April 15, 2009 at 11:01 · Filed under Design, LinkedIn
Every online company should always try to continuously improve their product. As head of development of norwegian classifieds website zett.no I’ve been looking at our competitors’ websites (finn.no and tinde.no) comparing our booking solutions.
Booking solution of finn, tinde and zett
Booking system is a heart of these applications since this is where the money comes from (at least from the private persons). And being such an important part of the system the way booking solutions work today did not impress me much (on either of the three websites).
I have documented the booking process on all three websites just the way they looked 8th of April 2009 (I’ll publish own posts on this later for: finn, tinde and zett).
So here comes the challenge:
In 6 months from now 15th of October 2009 I’ll compare them again looking at how the process have been improved. Every detail count, I’ll evaluate the changes then, but I can announce the winner already now.
The winner is our users! And a nice side effect of improved booking solution is our revenue!
I hope that finn and tinde accept this challenge, and that we will see great improvements very soon. I also hope that when the improvements are made, we will steal the best ideas from each other and do a follow up release taking our booking solutions to the top of usability, ease of use and performance.
April 14, 2009 at 23:28 · Filed under LinkedIn, Private
Here is the list of books and resources that I read recently that has influenced me in one way or another (in no particular order):
- Zen Habits – blog of Leo Babauta covering: achieving goals, productivity, being organized, GTD, motivation, eliminating debt, saving, getting a flat stomach, eating healthy, simplifying, living frugal, parenting, happiness, and successfully implementing good habits.
- Get rich slowly – blog of J.D>. Roth sharing stories about debt elimination, saving money, and practical investing.
- Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery by Garr Reynolds
- The Non-Designer’s Design Book by Robin Williams
- Web Standards Solutions by Dan Cederholm
- DOM Scripting: Web Design with JavaScript and the Document Object Model by Jeremy Keith
- The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell
- Blink : The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell
- Scrum and XP from the Trenches by Henrik Kniberg
- The Neatest Little Guide to Stock Market Investing by Jason Kelly
- Scalable Internet Architectures by Theo Schlossnagle
- Designing the Obvious: A Common Sense Approach to Web Application Design by Robert Hoekman Jr.
- Getting real by 37signals
- Winning by Jack and Suzy Welch
- The big book of key performance indicators by Eric T. Petterson
The list is never complete, so I’ll update the post once in a while…
April 14, 2009 at 13:42 · Filed under Agile & Scrum, LinkedIn
Just wanted to share with you all this sprint burndown chart:
Sprint burndown chart (click to enlarge)
How do you feel about it?
How do you think the team felt about it?
Do you think this was a good or a bad sprint?
Say what you think in the comments, I’ll update this post one week later with real answers :-)
