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.