At the boundary between sprints, there are three different tasks that an Agile team should perform: Review and demo the work completed in the finished sprint (Sprint Review) Plan the next iteration (Sprint Planning) Evaluate the team’s performance during the sprint and look for improvements (Sprint Retrospective) While it may be tempting to package that entire list into one long meeting, these should really be separate sessions. Each one requires a different focus and a unique cast of characters; plus, meetings can only last so long before efficiency plummets. Over the next set of posts I will be discussing each of these tasks separately, in the order in which I listed them. Even though planning happens first in any particular sprint, I prefer to look at the transition between sprints as a single process. So, we’ll start with Sprint Review. Objective As we’ve discussed previously, one of the core values of Agile is to prioritize working…
Category: Original Content
Negotiate!
I’m going to say it: Librarians are rarely effective negotiators. Way too often we pay full prices for mediocre resources without demur. Why? First of all, most librarians are introverts and/or peaceable sorts who dislike confrontation. Second, we are unlikely to get bonuses or promotions when we save our organizations money, so there goes most of the extrinsic motivation for driving a hard bargain with vendors. Third and most importantly, we go into the library business because libraries aren’t a business. Most of us deliver government-funded public services, so we have zero profit motive, and our non-business mentality is almost a professional value in itself. But this failure to negotiate weakens our value to the communities we serve. Libraries pay providers over a billion dollars a year for digital services and resources, only to get overpriced subscriptions and comparatively shoddy products. When did you last meet a librarian who loved…
Amazon Echo Update
I wrote about Amazon Echo a few months back. At the time, I did not have it, but was looking forward to using it. Now, that I have had Echo for a while I have a better idea of its strengths and weaknesses. It doesn’t pick up every word I say, but its voice recognition is much better than I anticipated. The app works nicely on my phone and iPad and I found it easy to link Pandora, my music, and to indicate what news channels I want to hear from. I enjoy getting the weather report, listening to a flash news briefing, adding items to my shopping list, listening to music, and being informed of the best route to work to avoid traffic. My favorite feature is that it is hands-free. I’m constantly running around my house juggling a lot of things. Often I need an answer to a…
Navigating Conferences Like a Pro… When You’re a Rookie
I’ve recently attended some of my first conferences/meetings post-MLIS and I thought I’d pass on the information I learned from my experience navigating them for the first time. Always be prepared to promote This is the most dreaded aspect of networking. It essentially implies schmoozing and self-aggrandizement, but if you consider it as a socializing you’ll realize it’s an essential part of getting to know others in the profession and the roles they play in their organization. If you’re new to the information profession, it can be a great opportunity to ask other professionals about the path they took to enter the industry. More often than not when they find that you’re new to the profession, they’ll offer you advice. They’ll be curious to know what your career goals are and why you’re attending. This is a great opportunity to ask for their business card or contact information. If you find that…
Tech Yourself Before You Wreck Yourself – Volume 6
What’s new with you TYBYWYers? I’m sure you’ve been setting the world on fire with your freshly acquired tech skills. You’ve been pushing back the boundaries of the semantic web. Maybe the rumors are true and you’re developing a new app to better serve your users. I have no doubt you’re staying busy. If you’re new to Tech Yourself, let me give you a quick overview. Each installment, produced monthly-ish offers a curated list of tools and resources for library technologists at all levels of experience. I focus on webinars, MOOCs, and other free/low-cost options for learning, growing, and increasing tech proficiency. Welcome! Worthwhile Webinars: Texas State Library and Archives – Tech Tools With Tine – One Hour of Arduino – May 29, 2015 – I’ve talked about this awesome ongoing tech orientation series before, and this installment on Arduino promises to be an exciting time! TechSoup for Libraries –…
The ‘I’ Word: Internships
Two weeks ago, I completed a semester-long, advanced TEI internship where I learned XSLT and utilized it to migrate two digital collections (explained more here, and check out the blog here) in the Digital Library Program. During these two weeks, I’ve had time to reflect on the impact that internships, especially tech-based, have on students. At Indiana University, a student must complete an internship to graduate with a dual degree or specialization. However, this is my number one piece of advice for any student, but especially library students: do as many internships as you possibly can. The hands-on experience obtained during an internship is invaluable moving to a real-life position, and something we can’t always experience in courses. This is especially true for internships introducing and refining tech skills. I’m going to shock you: learning new technology is difficult. It takes time. It takes patience. It takes a project application….
Don’t Go Chasin’ Waterfalls
Fellow LITA blogger Leo Stezano has been knocking it out of the park lately with his insightful posts about Agile Development. Agile is a word that gets thrown around a lot in the tech world, and while many people in the library world may have a kinda-sorta understanding of what it is, far less have a solid understanding of why it is. Agile seems to make a lot of sense on the surface, but one can only appreciate Agile when one knows where it came from and what it was rebelling against. In the beginning, there was the dreaded Waterfall model: As you can see from the diagram, you start with requirements and work on them until they are done. Then you move on to design and work on it until it is done, then implementation, etc. and the fun rolls downhill from there. The basic assumption of the…
Agile Development: The Daily Standup
The cornerstone of Agile development is the sharing of information. An Agile team that does not communicate well is destined to fail: the focus on efficiency and short, independent development cycles means development moves at a rapid pace, and there is much slack in the timeline to account for communication hiccups. Therefore, the each member of the team needs to be aware of what everyone else is working on, as well as any impacts and dependencies between her assigned tasks and those of her coworkers. With sprints lasting two or three weeks each, it’s imperative that team members be proactive about sharing the status of their work. While this can (and should) happen as informal conversations between team members, Agile provides a tool to encourage frequent communication: the daily standup. What it Is The daily standup is a meeting where team members discuss their own immediate goals and challenges. It is typically held at the…
Tips for Managing Electronic Resources
Last fall, I unexpectedly took on the electronic resources management (ERM) role at my university. Consequently, I had to teach myself–on the fly–how to manage 130+ electronic resources, along with a budget of several hundred thousand dollars. My initial six months focused on finances, licensing, and workflows rather than access, discoverability, or other key issues. So here are some life-saving tips for all you new e-librarians, because I know you didn’t learn this in library school! Let’s start, as always, with the users. Evaluate user needs. Are you new at your job? Then begin by conducting a needs assessments, formal or informal. Check the programs and course offerings to make sure they still align with the e-resources for which you pay. Seek out faculty, colleagues, and students to get a sense of what resources they assign, use, or see used. Pull usage statistics from each database–and be sure to cross-reference this vendor data with…
No Rules
Librarians are great at making rules. Maybe it’s in our blood or maybe it’s the nature of public service. Whatever it is, creating rules comes naturally to many of us. But don’t worry, this isn’t a post about how to make the rules, it’s about how to avoid them. We recently introduced a new digital media space at the Robert Morgade Library in Stuart, Florida. The idea lab includes tablets, laptops, and cameras that can be checked out; a flexible space that encourages collaboration; tech classes that go beyond our traditional computer classes; as well as three iMac computers and a flight simulator. With all this technology, you would expect to find people lining up, but we’ve actually noticed that our patrons seem intimidated by these new tools. In 2012 the first idea lab opened at the Peter & Julie Cummings Library, but the idea of a digital media lab…