Feb-March2011

• Teaching COMP102: Intro to Program Design in T1
• Awaiting thesis reviews anxiously
• Working on a journal paper and another article
• Reviewing more Agile2011 submissions
• Organizing CHASE workshop at ICSE2011
• Saddened by the destructive quake in Christchurch.
• Attended APN presentation
• Good to be back

Dec2010-Jan2011

• XP2011 paper and a tutorial accepted by God's grace
• Reviewing CHASE workshop submisions
• Reviewing Agile2011 submissions
• Presented at some Indian tech institutes - great response, valuable feedback
• XP2011 paper and tutorial submitted
• Taking some much needed time off with family
• Submitted thesis, by God's grace!!!

November2010

• Too busy finishing thesis to update!!

October2010

• Having to move house...now...in between my thesis writing and before submission God give me strength!
• Took James and Stu's advice and rested a day - sustainable pace
• Working on Research Deisgn chapter - starting to look complete, by God's grace.
• Got Practices chapter back from James - 3rd draft stage - yay!
• More work on Lit. Review and Research design chapters.
• COMP103: Ran course/teaching evaluations for Marcus, last lecture of the trimester.
• Made HAoSE presentation slides for "Using GT to study HAoSE"
• Worked on Research design chapter
• Made OOPSLA presentation slides for "Agility in Context"
• Worked on Literature Review chapter
• Incorporated changes suggested by George on writing style and GT description
• Incorporated changes suggested to ROLES chapter by J&S
• Practices chapter with James and Stu for review
• More meetings and discussions about thesis with James and Stu
• ROLES chapter with James and Stu for review, working on PRACTICES chapter
• Working on ROLES chapter - two more roles to go.
• Drawing out the emergence diagrams for all categories - helps solidify the thesis outline.
• Working on codes for Senior Management Support chapter.
• Got feedback from George on GT chapter of the thesis
• Discussed some new insights from the data with Stu
• Got some feedback from George about my GT chapter
• COMP 103: Last assignment out of the way!
• Constant comparison - one last time, the whole lot! will I survive?!
• Nearly fainted...this thesis writing mega sprint is starting to take a toll on me. reality: must take better care of self (e.g. have lunch!)
• Analyzing rest of data to merge with results from old ones - very consistent so far, thank God. no new category. old categories strengthened.
• More work on 103 exam, getting it audited etc....
• Meeting with James and Stu: discussed latest thesis outline, chapters, and submit/review timelines etc
• All transcripts, coding done (expect one!)
• late nights are back again...this time for the thesis, not another conference paper!
• Ended up running an impromptu lecture session when I went to check in on the tutor at COMP103 lecture. t'was fun anyway
• James and Stu met their first 'deadline' of reviews - you guys are awesome!
• 1st day of October already...I'm nearly done with ALL the transcripts and coding! Only about 3-4 more to go!
• Working on 103 exam with Marcus

September2010

• Allergies acting up again, on a sunny day - what a shame. panadol and sleep....
• Preparing the COMP103 final exam with Marcus...loads of coffee and fun
• Prepared COMP103 assignment 9 - the last one - about Bells Pizza!
• Got re-invited to present at APN, had loads of fun and some great interactions with the audience. was kinda special coz James and Stu made it too!
• Had a long chat with James about emergent categories and how best to represent the theory.
• Created a Thesis backlog, worked out the stories and tasks required to finish writing and submit!
• Discussion with swen302 student who approached me for guidance on how to go about doing an independent research on Agile practices in the Indian industry. Given him the OOPLSA paper "Agility in Context" since it's very close to his proposed topic.
• Meeting with James and Stu: need to get things moving along research front.
• Prepared COMP103 assignment 8
• ESE revision submitted after a long-drawn battle with the ugly latex-hating submission system.
• Working on recommended changes to ESE article.
• First journal paper accepted to IST, by God's grace!! Submitting final version for publishing
• Got great feedback from Pondy and Thomas on my teaching...the last lecture was truly special
• Was completely overwhelmed at the last lecture, wasn't expecting a class-wide applause to end it all. I love teaching and my class
• The Last lecture :"( bohoooo....I'm gonna miss this!
• Submitted revised IST article.
• HAoSE2010 position paper accepted, by God's grace.
• Invited to speak at next APN again: people would really like to know more about self-organization on Agile teams.
• Meeting with James and Stu: discussed IST and ESE changes

August2010

• More 103 lectures and assignments
• Making changes to IST article as per suggestions from editors.
• Presented "Agile Undercover: When customers don't collaborate" to the Agile Professionals Network (APN). Got good feedback from audience and spotted a couple of blogs about the presentation. Lots of curiosity about self-organizational roles and practices.
• COMP103 mid term tests and marking - all done!
• Meeting with James and Stu
• Having great fun lecturing
• Heard from Journal: we're still in the running
• Setting up first COMP103 assignment...running loads of script that do various nifty things like publishing assignment online, creating demos etc.
• Meeting with James and Stu: discussed thesis chapter progress and writing/review plan

July2010

• Gave a guest lecture at SWEN302: Agile methods course on "Scrum 101++"
• OOPSLA camera ready submitted, copyright form signed
• Meeting with James and Stu: discussed coding progress and major categories
• Preparing OOPSLA camera ready
• Enjoying lecturing COMP103: Data Structures and Algorithms
• Meeting with James and Stu: updates on XP conference

June 2010

• Submitted final version of EuroPLoP paper after third round of shepherding
• Sight-seeing at Trondheim
• Presented full research paper "Agile undercover: when customers don't collaborate" at XP2010, Norway
• Displayed poster "What language does Agile speak?" at XP2010, Norway
• Volunteering at XP2010
• "Agility in Context" accepted to OOPSLA, thank God Vic scores a triple win at OOPSLA2010

May 2010

• EuroPLOP paper accepted, by God's grace
• Shared ICSE2010 experiences and photos at Elvis meeting.
• Working on XP2010 slides and poster.
• Thesis: compiling chapters into the thesis...this is looking pretty good, thank God
• So I was thinking I'd take a bit of a break after ICSE2010, but oh well. On to finishing the IST submission, preparing XP2010 presentation and poster, and reviewing couple of ESE papers.
• Time to make the long flight back
• Thoroughly enjoyed the Microsoft ladies lunch.
• Thanks to God, had the most fun ever presenting "Organizing Self-Organizing Teams" at the research track on Thursday 11.30 to 12.30! Our Human Factors session turned out to be an all ladies one with Gail Murphy chairing and Rachel Bellamy (IBM T.J Watson, USA), Soo Ling Lim (University College, London), and myself presenting.
• Out and about Cape Town.
• Attending several interesting sessions on SE in education, SE in practice, and the main research track.
• The statistics of submissions versus acceptance shown during the openning ceremony was pretty scary! The co-chairs looked fabulous in "Mandela" shirts Enjoyed the keynote by Clem Sunter, author of the best selling book "Mind of a Fox".
• Meeting several respected researchers in SE. Good to catch up with Philippe (Kruchten), Ewan (Tempero), and Chris (Lewis). Glad to finally meet Helen (Sharp) in person! Also happy to meet Norsaremah, fellow Agile researcher from university of Auckland.
• Had a great time participating and presenting at the Co-operative and Human Aspects of Software Engineering (CHASE) workshop at ICSE. It was good to meet other researchers from around the world also looking at social aspects of SE.
• At ICSE2010!

April 2010

• Our research covered on InfoQ
• Need to work on CHASE presentation slides
• Organizing travel to ICSE
• EuroPLoP submitted first revision
• Need a break.
• Had the worst time trying to use a journal submission system. what a nightmare! Thank God its over
• EuroPLoP sent first revised draft to shepherd.
• NZCSRSC2010: chaired the first session and facilitated Open Space - which was great fun!
• NZCSRSC2010: it's happening!!
• Extensive literature review on self-organizing teams: both in and outside Agile software development. very cool concepts
• This is turning out to be the longest paper yet - thank God for the deadline extension
• Agile2010: submitted my share of reviews.
• Presented a seminar on the self-organizational roles. got some interesting questions and good feedback.
• Attended Craig's proposal seminar.
• Made it to the presentation slot at CHASE.

March 2010

• One down, one to go!
• James, Stu and I working away on the paper.
• Received several rsvps from industry on my seminar invitation - Agile on the rise in NZ for sure.
• Agile2010: received my share of research papers to review.
• SDC2010: interesting presentations. Met with several practitioners and presenters.
• NZCSRSC2010: set up and published the conference program online.
• Paper: deadline countdown begins!
• Seminar: due to present a seminar (based on ICSE paper) on 1st of April.
• Agile2010: reviewing to start soon.
• Seminar: Philippe's seminar on Architectural Knowledge Practices was interesting...gave me a couple of ideas which we discussed
• NZCSRSC2010: Checking camera readies, following up on issues
• Writing on GT methodology
• EuroPLoP paper about documentation patterns on Agile projects accepted for shepherding
• NZCSRSC2010 meeting: discussed program among other things
• NZCSRSC2010: fielding queries from authors
• Got interviewed about my CHASE paper...let's see what it comes out like with my croaky voice.
• getting better by God's grace
• coming down with a nasty soar throat...limited voice.
• Exchanged emails with Jeff on ICSE paper.
• APN Event: met and heard Jeff Sutherland and Jens Ostergaard. good to catch up with several industry friends.
• Revisiting data (again!)
• Agile2010: reviewing some more sessions
• NZCSRSC2010: admin stuff, sending reminders out, fielding submissions querries
• CHASE2010: submitted camera ready

February 2010

• Inching closer to the end of a rather full on and eventful month. The next one's looking busier still!
• Agile2010: reviewing some more sessions. heartening to see several proposed sessions tackling the human aspects of Agile.
• Agreed to be a lab rat for Nick's usability experiments...was fun.
• XP2010: submitted camera readies, registered
• More chat with Philippe and James
• Applied to BuildIT for travel grant to present at ICSE.
• Attended couple of seminars
• Moved back to Cotton.
• NZCSRSC2010: fed the decisions into easychair and sent out all notifications
• Meeting with Philippe and James: interesting chat into defining Agility
• NZCSRSC2010: meeting
• Heard from CHASE
• Met and had a lovely chat with Esther Derby on self-organizing teams.
• Submitted patterns paper.
• More Chat with Philippe.
• NZCSRSC2010: reviewing papers and emailing reminders out Note to self: This is loads of work to be taking on in the final year PhD, specially in the paper-writing months of the year!
• Feb seems to be the "papers" month...writing, submitting, receiving notifications, preparing camera readies the whole lot.
• Seminar by Chris about his experience in EU. Good to hear "scrum matters".
• NZCSRSC2010: looking over reviews, emailing people to remind about reviews and reviewing the papers assigned to me.
• Had a good chat with Philippe.
• Meeting with James and Stu: discussing the patterns paper.
• Writing my first patterns paper...this is so seriously cool. Love the freedom to be creative
• Elvis: interesting chat over the new labs (replacing Memphis)
• ICSE2010: working on camera ready
• XP poster abstract: working on a 2 pager (not easy to cram enough information in a 2-pager while still saying something useful in a coherent way)
• Meeting with James and Stu: got James' comments on documents paper. Discussed XP poster abstract and ICSE camera ready changes etc.
• Elvis: attended elvis meeting after a while (thanks to major paper deadlines around last few Fridays)
• Agile2010: having fun reviewing the session proposals...requires a lot of responsibility but loads of fun nonetheless.
• NZCSRSC2010: regular meeting. Need to start charting out the conference program soon.
• XP2010: Full paper accepted by God's grace plus possibly a poster abstract.
• ICSE2010: working on camera ready, need to sort out visa etc.
• Need to apply for travel funds for presentation at conferences.
• Meeting with James and Stu: discussed ICSE camera ready among other things.
• Hooked on TED! Found J.K.Rowling's Harvard commencement speech and a neat innovation presentation really inspiring.
• NZCSRSC2010: reviews pouring in. answering various questions about review process.
• Catching up on BDD and DDD discussions I had been meaning to learn about for a while.

January 2010

• XP2010: Awaiting notification any time now...tick tock tick tock...
• Agile2010: reviewing technical program proposals. Came across some really neat ones.
• CHASE2010: submitted.
• Moving house!
• Agile2010: joined the research program PC and the technical program reviewers.
• CHASE2010: Expanding the sections out. Comparing results to literature revealed strong relationships between our results and fundamental conditions of self-organization as described in Agile literature, which is exciting.
• NZCSRSC2010: Discussed review assignments with Craig who's helping by feeding the assignments on easy chair and sending out assignment emails (as I scuttle to submit the CHASE paper on time)
• CHASE2010: Sent a draft to James and Stu for reviews
• NZCSRSC2010: Collected and sorted list of all students who've submitted to the conference and forwarded them to Siva for distribution to respective universities so that they can arrange for their students' registration, travel, etc in time.
• Met with James and Stu after the long break in a long meeting. Discussed the papers, ICSE camera ready copy, coding progress, thesis writing, and various other issues.
• NZCSRSC2010: Went about assigning 3 reviewers to each of the papers, working with a mental algorithm. Highly time consuming. Will be sending out review info to authors soon.
• NZCSRSC2010: sorting out the submissions in preparation for review assignment. The (not so) easy chair system requires downloading and manually accessing files to retrieve simple information such as page numbers, which makes things a bit tedious. Nonetheless, with the nearly-overwhelming response to our CFP this year, I am sure we'll have some great sessions to attend at NZCSRSC - which makes all this effort worth it!
• Transcribing latest Indian interviews
• Started working on my thesis' outline and GT chapter, exciting stuff...
• Working on papers

December 2009

• Heard from ICSE
• NZCSRSC2010: submissions are pouring in! Excess of 60 submissions, that's a 50% rise from last year...wow!
• Submitted papers.
• Back to paper writing...due in 2 days (another extension is highly unlikely)
• Barcamp Agile: the barcamp returned after 2 years. It was great to catch up with the Wellington Agile practitioner community. The open space set up was very comfortable as usual. Attended 3 sessions (1 presentation and 2 discussions) and presented my research results in one session. It was great to get encouraging response from the community as most people related to the self-organizational roles we have identified on Agile teams. There were some interesting comments and several requests for our presentation slides/papers. I need to remember to send those out. Most of the discussion sessions focused on challenges of working on Agile projects such as level of customer involvement, working in a government organization, negotiating fixed-bid contracts.
• Looking forward to attending the Open Space unconference at theBarCampAgile this Saturday. It should be fun!
• Provided some basic information on Open Space on a page on the NZCSRSC2010 website.
• Receiving submissions for NZCSRSC2010 which is great! We've decided to extend the deadline to 31st Dec 2009 (instead of 11th Dec) to allow more students to submit to the conference.
• Nothing like a last minute deadline extension, yay!
• Discussing paper with James. Iterating through write-review cycles.

November 2009

• Some papers are easy to write, others are demanding...the XP paper is of the latter type. I have no idea where the last 2 weeks went...actually I do...straight into the paper! Although the paper was nearly complete, the last minute deadline should give me some time to polish it.
• Elvis meetings
• Submitted 6 monthly report.
• NZCSRSC2010 meeting
• Finished writing 6 monthly report, approved by James, need to pass it down to Stu.
• Revisiting 'Theoretical Coding', makes so much more sense as I read it now than it did when I browsed through it in my early GT days.
• XP paper: picking up where I left. deadline in about 2 weeks.
• Received couple of reviews of our paper, submited clarifications...awaiting results.
• Wrapping up data collection. good news is I'm hardly hearing anymore new stuff which indicates we're getting close to theoretical saturation.
• Talked to several experienced Agile practitioners, presented research results to participating organizations.

October 2009

• Gearing up for final round of data collection.
• XP: good news is that the page limit is 15 (as opposed to 10 last year)...giving us 5 pages of pure content!
• SWEN302: last week of course...amazing how fast the iterations went! looking forward to team presentations tomorrow.
• XP: turning out to be a lot bigger than we originally thought...planning to cut it down.
• NZCSRSC2010: Set up Submissions page and linked to easy chair. Printed posters...ALL of them
• Worked on the NZCSRSC2010 easychair settings and tested it out with Siva...seems to be working well. Need to hook it on to the main website tomorrow.
• Conducted a couple of interviews with members of the new team. Looks like couple of categories have reached saturation.
• Had Sandy and Doug come over as guest speakers at swen302 (Agile methods course). It was so cool to have them chat with the class...it made the course feel so much more 'real' for the students. The teams asked some interesting questions and got equally interesting answers
• NZCSRSC2010 Posters ready to be printed and posted away to various universities this week. Need to sort out easychair account settings.
• Conducted an interview with a senior management person...always interesting to listen to different perspectives.
• XP: Starting to think about possible topics. The conference website does not have enough details on format/length etc so I suppose I'll assume those to be similar to previous years for now.

September 2009

• Met with a new Agile team that I will be following for the next few weeks...beginning with attending their sprint planning on Monday..exciting stuff!
• SWEN302 teams getting closer to completion of their projects
• NZCSRSC2010 planning meeting: Logo/poster ready barring minor changes. Set-up Easychair page, need to change setting to suit our conference style.
• Sorting loads of papers, codes, articles...
• Weekly Meeting: discussed research time-line for coming months and planned papers, interviews etc.
• Reading 'Theoretical Sensitivity' in detail (again). Good to see my identified core category passes the criteria laid out by Glaser.
• It's Eid on Monday
• SWEN302 teams humming along nicely. User evaluations planned at lecture in week 10. Have invited couple of my industry friends (Agile practitioners) to chat with the students at lecture in week 11.
• Hosted a Ramadan iftar (dinner for opening fast) for local Muslim community along with other Indians.
• Attended another PhD proposal seminar
• Designing Logo and Poster for NZCSRSC2010. Learning how to use the GIMP on the way!
• Conducted another interview. Had an interesting discussion about Agile adoption.
• Done, submitted, forgotten (not really! )
• Attended Keith's PhD proposal seminar.
• Time really is whizzing past. Deadline is in close view.
• Going through iterations after iterations of writing and review with James over the paper. It's the most (merciless) refactoring I've done ever on a paper...all tiring but good stuff!

August 2009

• Still not a 100% with the throat/voice problem.
• Stu presented our paper at Agile2009. Good feedback from auidence and some interesting discussions
• Sent some last minute clarifications to Stu for the presentation.
• Stu is at Agile2009, Chicago...due to present our paper in a few hours from now...Go Stu!
• Rashina the Agile Coach, is on holiday for the next two weeks of the mid-term break...work on paper continues non-the-less. Looking forward to some data collection - as soon as I get my voice back, God willing
• Still struggling with the loss of voice due to throat infection. Makes me realize how much I normally speak, gosh!
• Attended a seminar at usual Elvis time.
• Discussed paper with James: charting out the content structure
• Discussed Agile2009 presentation with Stu. Made few changes to the slides.
• Writing a paper: initially started out polishing an old one, but turning out to be a new one with a narrower focus
• Coded interviews, revisited previous to compare

July 2009

• Made Agile2009 presentation and handed over to Stu
• Walking, talking, eating, sleeping, and dreaming Agile...really
• Attended APN meeting: Douglus talked about his experiences of Agile projects...very interesting stuff.
• Saw some cool scrum/academic videos on youtube including the Last lecture by Randy Pausch.
• More interviews, coding, memoing, and analysis of data.
• Tutoring SWEN302 Agile methods course: feels awesome to be an Agile coach and apply my theoretical knowledge base to coaching 3 teams developing real software, for real customers, to be used in the real world. Mentioned this to a few of my industry friends and everyone (including me) agrees that "we wish we had a course like this when we were in uni!"
• Felt great to have my name published under the list of Victoria's Top Scholars of 2008-2009 in the Dominion Post http://fairfaxmedia.newspaperdirect.com/epaper/viewer.aspx
• Thrilled to find article on Rilla's research in the Dominion Post. Very proud of you, girl!
• Reviewed presentations for the Agile NCR 2009 conference.
• Conducted couple of interviews. Familiar concepts are resounding, as well as some interesting insights.
• Had a good discussion with a practitioner friend and got interviews lined up with the team.
• Discussed all the emerging concepts and theory with James and Stuart. We're all excited! Now I'm beginning to move from Open coding to Selective coding (having found the core category.)
• This is so exciting! It's all coming together. I'm getting more confident about what the codes are telling me. The relationships are getting stronger and more evident than ever. Emergence, true GT style - just as Glaser promised! All the rigorous coding is paying off. It is so important to write memos. Everytime I write memos, I find deeper understanding of the codes and relationships. Looking forward to discussing everything with James and Stu.
• Analyzing the codes, spotted major categories, wrote memos to record the relationships between different code combinations. Analyzing the codes in different combinations to tease out all possible relationships.
• Transcribed and coded up another interview.
• Interviewed senior Agile expert.
• Meeting with George to discuss GT went well. It was great to get his expert feedback on the coding process. Looking for forward to more sessions.
• Attended our Agile reading group. discussed the paper and setup an appointment with George to discuss GT.
• Meeting with James and Stuart. Discussed upcoming conferences and papers to submit.
• Coded up an interview. Lots more to go...
• Our presentation details are up on the Agile2009 website: http://www.agile2009.org/program/4310
• Read paper for Agile Reading group tomorrow.
• Interviewed another developer from the same team.

June 2009

• Interviewed a Business Analyst (same team). The BA role (in this particular case) was every important, interfacing between the team and the customer.
• Follow-up discussion with senior Agile practice. Explained my model and got valuable feedback.
• Watched a presentation on an Agile project gone wrong. Read some recent articles on Agile.
• Working on a paper idea.
• Attended Elvis. Emailed Siva list of GT books to get started.
• Reading up on Shu Ha Ri and Agile: interesting stuff. discussed with James and Stu.
• Scheduling more interviews
• Attended an ECS PhD proposal seminar. Sent HEC link to the candidate. Will read their proposal in coming days.
• Interviewed a senior Agile practitioner today. Very enlightening discussion, planning for a follow up soon.
• Attended the APN meeting, caught up with Agile enthusiasts and chatted with prospective participants.
• Attended a demo session. Demos are a great way to update everyone with what the team has achieved over the last sprint in terms of new features developed, old bugs/defects corrected etc. It also serves as a platform to clear customer expectations on what was built and where the project is heading.
• Attended the Agile Methods reading group.
• Interviewed a developer today.
• Transcribing a recent interview.
• Discussed Agile2009 paper with James and Stu. Finished all changes and submitted final camera ready version along with copyright form.
• Attended George's seminar on GT. Heartening to see the number of people who turned up. It is important to explain GT to academics of all fields so that they don't harbor misconceptions about the research methodology.
• getting papers together for an application...very time consuming!
• Attended another release planning meeting. I sat observing and taking notes in a quiet corner, about 2 feet from the table. The team went through the stories, breaking them into tasks, and playing plannning poker with decks of number cards to estimate story size. It was neat to see the different team members interact with each other. Many Agile critics would think planning/estimating software development tasks using story cards, deck of number cards, and post-its etc is not so hi-tech or even slightly immature. But it was obvious that the team put in a lot of thought, discussion, and analysis in coming up with the task breakdown and estimations. There were few disagreements which was reflective of the teams' experience of release planning and comfort with each other.
• Interviewed my first Test Analyst/Tester participant...got a very different perspective of things. Looking forward to chatting with others in the team including a BA and some developers
• Emailed James and Stu copy of Agile2009 camera ready for review
• Trying to set up data collection opportunities at the conference
• Looking forward to George's seminar on GT next Monday
• Rescheduled an interview to next week.
• Finally got the camera ready instructions for Agile2009 paper. started working on it...
• Meeting: James' away to the not-so-freezing parts of the globe (I'm so jealous!!)...met Stu briefly. got their letter of support for the visa.
• Interviewed a practitioner...insightful chat...very nice individual
• sorting out application for visa. its difficult to co-ordinate the appointment with the flights! took me ages to get a suitable common time...hopefully all goes well.

May 2009

• Meeting: discussed some new ideas I had been thinking of. Discussed and submitted 6-monthly report.
• Sent off application for travel funds...results expected in July.
• Interview time again: this time a product owner...very interesting chat. Its good to have multiple perspectives.
• Conducted another interview and discussion on Agile. Its amazing how practitioners find the time to keep up to speed with the research and literature in their field. What was more interesting was to see the similarities between our experiences.
• Applied for tutoring in T2.
• Need to sort out lots of things to organize the conference trip including funding, visa, tickets, accommodation...phew!
• Fixed appointment for research interviews next week
• XP2009: presentation ready. Converted to PDF to avoid formatting issues. Added notes to go with the slides. Wish I could go! Many thanks to Jenny for this favor!
• Meeting with James and Stu: reviewed the XP2009 slide, suggested some changes.
• Recommended Siva to apply for volunteering if he wants to attend Agile 2009 and explore funding options.
• Observation at an org running an Agile project, including daily stand-up and a projects interdependencies meetings. Very interesting indeed. Plan to return for interviews.
• Attended seminar by Ange while she was in town for graduation. Returned her books.
• Filled six monthly report. Need to sign and fwd to Stu and James.
• Watched a Mary Poppendieck video on 'The role of leadership in software development'. The historical background to management/leadership was both interesting and intriguing. Took notes.
• Volunteered at Agile2009...should be fun.
• Exploring possibility of traveling with Ange to Agile2009.
• Meeting with James and Stu. Shared copies of codes, transcripts, recordings etc. Discussed OOPSLA and Agile papers. Exploring possibility of reviving the Agile reading group.
• Agile 2009: paper accepted, Thank God You win some, you lose some...
• XP2009: Finally got details of presentation format/duration. Working on the powerpoint.
• Emailed Siva a copy of my Phd proposal as requested.
• Waiting for Agile reviews...hopefully there's better news from that front.
• Recieved reviews from OOPSLA...my first paper not to be accepted! But I sincerely found the whole exercise of writing the paper, submitting, and the reviews very valuable indeed. It made me think and analyze the data at a deeper, more integrated level. I was happy with the quantity and quality we achieved in a short span of time...of course there's always room for improvement. It was definitely worth it!
• Illness lasted a couple of weeks. feeling exhausted, very weak.
• Went to doc, not well...at all

April 2009

• Not feeling too well...
• Conducted one interview locally...follow up with a previous participant. Great to see them flourishing in the Agile space. The experiences they shared were very enlightening and thought-provoking. Possibility of interviewing other members on the same project. Need to transcribe and code interview.
• Attended APN talk on user stories by Sandy and Douglas...very interesting takes from both.
• Started a new Agile group on yahoo. Six members strong now. Hopefully we can add value to each others' research and discuss issues here. Open to practitioners as well.
• Still waiting for reviews from OOPSLA and Agile...
• Meeting with James and Stu to discuss latest developments in the analysis and the emergent theory. Discussed research plan.
• This is pretty cool...the different concepts that seemed so separate are actually coming together. When Glaser said the theory will emerge, it just has to....guess what, he was right! This feels awesome!
• Coding, coding, coding...and waiting for more interesting things to emerge in true GT style!
• More books....revisiting 'Discovery of GT' and 'Theoretical Sensitivity'.
• Reading GT books 'Basics of Grounded Theory Analysis' and 'Examples of GT: A Reader'. Thanks to Angela for lending them.
• Need to code remaining interviews.
• Transcribing remaining interviews.
• Eager to get reviews from Agile and Oopsla by month end and ealry May respectively. This is a verrry long month!
• Awesome to see Ange get the coveted 'Dr.' title. Well done! Looking fwd to reading her thesis.
• Attended NZCSRS, Auckland. Flying to Auckland and back from Welly is both convenient and tiring. The conference was well organized. It was interesting to see what other NZ researchers are up to. After my presentation, we had some discussion forums over lunch. I hosted one on 'Agile concepts' and was pleased to see interest amongst people about Agile. It was fun answering their questions based on my research experiences. I hope Vic gets a chance to host NZCSRSC soon.
• Made changes to presentation to focus on one set of results as suggested.
• Dry run for NZCSRSC at Elvis. Received feedback.
• Transcribed few recent interviews.

March 2009

• Finally over with the marathon run - submitted the paper in time. Taking few days off studies...tending to my much neglected house!
• Planning on another paper. deadline's close...let's see how it goes.
• Reading 'The Enterprise and Scrum' by Ken Schwaber.
• Saw new layout of department...looks much better than before. Got room keys.
• Met James and Stu...quick update on India Trip, research plan.
• Catching up on latest papers/publications on Agile.
• XP2009: Working on camera ready copy
• XP2009: Paper accepted
• Agile2009: paper submitted.
• Returned from India on a loooong tiring flight. Everyone's completely drained form the journey! Good to be home, thank God.

February 2009

• Worked on Agile2009 paper.
• Conducted interviews in India.
• Attend Scrum Master Certification by Pete Deemer: Officially a certified Scrum Master now.

January 2009

• NZCSRSC'09: paper accepted
• XP2009: Submitted paper
• ACDC'09: presented at doctorial consortium, received feedback from panel.
• NZCSRSC'09: finished reviewing 3 papers

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