Monday, 23 August 2010
Get Agile - Collaboration is the Key
Earlier in the year while knocking back a drink or two on a night out with an old university friend, who also works in the web design and development industry, I was inspired to think about the way we work and how we introduce our methods to our clients. It was the first sunny Friday evening of the year in London for a long time and the pubs down Kingly Street were packed with a throng of creative types, office workers and a few shoppers who had dared to venture off the main streets of the west end. The arrival of the spring weather had also seen some new shoots of inspiration work wise.
Now I must admit that my friend had approached the topic of agile project management and web development during previous nights out. Maybe the glorious weather that had brought an upturn in mood helped, or perhaps it was the enthusiasm that he approached the subject with, but this time we eventually got into fundamentals of what makes the agile approach work. We discussed the ideas behind the agile methodology and how they were implemented within his company and I instantly saw many similarities to the way we work at Activate Media.
The agile method is the antithesis to the traditional method that involves very disciplined and deliberate planning and control methods. This is the method we now like to call the ‘BDUF’ method (big documentation up front) or as it is better known the waterfall method. The ‘bduf’ method follows a rigid sequence of events:
- Business Requirements
- System Requirements
- Design
- Construction
- Test
- Deliver
- Operations and Maintenance
Web projects rarely follow this sequential flow as it is always difficult to completely state all requirements early on in a project. This means that changes made late on in the sequence lead to projects going over time and over budget. This is not a method we have ever embraced at Activate Media always preferring a lighter-weight approach to web strategy and planning. It can often be perceived as being lazy or unable to plan, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. Agile methods can create a disciplined project management process that speeds up the deployment of a web site or service. The agile manifesto lays out some key values:
- Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
- Working software over comprehensive documentation
- Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
- Responding to change over following a plan
(The qualification to these guiding principles states; “That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.”)
In practical terms this means it is possible to deliver:
- Specifications, wireframes and designs that evolve with the development project
- Late changes to projects that are worked into the development cycle without causing time and money overruns
- Adaptation to changing circumstances
- Web sites that are delivered rapidly (weeks rather than months)
The question now is ‘How can we become more agile?’ I believe the key to the agile method of working is the people involved and the collaboration between them. This means planners, designers and developers talking to each other and working together throughout a project. This is something that that works really well with the compact project teams we work with at Activate.
Where I can see we can make a fundamental change in the way the industry approaches client relationships is by increasing the client’s involvement in the process. I believe close, daily cooperation with clients can only improve the quality of a project and the speed of delivery. Ideally this would include clients being involved in frequent on site meetings, which assess working web modules and tackle the questions that only working software can throw up. This involves the client in decisions that could never be covered by negotiating a detailed specification up front.
So where do we go from here? Initially the implementation of this creates more questions. Is it practical to expect clients to be so involved? How do you convince clients to get involved? These are questions I hope to find the answers to as we push to make Activate more agile.
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