Monthly Archives: February 2010

Happy Lombardi Gras!!

Posted on by
Reply

“It’s like waiting 43 years for someone to tell you ‘I love you’ back.” – Superbowl Pregame Show.

What a week.

I flew down Saturday morning to join family in the French Quarter. A cousin booked a hotel room with a balcony on Bourbon Street for Superbowl weekend way back in October. What an incredible experience to be right there in that number when the Saints went marching in.

This photo was taken by me, hence the poor quality, which may not be a bad thing. =D

Bourbon Street right after Saints winning Superbowl

All around New Orleans folks were honking horns, shooting fireworks, hugging one another. Everywhere you went in the city that night was a sea of black and gold.

My cousin sent the New Orleans TV crew WWL “Pigs are flying” mardi gras beads. The news anchors were so thrilled by them that they showed them on the news, twice (once in Miami and once in New Orleans). We were beyond thrilled.

Flying Pig beads

Maybe it was the Saints or maybe it was the City of New Orleans, but whoever it was, someone had great insight to plan a Saints parade (win or lose) on Tuesday after the Superbowl. We called that day Lombardi Gras.

Parade organizers estimate 800,000 were in attendance. To put that number into perspective, approximately 250k-300k live in New Orleans. And it was cold. Very cold for New Orleans standards. So cold in fact, it started to snow today, but that’s what happens when the Saints win the superbowl and pigs fly.

Just as if we couldn’t adore Drew Brees any more (we’ve already turned his home into a shrine), after the Saints parade, he unexpectedly dropped by a local bar in New Orleans right off parade route to hang out and teach the crowd the pre-game chant.

Who Dat? We Dat! “New Orleans is back” – Tom Benson, owner of the Saints.

CodePlex banner does WhoDat Chant at Greater New Orleans .NET User Group

Posted on by
Reply

On Wednesday night, I spoke at the Greater New Orleans .NET User Group http://www.gnonug.org/. Thanks to George Mauer for organizing and to our sponsor Antares Technology Solutions for organizing dinner.

I was very happy with the turnout, considering the construction, the Krewe of Thor parade, a fatality accident on I-10 East, and the Saints parade being the night before. I talked for 2 hours on CodePlex and Visual Studio. A glass of Purple Haze Abita Beer (a New Orleans classic brew) never tasted so good afterwards.

In keeping with my tradition of taking the CodePlex banner with me wherever I go, a few of us Who Dats got together afterwards to do a Saints chat.

WhoDat Nation Invades Microsoft’s Channel 9

Posted on by
Reply

I’m sitting here in the Memphis airport at the terminal gate for New Orleans. Having gone 17 weeks without seeing a single Saints fan, you’d think each person wearing a Fleur de Lis football jersey was a long lost family member of mine, as I run up to them hugging them screaming Who Dat as if it were some Cajun form of “Hello, I wish you well.” In fact, it is precisely that.

To discuss my last day on CodePlex, I chatted with Dan Fernandez on Channel 9 and introduced him to the Who Dat Nation. Dan has known me for years, so he wasn’t surprised when he saw me putting on my Mardi Gras gear in the parking lot.

URL: http://channel9.msdn.com/shows/This+Week+On+Channel+9/TWC9-Sara-Ford-recognize-touch-gestures-make-Windows-7-into-a-hotspot/

WhoDat!

And Happy Mardi Gras!

How Agile Works – My Program Manager Cheat Sheet

Posted on by
Reply

While cleaning out my office in preparation for my big move to California, I ran across my Agile Program Manager “cheat sheet.” I had to laugh because as I reviewed the document, i thought to myself “This makes so much sense. How did i never get this before?”

When I first joined CodePlex, I was going out of my mind insane trying to figure out what my daily PM responsibilities were. So, in typical Sara Ford-like fashion, I told Jim Newkirk we weren’t going to end our 1-1 weekly meeting until he had outlined what was expected of me as a PM each step of the way in an agile development cycle.

3 hours later, I left Jim’s office with this document.

How Agile Works

Release Overview Diagram

Each number represents an iteration, which is a week of work. I1, I2, and I3 are the development iterations. The majority of a Program Manager’s time is spent in the pre-I1 iterations, named –3, –2, and –1.

The Epic Story – This is what goes on a sticky note on the whiteboard. For example, “Ratings and Reviews for Project releases” is an epic story with the following stories associated with it.

  1. Rate Release
  2. Display ratings and reviews on release page
  3. Display ratings and reviews on project homepage
  4. Move release metadata to new location  // also a UX improvement Epic story
  5. Releases sorted by date with release ratings  // also a UX improvement Epic story

Pre-Iteration Planning Meeting (IPM) Planning (about 10 weeks out from deployment date)

These are the series of Program Manager tasks that need to be completed in this order:

  1. Epic + Proposed Stories are written
  2. Wireframes are designed
  3. Review wireframes with team
  4. Rewrite stories based on wireframes
  5. Prioritize what gets done first in terms of dependences
    1. Think about how non-dependencies can be done later or separately
  6. Talk to developers for high-level estimates
    1. These "stories” should be in terms of < 5 days of work
  7. Talk to test team about acceptance tests

Product Backlog

  • Story must be ready at I1 (the first iteration of development work). This must be actionable work, meaning the developer can grab the story (and wireframe if appropriate) and start coding immediately.
  • Story entered as feature in product backlog
  • Have about 9-10 weeks of work in Product Backlog at all times

Iteration Planning Meeting (IPM)

  • Program Manager –> Developer translation occurs with each story
  • Developer breaks story down into their language and into their own tasks. (again, this is where the dev is in charge of the how and the PM is in charge of the what).
  • The team as a collective aims for how much work they can do in that one week. Everything beyond that is put back into the backlog for re-priorization by the Program Manager for the next IPM

Saying Farewell to CodePlex

Posted on by
Reply

In January 2006, nearly 4 years ago to the day, I created my first account on CodePlex, when the site was still in internal-only alpha preview. A the time, I was the Program Manager for the Visual Studio Power Toys, where my team created the 5th, 6th, and 9th projects on CodePlex before it went live. I recall sending the CodePlex team a 15 page document on all the UI suggestions I had. They were very receptive of my feedback and always treated me like a virtual member of the CodePlex team since the very beginning.

I officially joined the team in October 2007. The CodePlex site had approximately 2800 projects at that time. Now, we have exactly 13,505 projects. It’s been an absolute privilege to watch 11,000 open source projects get created on a site run by Microsoft. I can’t thank the CodePlex community enough for the support they’ve given us and me personally over the years. It’s just been incredible.

So what’s next?

I’ve accepted a position to be a Developer Evangelist for Microsoft in the Silicon Valley area in California. In other words, I’m moving from the product groups to “the field.” Needless to say, this won’t be the last you’ll hear of me doing open source. Remember, I jumped off a building for open source at Microsoft, so you’re not getting rid of me that easily!

Again, I cannot thank the community enough for such a tremendous couple of years. To quote the immortal words of the 9th Doctor Who (Christopher Eccleston) right before his regeneration, “You were fantastic! And so was I!”

Happy Mardi Gras!

View original comments