Greehoppers latest release 5.2

A couple of months back I wrote a post on creating a cumulative flow diagram (CFD) using Greenhopper. Unfortunately the article didn’t provide readers with a solution to the problem, as I was unable to finish off the custom php script I was planning to use to generate the pivot of data required to create a CFD.

Thankfully the Greenhopper team had enough time to do it for me! The latest release of Greenhopper – 5.2 includes CFD’s as well a number of other changes which you can catch up on in the Release notes.

It was a great touch by the Greenhopper team to invite me to test the latest set of features prior to the launch. I was impressed that they took the time out to send me a personal email and invite my feedback – thanks!

In testing the latest release I realised I have been a little out of touch with progress made on JIRA over the past while. The tweaks made to the interface add a “minty freshness” to the user experience, which I like. There is a clear focus to developing the supporting agile widgets – great value to project managers who are looking for that little bit extra than competing products provide. I need more time to explore 5.2 further – so far so good though.

Greenhopper has great potential in the PM tool marketplace – with such competitive pricing and available functionality, it is hard to ignore. It still doesn’t provide you with multi project/programme reporting and analysis but what’s the bet that is planned for Release 6 – watch out!

Hyderabad Business Trip

Two weeks ago I travelled to Hyderabad, India on business. We flew Emirates via Dubai: fairly comfortable, decent food and great entertainment system = good flight. The Hyderabad airport is impressive – definitely something for the people of Hyderabad to be proud of. It is, however, on the drive out from the airport that you start to realise that the development of infrastructure is very much still in progress. Four lane highways lead to dirt road off-ramps, which then lead back on to further stretches of tarred road. This theme runs throughout Hyderabad with pockets of infrastructure clearly outstanding.

The city is vast and best explored via taxi. We were fortunate to have one driver with us throughout our stay who diligently navigated the crazy traffic and roads. I have uploaded a couple videos from one of our rides into the office. Gives you an idea of what it is like out on the streets.

Hyderabad is known as on of the major IT hubs in India and this is clearly evident. A number of the large firms have built massive campuses, I managed to get a photo of the front end of Microsoft’s campus. There are masses of buildings going up everywhere. Most of them shells though, awaiting fresh investment since the recession.

View Slideshow

Why all the foreign investment you might ask? India has a large highly educated and skilled workforce, and with the favourable exchange rate, it is a desirable emerging market to invest in. A quick sum to give you an idea of the scale: 8 developers can be hired in India on the wage of a single developer in London. Hmmm that is a bit of a no brainer for CEO’s. This cost however comes with its challenges – cultural differences and communication being the most prominent.

My experience of the people and culture of India was limited to my interactions with those I met in our business meetings and at the hotel. Polite, humble, dedicated, genuine and hard working are some of the words that come to mind in recalling those we met. Unfortunately our time was limited on this trip, our only outing being a business lunch at a local curry restaurant to sample dum briyani (famous in Hyderabad). I was breathing fire after the starters, the briyani was great!

No sooner had we arrived than we were once again packing for the journey back. Next time we will have to hang around a little longer to explore.

India is a country full of potential and destined for greatness, let’s hope it is realised.

Create a Cumulative Flow Diagram using Greenhopper

Note: I have since discovered that actually this does not produce a perfect cumulative flow diagram as the script doesn’t incorporate negative accumulation. Working on a php script which factors both positive and negative to give an accurate flow.

Ok so after much hunting around I have finally found a solution to creating a cumulative flow diagram using Greenhopper – albeit a workaround!

1) Download Toad for MySQL: http://www.quest.com/toad-for-mysql/

2) Connect to your JIRA Database

3) Use the following query to pull out accumulative totals – tweak parameters based on the project you are working on:

SELECT DATE_FORMAT(changegroup.CREATED, ‘%Y/%m/%d’) AS CountDate, changeitem.NEWSTRING, Count(changeitem.NEWSTRING) As Total
FROM changeitem
left outer JOIN changegroup
ON changeitem.groupid = changegroup.ID
left outer JOIN jiraissue
ON changegroup.issueid = jiraissue.ID
left outer JOIN projectversion
ON jiraissue.PROJECT = projectversion.PROJECT
WHERE jiraissue.PROJECT = ** Your Project ID**
AND changeitem.FIELD = ’status’
AND projectversion.vname = ‘Release 1′
GROUP BY CountDate, changeitem.NEWSTRING
ORDER BY CountDate ASC

4) Export your result set into Excel and create a pivot table
5) Change the graph to type Area
6) Summaries your results by running total

See Example here

Team motivation in a changing environment

The previous company that I worked for experienced a fairly radical change in environment in the space of 2 years. A sudden growth spurt, as well as a corporate transformation, were the key factors in this change.  This is a hard task for any leader to manage and as one can expect it raised challenging situations.

Some of the noticeable negative side affects of this change were a decrease in motivation of employees and an increase in staff churn. It is often difficult to immediately see the direct cause of these issues but a process that I have been through recently, reviewing the root of motivation, and further reading, has definitely improved my understanding.

There are loads of theories out there that lend different ideas to the driving force behind motivation. We tested one of these on a course at FTI, Hertzberg’s two factor theory. The two factors are divided into the categories of motivational and hygiene factors.

Hertzbergs Two Factor theory

In our class of 20 we each ranked the factors individually by order of personal priority and then collated results. The top 5 results are as follows:

1. Recognition
2. Achievement
3. Work itself
4. Growth
5. Salary

Interesting results considering that we represent a cross section of ages (25 – 42) and business sectors across Cape Town. One would always assume that salary would come out on top, but this is not so.

So what do these results say? Recognition, achievement, work itself and growth in a work environment are all functions of management. As managers we appraise our team members, recognising their achievements, rewarding and assigning further work that plays to their strengths. Well, in theory, that is what we should do. In retrospect I now realise the shortcomings of our approach to managing the changing environment at my previous company. The negative side affect being staff churn.

Some further reading that I have done confirms that, in fact, management is at the heart of motivation and company churn – Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman authors of First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently – write “People leave managers not companies, so much money has been thrown at the challenge of keeping good people – in the form of better pay, better perks and better training -when, in the end, turnover is mostly a manager issue.”

In conclusion: the message is clear – If companies can focus resources and attention to ensuring that recognition, achievement, work itself, growth, and employees’ salaries are maintained at a satisfactory levels then staff will remain motivated and not think to leave and move elsewhere. Personally I am not a fan of formulas that magically lead to success. I feel that these factors are great in theory but only learned through practice and making loads of mistakes along the way. How else do people learn…?

Reading:

• http://ideas.wordpress.com/2006/01/25/why-do-talented-employees-leave-companies/
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivation
• http://www.marcusbuckingham.com/site/about_us/books.php
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First,_Break_All_the_Rules
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Herzberg