We spend a lot of time scouring the web for resources to assist us in improving our business. With the number of web application prototypes we have been working on lately, we think the following resources can be as valuable to you as they have been to us.

Smashing Magazine - Design Better & Faster with Rapid Prototyping

Adaptive Path - Spreadsheet of Rapid Prototyping Tools

Venture Hacks - What is the Minimum Viable Product

Venture Hacks - 10 Examples of Minimum Viable Products

OnStartups - From Minimally Viable to Maximally Buyable Product

Our core business is, has been, and likely will be for a long time, the development of web applications using Ruby on Rails. Sometimes we get into discussions about how Ruby on Rails compares to other Frameworks and why we focus on Rails versus other options. We’ve done projects here and there using other web application frameworks, including: Symfony, Code Igniter, Django, and Flex among others. Each framework has it’s benefits, but in the long run the thing that keeps us coming back to Ruby on Rails is the ecoSystem.

EcoSystem seems like a bit of a buzzword, but in the end it’s simply a way to describe the elements that surround the framework and make working with it that much easier and more productive. Whether it’s hosting providers, dev tools, communities for support, conferences, or training, Rails has a hugely vibrant ecosystem that magnifies the value of working with it.

What are your thoughts on the Framework discussion?

Just wanted to refresh on the types of meetings we do in company according to Scrum logic. So once again, it’s not something we’ve invented, it’s standard logic used by other respected teams as well.

Type 1: Daily Scrum

Each day during the sprint, a project status meeting occurs. This is called a “daily scrum”, or “the daily standup”. This meeting has specific guidelines:

• The meeting starts precisely on time.
• All are welcome, but only “pigs” may speak
• The meeting is timeboxed to 15 minutes
• The meeting should happen at the same location and same time every day

During the meeting, each team member answers three questions:

1. What have you done since yesterday?
2. What are you planning to do today?
3. Do you have any problems preventing you from accomplishing your goal? (It is the role of the ScrumMaster to facilitate resolution of these impediments. Typically this should occur outside the context of the Daily Scrum so that it may stay under 15 minutes.)

Type 2: Sprint Planning Meeting

At the beginning of the sprint cycle (every 7–30 days), a “Sprint Planning Meeting” is held.

• Select what work is to be done
• Prepare the Sprint Backlog that details the time it will take to do that work, with the entire team
• Identify and communicate how much of the work is likely to be done during the current sprint
• Eight hour limit
  • (1st four hours) Product Owner + Team: dialog for prioritizing the Product Backlog
  • (2nd four hours) Team only: hashing out a plan for the Sprint, resulting in the Sprint Backlog

At the end of a sprint cycle, two meetings are held: the “Sprint Review Meeting” and the “Sprint Retrospective”

Type 3: Sprint Review Meeting

• Review the work that was completed and not completed
• Present the completed work to the stakeholders (a.k.a. “the demo”)
• Incomplete work cannot be demonstrated
• Four hour time limit

Type 4: Sprint Retrospective

• All team members reflect on the past sprint
• Make continuous process improvements
• Two main questions are asked in the sprint retrospective: What went well during the sprint? What could be improved in the next sprint?
• Three hour time limit

For any of you that follow me or CEO Chris Schultz on Twitter (or on his blog at ChrisSchultz.net), you know that we are both incredibly interested and involved in helping to build an increasingly vibrant entrepreneurial community in New Orleans. Thanks to a fortunate chain of events (and a little help from our friends), Chris and I were able to make the trip up to Boston last week to attend the Demo Night of TechStars Boston’s 2010 class. If you’re not familiar with TechStars you should be. They are one of the premier seed accelerator programs in the United States and have helped launch a number of successful startups (SendGrid, OneForty, and Graphic.ly among others) from their programs in Boulder, Boston, and now Seattle. Demo Night is the culmination of 3 months of intense work resulting in the opportunity for each company to spend up to 8 minutes pitching a crowd of 150+ angel investors and VCs.

One of the companies in this years class, LoudCaster was a company we had the pleasure of working with right before they joined the program and I was particularly excited to see how the last 3 months had shaped their company and their app. It’s easy for me to say that I was impressed both by how far along their app is and by how polished and advanced their company at this point. I can also say without any hesitation that the other 9 presenters all impressed me with their offerings as well.

The companies we had the opportunity to interact with included:

Appswell is a mobile crowd sourcing system that allows people, companies, and brands to harness the wisdom of crowds.

Loudcaster lets anyone create interactive online radio stations quickly and easily. Their model is to sell Internet broadcasting tools to DJs and to generate revenue by aggregating their audiences and inserting advertising.

Marginize augments pages on the web with an independent space owned by the visitors where they can meet each other and interact freely.

Mogotest is a front-end testing tool to help companies ensure that their web sites render properly across various web browsers and platforms.

Monkey Analytics powers mathematics and data analysis in the cloud by providing on-demand computing resources, analysis tools, and a socially driven marketplace for analysts, algorithms, and data.

SocialSci helps academic and professional researchers source and survey participants for their scientific studies.

Sparkcloud introduces you to interesting people who are around you in realtime.

StarStreet is a sports stock market that allows sports fans to make real money based on their skill in trading players and their knowledge of sports.

TutorialTab lets non-developers add interactive help systems that make web sites easier to learn. TutorialTab helps website owners enhance the user experience without writing a line of code.

UserMojo is an emotion analytics platform that measures the quality of user experience to help site owners understand not just what their users are doing, but also why they’re doing it.

For more on each of these companies, take a look at Don Dodge’s recap of the evening on “The Next Big Thing”.

The other thing that struck me as I had discussions with the companies after the pitches were over was how many of them have chosen Ruby on Rails to build a significant portion of their applications. While we have been focused on Ruby on Rails at Flatsourcing for a number of years, it seems there is a constant barrage of new frameworks coming out and it is a great testament to the quality of the Rails framework that is is being used by such a diverse and talented group of companies. It reinforces my core belief that by focusing on the elements of our business that provide the most value to our clients and being the very best that we can at them, we are on the path to continued success.

If you’re interested in how Flatsourcing can help you with your development needs, feel free to give us a shout.