I recently had the pleasure of playing host to a friend/artist whose visit was largely inspired by the fact that I own a 3D printer. Thanks to ROWE I was able to work from home while my husband and friend spent countless hours Makerbotting. Needless to say I got inspired.

Using a vector based drawing program and some online instructions I created a .stl file of the Highgroove Studios logo. Check out Thingiverse to print one of your own!

How do you take advantage of your ROWE?

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We recently submitted an application to receive the official ROWE seal of approval. Not only did we receive approval, we also received a personal response from Jody Thompson praising us for our efforts in and pinpointing our weakness in our results only work environment.

Where we were failing our ROWE was in regards to our vacation policy. In a ROWE results must always be met regardless of vacation. This means that there is no need for a vacation policy. Employees can work when and from where they want to work. When an employee takes vacation the rest of the team should “mind the results” while the employee is away.

The Problem: Highgroove is a small shop and we do not work in large teams. Our developers are all responsible for a high volume of results. If a developer goes on vacation there is no way for the team to carry on their results. it is also unreasonable to require them to complete their normal results while on vacation.

The Solution: Start working in teams. Our developers often work solo on week long iterations. We are currently discussing the options for pairing teams on iterative development. This would double the size of the development team and provide a basis for team coverage in the absence of one team member. What is your ROWE vacation policy?

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I, along with Charles Brian Quinn, recently attended
A Day in the Life of Agile: Hands-On Workshop presented by Pillar Technology Group.

At this one-day, intensive workshop, we had fun learning and demonstrating agile techniques while attempting to replicate the video game Space Invaders! The training reinforced agile concepts we use daily here at Highgroove, provided deeper insight into agile techniques which we could improve on, and emphasized aspects to agile development that Highgroove will definitely be embracing in the future. As a manager and client liaison, I was especially interested in the concept of Value Centered Design. Value Centered Design supports client needs at the highest level, encourages focused development, and fundamentally promotes efficiency. Here are my notes”:

VALUE CENTERED DESIGN

Value Centered design Is based on the client needs as defined by a value story. The value story is the client/organization’s primary goal. This is a big picture goal preemptive of the project. The project is designed to satisfy the goal.

Always allocate preproduction time within the budget for obtaining a specific value story from the client. Also allocate preproduction time within the budget for spikes. This will encourage efficiency, reinforce the value story, and reduce cost during production.

Example:

Goal: As a payroll processing organization we want to reduce cost by 20% so that we can pay our employees more, charge our clients less, and increase our client capacity.

Action: Build an application that will automate some of our services.

Things to Remember….

• Establish a value story – this will be the common currency throughout production.

• Maintain relative stories, or subsequent goals, underlying the value story

• Diversification. Create, fund, and implement small commitments over time

• Provide real time feedback: demonstrate how the user stories build up to the value story (if they don’t then reevaluate their purpose and refocus on the value story)

• Maintain the value story and redirect the client to their original value story throughout the project. This will keep them on track, on budget, and in line with their goals. It will also invoke trust in the team by demonstrating the team’s commitment to and support of client goals.

• Educate your clients on agile methods before development begins. Provide them with the ability and tools needed to drive efficiency throughout production.

• Remember that user stories should always map toward the value story

Some Definitions…

• Test driven development – testing must occur on completed user stories before production can continue. Incremental testing is definitive of agile development. Without it you will end up in waterfall production.

• Continuous integration – stand ups, check-ins, tests, feedback are features of continuous integration
• Demo – a demonstration of progress to the client at the end of each iteration for the purpose of a retrospective
• Retrospective – a meeting at the end of each iteration where we identify pros and cons of the current iteration and establish actions for improvement or change to be enacted in the next iteration.
• User stories – are always vertical slices, not horizontal slices, of functionality that support the value story
• Value Story – the client/organization goal to be satisfied by the end product
• Spikes – time boxed investigation to asses risks of and prepare for estimating user stories
• Estimates – assignments of relative complexity to user stories (estimates are 1-5 points where 5 might take more than an iteration…which often means it should either be broken down into multiple stories or that it requires a spike before being estimated)
• Point – a relative measurement of complexity

Some Rules…

• Individuals and Interactions > Processes and Tools

• Functionality > Documentation
• Collaboration and Change > Rules, Plan, & Contracts

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I’m not a technical gal. I can navigate my way through any application, but don’t ask me how it works. As a manager I am often frustrated by the limitations in our management software. For the most part I grumble my way past the inefficient idiosyncrasies and find little cheats to cut 5 seconds off my process here, 10 seconds there. Fortunately for me my desk is rather close to that of our president and development guru Charles Quinn. When he tires of my grunts, mumbles, and groans he inevitably turns to offer assistance. To my surprise he often responds to my frustrations in agreement, “Yes, that feature should be available. That is a great idea. You should request that feature be added.”

The idea that I could request a change in functionality to an application had never entered my mind. I am accustomed to using either stagnant software made by big names and mass marketed to a general audience or industry specific applications that are, cough cough, built using Access and marketed toward a very specific audience. In both scenarios the product tends to come as is or in edition format. If you want to see a change in the product, you have to wait for an undefined period of time until the software company releases the next edition.

I started sending feature requests to the incredibly responsive support team at letsfreckle.com. We use letsfreckle.com for time tracking and internal management. To my surprise, my requests materialized almost immediately! Within a few weeks I was using all of the features I had requested. Though these features may seem small, they have reduced the time I spend generating reports by 50%. My grunts and groans are now replaced with cheers and excited sighs of relief.

Highgroove loves rails and loves agility. Agile is defined as being active. Active is defined as being in a state of progress. We use rails apps wherever possible which I assumed was our way of supporting the community. Now I know that we use rails apps because they are built by agile developers and are therefore adaptable to our needs. Sure, we tend to support our rails community, but we choose products based on functionality and agility.

Does your software adapt to your needs? What agile software are you using?

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