team as they continue their domination of the association industry.

My thanks go out to Sterling, Derek, Daniel, Elizabeth, Nadia, Bender, Liana, Rene, Mike, Rick, and Eddie for making my time at NFi a great pleasure and learning experience.

Robert came in and helped get NFi on track at a crucial point in our business. Through his outstanding and tireless leadership, he gained the trust of the entire team and helped to both stabilize development, and create a solid foundation on which NFi can grow. He’s a guy that truly defines himself by the success of his team.

- Sterling Raphael, CEO/President

Companies must face the fact that consumers and employees have a loud voice, and that relationships with them can no longer be one sided.

A lot of people say they want open and honest communication – a necessity for smooth business operations – but don’t act like it. Agile requires a huge amount of communication to be successful, both from team members and projects. Also a shout out to one of our Facebook fans, Mariel.