Lots of product teams use “User Stories”. They have a particular format, like this… As a user, i want to search for products, so that i can quickly find what i want. To any normal person, this may be called a “story” but it obviously isn’t a real story, a story that’s engaging. It’s missing…… Continue reading User Stories vs Real Stories
Give your team superpowers with this awesome team board
Superpowers happen when a team combines three key ingredients: a laser focus, deep collaboration and “user-centricity”. Zenboard is a new team board that makes all of this easier. (Demo here). The grid is based on the physical team boards popularised by Scrum. The flexible rows make it really powerful. (Sorry JIRA, you’re row are too…… Continue reading Give your team superpowers with this awesome team board
Building a news community using the StackOverflow model
Some communities, such as BBC Reader Comments, have a simple system of privileges: either you are a moderator or you are an end user. However, the best communities have many levels of privilege. StackOverflow has around 25 levels based on reputation points (listed here). When your contribution gets up-voted, it increases your reputation. Gaining new…… Continue reading Building a news community using the StackOverflow model
A news community that crosses divides?
I believe it’s possible to build a community for “news you can trust” that crosses over news brands and political affiliations. It would need the right community guidelines: being constructive, being objective, respect, adding value. WikiTribune has some thoughts about how to minimise bias within a news community. Here are some of the editors and…… Continue reading A news community that crosses divides?
Is speech-to-text getting cheaper?
In October 2016, Google Speech-to-Text cost $0.006 for 15 minutes (see post here). Now, 22 months later, it costs the same for 60 minutes (see here). So the cost is roughly halving every year.
Lat/long api: twofishes docker image
I’ve been working on a project requiring latitude and longitude for locations. We used the twofishes API. If you want to use it, my colleague Andrew Blaney has made it available as a Docker image – it’s andrewblaney/twofishes The API is originally by Foursquare. Here is why we created our own image. Enjoy!
Machine learning translation and transcription: open source options
Using machine learning for translation, transcription and other language capabilities is very powerful. What open source options are there? Here are just a few: OpenNMT supports translation and summarisation. Moses translation supports English, French, German, Spanish, Russian, Swedish and Finnish. Apertium is a free/open-source machine translation platform, initially aimed at related-language pairs but expanded to deal…… Continue reading Machine learning translation and transcription: open source options
The junk news epidemic
News has a bigger problem than fake news: junk news. Readers are gorging on junk news about murder, terrorism, etc. For example, the BBC have published 5 articles about murder in the last 24 hours. It’s published zero articles about heart disease, which is thousands of times more deadly. What if articles about murder etc…… Continue reading The junk news epidemic
How to promote unit testing JavaScript with Visual Code
So you want the developers on your team to write more unit tests. One good way is make their IDE show any non-tested code in RED. In the image above we can see that line 8 is marked red – it hasn’t been tested. People focus on what’s visible, and there’s nothing more visible than…… Continue reading How to promote unit testing JavaScript with Visual Code
Agile Coaching: The Robots Are Coming!
For a team to perform at the highest level they need the right culture. Too many teams focus on Agile rituals (like story points and burndown charts) without understanding Agile principles (like self-organising teams, fast feedback and delighting customers). I believe that every team deserves an experienced coach. To help with this i’m creating an AI…… Continue reading Agile Coaching: The Robots Are Coming!
Modern Agile made easier
Introducing a new tool to help teams with Modern Agile