Features wanted in a Wiim Ultra 2

Well, I find it sweet that the R&D folks are getting feedback that doesn't require fixing a bug...

I do R&D.

See, most of the time we just hear from some support engineer that some customer is having an issue.

"When Fred does this, the metalMachineCruncher smokes"
"Well, tell Fred not to do that"

"When Joe does this, the router immolates itself and burns down the fiber lines"
"What version of the firmware is Joe using?"
"Oh, I think it's 0.9"
"That's ancient! Tell Joe to update to 15.7 or later... it's supposed to only burn down the copper"


It's good to hear from fellow R&D people.

"The R&D guys over at BombsAndInc would like you to implement a homing guided bomb algorithm for WiiM Ultras based on the WiFi MAC address"
"Fantastic Idea... we'll need 1000 hours (*) of labor budget"
"Done"
"Oh, and can we have a new espresso machine for the office""
"Done"
"Sweet! We just wrote the JIRAs and got a PO for the Profitec 500"


It's nice to feel the love, all we hear are problems with old versions (stuff we fixed last year), belly aching from the program managers about the cost and schedule or the bug reports from the Test and Validation teams.

(*) I know, this is a laughable number... I'm assuming commercial stuff that we can outsource to some monkeys overseas who think Python scripts are "programming". In reality, if we're gonna follow DO178C this will be more like 10,000 hours, a Profitec 800 and we'll hire four interns to write the code in C++.
 
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Well, I find it sweet that the R&D folks are getting feedback that doesn't require fixing a bug...

I do R&D.

See, most of the time we just hear from some support engineer that some customer is having an issue.

"When Fred does this, the metalMachineCruncher smokes"
"Well, tell Fred not to do that"

"When Joe does this, the router immolates itself and burns down the fiber lines"
"What version of the firmware is Joe using?"
"Oh, I think it's 0.9"
"That's ancient! Tell Joe to update to 15.7 or later... it's supposed to only burn down the copper"


It's good to hear from fellow R&D people.

"The R&D guys over at BombsAndInc would like you to implement a homing guided bomb algorithm for WiiM Ultras based on the WiFi MAC address"
"Fantastic Idea... we'll need 1000 hours (*) of labor budget"
"Done"
"Oh, and can we have a new espresso machine for the office""
"Done"
"Sweet! We just wrote the JIRAs and got a PO for the Profitec 500"


It's nice to feel the love, all we hear are problems with old versions (stuff we fixed last year), belly aching from the program managers about the cost and schedule or the bug reports from the Test and Validation teams.

(*) I know, this is a laughable number... I'm assuming commercial stuff that we can outsource to some monkeys overseas who think Python scripts are "programming". In reality, if we're gonna follow DO178C this will be more like 10,000 hours, a Profitec 800 and we'll hire four interns to write the code in C++.
Jira gives me stress (but maybe we have not implemented it well at my org).

-Ed
 
Jira gives me stress (but maybe we have not implemented it well at my org).

-Ed
LOL.... fellow R&D...

Being doing the JIRA thing now for... OMG... since the late 90s I think. We were actually writing the book on Agile at the Lab in the late 90s. We started to lay out the cadence of Agile, Spiral and Sprints.

The most stressful tempo is the 2 week sprints. It doesn't really give you time to breathe and it's hard to do epics and stories correctly. You end up doing never ending chains of tasks that you have to come up with every two weeks. ( Heck, today is Friday.. so I have to close my tasks this weekend and open more for next sprint..).

The best one I ever did was with 4 month sprints... That gave us time to assign quite a few stories and shuffle things around. I used to joke we had epics... so many epics that we needed a "saga" to tie them down.

( Inside Atlassian joke... you either get it - a la Dilbert- or you are just not Agile enough )

The projects I've laid out and ran, I went with one month sprints. Seems to be the best balance between management and performance. With at least one week out of four that is relaxing and people can take some time off.

BTW, did you know that JIRA comes from Gojira ( Japanese for Godzilla )... and the old Bugzilla tracking tool?

Chez moi, we have two really cool norens of Gojira. Over the door to my home office, its the classic Gojira with The Great Wave off Kanagawa and Fuji. Over the front door, we have a very cool noren of modern Gojira attacking a classical bridge with fishermen falling off the boats. I'd love to find a noren of Gojira stomping on Toyopets.

Tell you the truth, I don't give a da... what the neighbors think. We LOVE GOJIRA in our home. Yes, a matter of fact we got the Fragile Lamp in by our bedroom window facing the front of the house.

But I digressed... gotta go close a couple of JIRAs to keep the management happy.
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LOL.... fellow R&D...

Being doing the JIRA thing now for... OMG... since the late 90s I think. We were actually writing the book on Agile at the Lab in the late 90s. We started to lay out the cadence of Agile, Spiral and Sprints.

The most stressful tempo is the 2 week sprints. It doesn't really give you time to breathe and it's hard to do epics and stories correctly. You end up doing never ending chains of tasks that you have to come up with every two weeks. ( Heck, today is Friday.. so I have to close my tasks this weekend and open more for next sprint..).

The best one I ever did was with 4 month sprints... That gave us time to assign quite a few stories and shuffle things around. I used to joke we had epics... so many epics that we needed a "saga" to tie them down.

( Inside Atlassian joke... you either get it - a la Dilbert- or you are just not Agile enough )

The projects I've laid out and ran, I went with one month sprints. Seems to be the best balance between management and performance. With at least one week out of four that is relaxing and people can take some time off.

BTW, did you know that JIRA comes from Gojira ( Japanese for Godzilla )... and the old Bugzilla tracking tool?

Chez moi, we have two really cool norens of Gojira. Over the door to my home office, its the classic Gojira with The Great Wave off Kanagawa and Fuji. Over the front door, we have a very cool noren of modern Gojira attacking a classical bridge with fishermen falling off the boats. I'd love to find a noren of Gojira stomping on Toyopets.

Tell you the truth, I don't give a da... what the neighbors think. We LOVE GOJIRA in our home. Yes, a matter of fact we got the Fragile Lamp in by our bedroom window facing the front of the house.

But I digressed... gotta go close a couple of JIRAs to keep the management happy.
Actually, I'm in operations. Our org uses Jira for tracking tech support tickets. There are way-too-long drop-downs with almost no actual options for the problem I'm trying to submit a ticket for most of the time. So yeah, probably an implementation problem.

I actually work for an investment firm--you may have heard of it, Franklin Templeton.

-Ed
 
I've heard of them... Of course. ;-)

I guess you could use JIRAs to track "tasks". You can write a JIRA "issue" and then follow up with the tasks.

If you use Atlassian, then there should be all kinds of options. Ideally you want to create chains... the root (reason why you are doing the work) and then the actual tasks to do design/implementation/test...

Support issues, since they come from "support" are normally handled by R&D as "exceptions". And then you do the analysis and fall into the cadence... You would never have an actual "epic".

How about a Super Duper WiiM Ultra Reference with:

larger OLED touch screen,
powerful analog output section with socketed op amps
Balanced output, SE output, balanced aux input and SE aux input.
Included calibrated microphone?
Dump the MM input.
Upgraded USB/DAC as deemed necessary
Optional... FIR for Input Response Calibration.

10"(w)x 9"(d) x 3.5"(h)

$1000 without Calibrated Microphone
$1100 with Calibrated Microphone

Add $200 for FIR / DSP board upgrades.

And Fix WiiM Home for the desktop.


I can help writing the JIRA epics.
 
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