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I've recently been encouraging people at work to record any demos they do. The need for this was highlighted for me by the fact that - due to recent laptop problems that ended up with me having to reinstall Vista and losing all my Outlook data - I missed an important demo. Fortunately, however, I'd been very close to the development of the functionality being demonstrated, so I wasn't missing anything I didn't know about, but if I hadn't  already known about it, missing the demo might have meant I wouldn't have found out about the new features for some considerable time.

But if someone had plugged in a mic and switched on Camtasia or Jing, captured the demo and published it somewhere, I could have just played it back at my leisure. And for anyone at the meeting who, a couple of weeks down the line, couldn't remember how something worked - they could just replay the relevant part of the recording.

In general, I think recording stuff like that is a good idea and there's also a strong case for recording product design meetings, release authorisation meetings, or any company meeting where important information is communicated or important decisions made. However, sometimes you've got to move one step at a time. The first step is to get demos recorded: both internal product demos, Webinars with customers and feature demos that can be put on the Web site for general consumption.

This afternoon I've spent some time brushing up on SharePoint. As I've mentioned here before, I've been advocating adoption of SharePoint at work for about a year and a half now and recent signs are that this is, finally, going to happen (at least, I've heard a purchase request is sitting in an inbox waiting for a signature). So, as the resident SharePoint evangelist, I felt I should refamiliarise myself with it, and I came across a very effective, informal demo by Darren Strange, UK product manager for Microsoft Office.

http://officerocker.officeisp.net/files/Shared%20Documents/ProjectColloboration.wmv
Note: This is in Windows Media format. I recommend clicking the "View Full Screen" button, bottom left of Windows Media Player.

Personally this is the kind of demo I really like. I like to hear a real person talking me through a product demo - someone who knows what he's talking about - complete with a few ums and ahs and pauses. I have no time for slick demos where some "voice talent" has been paid to read a script - because you just know the guy doesn't know what he's talking about and if you asked him a question the whole demo would fall to pieces. Equally, I sort of resent demos where there's no spoken word just lots of bubble pop-ups that you have to read. I find it annoying that someone's gone to all the bother of writing the pop-up text and setting up when they appear and disappear, when they could have just recorded an audio track and saved me the trouble of having to do all that reading. Especially annoying about those type of demos is when the only sound on the audio track is over-loud mouse clicks. It's bizarre! If you've got an audio track, use it!

Okay, I know it's often all about localisation and producing the demo in twelve different languages, but sometimes it's just down to a misguided belief that if a demo isn't "slick" it's not effective. Quite the reverse. For me, those slick demos - particularly the voiceless ones - are eminently forgettable, whereas the informal ones, like this SharePoint demo, really get the information across well and stick in your mind.  

More demos by Darren Strange at:

http://blogs.msdn.com/officerocker/archive/tags/Blogcast/default.aspx

Incidentally, Darren mentions a little trick of Windows Media Player that's worth knowing. Press Ctrl+G to speed up the demo. You get through the demo a bit quicker without the commentary Mickey-Mousing. To get back to normal speed, just click the Play button.

For amusement value, try pressing Ctrl+S to slow things down.

I've got to admit I'd always had a jaded opinion of the Agile software development methodology. From what I knew of it - no detailed requirements document, no functional specification, no prototyping, no design thoroughly first then build it - from all of this it seemed to me that Agile was something dreamed up by a software developer, for software developers, but a potential nightmare for testers, technical authors, marketing, sales and support. To me it seemed like Agile was a kind of a "let's just bash on and make it up as we go along" approach that left developers free to do whatever seemed best (or maybe just easiest), without being tied to anyone else's plan, or maybe any plan at all. And, as a technical author, how do you document something that's evolving from day to day according to the whim of developer?

So that was where I was with Agile until the week before last. Not hostile to Agile, but definitely skeptical.

Then, as part of the restructuring exercise that's underway at my work, I spent a week with MarketAcuity CEO and Agile guru Sam Bayer. I'm not entirely sure what Sam's mission was: whether he'd been tasked with introducing Agile product development to the company, or just talking us through the Agile methodology. He has a very laid-back, discursive approach, so it's hard to tell. It never felt like he was trying to teach us particularly, more like he was just talking with us about one way of doing things.

We started with some basics of Agile product development. What's the point? Answer: it's about accelerating value to the customer. The 4 pillars of Agile:

• Customer
  The process is centred around the customer. It's not about producing some new, cool product because it's something we think would be interesting to work on, or because it's this year's big thing. It's about finding out what our customers and potential customers need and value and doing that for them.
• Demonstrations
  Show your customers the real production software (not a prototype or a smoke and mirrors job) on a regular basis and get their feedback.
• Iterative
  Build something, demo it, get feedback, build some more, and so on. Demonstrations could be a week or a month apart, but probably not more than a month apart, and always on a regular schedule. Don't go away and work on something for six months or a year only to find at the end of that time that it's not really what the customer wants, because they found it hard to explain, or you weren't listening, or they changed their minds/personnel, or the market or operational environment changed.
• Collaborative
  This isn't the waterfall approach. There's no leader passing down commands that must be obeyed. Within the company everyone's got a role and a job to do, but these aren't set in stone with high walls. The team have to work together according to their knowledge and abilities to get the job done. And, looking externally, you've got to collaborate with the customer and bring them into the process.

Another concept that, first off, I found puzzling was that, as well as accelerating value to the customer, Agile helps you to accelerate failure. Sounds bizarre, but what it means is that if you're producing the wrong thing, or you've made bad decisions, or misunderstood the market, you get to realise this much earlier. You don't work on a project for a year, then have a launch and suddenly get hit with the truth that potential customers don't really rate what you've done, and the stuff they really want is missing from what you produced. If you're really going nowhere with a project then it's much better to find out soon, cut your losses and get on with doing something profitable.

All of this, and more, makes perfect sense to me. But it really wasn't until day 3 of the week that things really clicked with me. A lightbulb went on and suddenly I saw a way of doing this product management thing successfully.

So now I sort of feel like a convert to Agile. It fits with my way of thinking. Don't overcomplicate things. Don't weigh yourself down with a ton of process and procedure rules. Do one thing at a time, bit by bit. Tell the truth. Don't pretend you always have all the answers. Talk to people. Get their opinions. Keep talking. Keep listening. Be prepared to change your mind.

Suddenly I'm no longer in the documentation business. My job changed from Documentation Manager to Bid Team Manager. I'm currently involved in preparing proposals for a couple of new business tenders, which is going to leave me no time for podcasting, or even blogging.

So - at least for the time being - ITauthor.com is going into hibernation. Thanks for reading/listening, if you have been.

Bye for now.

Alistair

Want to read about tech writing? Check out Tom Johnson's directory of tech writer blogs at:

http://www.techwriterblogs.com/doku.php

If you haven't had a look at Windows Live for a while, it's worth a look. There's a couple of really nice things on there now. The first one is the one that's had a lot of publicity: Spaces. This is, in effect, your own Web site on live.com. You get to choose a URL (e.g. yourname.spaces.live.com) and your get a personal Web space with a blog, a photo gallery, storage space for saving files that you want to access from anywhere, an event planner and the usual friends list. You can set up the permissions to keep everything private, make everything public, or specify who gets to see your pictures, your blog, your stored files, etc.

The other excellent addition to Windows Live is a replacement for Windows Picture and Fax Viewer, which, until today, was my default application for viewing image files from Windows Explorer and doing a slideshow. It's called Windows Live Photo Gallery. It does all the stuff Picture Viewer used to do, like rotating your photos and doing a slideshow, but it also makes it really easy to adjust your images, including cropping and resizing them.

If you have a look at my recent post on My podcast recording setup, the photos in there were fixed up using Live Photo Gallery. I took the photos in my poorly lit study, beside a very yellow desk lamp, without any flash lighting. The results were not great, but clicking the Auto Correct button worked wonders and made it look like I'd taken the photos beside a window with plenty of natural light. I also increased the brightness and contrast a little and then cranked up the Sharpness setting to the max just so's the settings on the mixer were as clear as possible. Compare a detail from the original photo and the fixed version:

Original:
 
Fixed:
 
The fixed version is quite grainy because of the artificially high sharpness setting I used, but I think the result are really good, considering the original photos were so poor.

I've always used Photoshop for most image adjusting, but for little quick things like this, I'll be using Live Photo Gallery from now on. By the time Photoshop has loaded I could have done my colour correction, cropping and resizing and posted the results to my blog.

For more information about Windows Live, see:

http://get.live.com/wl/all