The opening keynote “Test First Saves The World” by Joe Justice introduced WIKISPEED. The project aims “to deliver a mass-production, ultra-efficient, Comfortable Commuter Car, the C3“.
You can find the current list of bugs here.
Some important points about this car: Building the first road-worthy prototype took only 3 months. A team of untrained individuals can build one of them in about one day. It runs on 2.8 l gasoline per 100 km.
In comparison: Professional car manufacturers need hundreds of people and 3 years to build something which dozens of trained teams can assemble in a few hours. And the result is either four times as expensive or pollutes the environment more.
Sounds good? They use scrum. They proved on several occasions that the method works very well for hardware, too (Forbes, CNN Money).
I agree with Joe that scrum is now entering the 3rd phase of the hype cycle: Only the most conservative companies remain cautious.
But scrum isn’t easy – if our problems were easy to solve, we wouldn’t need help, right?
While you can spend some money on training (for example, by asking scruminc to send Joe to your place), you need to remember one of the most important points of scrum: Continuous improvement.
Conclude every spring with a retrospective, identify one item that the whole team wants to have solved – more plants, better soap, an additional microwave, more light, new computers, you name it. Put that as the first item in the next spring and work on it first. Don’t forget to define acceptance criteria.
Or do you like working in a place where the general mood is that “nothing ever changes – especially not for the better”? Everyone knows that happiness and quality will make teams more productive. It’s high time to take a stand in the face of “it’s just the way it is.”
Joe’s next project? A $100 house for homeless.
What’s your’s?
Tagged: 2013, Jazoon, Scrum, TDD
