A while back people talked about wanting a real story list for a real XP
project. I'm still planning to write a more detailed article on a
finished product, but in the meantime one of my clients has generously
agreed to let me publish their story list. The app in question is here:

http://www.sidereel.com/

SideReel is a San Francisco-based startup that helps viewers find
entertainment, and lets fans collect and polish information about the
objects of their interest. They started toward the end of December 2006.
At the end of February they had their private alpha launch; private beta
came at the end of March, and public beta started at the end of April.

A few vocabulary items:

* Source1, Source2: sites with information used to seed the catalog
* Atom: A topic, like the TV show 24 or the actor Will Farrell
* Field: a specific fact about an Atom, like the summary for a show
* Watch link: a link to the video for an Atom


Here's their story list by week, with estimates:

* 12/18 (& 12/25)
o Crawl Source1's API for 40 shows and display them on a page [4]
* 1/1
o User watches some shows for House (a TV show) [2]
o Links to episode parts are grouped together [1]
* 1/8
o Crawl Source2 for fulfillment links - 25% accuracy [2]
o User sees plaintext Atom page (paragraphs, indents) [1]
* 1/15
o User sees formatted text on Atom page (bold, italic,
headers) [1]
o User sees Atom page with fields [0.5]
o User sees Atom page with lists (bulleted, numbered) [0.5]
o User sees Atom page w/links (internal, external) [1]
* 1/22
o User edits an Atom page [1]
o User sees persistent page header [0.5]
o User creates an Atom page [1]
* 1/29
o Admin enters seed data [0.5]
o User edits existing data on a TV series page [1]
o User places image link on a page [1]
* 2/5
o User searches for Atom by title [1]
o User enters Watch links [1]
* 2/12
o User views a generic video page [2]
* 2/19
o User sees home page [1]
o UI cleanup [3]
o ALPHA RELEASE
* 2/26
o Crawler continues after show error [0.5]
o User changes survive across restarts (5000 atoms) [1]
* 3/5
o Crawler creates video atom [1]
* 3/12
o Users discuss [1]
o Sidereel blog [0]
o User chooses what type of Atom to create [0.5]
o User sees static text on pages [0.5]
o User traffic is tracked and reported [0.5]
o User sees homepage with video types separated [0.5]
o User sees page type in search results [0]
o Cleanup from new copy changes [0]
* 3/19
o Crawler doesn't inject ad links into Atom page [0.5]
o Crawler links from Source2 are 50% correct [1]
o Crawler updates existing links [0.5]
o PRIVATE BETA RELEASE
* 3/26
o Research SVN as versioning mechanism [1]
* 4/1
o User sees control bar after clicking a watch link (for
tracking) [1/2]
o User sees page history (using SVN) [2]
* 4/8
o User sees static home page with header and footer [1]
o User sees content index pages [1]
o User reverts page to previous version [0.5]
* 4/15
o Static pages rendered with dynamic header, footer [0]
o PUBLIC BETA RELEASE
o User enters title image on page [0.5]
* 4/22
o User enters recommendations [1]
o RELEASE
o Research templating system [1]
* 4/29
o Designer edits template of video atom [2]



A few things to note:

* They started with the core user experience: finding and viewing shows.
* The system had no persistence until the week of 2/26; it wasn't
needed, and leaving it out made development faster. The story for
that was originally estimated as a 3, and ended up as a 1.
* They launched with no user accounts. They'll be added shortly.
* Yes, that's a wiki we built in there.
* Using XP, they've hit or beat all their target dates so far.
* All of this happened in the usual startup context, which includes
all the upheaval and uncertainty you'll find in any business
starting from scratch.



So that's the basic scoop. As a plug for them, I should mention that
they are looking for both funding and great developers, so if you know
somebody who might be a good match, please pass the link along.

Also, the product manager is on this mailing list; if you have questions
for either him or me, don't hesitate to ask.




William

--
William Pietri - william@... - +1-415-643-1024
Agile consulting, coaching, and development - http://www.scissor.com/