Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Some system developments take a long time and drain people. You walk in to work and there is no energy. A demonstration of capability is one way to awaken people and bring focus to a project.

Several years ago, I was working with about a hundred people on a large ($100 million) project. We had a rough start, recovered somewhat, but we weren’t focused – we had little energy, and it showed in everything we did.

Enter the demonstration. I asked that we demonstrate what capabilities we had in hand. To those who use the various strains of Agile Development this brings a resounding “No Duh!” Frequent, short, iterations that put something of use in the users’ hands are the foundation of these methods. This organization and this project, however, were not agile.

The system didn’t lend itself to two- or six-week iterations. Hardware was involved – one-of-a-kind, hard-to-build, hard-to-purchase-parts-for hardware.

Nevertheless, we had reached a stage with the hardware that it functioned. It wasn’t pretty, it looked like a rat’s nest of wires trimmed with duct tape, but it functioned. We could use the hardware to sense a signal and store that signal to a disk drive. We had software scripts that proved our signal processing algorithms. I emphasize that these were scripts, not compiled code.

We picked a date to demonstrate what we had – concentration ensued.

The hardware engineers removed the duct tape, secured their connectors, and tamed the rats nest into somewhat presentable wiring harnesses. The algorithm developers found their scripts and moved them from their experimenting computers to the project’s server. That movement took far more work than anyone anticipated. It forced the algorithm developers to learn about the environment they were using and if that environment existed anywhere else. It also forced the programmers working on production code to look at their environments again. They learned a few things.

The demonstration date arrived. The hardware sensed the signal and sent it to a disk drive. The alorithm developers ran their scripts. A system administrator rigged a way to play the result over speakers.

The hardware and software we had in hand worked! Many people breathed normally again. People smiled, and the  boss took everyone to lunch.

Agile methods aren’t appropriate or possible for every type of project, but demonstrations of capability work in almost all projects. People concentrate, people look at their work closer, and they pull together as a team.