May
29
Agile development?…Next!
Filed Under management styles, product design
I think the West Wing was one of the best written shows on television during its heyday. Aaron Sorkin has thespecial ability to humanize his characters and make them easy to relate to. You understand both their strengths and their weaknesses, and just when a character is struggling with one of their key flaws, they have a moment of incredible strength that makes you love them even more. (See President Bartlet dealing with Conservative Christians in the pilot episode)
One thing I love about President Barlett’s character is that he walks a fine line between a character you like and a character you respect (it’s almost impossible to be both liked and respected as a president). He looks to his staff for opinions and support but once he has made a decision he is ready to move on. The sign that he is ready? “Next!” Some might see it as a bit brutal or dismissive, but I like to think of it as a sign of his incredible leadership. Know when it is time to make a decision and when it is time to move on.
Developing Event Seek has been no easy task. We’ve argued, debated, discussed, and downright fought over some really minor and some really major issues. Our development team is using Ruby on Rails (RoR) as the development platform and I can speak for everyone when I say that we’ve been pleased with our choice. Why RoR you ask? Simple. Agile Development.
Agile Development is the concept of using a language and platform that support rapid changeable development. Rather than spend weeks or months on one aspect of the product, you build it in smaller successive pieces. This way you can test the results, see what you like and don’t, see what the users like and don’t and make changes as necessary. I can’t speak to the value of this type of effort enough. No one should build a product in a vacuum. This is especially true for a web application, and agile development makes rapid development possible while still keeping everyone on a guided path.
Event Seek has aspects of the product that require messaging - the ability to send messages to users, event organizers, business owners and the like. We designed the messaging system a few months back and since then the site and product have gone through significant changes. While reviewing some of the updates today, we took a gander at our messaging platform and everyone agreed that thee new changes made our old structure confusing. What are messages? How are they different from questions? How do comments play into this? So, we did what we do best here at Digital Lodestone Group, jump back to 50,000 feet and think about how the user will use the system. What do they need? What do they want? How does the average joe think about this?
After 10 good minutes of debate, discussion, and dialogue we were done. In 10 minutes we restructured a major section of our product. No real new development required, just rebuilt how the system was organized and how a user would navigate the product. The user interface guy in me couldn’t be happier - we just increased usability ten-fold. Surely we’ll need to test the results, but I can say for certain what we have is better than what we started with.
Agile development? Nope. Agile Management? Yes sir!
Next!
Posted by: Connor Fee
Comments
Leave a Reply