Lots of you email me with ideas, suggestions and requests. Many of you are interested in joining our team. We are excited that you are even interested in the project. I was reading about the Mongrel and their open source community. Zed Shaw had some great points that I wanted to include here as a basis for the creation of our community:
No Code Fisting: Zed explains, “I worked with this guy once who walked into my office one day to tell me that he had started reorganizing the code base for the product. Problem was he started this completely useless reorganization two days before a big deployment, checked it into the CVS repository without telling anyone, didn’t get it working at all, and then had to go on vacation that same day. He was in my office to tell me to clean up his mess since his changes completely broke the build. He did all of this without telling anyone or asking first.
This is “code fisting�, where you shove large amounts of code at people where it isn’t wanted. When you do this all you’re doing is pissing off the people you work with and costing your employer money. In an open source project it can get you kicked out, ridiculed in public, and jeopardize your reputation.
I find that people who do this seem to not understand the #1 rule about working with others on a software project:
"Whenever you do something make sure it causes the least amount of suffering
for others."
Change is important and the project needs it to improve, but if you go thrusting your nasty designs on other people in surprise Ninja moves then you’re not following the rule.
So how do you reduce the suffering that comes from big changes?”
Code Lube Required: Again, Zed explains, “Code lube is the answer to necessary code fisting. Code lube is a combination of communication, coordination, and gently applying your changes slowly over time until they’re in sync with the rest of the world. You have to baby step the other participants and if they aren’t receptive, then put your stuff into a patch or a branch and come back to it later.
This includes changes that aren’t related to code. Deployments need to be heavily coordinated. Moving servers, changing database schemas, installing new versions of tools, and changing important documentation all require talking with people.”
Zed’s post is a great read for anyone interested in an open source project. Thanks!
July 24, 2006 |
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The new code was installed internally last week. We have been playing with it and making modifications. There are still some functional issues as well as visual issues. We are updating some of the wireframes to more closely reflect the needs of the design. Here is an example:
Note the additional button to replace fake buttons. Note the feed icon. Note the tagging function. The text on the lower right corner describes three of the drop down screens.  We are still working on a release very soon. Keep your fingers crossed.
July 24, 2006 |
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Tags: SimpleTicket , simpleticket , rubyonrails , opensource , wireframe , design , css | Bookmark on del.icio.us | Digg It
Here is the screen we project in the NOC for SimpleTicket. Tickets submitted by users show up at the top and must be opened within 30 minutes or they turn red. If a user is contacted, but is not available the ticket is put back into the pending que and marked as contacted with green. Contacted tickets must be updated each day, if they are not updated each day they turn red as well. The bottom includes stats for each engineer (up-to 24 on this page).
July 19, 2006 |
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We are building a hosted version of SimpleTicket that will allow companies or IT support shops to create a SimpleTicket install within minutes. Here is a peak:
Above you can see the ‘draft’ service levels. We plan to offer two types of SimpleTicket installs. The first is for internal support departments and the second is for IT support companies (like our own Architel).
We are still working out the details, but here is what the signup page might look like once you have selected a plan.
July 18, 2006 |
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We realized that we needed to update the customer view of SimpleTicket before we released the new backend. These wireframes were whipped up today. Let us know what you think. We are still thinking through a few issues (password recovery, login, account creation) and we are not certain this is how it will all turn out, but it will give you a glimpse into our thought process:
Most users will only see this view once. After they login they set their cookie and they only see the Create New Ticket page.
We decided to include three things in this view: 1) login, 2) password reminder, 3) create an account. Hopefully this isn’t too much for one page, but we wanted to keep it very simple - fewer pages, less navigation.
We removed priority settings. We have been using SimpleTicket internally for six months and less than 1% of users actually set the priority. We still have priority for internal use - i.e. by the engineers, but that is really for their uses.
This page is the default view for most users after they login for the first time.
This page starts out with a list of a users open tickets. If the user clicks on the “open ticket” link the Ticket detail opens and allows the user to view the ticket history, close the ticket (i.e. really close it), escalate the ticket to a manager, or close the view. Of course the user can still update the ticket with additional information. Note the two feed icons. Users can get an RSS feed for all of their tickets - i.e. so each time they are updated they get a notice in their newsreader. Users can also limit their feed to a specific ticket.
In our new closed ticket view, works just like open ticket view, but the users can reopen tickets if they wish. We have lots of users not happy that their ticket was closed - this gives them an easy way of re-opening it.
We now allow the user to update any of their information themselves. No more tickets asking us to update their information!
July 18, 2006 |
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