E N D
3. About me 27 years in publishing, all at AIP
9 years in print journal production (most as a technical copy-editor)
3 years in desktop publication production
15 years in electronic/online products (8 as a manager)
Currently an online product development manager in a business unit
Not a programmer; more of a technical projects manager/product manager
4. Our goals Increase development speed in order to meet customer and customer constituency demands, as well as our own needs to evolve our services more regularly
Position ourselves to innovate or deploy new features quickly in response to unpredictable market conditions, major paradigm shifts (like Web 2.0), or good ole competitive one-upsmanship
5. The enemy is us Project (micro)management
Perfect-plan-ism
Fear of failure (culture of that wont work)
Distributed decision-making
Monolithic release mentality
Design by committee
Disconnect from users and customers at all but latest stages
Compartmentalization, thick-walled bizunit-bizunit and bizunit-IT silos
6. From many schools of agility Observe Orient Decide Act (Boyds OODA Loop)
Observe Model Test Reflect (Kolbs Learning Model)
Plan Do Check Act (Shewharts QC Cycle)
7. we stewed an agile approach
8. Agility demands the right roles The Agile X Organization
The Leader, a/k/a Big X
The Stakeholder
The Timekeeper
The User Advocate
The Visualizer
The Architect
The Coder
The Bulletproofer
The Tester
The Gatekeeper
9. What was our Big X like? Did not act like a certified project manager; more of an engager-resonator-cultivator-harmonizer
Articulated clear intent/goal (co-signed the contract of leadership with the team)
Asked the team to accomplish the goal, but did not tell them how to do it
10. Team attributes Highly motivated, highly skilled
Zen-like, intuitive understanding (feeling it)
Mix of experienced hands, fresh POVs
Rank did not dictate leadership role(s)
Business-technology blend
Self-mobilizing at all levels
Cross-pollinating
Credibility, mutual respect, passion, trust
Subjugation of personal agendas
11. Team behaviors Highly verbal
No blame, no fear
No assumptions, projections, conceits
Dialogue over monologue
Sublimation of egos, but wide berth given to passionate POVs
Devils advocacy tempers evangelism
Belief in user input and test-driven development as primary design driver
12. A little inspiration Korean War jet pilot John Boyd believed the perfect fighter planes key characteristic was agility the ability to change its energy state rapidly to move from patrol to attack mode, and for a pilot to do the same mentally to gain advantage once engaged in a dog-fight
Pilot advantage hinged on highly intuitive Observe-Orient-Decide-Act (OODA) looping
The more agile pilot was the one who could change the situation more quickly than his opponent could update his orientation to it (getting inside the enemys OODA loop)
OODA grants us the ability to balance continuity and change (a pretty good definition of agility)
13. What do aerial warfare and projects have in common? Shared adversaries
Rapid, unanticipated changes that lead to disorientation
An uncertain environment
Constant threats to any initiative gained
Time itself
OODA helps in dog-fights and projects
Allows us to control the environment (esp. change)
Can help identify threats faster
Is iterative by design
14. OODA, cheap DC comics version
15. OODA, expensive OReilly book version
16. Our 1st OODA loop
17. Thank you, sir, may I have another
18. So, where did that speed come from?
19. Our obligatory process diagram
20. Keys to speed: paper Went retro for planning, design, and visualization
Used index card bleachers to organize the high-level project components
User stories were literally story-boarded
Used presentation boards and Post-Its in multiple colors like Colorforms to arrange GUI elements and wire-framed the results
Used dozens of 3x5 index cards and Post-Its to map the deeper logic underlying screen flows
Captured certain visualizations with a digital camera on the spot and posted them to the project Basecamp as a point of reference for the team
21. Keys to speed: new environments Ergonomics, creature comforts
Dual monitors
Development framework
AJAX
Apache Tiles
Spry
XML
Management framework (still playing with these)
Basecamp, JIRA (web-based project collaboration)
Jabber (IM-like messaging and conferencing)
Pbwiki, Confluence, Drupal (online documentation)
surveymonkey (online user feedback collector-analyzer)
22. Keys to speed: the war room Leveraged the social-ness inherent in teams
Provides an extremely high signal-to-noise ratio
23. Keys to speed: optimized meetings Daily meetings of the action team (team leaders, developers, designers)
15 minutes or less
Twice-weekly meetings of the entire team.
30 minutes or less
All other communication handled on the teamlet level, via short-burst online chat/IM or face-to-face
24. Keys to speed: eating the elephant To build is human; to iterate, divine
Build first out of necessity, and then iterate aggressively to grant user flexibility, comfort, and if desired luxury:
Dirt track ? single-lane cobblestone road ? two-lane asphalt road ? Autobahn
Start with one story, and then
Rewrite it
Rewrite it again (embrace change)
And (possibly) again
25. Our agile mythology scorecard
26. How we plan to stay agile A good plan executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week
27. Its alive! Project your agility allow the public/users/potential partners to look behind the curtain at select products way before even soft launches:
Allow them into your Labs/Skunkworks virtual sandboxes for new, experimental, or evolving features
Introduce the proposed alongside the old, and let the users compare
28. Thanks! AIP
Agility in Practice
Learn more at http://www.aip.org
The directors cut of this presentation is available
at http://www.slideshare.net/secret/1hFBfq9FGEZEAj
CREDIT WHERE ITS DUE
Redrawn version of John Boyd's OODA Loop by Patrick E. Moran.
Agile Lifecycle and other diagrams, courtesy Scott W. Ambler, Javapolis.
A lifetime of project-management inspiration via http://www.lessons-from-history.com/
Other images and sound bytes from the Great Internet Hard Drive.