About us: http://www.technovated.com/who-we-are/

About the position:
You’d be mainly focused on working on the development of an e-commerce project, and may also get your hands on social media for other projects, but probably end up doing both if you’re ambitious.

This includes helping develop and manage e-commerce content, working with technical people to scale up our application, plus realising additional marketing activities. Basically you get to grow and build something without having to fund it…

About you:
Ideally, you will

1. Have a good knowledge or experience (or at least genuine interest) of the Internet, ecommerce, social networking, web 2.0 and blogging
2. Are not afraid of keyboards – touch typing a major plus
3. Are interested in entrepreneurship (experience would be great)
4. Are fluent in English
5. Speak other European language/s (preferably but not essential)
6. Have great communication skills (written and oral)
7. Get things done
8. Are accountable for the work you do
9. Have read this page

We offer:

1. A friendly, informal and creative environment with lots of opportunities for growth and more responsibility
2. Very little bureaucracy
3. Working with experienced people who have built, scaled and sold a global web application
4. A three month internship and the potential for growth into a full time position
5. An internship remuneration and additional bonus scheme based on achieving agreed targets

We are interested in what websites you have started, been involved in, designed or promoted or simply your favourite sites on the net.

Send us your CV to hello@technovated.com

We’d love to hear from you

So the project looked as follows:

1. Review codebase
2. Review problems with mail delivery
3. Suggest improvements, scope and people needed to bring the project in under budget
4. Do interviews for technical people (ended up interviewing 6 people in a day for 2 roles)
5. Get all code under control, install code revision and management, get developers working on new version of project
6. Implement email fixes to get email into Inboxes
7. Project manage for weekly updates to client

One of the things that made the project manageable from my perspective was hiring the right people from the beginning, so that my work was limited to communication and prioritisation, which is how it should be. My general point of view is that if a product or project manager is spending more than 20% to 30% of their time on any one project, then something is wrong. Maybe 40% on the outside is acceptable for a really technical project, or one heavy in stakeholder communication, but then that’s really becoming an account director or similiar.

So, once the tech people were bedded down and we’d established the priorities for the project, we moved into a nice agile routine which got the project done well under time, making the client happy. Principle lesson and take away – hire the right people from the beginning, and life is easy. Do the opposite, and projects can be hell

So deliverables for this short project were as follows:

1. Review systems and infrastructure
2. Review current search engine optimisation
3. Review site usability and user journeys
4. Deliver document which outlined improvements on all of the above, as well as wireframes for primary layout and pages

The good news is that the client team has been slowly chipping away at the list of suggestions, and they’re starting to make real progress and get search engine results, which is awesome! Take home for me was: persistent, consistent effort is often the only way things get done “in house” as there are often so many competing priorities that the only way to move forward is with a little sculptors hammer – it takes a long time, but you eventually get your masterpiece!

Not doing #agile is like walking thru molasses with your hands behind your back, with blindfolds on, covered in treacle

Note they’re not all the same thing:
Robust is code that doesn’t break, is easily tested, scales well, and where collaboration is easy.
Fast is what it says on the tin, literally releasing new code fast and often.
Agile means being able to change direction, or make changes, quickly.

In my experience, Agile software development is the best way to enable the above – it’s a compromise between speed, collaboration and real results.

So with this engagement, the brief was to review everything (tools, processes, infrastructure, code) and to come up with a document that includes analysis and recommendations. My observation from this experience is that there is a fine line between agile development and chaos, but that this line gets thicker the more you invest in the right systems, processes, tools and infrastructure, which all enable and support doing *stuff* fast.

For example, in no particular order:

1. Testing is harder than it needs to be if there are no testing environments, unit tests, documentation of code, testing scripts, user outcomes (there are many examples, these are just a few)
2. It’s difficult to estimate and prioritise for business priority, when your list of items to work on is not prioritised or you don’t know what dependancies are
3. If you ask people to step outside of their comfort zones, more often than not you’ll be met with resistance. Use tools that make people comfortable
4. If it takes a long time or is difficult, to release a version of your software, then you’ll release less often and make more mistakes
5. If everyone understands the processes involved, you’re more likely to become more efficient. If those processes are changing or non-existent, efficiency is hard to gain.
6. If you’re going in the wrong direction, you don’t want to get there faster. If your code doesn’t support quick changes, you’re not going to be able to change direction quickly

The above are just some examples that were pertininent, so you should get the general idea.

My hope is that with the right motivation, we’ll fix the issues holding things back by setting up the right infrastructure and processes to support the business goals, and end up creating an environment that does indeed foster robust, fast, agile development.

From:
http://blog.kindo.com/

1. Pruning is better (and you can use your keyboard to move your family tree around)
2. Invitations are smoother (and we’re playing nicer with Hotmail)
3. Your profile page has more information for your family (more status updates, and a better calendar)

Since we’re no longer in “beta”, you can be sure that your tree and pages will work as expected. So continue to build your beautiful trees, and share it with your whole family. And tell your friends to start their own tree too!

We feel we’re far from the finished article – Kindo will grow up, evolve, and get bigger and better all the time. We’ve launched a new Kindo forum [http://forum.kindo.com] too, which is a good place to ask questions if you need any help. Please tell us what you do and don’t like about Kindo, and also tell us how you want it to grow too!

Bye for now!

Living and breathing what we’re doing every day sometimes means that often we don’t see the wood for the trees. Having people external to our team try out what we’re doing then give us feedback, is such a valuable process, and we’re hoping that it will help us to discover new bugs, problems, and cultural differences that will enable us to give our users something truly exciting. Of course, we are already aware of many bugs, but having our friends help us to find more is both important and rewarding. We like to think of it as continually polishing our masterpiece.

To do that we’ve created an area we’re using to discuss everything related to what we’re doing, because we want to keep things real. We’re hoping that as we grow and develop further, you’ll help us to make the right decisions about what features we add, and tell us what you think we’re perhaps doing the wrong way. After all, we’re only people, and we’re making the assumption that getting things right for users is going to be an interactive process involving everyone!

So today, while getting the Alpha out the door, it felt incredibly rewarding, both to be working with such a cool team, but also to actually get something out that people are using and testing.

Our initial stats show that the trend we were hoping for is in fact happening, which is also very rewarding. We’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how to take something very complex, and turn it into something visually simple and easy to use. I’m not saying we’ve achieved that, but we’re certainly most of the way there.

So, it’s almost time to go home and do some more work, but it sure feels like today (even though it feels like we’re in a heat wave) was a good day

We’re growing faster than I can keep track of, so I’m looking for a senior php person to join our team of ninjas.

Details below:
A growing web applications company based in Putney Bridge, London, specialising in Web 2.0 work in the LAMP stack, seeks an ambitious, talented, enthusiastic and motivated PHP Developer.

You will have:

1. 3+ years PHP experience with an excellent knowledge of object oriented PHP 4/5, MYSQL 4/5, and a good understanding of CSS, xHTML, AJAX and JavaScript?.
2. Apache and MYSQL administration experience would be ideal but not essential, as would experience with the Seagull framework.
3. Exposure to Open source technologies/frameworks/classes eg PEAR, prototype, scriptaculous is essential. As is exposure to web-based APIs (using SOAP, XML etc).
4. Experience writing/working with CMS, E-commerce systems is beneficial.
5. You must be able to manage a development environment, be able to accurately quote time for completing required tasks and be comfortable working with Trac and svn.

Please get in touch if you are interested.

Emails / responses where the applicant does not fit the above requirements will not be replied to.
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