day -18: cleanup, commits & AgileZen
Daily stories from the ambadoo team, behind the scenes, dev-stats and other random stuff.
What an epiphany. Since we started working with ambadoo we’ve been working with some different management tools. The setup with one part in Sweden, the other in Spain it was necessary to find tools to collaborate over distance. We’ve used Beanstalk, Basecamp, Codebase but mostly fallen back to email. Among those, Codebase is easily the best one.
AgileZen
We’ve been missing a tool where we have an overview of the project, process and what’s going on. I believe we’ve found it. AgileZen is a digital version of the physical scrum board we’re using. It enables us to sit apart and work from anywhere, yet have total overview of the to-dos, workflows and progress. We just set it up, so we’ll see how it develop over time but it’s by far the best tool I’ve seen to date. Try it out if you work agile!
Commits & Cleanup
We continue to clean up in the backend, stripping it down to only the required resources, while writing stress tests so that when we launch it won’t break apart. Magnus is really crushing it there, making it hard to see him leave the project. He’s done a great job documenting not only the API but setting up the system so that others can take on the mission.
iPhone
The work continues on the profile. If we’d kept the profile to only stuff that’s in the built-in address book we could store it in that database without problem but since we’re adding things like privacy, tags and other things we have to create a separate storage for that, then keep those two in sync, as well as sync to the server. Syncing is more difficult than what it seems, but it has to be right. Your, and your friends information should be the same on all devices. That’s this week’s big challenge, and we’re on it.
mind your own…
based on a true story.
The summer two years ago I moved back to Malmö from Madrid, where I’d been living for a year and a half working as an architect. I was quite eager to move on with something new and I had a job offer in Copenhagen / Dubai. It wasn’t my dream job but it was exciting enough to give it a go. I had no better plans. Not when I applied.
Free time
For the first time in a long time I had three weeks in between doings. Three weeks. I can’t remember when I had so much time doing ‘nothing’. I decided to catch up with friends, and suddenly I realized that my address book was completely out-of-date.
I decided to, since I had so much time, to update it! Not many seconds later I realize that it’s completely insane. Even after emailing, texting, calling everyone asking for their correct details, going from A to Z, completing the list – it would be a never-ending-job.
It was first when I came to my own card (as you have in Address Book) the light struck me. My card was complete, it was up-to-date, with photo, all phone numbers, emails, IMs, websites & addresses. So, why is it that I should fill everyone else contact cards, instead of just my own – the one I know better than anyone else.
Mind your own…
In Sweden there’s a saying, ‘sköt dig själv och skit i andra’ which roughly translates into ‘mind your own business, leave others to theirs‘. Well, it’s a really bad attitude, and a world I wouldn’t like to live in – but here in the case of an address book it makes perfect sense.
As it is now, in mine, and most probably your phone/address book, we all, edit everybody else info. I insert, edit & update all info about you, and all my other friends, and you do the same with me, and all of your friends. Wouldn’t it be beautiful if it was the other way around?
If everybody just took care of their own info, and nothing else, all our address books would all of a sudden be both correct & up-to-date. And the best part about it, it’s one card, instead of hundreds or thousands.
Main Story
This is the core idea of ambadoo. You take care of your contact info, I take care of mine – and when we update it, it will get pushed to everyone else. That way we never need to be out-of-date, ever again.
To Realize a Dream
I couldn’t let go of the vision that pretty much everyone on this planet would benefit from this system and always stay in touch with their friends & family, always up-to-date, in a system that does it all for you. So I decided to quite that job and take on the mission to realize the dream of a global & universal, self-updating address book and here we are, working on edit profile, this weeks story.