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about aip

About AIP. Founded in 1931 as a service organization

adamdaniel
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about aip

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    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 won’t 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 (Boyd’s “OODA Loop”) Observe – Model – Test – Reflect (Kolb’s “Learning Model”) Plan – Do – Check – Act (Shewhart’s “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 Devil’s 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 plane’s 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 enemy’s 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 O’Reilly 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. It’s 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 director’s cut of this presentation is available at http://www.slideshare.net/secret/1hFBfq9FGEZEAj CREDIT WHERE IT’S 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.

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