Back in early January I posted about our new way of working in 2010. Instead of working individually in isolation as we had in the past, we’re breaking into small teams of three (two programmers, one designer). We’re keeping the teams intact for two months at a time. During those two months, the teams will work on four separate iterations, two weeks each. The goal is to drastically cut down scope, set short fixed deadlines, and focus on improving our products.
How’d it go?
Now that January and February are behind us, and March is upon us, we can reflect on the first two month term. So how’d it go?
It went incredibly well. It was the most productive two month period we’ve had in a long time. It wasn’t all perfect, and some adjustments were required, but all in all we definitely feel like we made the right call switching to this new way of working.
The results
Here’s some of what we accomplished:
- HIGHRISE: A major redesign of the “stream” in Highrise.
- HIGHRISE: Jump to a case or deal from the sidebar search.
- HIGHRISE: Merge companies to help deal with duplicates.
- HIGHRISE: Email notifications, daily digests, and vCards for your Highrise Dropboxes.
- BASECAMP: Stylized HTML email notifications for messages, comments, to-dos, files, and milestones.
- BASECAMP: Post new messages via email.
- BASECAMP: Redesigned message section with active threads highlighted.
- BASECAMP: Replies to assignment emails are posted as comments.
- CAMPFIRE: Formatted tweets in Campfire chats.
- CAMPFIRE: Image thumbnails in chat transcripts, redesigned transcript view, starring chat highlights for easy future access.
- LAUNCHPAD: Jump deep inside an app right from the Launchpad.
- 37id: New help section.
- ANSWERS: Launched 37signals Answers.
Plus a variety of bug fixes, minor updates, infrastructure improvements, and design and language tweaks.