Week 512

We’ve kicked off the fourth sprint on the Crown Marketplace app development, splitting our time between our offices in Whitechapel and the CCS offices on Kingsway.

Crown Marketplace

We’re around half-way through the project now, and some things are coming into focus while others are infuriatingly hard to get hold of.

We’ve all had to stretch a bit beyond ‘just development’ this sprint into data mining, business analysis, and service design to keep the project moving.

It’s been very clear that we bring a surprisingly diverse set of skills to a project. In difficult environments, I think you need that to get anything good shipped.

It can be a bit tiring though, and some of us enjoy the variety more than others. I suppose it’s not exactly what we’re being paid for either!

It’s especially hard in organisations who view developers as the people at the end of a long chain of thinking and planning who just do stuff.

All this, and the previous project we did with thetrainline, have made us think about how best to sell ourselves before a project and how we prepare clients for working with us when a project is kicked off.

We’re hoping to get some time for some more focussed thinking about this, maybe getting in a third party to help us tease it out.

GFR Drinks

GFR Drinks were in the Prince Arthur and a fine time was had by all.

CoTech

We’re now a couple of weeks away from the annual CoTech gathering at Space4 this year. Chris is going to be leading a session on improving the Website, which I’m looking forward to.

– Ben