I'm fascinated by peeks into the inside of what actually happens in the real world of Getting Things Done. The web site Bare Naked App could therefore be a voyeur's delight.
What we have here is an inside look at web product development -- without a description of the application itself. Here's what they say about the blog:
So how bare will we get? The answer is, down to the pants (or underpants if you’re not English). We will be revealing all of our costings, the reasons behind our decisions, why we chose to work with the people we did and of course the embarrassing mistakes we made along the way. The only thing we won’t tell you is what the app does - at least not until we launch.
Now, it remains to be seen how open this kimono will actually get, but I really do like this list of categories that they use for classifying their blog entries:
- Project Management (1)
- The Budget (1)
- The Design (10)
- The Development (6)
- The Logo (8)
- The Name (4)
- The Servers (2
- The Team (3)
- The Text (2)
- The Timeframe (6)
- The Wireframe (3)
- Tools (1)
- Video Diaries (4)
If you've ever built or used an intranet web portal to help manage a project, as I have, you'll find much of this familiar and, to some extent, mundane; alas, there is much more to project manager than "building neat stuff." But I've been wondering about the intersection between Web 2.0 technologies and the real world of project management, so this is one way to find out. It could just be a lame attempt at word of mouth marketing, but I doubt that.
I'll report back after I've had a chance to follow it for a while.
Here is a short video of one of the developers talking about how Amigo is handling incoming and outgoing payments.
http://www.barenakedapp.com/videos/paypal-to-the-rescue#comments
There's a lot of practical information exchanged here as well as a hint about what Amigo will be doing. Not everyone agrees wit how Google and PayPal operate, so you realize that even in highly public experiments like this a sense of uncertainty pervades the project sometimes. But with so many people watching over your shoulder, there's no lack of advice, either.
An interesting side note -- the developer in the video likes the fact that he can pick up the phone and call his team member in the UK, but due to time differences he sometimes is reduced to using email with his U.S. team member.
Reminds me of the time I was working on a project where half the team was located in New Jersey and the other half in Hong Kong. Not only did we have time differences to deal with, we also had day differences!
