On Saturday, September 10, 2005, at 11:38:10 AM, aacockburn wrote:

>> Third, the article suggests that short iterations are a matter of
>> pride. That is not the case in my opinion. AYMR, the original XP
>> project started with three-week iterations, tried one week, and went
>> back to three, having found it better. The /XP Installed/ book, I
>> believe, recommends three weeks. (ICBW).

> True about C3, but that was back in the mid-90s, recall. Note that
> the new XP calls for one week. You are now a fuddy-duddy like me
> (well, maybe not quite as fuddy duddy, because my default iteration
> length is still probably longer (for some definition of "iteration";
> and you are not really /like/ me; but the song under the lyrics still
> applies)

Well, that makes you a wuss, more than fuddy-duddy. Use of the term
fuddy-duddy is self-incriminating, I suspect.

>> One of the interesting effects I've observed relates to this. I
>> encounter clients who, over the course of a month, have trouble
>> completing features. I tried recommending that they go to one week
>> iterations (I like the term "deliveries" very much, by the way, and
>> will start using it as soon as I step out of the thought here.)

> Please, only if they really deliver. If word-inflation moves
> into "deliveries", then I'm running out of words to use.

Yes. I like delivery for that reason. When you say "deliver" to you
wish to limit the term to those cases where the customer actually
puts the software into production, or is it sufficient that they can
run it and use it if they want to?

Ron Jeffries
www.XProgramming.com
Hope is not a strategy. -- Michael Henos

---

From: agile-usability@yahoogroups.com [mailto:agile-usability@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Angela Martin
Sent: Friday, 9 September 2005 10:42 a.m.
To: agile-usability@yahoogroups.com; extremeprogramming@yahoogroups.com; agileprojectmanagement@yahoogroups.com; agile-customer-today@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [agile-usability] ANN: The Six Million Dollar Customer Tutorial at OOPSLA 2005

Hi,

We would like to announce that we are running a tutorial entitled "The Six Million Dollar Customer" at OOPSLA 2005. 

This tutorial will introduce you to practices that will increase the effectiveness of "the customer" on your XP project. Customers have one of the most complex and difficult roles on a project, yet XP includes very few practices that support the customer in their role—other than prescribing how they interact with the developers. Over the last three years, we have investigated many projects around the world to identify how customers succeed in this complex and difficult task—discovering not what people think should have happened, but what really happened and what actually worked! This tutorial will present a consistent set of practices, skills, and characteristics that are crucial to ensuring your customer role, and thus your XP project, will be successful.

If you would like further information on this tutorial please see - http://www.oopsla.org/2005/ShowEvent.do?id=120 or email me directly.

Cheers,
Angela

-- A n g e l a M a r t i n
P h D C a n d i d a t e
Elvis Research Group
School of Mathematics, Statistics & Computer Science
Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand
p : +64 21 668 511
e : angela@...
w : http://www.mcs.vuw.ac.nz/~angela/ Sign-up for our tutorial "The Six Million Dollar Customer" at OOPSLA 2005 - http://www.oopsla.org/2005/ShowEvent.do?id=120

On Mon, 2005-09-12 at 18:34 -0700, Rob Keefer wrote:
> While talking with a collegue recently, we were bemoaning the lack of
> browser development over the past few years. It occured to me that
> Macromedia's Flash supports a much richer user experience than
> traditional HTML, but there doesn't seem to be many applications built
> using Flash.
>
> Does anyone have experience building a web-based application using
> Flash? I wonder what kind of problems this posed over traditional
> HTML/JavaScript solutions. Any stories from the trenches?

I don't have personal experience, but I've been on teams that have
evaluated it. This is a little dated, but mentions a number of the
important issues:

     http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20001029.html

In addition to this, I'd add that it breaks external search engines,
which is a problem if you want your content to turn up on Google or be
indexable by in-house third party engines. Another issue that worries me
is the rise of non-PC internet devices. My phone, for example, has an
adequate web browser but I doubt I'll ever see Flash for it.

Most of the richer applications these days seem to be done with more
direct descendants of the traditional HTML toolsets. Flickr, GMail, and
Google Maps are good examples of that. Flickr is an especially
interesting example: they started out as a Flash app but have mostly
dropped their use of Flash.

The only vaguely compelling Flash app I've seen recently is on
Spreadshirt.com. Even that, though, isn't impressive enough that it's
made me rethink Flash in the same way that the recent wave of AJAX apps
has made me rethink JavaScript.


William

--
William Pietri <william@...>

Anyone catch the New Yorker cookier shootout? It's a 3 team approach to
develop a new cookie using the  3 major software approaches: an XP team, a
conventional team lead by star manager and an open source team.

Check also:

http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2005/09/06.html#a1295

Alas, the XP team loses!

RC

_________________________________________________________________
Don’t just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search!
http://search.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200636ave/direct/01/

I prefer Eclipse RCP, you can find my reasons "Why Eclipse RCP is going to rule the world" ( http://www.lakesidelab.com/henry/105.asp )

Henry
www.henryjacob.com
Solution Architect, IonIdea
Bangalore INDIA

*** Some of the world's greatest feats were accomplished by people not smart enough to know they were impossible. ***

----- Original Message -----

From: Cummins, Darin

To: agile-usability@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Tuesday, September 13, 2005 9:41 PM

Subject: RE: [agile-usability] Flash UIs

There is a company in Brazil called Vidatis who has written an application for the Brazilian hospital system that uses Flash extensively.  They presented at JavaOne this year.  They had an issue with needing to use existing, low powered, clients, but needed to have a rich user experience.  The application looked nice and seemed very responsive during their presentation, running on a small laptop as the server.

 

I have the contact information for their Director of Technology, with whom I have had a couple of email conversations.  I can contact her and see if I can get permission to post her email if you are interested in asking them questions.

 

--Darin

 

 

---

From: agile-usability@yahoogroups.com [mailto:agile-usability@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Rob Keefer
Sent: Monday, September 12, 2005 7:34 PM
To: agile-usability@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [agile-usability] Flash UIs

 

While talking with a collegue recently, we were bemoaning the lack of browser development over the past few years. It occured to me that Macromedia's Flash supports a much richer user experience than traditional HTML, but there doesn't seem to be many applications built using Flash.

 

Does anyone have experience building a web-based application using Flash? I wonder what kind of problems this posed over traditional HTML/JavaScript solutions. Any stories from the trenches?

 

- Rob

 

 

---

This message and any attachments are intended only for the use of the addressee and may contain information that is privileged and confidential. If the reader of the message is not the intended recipient or an authorized representative of the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately by e-mail and delete the message and any attachments from your system.

> While talking with a collegue recently, we were bemoaning the lack of
> browser development over the past few years. It occured to me that
> Macromedia's Flash supports a much richer user experience than
> traditional HTML, but there doesn't seem to be many applications built
> using Flash.
>
> Does anyone have experience building a web-based application using
> Flash? I wonder what kind of problems this posed over traditional
> HTML/JavaScript solutions. Any stories from the trenches?

I used to use Flash (5) quite a bit. I wrote a chat application and a
search application, both which communicated over XML to a server app. It
was great because it was one of the first cross-browser XML processing
apps that I could deploy to a variety of platforms.

Flash back then was not really made to write good solid apps in,
thought. ActionScript was very cool, but Flash is, and probably will be,
a designer's tool.

I do have several friends who do a lot of Flash, and they've been able
to do some amazing stuff. But nothing like Form processing, workflow,
etc, etc.

Cory

I have a question for the agile gurus in the group.

I've been reading about the role of "customer" on an agile development
team, and in all the lists of the duties of this role, I don't see user
interface design ever mentioned.

Is user interface design part of the "official" duties of a customer?

Lynn

For me, it depends on the project and also the
customer. There are some (usability) methodologies
(adapted to agile) which incorporate the customer (are
we talking user, purchaser, recommender here - big
difference)as part of the UI design team. I personally
try to avoid involving them unless customers are users
(SMEs), articulate, and they are trained into the
process so they are actually part of the UI design
team. Then it works.

Everyl Yankee
www.yankeeingenuity.us

--- Lynn Miller <lmiller@...> wrote:

>
> I have a question for the agile gurus in the group.
>
> I've been reading about the role of "customer" on an
> agile development
> team, and in all the lists of the duties of this
> role, I don't see user
> interface design ever mentioned.
>
> Is user interface design part of the "official"
> duties of a customer?
>
> Lynn
>
>




__________________________________
Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005
http://mail.yahoo.com

I'm talking about the definition of "customer" as a role on the
development team as written in XP or other agile literature.  Not the UX
definition of "customer".

Lynn

Everyl Yankee wrote:
> For me, it depends on the project and also the
> customer. There are some (usability) methodologies
> (adapted to agile) which incorporate the customer (are
> we talking user, purchaser, recommender here - big
> difference)as part of the UI design team. I personally
> try to avoid involving them unless customers are users
> (SMEs), articulate, and they are trained into the
> process so they are actually part of the UI design
> team. Then it works.
>
> Everyl Yankee
> www.yankeeingenuity.us
>
> --- Lynn Miller <lmiller@...> wrote:
>
>
>>I have a question for the agile gurus in the group.
>>
>>I've been reading about the role of "customer" on an
>>agile development
>>team, and in all the lists of the duties of this
>>role, I don't see user
>>interface design ever mentioned.
>>
>>Is user interface design part of the "official"
>>duties of a customer?
>>
>>Lynn
>>
>>
>
>
>
>
>
> __________________________________
> Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005
> http://mail.yahoo.com
>
>
>
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

--
Lynn Miller
416-874-8378

"When a person goes to a hardware store to buy a drill,
they don't want a drill, they want a hole."

I think of the customer team as having two primary types of competences.

1) A lot of knowledge about the world that the software will live and either
succeed or die in. That BTW is much wider than just knowing about users. It also
means understanding the business needs of the people who are paying for the
development of the software (which are often quite different from the needs of
the user).

2) Ability to communicate that knowledge to the development team

I think "UI design" definitely falls under 2).

Alain Dιsilets, MASc
Agent de recherches/Research Officer
Institut de technologie de l'information du CNRC /
NRC Institute for Information Technology

alain.desilets@...
Tιl/Tel (613) 990-2813
Facsimile/tιlιcopieur: (613) 952-7151

Conseil national de recherches Canada, M50, 1200 chemin Montrιal,
Ottawa (Ontario) K1A 0R6
National Research Council Canada, M50, 1200 Montreal Rd., Ottawa, ON
K1A 0R6

Gouvernement du Canada | Government of Canada

On Wednesday, September 14, 2005, at 9:38:11 AM, Lynn Miller wrote:

> I have a question for the agile gurus in the group.

> I've been reading about the role of "customer" on an agile development
> team, and in all the lists of the duties of this role, I don't see user
> interface design ever mentioned.

> Is user interface design part of the "official" duties of a customer?

It's certainly the responsibility of the team. The skills might
reside anywhere: the customer would dispose what should actually be
done.

Ron Jeffries
www.XProgramming.com
It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare,
it is because we do not dare that they are difficult. --Seneca

-- Alain wrote:
I think of the customer team as having two primary types of competences.

1) A lot of knowledge about the world that the software will live and
either succeed or die in. That BTW is much wider than just knowing about
users. It also means understanding the business needs of the people who
are paying for the development of the software (which are often quite
different from the needs of the user).

2) Ability to communicate that knowledge to the development team
----

-- Alain now adds:
BTW: I don't think  U* professionals cover /all/ of 1) and 2). They
cover the part that relates to end user needs, but unless they are also
very good at understanding and communicating the business needs of the
people funding the project, their skill set needs to be complemented by
that of more business-oriented people.

Don Norman made that point in the August issue of Interactions, (in an
article entitled: "Do Companies Fail Because Their Technology is
Unusable?"):

"Companies succeed because they make sales (more accurately, because
they make a profit from those sales), and for the company to succeed,
all aspects of the product must perform well: the business model, the
marketing and sales effort, the cost structure, the competitiveness, and
of course, the product itself, in appearance, function, and usability.
Which particular aspects dominate will depend upon the context."
    - Don Norman
---

"Companies succeed because they make sales (more accurately, because
they make a profit from those sales), and for the company to succeed,
all aspects of the product must perform well: the business model, the
marketing and sales effort, the cost structure, the competitiveness, and
of course, the product itself, in appearance, function, and usability.
Which particular aspects dominate will depend upon the context."
    - Don Norman

-- Alain:
Another interesting quote from that article. Here, Norman comments on an
actual user's decision to move from TiVo to Time Warner cable box,
eventhough that same user likened the experience of using Time Warner to
a "visit to a medieval dentist":

"Think about it, folks: Compared to TiVo, the Time Warner cable box is
like going to a medieval dentis. But despite his dislike, he switched
anyway. How important is usability? Answer: very important, but alone it
is not enough."
----

I agree.  UX professionals have enough on their plate without also
trying to set the business goals for the company.

However, to have a better chance at a successful product, UX
professionals should fully and deeply understand those business goals
and be thinking about them as they do their job.

Actually, to have a better chance at success, the entire product team
(developers, tech writers, QA, etc) should understand and work towards
the business goals.  I know this sounds obvious, but I have talked to
people and worked at companies where this was not true - where the
development team didn't know or didn't care about the business goals.

Lynn

Desilets, Alain wrote:
> -- Alain wrote:
> I think of the customer team as having two primary types of competences.
>
> 1) A lot of knowledge about the world that the software will live and
> either succeed or die in. That BTW is much wider than just knowing about
> users. It also means understanding the business needs of the people who
> are paying for the development of the software (which are often quite
> different from the needs of the user).
>
> 2) Ability to communicate that knowledge to the development team
> ----
>
> -- Alain now adds:
> BTW: I don't think  U* professionals cover /all/ of 1) and 2). They
> cover the part that relates to end user needs, but unless they are also
> very good at understanding and communicating the business needs of the
> people funding the project, their skill set needs to be complemented by
> that of more business-oriented people.
>
> Don Norman made that point in the August issue of Interactions, (in an
> article entitled: "Do Companies Fail Because Their Technology is
> Unusable?"):
>
> "Companies succeed because they make sales (more accurately, because
> they make a profit from those sales), and for the company to succeed,
> all aspects of the product must perform well: the business model, the
> marketing and sales effort, the cost structure, the competitiveness, and
> of course, the product itself, in appearance, function, and usability.
> Which particular aspects dominate will depend upon the context."
>    - Don Norman
> ---

I prefer Eclipse RCP, you can find my reasons "Why Eclipse RCP is going to rule the world" ( http://www.lakesidelab.com/henry/105.asp )

Henry
www.henryjacob.com
Solution Architect, IonIdea
Bangalore INDIA

*** Some of the world's greatest feats were accomplished by people not smart enough to know they were impossible. ***

----- Original Message -----

From: Cummins, Darin

To: agile-usability@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Tuesday, September 13, 2005 9:41 PM

Subject: RE: [agile-usability] Flash UIs

There is a company in Brazil called Vidatis who has written an application for the Brazilian hospital system that uses Flash extensively.  They presented at JavaOne this year.  They had an issue with needing to use existing, low powered, clients, but needed to have a rich user experience.  The application looked nice and seemed very responsive during their presentation, running on a small laptop as the server.

 

I have the contact information for their Director of Technology, with whom I have had a couple of email conversations.  I can contact her and see if I can get permission to post her email if you are interested in asking them questions.

 

--Darin

 

 

---

From: agile-usability@yahoogroups.com [mailto:agile-usability@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Rob Keefer
Sent: Monday, September 12, 2005 7:34 PM
To: agile-usability@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [agile-usability] Flash UIs

 

While talking with a collegue recently, we were bemoaning the lack of browser development over the past few years. It occured to me that Macromedia's Flash supports a much richer user experience than traditional HTML, but there doesn't seem to be many applications built using Flash.

 

Does anyone have experience building a web-based application using Flash? I wonder what kind of problems this posed over traditional HTML/JavaScript solutions. Any stories from the trenches?

 

- Rob

 

 

---

This message and any attachments are intended only for the use of the addressee and may contain information that is privileged and confidential. If the reader of the message is not the intended recipient or an authorized representative of the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately by e-mail and delete the message and any attachments from your system.

I agree.  UX professionals have enough on their plate without also
trying to set the business goals for the company.

However, to have a better chance at a successful product, UX
professionals should fully and deeply understand those business goals
and be thinking about them as they do their job.

Actually, to have a better chance at success, the entire product team
(developers, tech writers, QA, etc) should understand and work towards
the business goals.  I know this sounds obvious, but I have talked to
people and worked at companies where this was not true - where the
development team didn't know or didn't care about the business goals.

-- Alain:
I agree. One of the great advantages of Agile methodologies is that it
puts the /whole/ team  in direct contact with people who do know and
care about the business goals.
----

Henry on the page you link to you say "All web based enterprise applications are failed in terms of usability". That's a somewhat brash statement, care to elaborate? 

 

-- Alain:

There are certainly some highly usable web-based products (at least in my view) out there:

 

- Amazon

- Google

- Expedia

 

I'm curious... what do U* people on this list consider to be poster-children for usable web sites?

 

My all-time favourite is Google. To be sure, there are some usability issues with it, but think about how easy it is to find what you are looking for (at least compared to the early search engines like Lycos and AltaVista). As someone who wrote search engines back in the early days of the web, I can tell you how hard it is to build one where the user can enter a natural language query and usually find what he is looking for in the first five hits.

 

This illustrates an interesting point. Sometimes (but not often) usability comes from solving a technically deep problem, not from knowing a lot about user needs. From day one, all search engine developpers knew what their users needed... But noone before Google figured out how to do it.

----

After years of neglecting Java, I am attempting to start a new project
using Tomcat, Jakarta Struts, their test rigs, and the NetBeans
editor.

The answer to the Subject's question is "Unfortunately not"!

--
   Phlip
   http://www.greencheese.org/ZeekLand  <-- NOT a blog!!

On Wed, 2005-09-14 at 09:38 -0400, Lynn Miller wrote:
> I have a question for the agile gurus in the group.
>
> I've been reading about the role of "customer" on an agile development
> team, and in all the lists of the duties of this role, I don't see user
> interface design ever mentioned.
>
> Is user interface design part of the "official" duties of a customer?


I have successfully done it three ways:

      1. The UI designer is one of the developers. The XP Customer will
         answer designer questions about business priorities, but doesn't
         pay much attention to the UI details.
      2. The UI designer is an advisor to the team. When planning a UI
         story, the XP Customer brings in the UI designer. When the
         developers have questions, they call up the designer.
      3. The XP Customer is a user interface designer and provides the
         developers with detailed UI designs for each story.

All of these worked well for me in their respective circumstances. I
think the right arrangement depends a lot on who has what skills and how
UI-focused the product is.


Note that here I'm only talking specifically about the UI. As you move
from the concrete to the abstract, you're more and more likely to end up
in the XP Customer's territory. The Customer may not care about the
placement of a particular button, but they should be thinking a lot
about what users need, what needs we're trying to serve, and how we'll
we're doing at that.

William

--
William Pietri <william@...>

Typically, we try very hard to keep UI specifics out of our stories,
so IMO, I'd respectfully disagree that UI design is the customer's
responsibility.  I'd concur more with Ron's opinion that it's the
team's responsibility (the "whole team").  And WRT another post any of
the participants could play the role of the "designer".

.rob.

> I think "UI design" definitely falls under 2).
>
> Alain Dιsilets, MASc

--- In agile-usability@yahoogroups.com, Lynn Miller <lmiller@a...>
wrote:

>
> Is user interface design part of the "official" duties of a customer?
>
> Lynn

In my experience, user interface design is a collaboration.  Typically
the customer isn't particularly good at *defining* the user interface,
but is relatively good at *reacting* to a proposed interface, pointing
out potential problems, etc.

So on most of the projects that I've been involved with, it's the
development team that figures out what the primary customer goal is,
and designs an interface that meets the goal in the most
straightforward manner possible. The more types of users and goals in
a system, the more challenging this is, especially when these goals
aren't discovered until after the initial version of the UI is
implemented.

So clearly stating goals might be a customer responsibility, but it
takes a lot of collaboration, with the dev team often driving, to get
a solid, usable UI that actually solves the problem.

--Dave

Dave Churchville
http://www.extremeplanner.com/blog

--- In agile-usability@yahoogroups.com, Phlip <phlip2005@g...> wrote:
> After years of neglecting Java, I am attempting to start a new
project
> using Tomcat, Jakarta Struts, their test rigs, and the NetBeans
> editor.
>
> The answer to the Subject's question is "Unfortunately not"!
>

LOL.

Yes, I agree with this sentiment - companies fail because their
technology doesn't solve anyone's problem effectively (or because it
does, but no one is willing to pay for that solution).  There are
many examples of difficult to use technology that succeeds wildly
because it actuals solves a problem that people care about and are
willing to pay for.

Consider DSL service and the hassle (at least the last time I
checked) of getting that set up.  People still buy it, because it
solves a problem they care about (high speed internet that's
relatively cheap).


Dave Churchville
http://www.extremeplanner.com/blog

Dave C:
>Yes, I agree with this sentiment - companies fail because their
>technology doesn't solve anyone's problem effectively (or because it
>does, but no one is willing to pay for that solution).  There are
>many examples of difficult to use technology that succeeds wildly
>because it actuals solves a problem that people care about and are
>willing to pay for.
>
>Consider DSL service and the hassle (at least the last time I
>checked) of getting that set up.  People still buy it, because it
>solves a problem they care about (high speed internet that's
>relatively cheap).

I think I missed the original post but...

Or they fail because they have great technology whose time has not yet come
(think some security software companies, such as those with IDS products),
or they have terrible marketing and sales organizations, or... If a company
has a product that is unusable but still meets a need, then that company
will succeed in spite of itself.

The example of DSL (or cable) high speed internet access is more of an
example of a monopoly than anything else. If I want DSL, I can use only one
provider (SBC). If I want to use cable, I can use only one provider (Cox).
Do I think their technologies are usable? I'm not a good example, since I've
been a computer user for too many years now to count. Would I use anything
else? Well, I guess I really can't since they ARE the only vendors in the
market (unless I choose to go satellite, or use Verizon's WAN network --
which is what I'm using now on the train heading home from work).

...sue

This message doesn't specifically pertain to agility or usability, nor are the
jobs advertised specifically related to those areas.... but sometimes its just
nice to know about jobs.  As the list moderator, I'm going to allow this one. 
[Complain to me of you have concerns.
Thanks, Jeff [jpatton@...]
original message follows:

Hi Guys,

As you know, PayPal is growing which in turn means PayPal is
hiring.  We are currently looking for various job openings like
Technical Architects, a QA Load and Performance Manager, a Director
of QA, as well as Software Engineers (preferably with payments
experience) that are well versed in C++(see the job descriptions
below).  If you or anyone you know may be looking for an career
opportunities and has the skills to match any of these job
descriptions, feel free to get in touch with me at
skantamneni@...

Thank you,

Satyam

=====================================================================
=================================================

Business Title:  Technical Architect
Function:        Architecture
Work Location:   PayPal, San Jose, CA
Shift:   Day

Responsibilities:

• Provide architectural leadership and guidance to a rapidly growing
development organization.
• Design and implement frameworks, interfaces, and services to be
used by a broad range of applications and development groups. Design
system layers and architecture standards to support componentized,
layered, and distributed development.
• Work with internal and external technical leaders to develop
innovative solutions that meet market needs with respect to
functionality, performance, scalability, and reliability, realistic
implementation schedules, and adherence to architectural goals and
principles.
• Review existing software architecture and identify areas for
improvement in the areas of scalability, maintainability, and
performance.
• Lead large-scale engineering projects by creating initial design
and ensuring that project meets architectural goals and principles
throughout development lifecycle.
• Help to shape the future of PayPal's software platform.


Job Requirements:
• Senior Leader: 10+ years of large scale, full life cycle
development experience and at least 5 years as a Senior/Chief
Architect.
• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related field of study
required (MSCS preferred).
• Expertise in C++, XML, XSL, DOM, schemas, and XML parsers and
tools.
• Experience with RPC, HTML/ HTTP, cryptography, and data modeling.
• Expertise in heterogeneous transactional environments and
distributed transaction managers.
• Extensive knowledge and experience with RDBMS (Oracle preferred),
including optimization and performance tuning.
• Extensive experience in designing and implementing large server
software with particular attention to security, scalability, and
high performance.
• Experience in building middleware messaging services and
distributed objects.
• Experience with O-R mapping and persistence mechanisms.
• Strong business and technical vision.
• Strong presentation and leadership skills.
• Proven results oriented person with a delivery focus.

If you are interested in being considered for this position please
email a Word version of your resume

Thank you for your interest!
=====================================================================
=====================================

Business Title:  Load and Performance Manager, QA
Function: QA
Work Location: PayPal, San Jose, CA
Shift: Day


Will be the first line manager for Load and Performance Team. Main
responsibilities are the managing Load and Performance testing
responsibilities of functional groups all across PayPal. This
testing will include black box, grey box, white box, the creation of
detailed test plans and test scripts for proposed work and follow-
through of proper software defect reports.

• Manage a world class QA team
• Create processes around testing and managing releases efficiently.
• Manage implementation of new infrastructure/platform frameworks
for automation of both backend and front end components
• Participate and become actively involved in architecture
discussions
• Employ technical expertise in helping team members overcome any
technical or scheduling issues
• Participate and become actively involved in architecture
discussions
• Employ technical expertise in helping team members overcome
technical problems
• Develop and manage release/project schedule and milestones

The ideal candidate will have a BS in Computer Science or an
equivalent degree and 5+ years of Software QA management experience
with a strong understanding of QA methodology. Must have technical
knowledge and experience of working with development tools and
databases. Excellent written and verbal communications skills are a
must. Knowledge of general programming techniques is required as is
detailed knowledge of Windows, Unix and SQL. Knowledge and
experience of working
with financial systems is highly desirable.

If you are interested in being considered for this position please
email a Word version of your resume

Thank you for your interest!


=====================================================================
==================================

Business Title:  QA Director
Function: QA
Work Location: PayPal, San Jose, CA
Shift: Day


Responsibilities: Manage technically oriented teams in the Quality
Engineering, including, load and performance testing, test
automation and release engineering/configuration management. Ensure
that release processes are fully automated, oversee and guide the
creation of test scripts using Silk. Build out load and performance
testing function. • Overall management of quality process, release
methodology, and relevant metrics • Work directly with Operations,
Development and QA managers to ensure that releases and release
tools are well managed • Ensure necessary processes, metrics and
methodologies are in place for projects including streamlining
processes and developing new automated test procedures.

The successful candidate will have 10+ years of experience managing
related teams: Release, Load and Performance tuning, development,
test automation. Candidates with experience in large and growing
organizations are preferred.

• 5+ years experience in a Director or VP level managing a large
organization.

• Experience managing offshore resources desired.

• Knowledge of software development lifecycle.

• Proven ability to work cross-functionally with all departments to
achieve and meet tight deadlines.

• Outstanding communication skills and customer oriented focus.

• Exceptional understanding and knowledge in the latest release,
quality assurance processes, standards and methodologies and tools.

• Deep understanding of the product development process for
enterprise software and service.

• Strong leadership skills.

• BS or BA in Computer Science or equivalent field.

If you are interested in being considered for this position please
email a Word version of your resume

Thank you for your interest!
=====================================================================
=====================================

Business Title: Software Engineer
Location: San Jose, California











PayPal Engineering is looking for a top-notch software engineers who
will work on a large variety of important projects. Join PayPal and
help shape the future of global economics.
We are targeting exceptional software engineers with anywhere from 1-
15+ years of experience, and primary strengths in C++, SQL, Oracle,
and dependable software engineering practices.  Familiarity with
Linux, HTML, CGI, (localization, banking systems and finance) are a
plus. Degree in CS or related fields desired.  You must be a strong
communicator, both written and oral.  You must be able to thrive in
a fun, open, social environment with a high degree of autonomy.
We have several different teams hiring, but each team looks for the
same skill set. The first few stages of the interview process are
all the same for each team!

You will focus on the following:
• Work with the Product Management group to identify business
requirements and design product specifications
• Create high-level and detailed technical design documents, and
conduct design reviews
• Play an active role in implementing and providing feedback on new
processes
• Provide technical guidance to other software engineers
• Implement new product features using C++ and SQL in an
Apache/Linux environment
• Enhance and maintain existing product capabilities
• Develop and update product documentation
• Participate and become actively involved in team and company wide
architecture discussions
• Employ technical expertise in helping team members overcome
technical problems
• Adhere to release/project schedule and milestones

If you are interested in being considered for this position please
email a Word version of your resume

Thank you for your interest!



Business Title: Software Engineer: SWAT
Work Location: PayPal, San Jose, CA




PayPal is one of the largest on-line financial transaction
processing systems in the world. The PayPal SWAT team provides
mission-critical 24x7 software systems support for the rapid
identification and resolution of site issues. The PayPal SWAT team
is composed of highly competent software engineers that are able to
work across multiple programming languages, large-scale systems, low-
level applications, kernels and operating systems. The application
functional areas include the PayPal website, APIs, administrative
functions, batch processes, and financial systems. Additionally,
this team is involved in new features and systems projects from
inception through deployment.
The successful candidate should have 3-5 years experience supporting
live applications in their production environment, and have
knowledge/experience in the physical deployment of applications. The
duties include, but are not limited to:
• Troubleshoot and resolve problems with production systems.
• Identify and help fix code stability/scalability issues in a very
time critical environment.
• Analyze and root-cause application problems, identify their
severity, propose and implement fixes.
• Develop industry and product technical expertise.
• Good communication skills and the ability to work with other
developers optimizing or fixing code.
• Define, design, and implement complex, multi-tier distributed
software applications. Segment and design system layers to support
componentised and layered application development, including user
interface, business functionality, and database access.
• Share on-call responsibilities.
• Work with other engineers, managers, Product Management, QA, and
Operations teams to develop innovative solutions that meet market
needs with respect to functionality, performance, scalability,
reliability, realistic implementation schedules, and adherence to
development goals
and principles.
• Estimate engineering effort; plan implementation, and rollout
system changes.
• Must be able to independently design code and test major features,
as well as work jointly with other team members to deliver complex
changes.
• This job requires innovative solutions and people that enjoy
rapidly solving very complex problems.
• Ability to perform under pressure.
• Experience in requirements analysis, design, coding and unit
testing of scalable, distributed, fault-tolerant applications in
UNIX and Linux environments.
• Experience in developing in C++ on Linux and/or Solaris
environments. Expertise in memory management, exception handling,
Oracle SQL, and fault tolerant code design also needed.
• Experience in scripting languages (Perl, Python, Shell)
• Expertise in object-oriented design methodology and application
development preferably in C++.
• Working knowledge of relational databases (prefer Oracle), Apache,
HTTP/HTML, XML, XSLT and basic UNIX system administration.
• Proven results oriented person with a delivery focus.
• Education Bachelors Degree or Equivalent


If you are interested in being considered for this position please
email a Word version of your resume

Thank you for your interest!


Business Title:Product Manager, Financial Products
Work Location: San Jose, California

Responsibilities:
The Financial Products team is part of an entrepreneurial new
business within PayPal. Our charter is to help PayPal deliver ways
for users to develop a financial relationship with our brand through
a variety of products: bank-account linking and verification,
private-label debit and credit cards that can be used on or off of
PayPal, an online buyer credit line, and a high-yielding money-
market fund. The team owns strategy creation and product delivery.
The product manager will guide the product strategy by understanding
the competitive landscape, the needs of customers and partners, and
PayPal's business objectives. The product manager will turn the
strategy into a phased roadmap of product delivery. He/she will
create detailed product requirements and work closely with a cross-
functional team of engineering, design, content, and QA to deliver
these products. Additionally, the product manager will work with
marketing to promote the product, with the international team to
address the needs of each local market, and with business
development to prioritize partnership opportunities. We are seeking
candidates passionate about online financial services and payments.
Ideally the candidate would have delivered online banking or credit
card management applications and has an understanding of integrated
cross-product loyalty programs and incentives.


Requirements:
• 3-5 years of product management experience
• Ideally, 1-2 years of direct experience with online banking,
online credit card management, or loyalty programs
• Experience successfully managing multiple projects from concept to
delivery while meeting schedules and budget.
• Experience working closely with partners on product integration.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Demonstrated leadership ability.
• Strong team player and contributor.
• Self motivated and directed.
• Passionate about the product.
• Passionate about making customers successful.
• A technical BS and/or an MBA are strongly desired.

If you are interested in being considered for this position please
email a Word version of your resume

Thank you for your interest!


Business Title: Operations Monitoring Manager
Work Location: San Jose, California

Responsibilities:
Monitor the successful completion of PayPal financial processes
(e.g., Money Market, eBay seller fee payments, OFAC screening,
merchant services, etc.). Specifically, the candidate will monitor
daily execution of all scheduled batch jobs and in some cases, real-
time links that support PayPal's financial processing
infrastructure. The candidate will be responsible for driving cross
functional teams of internal and external parties to resolve
operational issues on a 24X7 basis, analyzing and publishing daily
performance metrics, interacting with internal groups and vendors to
resolve incidents and publishing post mortems. Over time, this role
will evolve to become a back-up monitoring role for PayPal's ACH and
Credit Card processes.


Requirements:
Financial services industry experience
Operations experience
Direct or indirect experience with technology groups or technical
processes
Strong attention to detail
Ability to support 24X7 operations
Strong communication skills

If you are interested in being considered for this position please
email a Word version of your resume

Thank you for your interest!

Business Title:Group Product Manager
Work Location: San Jose, California

Responsibilities:
PayPal's customer base and transaction volumes have continued to
experience significant growth since our inception. Our projections
include a dramatic rise in the next 3 years in customer contacts,
customer service agents and new customer care centers around the
globe. We currently have global customer care and operations centers
in Omaha, Dublin and Shanghai. In an effort to continue offering our
customers a courteous, efficient and effective experience, the
Community Experience team develops strategies and builds features
for customer facing products on the website and proprietary, back-
end tools used by our customer service agents. The teams' goals are,
primarily, to resolve customer issues on the website and
secondarily, to assist in managing customer contacts in an efficient
and effective manner. This position will be responsible for product
strategy, requirements definition, execution, and leadership for the
PayPal Community Experience team. This position will work directly
with the Director of PayPal's Global Risk and Operations team to
manage a team of product managers in defining and developing
strategic initiatives to enhance the community experience from both
a customer service and marketing perspective. A large aspect of this
role will be to assertively serve as the Voice of the Customer
inside PayPal's headquarters. You will be responsible for devising
strategies and transforming them into tangible products by
overseeing product specification documents. Your goal is to create a
personalized, end-to-end user experience that increases customer
satisfaction, operational efficiencies and trust in the PayPal
Community. You will continue to seek opportunities to improve the
community experience by establishing strong relationships with
various teams and stakeholders across the organization including the
Business Units, Engineering, Web Development, UI, QA, Content,
Project Management and Operations.

Requirements:
• We seek a strong advocate for our PayPal Community. The Customer
Experience team is looking for a leader in bringing the customers'
concerns to the forefront in the minds of PayPal employees.
• 10 years of product management experience or equivalent, ideally
at an Internet company
• Minimum 3 years managing teams
• Excellent service philosophy and understanding of the challenges
in providing a superior customer experience at a global level while
controlling costs in a growth environment
• Experience managing and implementing back-end contact center tools
and applications
• Experience with various internet marketing software tools and
marketing solutions
• Ability to quickly drive decisions and consensus building
• Strong analytical and problem solving skills
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills
• Ability to work in a fast-paced, dynamic environment with a strong
level of initiative
• Proven track record of shipping successful products
• Ability to manage multiple projects and priorities
• Excellent communication and organizational skills, be a team
player, and be excited about working in a challenging, fast-paced,
and fun environment

We encourage those who do not fit *all* of the qualifications above
but whom bring an ability to learn quickly, a high degree of
motivation and a love for Customer Advocacy to also apply for this
position.


If you are interested in being considered for this position please
email a Word version of your resume

Thank you for your interest!


Business Title:Senior Product Manager, Customer Service Tools
Work Location: San Jose, California

Responsibilities:
Trust & Safety is a dynamic PayPal Business Unit focused on
enhancing privacy, fraud prevention, and consumer protection for
eBay and PayPal's global community of 100M+ buyers and sellers. This
team works to deliver both innovative customer-facing features and
patent-pending software applications used by PayPal's 1000+ customer
service agents around the world.

The primary focus of this position is to own the long-term vision
for PayPal's proprietary workflow management platform (ATTACK) and
the customer service tools built on that platform. Your products
drive operational efficiency and automation, and you can increase
customer satisfaction by developing innovative software solutions
that help people when they need it most. Take the opportunity to
turn ordinary users into loyal ones by building products that help
earn their trust in PayPal.

This is a career opportunity that encompasses all aspects of product
management, including product strategy development, user research,
reporting, writing detailed product requirements, project
management, rollout and maintenance. You will collaborate with our
global contact centers including Nebraska, Ireland, and China, cross-
functional implementation teams, and other verticals such as eBay,
Merchant Services, New Ventures, and International.

Responsibilities of this candidate include:
• Complete strategic analysis and develop frameworks to scale our
tools and ATTACK for PayPal's global expansion
• Partner with contact center management to identify operational
metrics and product requirements (the tools)
• Own the ATTACK workflow management software application and
database (the platform)
• Develop a customer service tools & platform product roadmap
• Work with vertical business units throughout eBay Inc. to
streamline risk operations wherever PayPal goes – new countries,
customer segments, or technologies
• Collaborate closely with Engineering to architect the next
generation platform
• Deliver detailed functional requirements
• Standardize reporting out of the ATTACK database

Requirements:
• BA/BS plus 3+ years of technical product management experience,
ideally with an Internet company
• Knowledge of customer care workflow management applications, CRM,
or enterprise applications is required.
• Outstanding customer care philosophy
• Outstanding analytical skills; creative thinker
• Excellent interpersonal communication & negotiation skills
• Ability to drive multiple, complex projects simultaneously in a
fast-paced environment
• Ability to build relationships internally and externally,
interfacing at all levels
• Thrives in an environment of change and ambiguity
• "Can do" attitude, team player, fun, energetic personality, works
well under pressure
• Must be eager to learn, contribute and teach – internally and
externally
• Familiarity with the eBay marketplace and the PayPal site a plus
(10+ feedback preferred – buying and selling)
• Some domestic or international travel is required (at least once
per quarter)


If you are interested in being considered for this position please
email a Word version of your resume

Thank you for your interest!


Staff DTS SWAT Engineer
  	 PayPal is one of the largest on-line financial transaction
processing systems in the world. The PayPal SWAT team provides
mission-critical 24x7 software systems support for the rapid
identification and resolution of site issues. The PayPal SWAT team
is composed of highly competent software engineers that are able to
work across multiple programming languages, large-scale systems, low-
level applications, kernels and operating systems. The application
functional areas include the PayPal website, APIs, administrative
functions, batch processes, and financial systems. Additionally,
this team is involved in new features and systems projects from
inception through deployment.
The successful candidate should have 3-5 years experience supporting
live applications in their production environment, and have
knowledge/experience in the physical deployment of applications. The
duties include, but are not limited to:
• Troubleshoot and resolve problems with production systems.
• Identify and help fix code stability/scalability issues in a very
time critical environment.
• Analyze and root-cause application problems, identify their
severity, propose and implement fixes.
• Develop industry and product technical expertise.
• Good communication skills and the ability to work with other
developers optimizing or fixing code.
• Define, design, and implement complex, multi-tier distributed
software applications. Segment and design system layers to support
componentised and layered application development, including user
interface, business functionality, and database access.
• Share on-call responsibilities.
• Work with other engineers, managers, Product Management, QA, and
Operations teams to develop innovative solutions that meet market
needs with respect to functionality, performance, scalability,
reliability, realistic implementation schedules, and adherence to
development goals
and principles.
• Estimate engineering effort; plan implementation, and rollout
system changes.
• Must be able to independently design code and test major features,
as well as work jointly with other team members to deliver complex
changes.

Job Requirements • This job requires innovative solutions and
people that enjoy rapidly solving very complex problems.
• Ability to perform under pressure.
• Experience in requirements analysis, design, coding and unit
testing of scalable, distributed, fault-tolerant applications in
UNIX and Linux environments.
• Experience in developing in C++ on Linux and/or Solaris
environments. Expertise in memory management, exception handling,
Oracle SQL, and fault tolerant code design also needed.
• Experience in scripting languages (Perl, Python, Shell)
• Expertise in object-oriented design methodology and application
development preferably in C++.
• Working knowledge of relational databases (prefer Oracle), Apache,
HTTP/HTML, XML, XSLT and basic UNIX system administration.
• Proven results oriented person with a delivery focus.
• Education Bachelors Degree or Equivalent


If you are interested in being considered for this position please
email a Word version of your resume

Thank you for your interest!

Discussion has been a bit slow lately so maybe this will get some
interest -- how do you integrate visual design on agile projects?

I know how I've been doing it, and what has worked well, but I'm
curious to hear about others' experiences.

I'm wondering, do you:
- Not work with a visual design because your applications don't
require one (e.g. internal system where you don't feel it's important)
- Do the visual design yourself
- Work with a visual designer who applies the design to each iteration
- Work with a visual designer who applies the visual design before a
release
- Some other option...?

And what tasks/deliverables do you associate with a visual designer?
(It would be helpful to what medium you're talking about -- web
site/application, shrinkwap software, touchscreen, etc.)

Obviously, some of the visual design relates more to
branding/marketing than usability, but it's amazing how much a good
visual design can enhance (or sometimes save) the usability of an
interface.

Jeff