Results From Scrum

The benefits of Scrum reported by teams come in various aspects of their experience. At
Yahoo!, we have migrated nearly 90 projects to Scrum in the last 30 months, totaling almost
900 people, and the list of teams using it is quickly growing. These projects have ranged from consumer-facing, design-heavy websites like Yahoo! Photos, to the mission-critical back-end infrastructure of services like Yahoo! Mail, which serves hundreds of millions of customers; they range from entirely new products like Yahoo! Podcasts, which used Scrum from concept through launch (and won a Webby Award for best product in its category that year), to more incremental projects, which included work on new features as well as bug fixes and other maintenance; and we’ve used Scrum for distributed projects, where the team is on separate continents. Several times each year we survey everyone at Yahoo! that is using Scrum
(including Product Owners, Team Members, ScrumMasters, and the functional managers of those individuals) and ask them to compare Scrum to the approach they were using previously.
Some summary data is presented here:
Productivity: 68% of respondents reported Scrum is better or much better (4 or 5 on a 5- point scale); 5% reported Scrum is worse or much worse (1 or 2 on a 5-point scale); 27% reported Scrum is about the same (3 on a 5-point scale).
Team Morale: 52% of respondents reported Scrum is better or much better; 9% reported
Scrum is worse or much worse; 39% reported Scrum is about the same.
Adaptability: 63% of respondents reported Scrum is better or much better; 4% reported
Scrum is worse or much worse; 33% reported Scrum is about the same.
Accountability: 62% of respondents reported Scrum is better or much better; 6% reported Scrum is worse or much worse; 32% reported Scrum is about the same.
Collaboration and Cooperation: 81% of respondents reported Scrum is better or much better; 1% reported Scrum is worse or much worse; 18% reported Scrum about the same.
Team productivity increased an average of 36%, based on the estimates of the
Product Owners.
85% of team-members stated that they would continue using Scrum if the decision were solely up to them.

Take Advantage of the New Features in Internet Explorer 8

Introduction

Internet Explorer 8 is more standards compliant than any earlier version of Internet Explorer. This means that pages you have written to standards will work better with Internet Explorer 8. Cross-browser compatibility is much easier because you don't have to modify your pages as much to display on specific browsers.
Note  Even browsers that are standards-compliant will interpret some part of standards slightly differently. The Internet Explorer team has published the test cases used for testing Internet Explorer CSS compliance. You can use these test cases as samples for determining differences in the various browsers' interpretations of standards. Those test cases are located HERE World Wide Web link.

Internet Explorer 8 also adds some new end-user features that you can take advantage of on your sites. The new features are Web Slices, Accelerators, and Search Suggestions for Search Providers. Big improvements have been made to AJAX, JScript, and Developer Tools.

This article assumes that your site works well with Internet Explorer 8 and that you have decided against using the META tag to force rendering to the Internet Explorer 7 engine. If this is a problem for you, please see How Do I Fix My Site Today?. You should also consider using the Microsoft Application Compatibility Toolkit (ACT). If your site looks better in Internet Explorer 7 than in Internet Explorer 8, set the META tag and continue reading to see how you can take advantage of new and updated features of Internet Explorer 8.

For more information on all the new features for developers in Internet Explorer 8, see What's New in Internet Explorer 8.
CSS Support

Internet Explorer 8 fully supports CSS 2.1 and more of CSS 3. See CSS Overviews and Tutorials for a full history of CSS support in Internet Explorer, including Internet Explorer 8 support.

For more information, see CSS Improvements in Internet Explorer 8.
HTML and DOM Support

Internet Explorer 8 has improved support for HTML 4.01 and 5, also for DOM 2 and 3. Internet Explorer 8 also more strictly adheres to those standards. In terms of compatibility between Internet Explorer 7 and Internet Explorer 8, this area will cause you the most problems. Some objects you used with Internet Explorer 7 have changed to work according the various standards specifications. In other words, some methods, properties, and so on that worked in a non-standard way in Internet Explorer 7 now comply with standards in Internet Explorer 8.

Test your site in Internet Explorer 8 to look for problems caused by non-standard usage. For more information, see HTML Enhancements in Internet Explorer 8 and Standards Compliance Updates in Internet Explorer 8.
Better AJAX Support

Internet Explorer 8 more easily supports backward navigation of page fragments. It provides better communication between pages, frames, sites, and domains. JScript also now provides native JSON support. See the following pages for more information:

    * An Introduction to Cross-Document Messaging in Internet Explorer 8
    * XMLHttpRequest Enhancements in Internet Explorer 8
    * Connectivity Enhancements in Internet Explorer 8
    * Introducing AJAX Navigations
    * JSON Object

Developer Tools Built In

You may have used downloaded and used the Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar. This add-on was released at nearly the same time that Internet Explorer 7 was released. The toolbar's functionality has been incorporated into the browser, so there's no need for an additional installation. The Developer Tools have been greatly improved to include a debugger, a profiler, and more. When using Internet Explorer 8, press F12 and try it out. For more information, see Developer Tools User Interface Reference.
Accelerators

You can make your Web services available to users as Accelerators. Users can add Accelerators to Internet Explorer 8 and use them anywhere they browse. The user selects some text (for example, an address on a page) and can select an Accelerator for a mapping Web service to see the location. Accelerators offer a preview of results so users don't have to navigate away from the page they are looking at and disrupt the flow of their work.

Setting up a Web service as an Accelerator is easy. It requires an XML file, similar to a manifest file, on your server. There are also scripting methods for adding the Accelerator to Internet Explorer. Microsoft has set up a Gallery (http://ieaddons.com/) where you can make your Accelerators available.

For more information about Accelerators, see OpenService Accelerators Developer Guide.
Web Slices

Like an RSS feed, you can set up portions of your Web pages that contain frequently updated information as Web Slices for your users. Users subscribe to a Web Slice and can monitor changes without having to navigate back to the original page unless they want to see more information. Microsoft has set up a Gallery (http://ieaddons.com/) where you can advertise your Web Slices.

For example, news feeds, auctions, social networking updates, and weather updates are all good scenarios for Web Slices, but there are many more.

For more information about setting up a Web Slice, see Subscribing to Content with Web Slices.