We're enjoying ourselves so much I'm wondering if it's illegal.
We're working in a 4-man team with a new client (who consult for
the
Lean
Enterprise Academy ) and we're experimenting with some new
techniques. Our goal is to create a product that is very kind to
its users, so we're trying to stay as close as possible to the
users' conceptual model and stop thinking like programmers all the
bloody time. When we catch one another 'flipping' to techie mode we
quickly 'flop' them back to user mode.
Keeping the interaction design simple, so that it can be easily
learned by users, is difficult. We've used paper prototypes to
explore options and we're also
iterating the interaction design
as part of developing the user stories. This approach is working
well. We do, however, need more ready-access to users to help
reduce rework. (When does iterating, and the learning that comes
from it, become wasteful rework? A subject worthy of it's own
post.)
Another thing is ...
we don't need no stinkin' process . I reckon
it's because our team is small, has only generalising specialists
who have
worked together for ages, we trust
one another implicitly, and our environment is extremely
collaborative and fun-packed. Ok, it's not entirely accurate that
we have no process. I just wanted to use the
Blazing Saddles clip. There is some semblance
of a process but, honestly, it really, really doesn't feel like it.
It just feels like the natural flow a conversation takes. Perhaps
it's that the interactions are so second nature to us it just seems
like everything is a conversation triggered by something that's
happened or has been discovered:
- Discuss a story in a pomodoro.
- Pair up and pull its card into play.
- Start slicing - working inwards from behaviour-driven Selenium acceptance tests, incorporating any non-functional and sysadmin work, while iterating the interaction design work.
- Call a timeout and talk in a pomodoro when something important happens.
- Deploy the accepted story to production.
- Go again.
Anyhoo, some people will say we're lucky to be able to work with such freedom. And we are lucky. Others say you make you're own luck. We choose to work freely and we choose our clients . :)
