John and Cory going over the discount engine and what is needed there. We have another project called the "smart cart" that deals with the cart logic as a whole. It really sounds like the client wants the smart cart logic to be built-in to the discount engine. We are aware of both projects, we just have people wanting more than is currently available. It comes down to time, resources, and priorities. We are trying and continue to do so.

Chuck joined the meeting and we went over a few of his to do list items for the parts and advanced part search pages. He also had some questions about grouping and how certain reports were grouping records by different things. Somewhat of some older legacy code and we don't do it that way any more. Trying to make it work. We had to do some patching and including some hidden form fields on some of his new reports and pages. It is coming along. I only wish that I could spend more time to help it get finished sooner.

Quarterly meeting meeting with Euflora and flyhi. Pretty quick today. Just following up with a few topics and running some things across the different teams as a sounding board. They are working on a press release for their flyhi deliver service. We briefly talked about the item catalog, upcoming project. That need for a global item catalog is growing and gaining steam and pressure.

After the Euflora meeting, Alan, Cory, John, and I stayed on the meeting. We were going over some scrum and agile development stuff. Alan is leading us in that direction and we are trying to help and support those efforts. We talked and Alan was trying to get us more educated. We will review some of the documents that he has give us and then go from there. We even lightly planned one of our first agile scrum sprints. We are going to do a real project, and use it to help train the team on how to do these sprints. Kind of a train the trainers with a real project in mind. One of the goals is to use the teams within the scrum sprints to help with answering questions and doing peer sign-off vs just having Brandon do the code review and sign-off.

Wayne joined the meeting and chimed in here and there as well. Once Alan left, we switched gears and Cory and I talked with Wayne about next steps and where things can go. We talked about some known big projects that are on Wayne's plate and even offered him to recruit help from Bryan, Alan, Eric, or John. We also asked him to reach out to Bryan and Eric and offer to help where needed.

Cory was talking to John about the new developer's testing box and who would take care of what, along with any small bugs that pop up in the testing environment. She is excited to get in there and do some testing, but may need help if there are any errors or bugs that pop up. After that, John and Wayne were talking about servers, updates, and installs of new patches, Java versions, and other services. Both Wayne and John have been looking at and watching some of the logs to see where certain traffic spikes are coming from. So far, it looks pretty normal and going through existing channels vs a hack of any sort. The server land area is constantly changing. Lots of moving parts.

Towards the end, John was asking Cory and I about a raise. We talked briefly and I told him that I would bring it up with Steve. We have a great team, it just costs money to keep it going. All part of the game.

Meeting with Bryan to review and push up some code. We did a small code review and merged in some new files. We then ran a database update on data 0 and pushed up some new pages and code. We had test credentials for the merchant processing changes that we had made. We were only able to test it so far without running into the test vs live merchant credentials.

Small bug fix on merchant processing stuff. Bryan and I had code in place, it just got launched before we were ready. Scrambling to get some database updates run on all servers. Recording notes, emails, and coordinating things between different developers.

Back working on the PO line items and automating the rounding error on inserts and updates of the PO line items.

Danny was on this morning talking about redoing some of the interviews with Steve and I. He has done the first version but wants to redo it again. Steve was talking with John, Sean, and others. Taking care of business.

I started back into the PO line item rounding project. Working through tons of black box pages and custom code.

Towards the end, John, Steve, and I chatted about some different options. We talked about a raise for John, he is doing a great job. We also talked about some marketing and sales stuff. By way of suggestion, we would still like to use Adi (the blue dog avatar) but we want to make sure that we keep pitching adilas - all data is live and searchable - custom software as a service (SaaS) for all your operations and accounting needs.

We also talked about some other t-shirt and marketing material and how to keep things separated, yet linked in purpose.

Weekly server meeting. Wayne, Cory, John, and I were there. Steve was listening in for a little bit and then had to bail out. We went over a number of  topics that were server related. We talked about the auto deploy process and I mentioned that yesterday, we had a couple of servers that deployed new code, right during the middle of the day. We were expecting it to happen after hours so it kind of surprised us.

We spent some time talking about a custom data extraction process for a client. They keep asking questions and we feel like we have delivered what was asked for. We need to wrap that project us so that all parties know that it is finished.

Wayne, John, and I spent some time in bit bucket (code repository) dealing with settings, groups, and users. Wayne showed me some special dumps that we can do on the developer or testing box. Without going too deep, there were some URL variables that we could add to get some dumps and server level variables. I did record more notes inside of the wayne_andersen folder on my local drive with the file name of developers_or_testing_box_dump_options.

We talked about running database updates and keeping a running version of the MySQL database up to date. We also talked about some special database updates that Eric is wanting to run and having Wayne and Eric run those updates specifically, as they will need more access and power than we want to grant to normal database connection users. The last topic was the size of the content server. We may need to start breaking that down into a smaller subset of servers vs just one big huge one. That is great. We didn't know the capacity of that server and now we are starting to see that. All part of the plan. Expand and contract as needed.

Work session with Shannon on the adilas origins story and how to help introduce concepts for the adilas core concepts origins document. We are currently working on showing how the process of trying to teach the system to others has opened up our vision and helped us to start boiling things down to make it more standard and manageable. Everything that we do and have done has come through a need and series of cause and effect decisions. Fun to see it unfold and see what key choices and consequences have driven us through this entire process.

11/2: Eyerate Business integration on third party solutions page. Will meet with their team after 1st scrum to move project forward.

Emails and recording notes from the earlier appointments and meetings today. Small email to the marketing team about the use of "Adi" - our blue avatar and mascot. Trying to help standardize some of our marketing efforts.

Working on the PO line item rounding project for Steve. Spent a few hours on that project today going through custom black box code, and files out in custom. Changing hardcoded $0.00 values into a special keyword that will auto calculate the rounding error per line item.

Talking about some marketing and ideas. Danny, Sean, and I were on the meeting to begin with. We were talking about the use of the blue dog avatar and where we are trying to go, marketing wise. Lots of good and open conversations. We talked about a few different ideas and just kicked the ball around. John joined and we asked him a little bit about his experience and questions that he has been asked and/or had to explain. Good conversation.

After Sean and Danny left, John and I went over some stuff for the content server. I showed him some old graphics and drawings of our world building concepts and how we were going to structure data servers, content servers, databases, and corporations within those databases. Click here to see some of the other analogies and explanations for universe level, galaxies or galaxy level, clusters, solar systems, worlds, etc.

Looking into the logic behind the recipe/build process. I haven't been in there for years and I have a project that is taking me back in deep into that section of the system.

I got a few texts from Eric and he and Wayne were working on the developer's box and making sure that things were updated and good to go. I ended up joining them on a Zoom session for a bit. It makes me happy that they are working together. We have lots of great people and as they work together, I'm excited to see what comes out of those ventures.

John and I did a quick check-in. Normally, Cory joins us but she was travelling today. John reported on the discount engine remake project. He is gaining traction and realizes that we have to tone it back a little bit compared to his dream of where he wanted to take it. The current project is just too big of a lift right now. We'll get back to it later on. The other thing that he reported on was some server stuff and John is taking more of a role in the code management and merging area. Especially for the new development environment and testing server. He has been put in charge of that.

Lots of emails. Marisa was chiming in on some marketing ideas. I also got some emails from Audrey and Marisa dealing with other marketing things, questions, budgets, and goals. Good stuff. I sent off a text to Steve to get a confirmation on some of the things that are going on. I want him to be involved with the decisions.

In between times, I was doing more research on the recipe/build process and getting deeper into the differences between build and sell (invoice based recipes) and build and hold (production or internal manufacturing PO's and inventory manipulation stuff). I'm seeing that I may need to add more options to help with sub inventory, multiple decimals, and yield multipliers. When we originally built this section, it was pretty simple. In the meantime, some of the needs are much more diverse and deeper. This whole thing is coming form a project to go back in and check some of the rounding errors for PO line items.

Without being too detailed, no rounding is needed if you have whole numbers times other simple whole numbers or simple decimals. It really gets funky if you have high quantities and costs that are clear out into the 5 decimal land. If you combine the two, the rounding error really starts to be more visible and important. Anyways, looking into what is needed to take those tools to the next level.

Danny and I had a fun meeting and did a little interview. We did one last week, but they wanted to change the format up a little bit. We had a fun time and even got into some other questions that weren't part of the "script". I think that both Danny and I had a really fun time and hopefully he got some good stuff.

Meeting with Bryan to talk about tips and how to record and take them through the full process. Often tips are done via cash and not even part of the system. However, if credit card transactions are part of the mix, then we have to be able to handle tips and helping that money flow across all of the financials without leaving huge holes. We went through a number of different options and ways of doing it. I imagine that it will end up being a setting or series of settings as to how it runs through the system. We covered cash payouts, actually setting up individual tip jars per person (special accounts), negative receivables (credit), adding in a "tips" money type, showing a liability back out to the employees, etc. Lots of scenarios.

We were drawing on the screen using GoToMeeting drawing tools and also using a tool we call the financial flow calculator. We have a version inside the system and also built a free version outside of the secured environment. No data gets entered into the database, it is just a scratch or worksheet type calculator. Anyways, we used it to track the pieces through the P&L and the balance sheet. Lots of cause and effect relationships. This little tool is a great helper for those type of things.

Here is a link to the free - public version of the financial flow calculator. Great little training tool.
https://data0.adilas.biz/financial_flow_calculator.cfm - free financial flow calculator
https://data0.adilas.biz/top_secret/help.cfm?id=363&pwd=flow - help file for the financial flow calculator

Danny was on the meeting this morning with some of the other guys. He and I were talking about the little interview session that we had yesterday. I was really happy and on cloud nine yesterday after that little session. Super fun! Anyways, Danny was talking about the question that he gave me about the elevator pitch. I quickly reviewed it and sent them over a link to the basics of the 3 part elevator pitch. Real quick - 1. High-end software as a service model (SaaS). 2. We service and cover needs in operations and accounting. And 3. We have a core system, ready, out of the box that we use and then we customize on top of that as needed. Those are the nuts and bolts of the super quick elevator pitch (at least currently).

John had some questions and was asking about some code samples and style guide (adilas docs) stuff. I gave him a bunch of samples and hopefully pointed him in a good direction. Chuck joined the meeting and John and Chuck were talking about some tweaks and changes to both the style guide and the docs (code snippets). I'm really happy that they are using that. Just by them using it, it brings value to that project.

Chuck and I did a small work session on the view parts page. He is doing a face lift on that page. We went over some things, I helped him with his settings, we added new my cart favorite buttons, we added new flex grid tie-ins, etc. Lots of talking and bouncing ideas off of each other. The current view is very top to bottom linear. We talked about doing two different mock-ups. One that would be linear (top to bottom) like the current page but with new look and feel. We also decided that we could break the page into some horizontal tabs to use the space more efficiently. We could also use those tabs to categorized the different sections. This is not exact yet, but things like main item details, photo gallery, sub/child inventory, recipe/build tie-ins, my cart favorite buttons, flex grid tie-ins, etc. Each tab would hold the respective data below it and thus somewhat hide what is not wanted unless clicked.

After that, I was recording notes, checking emails, and trying to help.

Working on content and verbage for an article we are writing (Shannon and I) dealing with the origins of the adilas core concepts. See attached for where we are at. Shannon and I were exploring on where, why, and how some of those core concepts came to life. We weren't planning on getting into all of this stuff like super deep custom business software and theory, but... The core concepts sort of just fell into our laps. We just picked them up and mixed them together... We didn't come up with them, but we sure have been grateful for them. The results are the lessons that we have learned and where we are trying to go and head.

Gratefully, the core concepts have been one of our best guiding lights and we are very vested in them. He/She who masters the concepts, masters much. They are kind of guiding us along this path and journey. I personally love learning and really enjoy talking about, teaching, and brainstorming on the different topics and subjects. I've been in and through many of these situations, scenarios, concepts, and topics. I've lived it, to some extent. I'm still learning, but loving it. I love talking about world building concepts, 3D data assembly lines ideas and ways to implement things. I've also really enjoyed brainstorming on other 3D business world building ideas. Shannon and I were talking universe level, galaxy level, cluster level, solar system level, word level, locations, groups, individuals, data, and running all of these different levels over time. So many different levels.

Fun stuff like 3D data levels (x=time, y=resources and money, and y=space and depth (layering, stacking, details, relationships, etc.). Good stuff.

As part of our research today, we were talking about more world building stuff and how all of that (those concepts) came to be. Once again, we didn't come up with them, but we for sure will help be a spokesman for the subject and topic. We love it! We were discussing the idea of learning and then protecting things through sharing of intellectual property (IP) stuff. That feels like one of our roles. We learn it, then we share it. If we just keep it to ourselves, no one else will gain from it. We really want to share and protect these pieces. Here is an article (developer's notebook entry) on intellectual property and ways of sharing to protect things. I feel driven to help educate, demonstrate, and protect some of the main core concepts and ideas that we, adilas, are founded upon. It give me purpose to try to play a role with these things. Good stuff.

Recording notes from earlier today and checking emails and what not. Light planning on the next phase of the recipe/build process. It already exists, just looking at what else is needed and how it could be tightened up a bit and tied in better with sub or child inventory packages.

Checking servers and updating time zones for daylight savings.

Steve gave us all an update on some of the things that are happening with Mike, Oklahoma, business, and things in general. He was showing us some emails and flyers that he got from the different sources. After that, some of the guys used the meeting to chit chat for a few minutes and do some fun back and forth catch-up. Nothing business related, just fun. They then started to file off and work on their own projects. Steve requested some photos and documents from me for an SBA loan and we then mostly did our own things. Fairly quite morning, thus far. 

Emails and other light clean-up.

Meeting with Bryan to go over tips for a merchant processing integration. The code looked good. We made a few minor tweaks and worked through the process. Once we ran things live, we had to update a money type id for "Tips" but other than that, it went pretty smooth.

Small bug fix dealing with some custom refund code in the shopping cart. It would only happen every once in a while, but we had a small order of operations bug. Just moved some code around and it fixed it. Basically, calling and trying to use a variable before we validated that it was there.

Back on the project to help with PO line items and getting correct rounding. The project is now leading towards us allowing subs or child inventory to be used internally through recipe/build actions. Normally, the recipes just hold parent inventory items. That will continue as before. The new code that we are working on will allow for subs to be pulled in, just in time, while doing an internal build process using recipe/builds.

Small session with Chuck to go over some layout and design options for the the view parts (general inventory items) and the parts usage page. He had some mock-ups and we talked pros and cons and pitched some other ideas back and forth. Small user design and layout session.

Emails and other small tasks.

Wow, power packed meeting and tensions were running high this morning. It started out and Steve and Danny were talking sales, models, and different teams and such. No big deal. We then got off into some custom work that one of the developers was doing and it got a little bit wild. We are really striving to bring all of the custom projects under the main adilas roof or umbrella. That is fine and well, but there are still a few older projects out that that are 100% custom and have been run by some of our independent developers. These projects don't seem to be problem, until, the crap hits the fan. Then it's a big deal.

Anyways, one of the custom projects is starting to go over budget and getting some scope creep (wanting new features that weren't originally planned or designed into the project). That makes all of us, on the meeting have to take time and see what we can do to fix things. It also comes down to who is going to fix what and how do we bill for that. We are really trying to cover costs for what we have to do. It was originally all with one developer and now it is spreading (getting other designers and developers involved). We have dealt with this tons over the years. All of our developers are independent. It has only been recently that we've tried to bring things more under the main adilas umbrella or virtual roof. This includes a project manager, quotes, estimates, project id's, proper billing, code sign-off, deployment, etc. Anyways, due to some emails going around, this project kind of blew up and some bottled up emotions and opinions (from multiple sides) kind of hit the virtual fan and created a fairly hot discussion.

We weren't able to come to a specific agreement before some of the different parties had to bail out for other meetings. Reporting on things later on (a couple days after - when I was recording these notes), it got better, but it was a little bit hot and heavy for a while, if you know what I mean.

Server meeting between Wayne, John, and I. Going over a number of different topics. We talked about special websites that branch off of the main root or master branch. Ideally, if they are needed, we'll put them under public from now on. We decided that we may make a retired code repo (code repository) for things that are no longer in use or that are old. That was Wayne's idea and I think that it is awesome. I tend to just leave things where they are and work around them. He is trying to streamline things and help to standardize where possible.

Wayne is making big steps on the conversion between Application.cfm and Application.cfc's (overarching application and security structure of the main application pieces). Things are going well and he is ready to push them up to the dev server for testing. That is awesome. That project is a prep step for bigger corp-wide settings projects and simplifying some of the settings. We have two tables that are really big, and both of them hold settings. We need to change the format so that we are prepped for more growth in those areas.

We spent some time talking about the cost of storing content and files off of the main data servers. That is one of the pieces that is holding us up from clustering servers. Anyways, we are looking in to it and starting to chip away at that project as well. The goal would be to get all of the content in one place (photos, images, content, media, files, temp uploads, etc.) That one place may be a variable (change it per corporation or per server box or per cluster) but a special spot where all of the extra files that are not part of the master code branch go. Currently, they are stored on the data boxes in special folders. They, other files, are stored on the content server. This little project came up because we are having to up the storage on the content server. Lots of companies are using it. Eventually, we may have multiple content servers and be able to dynamically assign them. Good stuff.

Some of the other topics for discussion were dealing with the datasource project (smaller databases per corp or per solar system - linked companies). Timezones on the servers and making them all the same. We also spent some time looking into possible cost savings by switching from Adobe ColdFusion to Lucee (free and open source cfml - still ColdFusion but a different engine). If we were to switch, it would save us thousands and thousands year over year. Worth checking out.

Paying bill and then back on the PO line item rounding project. Working on the recipe/build pages and pieces to allow the correct costing and rounding from that angle. Spent some time on the page getting the extended values to show up to 5 decimal points. Prior to this, they were mostly in 2 decimal places. Lots of new JavaScript to help with calculating cost changes as they happen. Pushed files up to bit bucket when done for the day.

Eric was checking in on connections to the development server. Pointed him to Wayne and maybe even making a new database user for his special database updates for the sales tax projects.

Danny and I were talking about sales angles. Things keep changing and we need to keep up and keep changing in order to survive. We talked about the book "Who Moved My Cheese". I recommended it to him for a good read. We then talked about small little steps and if people knew what we really do, what would that change? Anyways, moving towards that angle.

Once everybody else left the meeting, it was just John and I. He went ahead and gave me an update on what he was working on. We went over some progress on the redo/facelift for the discount engine. His GUI (graphical user interface) is looking good - modern terms just use the name UI for user interface, but they mean the same thing. We talked about funding and changes that are coming down the pipeline.

John has a diverse skill set. He works on physical computers, networking, web development, secure software, frontend graphics (UI and UX), as well as servers. Great mix.

We also got into a discussion on budgets and the need for doing and keeping a budget. We talked about increased costs on the server and server support side of things. That cost needs to be factored into the mix. We also talked about maybe dropping the adilas phones stuff. There is quite a bit of maintenance that is going to be needed there both now and in the future. The last topic of the day was dealing with year-end documents, forms, and things for payroll for the upcoming year. That too is a never-ending process.

Talking about testing code on live servers and options, such as a one-off (rename a page and no one will know that it exists - leave the older one fully in tact but tweak the copy or other page) or pulling code between branches as needed. Kind of some possible hacks, tricks, and tips.

Chuck did some show and tell on the view parts page and the parts usage pages. These are existing pages in the site. The new project is doing an upgrade and facelift on those pages. Both pages are being configured into a series of horizontal tabs. The old pages ran up and down and had a lot of scrolling. The new ones should be less scrolling and hopefully easier to use and navigate.

Lots of talk about how to handle custom code and custom projects from an independent developer type role and format. Yesterday there was some discussion and a small disagreement between Steve and I about how to handle these things. Tensions were high. Both of us are trying to make things happen. Chuck was talking about the need to put some rules in place for going forward. One of his comments was, he didn't think that it was fair for someone to be punished for moonlighting, if they are an independent. If they are an employee, then that might be different. However, our current model is setup to handle independent contractors.

Chuck had some good ideas on creating incentives and ideas on some of the rules that would help the process out. I asked him to put together a bulleted list of some ideas to get the discussion going and have at least a staring place. Chuck does independent work for a number of clients and different companies. Chuck kept saying that if a project is built on top of adilas, as a platform or system, then adilas should get a cut from that project. That is not in place at all at this time. He was mentioning IP (intellectual property) and how that is a company's asset and they should get a kickback if it is being used.

This is kind of funny, but Chuck said that he felt like a kid watching mom and dad fighting and trying to help out and find some common middle ground. He was pitching that we need an SOP (standard operating procedure) for how to handle custom projects. That would be good. We all need some standards and virtual limits or lines to be drawn. All of those things would be good to know. Especially, so that we don't get custom projects that get sticky in a bad way. We like it when clients like what we do and get sticky, meaning they want to stay around. If a project gets sticky, in a bad way, that is no fun. If we run all projects through standard processes, it will eventually help all parties involved. Good call.

Reviewing past lessons from notes in the developer's notebook. I literally was going through a pile or papers on my desk of things that I have printed out. Here are a few of the things that I was reviewing:

- Notes from a business consulting meeting at the end of 2019

- Notes from another business consulting meeting in the first part of 2020

- More business consulting meeting notes - end of January 2020

It was great to go back over some of these pieces. Some of them have completed and come to fruition and some of the other pieces are still flagging in the wind. Keep living and keep learning! We all need this kind of stuff.

Meeting between Alan and I, going over the scrum and agile development models and overview. Before we jumped into that, he and I went into adilas.biz and looked around on taxes, financials, and where things are at for the current 2021 fiscal year. That always helps put things in perspective, both good and bad. Anyways, I think it helps.

Once we were done there, we jumped back over to the scrum overview. We went over some other development processes and talked about the roles of project managers and developers. In scrum, the scrum master helps the team figure it out on their own and take ownership within the project. That doesn't eliminate the project manager, but it does transfer a lot of the weight between the product owner, scrum master, and development team. I'm excited about that.

We got into other scrum definitions and key points. We talked about product backlogs and we even went and looked inside of adilas on both Cory's master list of projects (over 300 currently listed) as well as what is already in the project queue (only about 20 in the queue). There was talk about "the definition of done" and what that means to different parties. Alan and I spent quite a bit of time talking about the product backlog (prioritizing a list of projects). We went over user stories and what those mean. We talked about who will do them (it - the user story)? What will they be doing? And what would be the acceptance test or approvals (sign-off's).

We got into story points, risk, complexity, and repetition/familiarity of the different pieces. The process allows for lots and lots of refinement. Alan and I went over some our own goals and wrote things down. Alan has that document. We really want to keep refining our own elements of time to handle all of our project management pieces. We already have a great start of lots of the pieces. It just may take a small scrum sprint to really tighten things up there. That would be really cool.

Along the way, Alan had a document that was prepped with different talking points, questions, and sections for planning notes. It worked well and we went down the document and filled in answers and recorded notes. Towards the end, we talked about ways of tracking bugs and what is called technical debt (other things, like bugs, that need to be done and taken care of that are outside the scope of the scrum sprint).

There are lots of different approaches on how to run these projects. We will be actively experimenting to figure out what works best for adilas and our team. Along the way, we will need to keep up with the backlog maintenance and refinement process. Lots of prioritizing and adding in details where and as needed. Good little meeting.

Today's subject was the adilas market (adilas world) and how to break down the doors and get in there. Russell and Nick built it, the adilas market or marketplace, years ago and we didn't have any documentation on it. Bryan and I went in there and were virtually backwards engineering things and figuring it out. We made some great progress without breaking anything, that was awesome. Anyways, we made a few changes and both of us know how to get in there now. We will keep refining that process so that it will be even more usable in the future.

We spent some time talking about custom code jobs and how things need to flow. We talked about old models and where we are headed with some of our new things and new models (where we are going). Good conversation. I asked Bryan to write me an email with some pros and cons of the different models (old fully independent and newer all under the adilas roof or umbrella model). Just trying to get some feedback and insight on rules and who is looking for what.

At the end, we talked briefly about some of the upcoming agile and scrum sprints that we are planning. Bryan is open to the changes and very interested in learning along the way. That is great.

Reviewing past notes and business consulting documents. Mostly going over a multiple page outline that we did with Jonathan Johnson back in March of 2020. There is some really good stuff there. I have the paper copy and digital copy at my house.

For internal use... If you want to get to the real document, go to the media/content homepage and do an advanced search for this file name: meeting_with_epic_enterprises.docx

On a client Zoom meeting with Kelly and a manufacturing company. They are mixing elements of time (calendar and scheduling) with recipe/builds and manufacturing (production runs). They are really trying to use the scheduling (elements of time) to virtually reserve inventory in the future for their production runs. Interesting stuff. Anyways, we met and I showed them some of the new changes that we have been working on and I was somewhat surprised, they didn't know about them. I could really see the breakdown in communication. I had related the updates to who I thought needed them, but then it never got passed on. Also, I never took the time to physically show the person who needed it (the new updates and information) how to operate the new features. Lots of assuming, on my part. Anyways, we were showing them things, that they had asked for, that had been done for almost a month, and it was totally new to them. Good lesson. Passing on the update and correct information is huge.

Great little meeting. We were dealing with flex attributes, elements of time, settings for time, and other requests. It was also very apparent that they, the client, wanted full control over the page layout, order, display, and full verbage. That is possible, but usually it takes an outside person, like Kelly, to get that information from the client and then translate the wants and needs into instructions for the developers and development team. Once they get it right, how they want it, they also want to cascade the same changes to multiple systems. Not only custom software solutions, but repeatable and duplicatable custom software solutions. It was good to see somewhat of what they were looking for. Kelly and I will meet again to go over things after she does her work, review, and then submits the projects and their requirements.

Emails and replies to Wayne about code review and suggestions for change. He is helping out with some code review on certain projects. On a call with Bryan to go over methods and functions and how we need to keep states (such as application, session, page, form, url, etc.) out of the cfc's (methods). We want the functions and methods to be stateless or not dependent on any other application state or state of being. We talked about different situations and how those roll together and/or flow through the code. Certain places we can use scopes, states, and even mix them in our code. Other places in our code, we need each function or method to be completely independent and not rely on any outside states of the application (don't mix certain pieces). Good little chat.

We also talked about pros and cons of different development cycle methods. This deals with how a project goes from concept, to planning, to development, to testing, to deployment (the process that it takes). We, as an adilas team, are looking forward to playing with some agile and scrum type approaches, as early as next week.

Recording notes and catching up from the last couple of days. Transferring hand scribbled notes or small digital notes into entries in the developer's notebook.

Working with Shannon on editing some new verbage and storyline content for the adilas core concepts origins document. See attached. Working on the part where we were introduced to the concept of "world building" and business world building. Trying to show the tie-ins between the concept of world building and how that relates to custom business software. Good work session. Making progress.

Quick meeting with Bryan to go over a setup article that he wrote for a merchant processing 3rd party solution. We made a few small edits. After that, we ended up on a phone call for a different question, after the first meeting was over.

Paying bills, recording expenses, scanning documents, and recording notes from earlier in the week. Trying to stay caught up. Small to do list items. Lots of good stuff being put in the developer's notebook section. The good, the bad, the ugly, all of it. What a treasure trove. Good stuff.

Steve and Sean were going over leads, sales, and updates from the weekend. Steve asked me for a report on the AWH project. I told him about the meeting we had on Thursday morning and who has the ball (making decisions) for the next steps. Steve had to jump on to another meeting. Just Sean, John, and I were left on this meeting. We chatted for a bit and then went on mute and all worked in the background.

Cory and I touching base on projects. She has been out of town for a few days, so just catching up and doing some updates and follow-up. We looked at our schedules and added a few things to help us keep pushing forward.

We then spent some time checking code and logic on how the sub barcode are being used. We looked into the code on the keyword "auto" and what process that does on the sub barcodes. As we got deeper into the project, we decided that we need to go back to the client and figure out if they are using standard processes or some other special processes such as invoice to PO (cross corp) or production pages, cultivation pages, bulk pages, etc. Trying to track down some of the changes.

The last part o the meeting, we briefly talked about the upcoming scrum sprints and where we are heading.

Server meeting with Wayne, John, Cory, and I. We talked about some of the domain names that we have and making sure that they resolve to the correct servers. These are extra domain names that deal with data assembly lines, world building, business zipper, data sphere stuff, and more.

We talked about budgets and light work on Excel doing some simple math. Along with this, we also talked about transferring backend code over to Lucee, an open source product that reads and translates the Adobe ColdFusion language. Basically, a switch between using the commercial (high dollar) version or the lower cost, but still super powerful, open source option. This could save adilas over $30K/year going forward. That is a great possible savings. We talked about what it might take to switch over.

Towards the end, Cory had some questions and we did some math, budgets, and drawing on what we are trying to do. We were talking about clustering of servers, possible fees per CPU cores, etc. It became more clear as we went through it. Good stuff.

Alan lead the team through an introduction to Agile and scrum development cycles. Good meeting. We had quite a few folks on the meeting with us. Lots of participation from Cory, Bryan, Wayne, John, Alan, and I. See attached for the agenda and the notes from the meeting. Great intro and we started to break things down at the end. Our goal is to create a item catalog on the enterprise system level. This is a master list of items, parts, or general inventory product. We ran out of time. To be continued tomorrow at 1-3 pm.

Meeting with Dave and Paul from visionmax.com

- Dave - they do a lot of kiosk work, mobile, web, etc. Some kind of a protected environment (usually full screen) and interfacing with some sort of kiosk or hardware unit.

- We need a bridge and/or proxy type environment - it is tough to go from web directly to hardware - we need a bridge or proxy type level

- Local installed code that allows for hardware interactions

- Browsers are clamping down on access to outside pieces and parties.

- They are seeing more and more need to play along SSL's on both web, local proxy, and middle ware interfaces. Certificates are needed on all side. They need to match.

- These guys have already done the integration with the PayPod unit. That is half of the way to the full goal.

- Dealing with money, there is tons of validation, who does what, and protecting from possible hacks.

- They, are out a couple of months (timelines). They took a good 3-4 months to build out the original pieces (middle ware) and then maintenance and other iterations based on that. They have been at this for about 10 years.

- There is an IP (intellectual property) aspect to this relationship.

- Http payload as XML or JSON - back and forth transactions. This could be for web, mobile, or hybrid type interfaces.

- Offer is open, they can point us in a good direction and we could do the development, or we could figure out a license type agreement and use their products and libraries.

Looking into a bug with Bryan on his eXPO echeck functionality. We were going through things line by line to find the bug. We eventually found that one of the include pages that we were looking at was not the real page that we were dealing with. Basically, we were making changes on a page and it wasn't passing the code changes through to the page. This sent us on a wild goose chase trying to track things down and add other break points. We finally figured out that the page that we thought we were tweaking was a page with the same name but in a totally different folder. Basically, Bryan had made a back-up file of the original and placed it outside of the code repository. Without knowing, he had pulled up the back-up page and we were trying to modify it vs the real file. The editor just showed the file name, so we thought that we were doing changes on the correct page but it never made it into the page due to the original and the back-up page issue. Wild goose chase but we finally figured it out.

Steve was giving us a report on some of his meetings. We reported back to him about some of the different projects, experiments, and where things are headed with the scrum teams. Lots of good back and forth questions and discussions.

Cory joined meeting and her and John went over some new features on the discount engine interface, plans, and project in general. We are trying to wrap up some of the changes to get them launched here soon. Cory gave John some good direction and helped him make some decisions. We also talked and set some other plans in motion going forward.

Jumped on a meeting to get a demo from the Cannapages and Cannamenu guys. They are trying to do a "deal to door" type approach. They showed us their new adilas driven (data) website and Chrome browser extensions. Super cool suff!

They had a bunch of guys on the meeting for the demo. One of them said, "The pro of adilas is that it is so diverse and powerful. The con is there is almost too much there." We would echo the same thing.

They showed us their robust shopping cart, nice looking pages, dynamic layouts, pricing matrixes, and data driven content. It, their custom shopping cart, connects via API sockets in the backend to a valid adilas account (able to push/pull - quotes, invoices, inventory, images, etc.). As we talked, there was some discussion about more bulk ecommerce tools, and being able to make their product an easy 3rd party extension and feature for custom shopping carts. We also got into some of the Chrome (internet browser) extensions and how that looks and interacts over the top of the existing adilas code and pieces. That was really cool! Almost to the level of custom on top of custom.

As a fun side note, these guys, have been around for years and have been big adilas fans. It is fun to see what they have come up with. Not sure of the exact date, but somewhere between 2010 and 2013 ish. Good stuff!

After they left, their team, the adilas guys and gals had a small discussion on what we saw, liked, and thought. We commented on the potential for making step by step industry specific wizards (handrails or custom interface to help with setup of certain things or tasks). We also love the fact that they already do a lot of marketing, print, web, digital, etc. Adilas doesn't do much marketing yet (tools we provide). We also talked about the browser extensions and how that made a cool custom look and feel over our existing code. Steve kept talking about custom on top of custom possibilities. That was fun.

Good work session with Shannon. We were refining the adilas core concepts origins project. Coming up with verbage and copy for introducing the concept of world building. See attached for our progress.

There were six of us on the meeting today. We were trying to refine some of the user stories. We had Alan, Bryan, Chuck, Cory, John, and I on the meeting. We started out by doing a review of the basic scrum pieces. See attached for our notes. We spent most of our time going over the user stories and acceptance criteria for the project. Still learning as a team, but making progress.

There are two docs attached to this element of time. One is general scrum notes and such. The other one is our notes from today dealing with the refinement process of our current project - global product or item catalog.

Towards the end of the meeting, there was a small discussion about the team members and what their strengths are and how we could mix these pieces. We are going to have Alan jump in and take the lead and help get some things prepped and ready for the next step. We are all learning as we go. Even today, we are scrumming and setting up self-forming teams and pulling retrospective views, learning and moving forward.

One note for the future... We need to work on planning things out far enough to let the other guys know about our plans. We have been developing things all by ourselves for years. It takes more future planning to get things coordinated with other team members.

Cory and I jumped on a meeting and were looking over an error that she had while running ecommerce on the dev testing server. We spent quite a bit of time tracking things down and trying to fix the issues. It ended up being a path or mapping issue between test and live environments. I'll have to get with Wayne to work out those details. Sent Wayne an email to see if we could meet up tomorrow morning.

Just Wayne and I on the morning meeting. Just for fun, we spoke in Portuguese for a bit. We flipped back to English when I couldn't explain my error  that I was having in Portuguese. Still kinda fun.

We worked on the dev_testing branch of code and looked into path variables, application scope, and session scope values. We were testing things out in ecommerce land and it wasn't able to add to the cart. We found some errors in some new code that is only on the development environment and sent a screenshot to Alan. It was dealing with some new code that he was working on.

Chuck and I went over an email that he sent me last week. I hadn't had a chance to read it yet. The email had a number of ideas for some rules of engagement between adilas and the developers as independent contractors. Good stuff. We read over the email and it had 10 or so bullet points for ideas and possible rules and things to consider as we do custom projects and custom jobs. We talked about ways of creating incentive, bonuses, commissions, etc. Another big key element in this email was dealing with if the project is built on top of the adilas platform, then adilas should have more control over it, be able to set the terms, and get a kickback by running the project through internal channels. Anyways, some great ideas. I told Chuck that I would setup a meeting with Steve to go over things.

So, one of the underlying pieces that is needed is a set of standards, rules of engagement, global style guides, and then following those rules, standards, and style guides. Easier said than done, for sure. We talked about some pros and cons of independent contractors vs employees as well as strengths and weaknesses of our team members. As we move forward, we need to keep in mind that this is a give and take type relationship. Help by setting up the boundaries, rules, and expectations.

Alan and team were doing some sprint planning. This is all part of our bigger scrum and agile training sessions. We had Bryan, Alan, Cory, John, Chuck, and myself on the meeting. We were going over user stories (list of to do list items) and using adilas to record and categorize those pieces. Alan did a great job and was getting feedback and questions from all of the parties involved. He had me demo some stuff, do some stick figure drawings, and help explain some of the options or flow. Cory had quite a few questions, Chuck made some suggestions, and John asked some very detailed questions about some of things that were just assumed but not fully stated. I thought that it was a good meeting.

Towards the end, we started using adilas to run these epics, user stories, combine the pieces, claim certain parts, and build out reports for our own internal usage. We are planning on using adilas for the project management tool and pulling reports to move pieces around on our own virtual scrum boards. We may end up doing some tweaking to this process later on, but for now, we'll just do it manually. I think that we are recording all of the data, we just want to make sure that it works.

After everybody else had left, it was just Cory, Alan, and I on the meeting. We spent some time and lightly planned out, on a calendar, our next couple of sprint windows. We plugged in some timeslots and pre-booked some time into January. The goal is to carve out some time so that this becomes a habit and where we are headed. We already have a number of things that are lining up to be in the sprints.

Recording notes, setting schedules, and trying to play catch-up.

Bryan and I working through a number of smaller questions. We checked out some cfqueryparams, uploading images for adilas marketplace, and talking about upcoming scrum sprint and some database work that is needed. All over the place but hopefully helpful.

I was also doing some research on git (code repository stuff) and how to go backwards in time to virtually undo certain code commits. Light research online. After Bryan left, I did some small updates to links for the adilas market and small updates on the adilas university professional profile inside the marketplace.

There were 11 of us on the GoToMeeting session this morning. We started out and some of the guys had some questions from yesterday's meetings. We answered a few things and some of the guys chatted and asked each other some questions. Alan joined the meeting around 9:30 and then we turned it into a virtual stand-up meeting (daily scrum meeting). Each of the guys took a turn. I was only able to stay until about 10 am and then I had to jump on another meeting.

Here is who was on the meeting this morning. Bryan, Cory, Steve, Alan, Chuck, Dustin, Eric, John, Sean, Wayne, and myself (Brandon).

Bryan had some questions about the database, plans, tables, columns, etc. Chuck showed us some small mock-up pages. He asked for some feedback and got some quick answers. John was working on some prototypes and asked for help from both Wayne and Alan. Towards the end, Alan was reporting on what he was doing and working on. I wish I could have stayed to see what else they chatted about, but I was impressed. Hopefully more good things to come.

Shannon and I had a good work session on the adilas core concepts and introducing the world building concepts that we got from Brandon Mull, a New Your Times bestselling author. Funny story, we actually got the concepts of world building from a presentation that Brandon Mull gave to middle school writers and artists in the Logan, UT area. Here are my notes, back in 2013, from that event. Fun memories. See attached for where we are at on our progress.

Emails, follow-ups, and calling the bank. Other little to do list stuff.

Quick meeting with Chuck. He had a question about starting a new page from scratch. By the time I got with him, he had almost figured it out. One quick tip and he was off to the races. Good stuff.

Going over elements of time and adding and transferring notes to the developer's notebook. Every day, there are tons of moving pieces.

Steve and Sean were touching base and chatting about some sales, new updates, and some options. Dustin, Wayne, and some other joined and checked in as well. We had a bunch of other guys join for the daily stand-up meeting. Alan ran that part of the process. We had Alan, Bryan, Chuck, John, Wayne, Steve, Sean, Dustin, and myself on the meeting. I was mostly just listening, but I heard some good reports. Chuck showed some stuff, Bryan showed some stuff, Wayne showed some stuff, and Alan showed some stuff. I didn't know everything that they were talking about, but I was impressed with the coordination and communication that was going on. Good stuff.

Towards the end, Alan was asking Wayne some deeper questions on models, services, DAO's (database access objects), and mock testing stuff. Object oriented deeper conversations. It seems like it is going well.

Going over questions, quotes, and projects with Cory. We talked about getting the Cannapages guys with a testing account on the development server. Lots of time talking about gift cards and running them through special accounts. We did some light research and looked up some stuff on the developer's notebook for special accounts, gift cards, and where things are at. We even looked at the database model for special accounts and gift cards. We really want to get on to this project. We talked about running things over and through the scrum teams vs just assigning projects to a specific developer. We have a lot to gain, if we can get these scrum teams working well and being efficient. We are hoping!

Emails, recording notes, and other follow-ups. General to do list stuff. Switched branches and checked a couple of past commits to get back into the PO line items rounding error and refining recipe/builds project.

Special accounts. A lot of work has already been done. Need to tie it in. 

Settings: turn on/off, rules, auto # or manual = need to have a setting to choose

Corp=# for gift cards

Create miniature accounts.

Load and unload and reload, expiration date.

Home page to deal with this directly (quick search option). How much is on your card?

Name of gift card is dynamic.

It's a real liability.

The client wants to use gift cards to generate more revenue and track liability. 

Do we load with an invoice?

Scrum in February hopefully.

Alan, Cory, and I on the meeting. Refining and pushing the projects forward. Light sprint review, thus far. Wayne and John have changed the database update process. We'll see how that works out. Alan is still helping us train on all of the agile and scrum stuff.

We started jumping into the product backlog and looking over projects and such. Cory was writing things down, Alan was helping her with specifics, and I was chiming in or helping with certain questions. I thought that it was working pretty good. Alan and I did have a side tangent that we went on dealing with images for part categories and images for items or general inventory items. We made some decisions and prepped some things for the next project.

He had a few changes that needed to be merged in and pushed up to servers. Did the merge and the push for Bryan and briefly chatted about the upcoming projects.

Switched back to the PO line item rounding error project. Working on some new JavaScript to help show extended costs calculations as the users interact with the recipe/build page for build and hold recipes (PO based recipes).

Eric joined the meeting and was asking for more power and control on the dev testing server and environment. He wants a new user that has more database admin control levels. He is working with stored procedures and aggregated data stuff. He was also wondering what the next project was going to be. He is almost done, but somewhat waiting on help from the server guys. We talked about going back to gift cards and more options for special accounts. We also went over some small bugs that he could look into and help out with.

Alan was traveling, so he asked me to help with the standup meeting for the scrum sprint. Bryan reported in and is working on passing the unit of measure info to the action page. Here and John were coordinating on some efforts. John piped up, and I'm glad that he did, and had some questions about how are we getting there and what are the steps that are knows or need to be built. Too many assumptions had been made and we sort of forgot about prerequisites and knowledge needed for the developers. There were three or four of us on the project that knew what was going on, so we felt like everybody was on the same page. Come to find out, there were multiple parties that didn't know how to setup a multiple corporation (multi world) environment and then how to setup the enterprise to transactional corporation mappings.

Anyways, those questions spun us off into a decent sized training session. We went over how to get to certain places (navigation), we went over step-by-step processes to add new corporations, assign inventory types, bridge users between corps and what not. We talked about permission, dependencies, and other required steps and pieces. The guys were really interested in starting the sprint, and we felt like it was a great starting project, we just forgot about all of the other prep work and knowledge that was needed. Basically, we jumped into the middle of things but didn't have a clear understanding of how everything worked. I say that statement, but some of the team, really did know what to do and where thigs were going, it just wasn't perfectly clear and common knowledge. Good lesson.

Here are some other notes from our meeting. Different people played in and out, but the whole thing was just shy of 3 hours.

- Too many assumptions

- The guys need the skills to figure out how to fake or mock-up the data. If the real source doesn't exist, they need to fake it or mock it up. That also requires some instruction and prep work to know what will be expected, what format, what names the fields, queries, and database tables and column will have. It's all more planning and communication.

- When to pull the new data and run the database updates (timing). With multiple people working on the same project, there wasn't a clear instruction as to when certain things were ready, stable, and good to go. That caused some of the guys to just sit around and wonder if things were ready. Not super efficient - yet. It will come. Great lessons are being learned.

- More conversations on learning how to fake inbound and outbound data

- From Wayne, he would love to see, get the UI (user interface) done first, new methods built, and then roll over to the DAO's (database access objects).

- Numerous questions on where does the frontend end and the backend begin?

- The need for internal training

- Talking about backend tools and controls - along the way

We then jumped into the server meeting. Normally, it has a specific start and end time, but today, it all felt like one big giant meeting. A bunch of the guys bailed out, after the huge training session on multiple corps and enterprise level systems. Just Wayne, John, Cory, and I stayed on for the server meeting.

We went over some of the extra domains and whether or not they were resolving to the correct spot. Small review from the earlier standup meeting. We are planning on heading more and more towards scrum projects and small teams. Some of the developers have questions and concerns and some of the projects may be over their heads. We, as a team, need to keep helping them along the path.

I'm really proud of Cory, she is taking almost any project that is coming across her desk, even ones that have already been assigned out to other developers, and she is trying to propose or turn them into smaller pieces and user stories. She was working with John and suggesting that we take his discount engine project and break it up into smaller user stories and what not. Good stuff.

At the very end, it was just Cory and I on the meeting. We went over some cash flow stuff, looked at receivables, payables, and talked some business strategy and options. We then got into a discussion of where things are going and help to help it go in a good direction. We have trained these guys to act and react in certain ways. We need to help them and even change the behavior. We need the guys to turn to their scrum teams vs turning to me to get help all the time. I'm excited to get that going and will work to support that change in direction.

This meeting happened, but it kinda got rolled into the prior meeting and I didn't know what the start and end times were. It sort of all fused together today. See other notes from today for details.

Shannon sent me a text and had to cancel. It worked out ok because all of the other morning meetings kinda overflowed and ran together.

Thinking about different angles - What is most important right now? How can we change patterns? What have we learned from the past (retrospective reviews)? What could we do differently?

I on purpose stepped away from my computer, I tend to get drawn in if I stay at the computer, to try to think of different ways and angles to approach and try. I was doing some household work (cutting and splitting wood for the winter) and thinking of different ways of doing things. Sometimes I do my best thinking, when I'm doing something else that doesn't require the normal amount of focus (still active, but somewhat mindless work).

Anyways, I'm only going to record an hour, but it was way more than that. I also did some similar brainstorming a couple of days ago on the 19th (11/19/21) and needed a place to put some of my notes. See attached for a quick scan of my scribbled down notes. These notes are from the 19th, but fit in with what I was thinking about and brainstorming about. Most of these are just "what if's" but fun to think about.

- What if we used adilas to help sell adilas? What if a marketing option would be, find a company that needed some help (either getting started or moving forward) and then offered the adilas product as a service to help them get going in a good direction. If they needed some funding, use an arm of adilas to help with funding. Set them up for success, and help them get training, consulting, and even custom code to make their business a success. Once again, just ideas, but what if you set them up in such a way, using adilas and even marketing dollars, they are successful. If they use adilas and are successful, they most likely will stay with adilas as their software choice. That is one of the main reasons for this venture.

- This is part of a bigger plan. Call it client acquisition costs. Set a budget and then go for it.

- Setup a funding company to help people realize their dreams

- Use adilas as the software for the backend of the funding company as well as the primary software for the companies that are being setup - the adilas piece and using it, is the key

- Setup weekly check-ins with the client (companies that are being funded)

- Pay for adilas (monthly), any training, custom work, consulting - all using the funds that were loaned - in a roundabout way, using other people's money to fund your product or business

- Business consultant that helps them out - external person for their team

- Help make budget and plans, provide resources as needed

- Provide some kind of incentive or ownership deal (depending on how things were structured and initial or original ownership) - For example, if they turn a profit, do some kind of kickback plan. Maybe setup a 5 year or certain percentage per year type plan for profitable business and good management of the business

- Don't give all the money at once - allowance per month - a budgeted credit line - additional funds available as needed

- Adilas could really be a huge key... make sure that the company has someone to help run the numbers and do the adilas work - internal, sub contracted, assigned, or some other arrangement

- If they use adilas and are successful, they most likely will stay with adilas. That is one of the main reasons for this little venture. Providing good products and services and helping businesses succeed. Let it keep going in a perpetual cycle.

- There are tons of other notes about the adilas market and ecommerce marketplace in the adilas, developer's notebook. There was a guy by the name of Todd that gave us some good ideas but we were able to get to them at the time. They deal with a adilas cafe level market or adilas marketplace of sorts. Click here to see some of those notes.

- Once again, just some ideas... but the real key is adilas (as a platform, application, and product) could be the biggest key to making something like this happen and succeed. That is pretty cool! There is a value there!

Meeting with Dustin and Cory. Dustin was showing us some of his production settings and new code for dealing with samples and special packaging. Lots of new stuff dealing with jQuery, Ajax, and lots of local custom JavaScript. His page is a nice one-pager with some helper files off to the side. Pretty cool.

As part of the meeting, Dustin was showing us some of his stuff and I asked him to give Cory and I a deeper tour on how he was using some of the technologies. I think that it was good and turned into a small teaching and education session.

Cory asked Dustin what he has left on the project and even lightly was leading him to start thinking about options of scrum or small teams helping to finish out the remaining pieces. Good stuff.

Started out with Sean and I talking about bulk update tools and best usage practices. He was trying to bulk update almost 14,000 items using an existing tool inside the system. At that point, it may be faster for a developer to just run some quick code vs spending hours using an existing tool.

After that, a couple of guys popped on for the standup meeting. Pretty quick meeting. Alan, Bryan, and Wayne were on. After Bryan left, Alan and Wayne were talking about some of their challenges as a development team (meaning the adilas developers). They were talking about having an all-remote team (nobody onsite), different skill levels, different hours and schedules, knowing what to do without being told. Another couple topics that were discussed were being able and willing to mock-up or fake the data or dataset that was needed, and working together as a collaborate group. Not that we can't do it, but most of our current training has been very independent and somewhat dealing with solo or independent projects.

A couple things that we are going to keep working on is better communication and keeping the momentum going. Sometimes we make a lot of assumptions. Being able to mock up and virtually fake the data that is needed, is a real skill. Can I pretend that I'm getting x, y, and z and then return a, b, and c. We also wanted to help our developers know that it is ok to ask. It is also ok to pitch a proposal (make a suggestion or provide a proof of concept). For example, both Alan and Wayne were filling like the guys were saying - I can't do this or that because I'm waiting on someone else to give me this or that. They wanted to be told exactly what to do, every step of the way. We are trying to increase communication and understanding so that we can keep the momentum going in a good direction. Almost no one can fully operate in stop and go type scenario. That makes it really tough.

I've allreay covered some of this, but here were some of my notes: Learning how to fake data and virtually mock things up - different skill levels - ideas vs requirements - what to do vs how to do it - testing and dealing with custom includes - global vars vs page level vars - getting tests in place and then using them.

Final topic for this morning's meeting was dealing with pair programming, teaching and training, and doing practice sessions, including learning how to write pseudo code (fake or assumes products or results). We have some great talent. We would we be well off if we could help share that and distribute it around a bit.

John, Cory, and I sent some time and went through the discount engine with John. He has been working on that project for a couple of months and we wanted to see what else was needed and where we could help out. We did a session going through each value (form field) and what it does and/or what we want it to do. Cory was taking notes while John and I were talking about the page and the functionality per section.

As we were talking, the question came up from John, how will I get enough hours if everything is based on scrum sprints? We talked about all of the other options that out there and there is no shortage of work to be done. Some of that will be through scrum sprints, scrum teams, solo jobs, peer programming, and one-off's, side jobs, etc. Lots of options. We will need to create a hybrid or mix and blend of all of the different pieces. More mixing and blending of pieces and concepts. That seems to be our lot.

This was our first sprint using scrum and agile development processes. I think that we learned a lot, but we didn't really get that much done that we could show and/or release. We have a number of independent pieces, but they need to be sewed together to make the whole. We'll keep refining and moving forward as we go. Making progress.

Bryan reported first and gave a visual tour followed by some code. Alan ten showed some code, cfc's, methods, and how using certain formats auto produces getters and setters without having to code all of that. Light training and discussions. We even talked about possibly of using ColdFusion to help with auto documentation for API sockets, methods, and functions. We aren't ready for that yet.

After the small review, we on purpose switched over and started into our first sprint retrospective meeting and recap (what did we learn and what could we do better). All of us are still trying to learn how this process plays out. The team felt like they had a good start and all of the team members were willing to play. They just needed more direction and guidance after the initial start.

John mentioned that we may need a mini SOP (standard opperating procedure) to help us all know what we need to do. That is awesome, but also, that is really tough as it is in a constant state of flux. We talked about defining any dependencies, early naming processes and procdures, and making sure that roles and tasks are more clearly defined.

Cory was taking notes - see attached. We are all trying to catch the vision. We are also seeing the need to fill in the gaps and make sure that everyone gets what they need to keep going. As a fun side note, Cory was stating that she is totally in and committed to making this happen. That is awesome. Alan and I will help her along that path. No one can do this whole thing by themselves.

We will need to mix and blend as needed. Keep striving to improve. We also want to use the daily standup meetings better (what did I do yesterday, what am I going to do today, these are my issues or roadblocks). We will just keep making it better and better through small refinements.

As a note, we were seeing some very normal parts of team building. The four main things are: forming, storming, norming, and performing. We are still in the forming and storming stages, as far as agile and scrum type development approach. No problem, we know where we are headed.

After the main retrospective meeting, Alan, Cory, and I had a retrospective meeting of our retrospective. What have we learned and where are we headed? Nice little rehash. I think that we are all on the same page. Just keep going!

We didn't end up meeting. We were on different meetings together earlier today.

Recording notes from earlier meetings today. Lots of good stuff going on.

Recording notes from earlier in the week. Busy times.

There were a bunch of guys on the morning meeting, checking in and giving updates. Pretty light. Steve wanted to know how the scrum stuff was going and how the first sprint worked out. Small report from me to Steve on the progress and lessons learned. We also talked about some of the potential of where we are going and what is still needed. After that, we helped a couple of the guys with some random questions.

Wayne popped on to show me some new unit testing stuff and how he is dealing with black boxes and custom page includes. Lots of page isolation code to help us test things at smaller and lower levels. Including ways of skipping some of the normal includes, so we could focus just on certain pieces. He also commented that he would like to see us move more into specific pages for add modes and edit modes. Currently, lots of our code has both the add and edit modes on the same pages (display and action). We just pass along page modes and then check accordingly. Anyways, he thought that we could gain by having specific pages to help the logic be smaller and more focused. The goal is more modular development and making things as independent as possible.

We then got into talking about testing and wanting to do more and more automated tests. There is still a need for manual or human testing for specific releases. Both Cory and Wayne were talking about scheduling a specific release and getting some key users to help with some of the manual or human level testing. In a nut shell, we have some code that has been deployed on the dev testing server and seems stable, however, the changes are big enough, we want to really beat it up by having some key users really push on it. This is for Wayne's change over from Application.cfm pages to Application.cfc pages (in-line code and auto include to object oriented methods and functions - cleaner, slicker, and more secure). It shouldn't look any different, but it is definitely some deeper plumbing changes (backend code changes). Anyways, they are going to coordinate some of those efforts together.

Cory and I going over projects, quotes, and doing some planning and scheduling.

Meeting with Eyerate, a SaaS (software as a service) for customer service and simple text messaging surveys and feedback. Cory and I met with two of their team members, Mike and Colby. We talked about options and what it would take to build out a 3rd party solution and integration. Lots of back and forth questions and specs. We talked about B2B transactions, opt in/out, tracking employee (salesperson or staff) interactions and hand-offs, and other customer service related functionality. Their goal is to allow for customer feedback to be sent back to the company to help track satisfaction rates and other customer service stats and data. Small meet and greet type meeting with a little bit of tech spread in there.

See attached for data fields that need to be populated. Also the order in which the data will flow.

Changed and started using this project to track a custom data export for the client as of 10/26/22.

New (number 2) sprint planning meeting. There were 8 of us on the meeting. Bryan, Cory, Alan, Chuck, Eric, John, Wayne, and I. Alan was leading off and tag teaming with Cory. Small comments from the guys, back and forth. We got into talking about learning how to fake or mock-up the data. How much detail is needed? That does vary a bit, based on the project. Maybe instead of saying - how much detail?, maybe say what is the proper amount of detail?

Wayne recommended working some of the projects backwards. From visual, then to logic, then to DAO's and backend database actions. Good idea. Bryan and others requested for some video walk-throughs. Some of the documents are scattered all over the place. We are trying to bring them all together, but it is still a little bit disorganized. The other takeaway comment was dealing with - we knew that we had discussed things, but no one knew how to get back to it (the steps or details). Just some missing links.

We did record a small video and did some assignments and drawings. I ended up going to the main and sub elements of time and adding in flex grid tie-ins and notes to help make things go full circle. Not that it matters, but see attached for the small video from part of our meeting. It was attached to the actual project elements of time as well, for documentation.

Working with Bryan. We uploaded the video from the sprint planning meeting, dealing with the enterprise unit of measure (UofM) project. We also uploaded an .exe file to the content server. This is a special program file that is required by one of the 3rd party solution providers to create a virtual bridge between Adilas and their merchant processing and payment solution stuff. Bryan and merged and pushed up some code.

While things were uploading, I was recording notes and what not. Trying to keep up.

Quick follow-up meeting with Steve. He was giving us some small updates and we were letting him know what was going on with some of the scrum stuff. We also did some light training for some of our guys on setting up elements of time, moving the dates, and hiding unused or unneeded calendar events.

We had a good standup meeting with the scrum team. I was taking notes and Alan was running the meeting. Making progress.

Wayne, John, Cory, and I were on the server meeting. It went pretty fast today. We were all on together for about 15 minutes. After that, I helped work with Cory and worked on a couple small bugs that had been reported, through tech support. Pushed up some new changes and code.

Shannon and I were working on the adilas core concepts and intro to world building document. We added in some new analogies and verbage today. See attached. Making progress.

Steve, Cory, and I jumped on a meeting to go over some of the requests from AWH (adilas client) who wanted some custom development done on the scheduling and production areas. We spent the first hour together going over an existing document with notes, bullet points, and requirements. Good discussion. We added some new notes and refined some of the requirements. We also did a lot of drawing and sketching to make sure that all of us were on the same page.

After the first hour, Steve had another appointment to go to. Just Cory and I stayed for the last hour. We were adding in user stories, setting up prerequisites, requirements, and other details. Good discussion and helping to push the pieces, user stories, logic, and general project forward. Tomorrow, we will meet with Kelly (consultant) to make sure that we are all on the same page.

Bryan texted me and said that he wasn't quite ready yet. We reconnected again at 4:30 ish, but it still wasn't quite done. No action happened here.

Lots of to do list stuff. Recording notes, uploading scans, linking to videos, paying bills, and emails and text messages. Busy times! Just in the last couple of days... my email inbox has blown up. Tons of little things that are needed. That is almost a fulltime job in itself.