SPA2005 session: Real software projects, but shorter! | |||
| One-line description: | The agile development process at Saffron Interactive: how and why we evolved it. | ||
| Session format: | Case study [read about the different session types] | ||
| Abstract: | At Saffron Interactive, we develop e-learning solutions for our corporate clients. Our projects - from initiation to live running - are typically between 6 and 8 weeks long. The subject matter can range from business processes to systems training, with the number of users never less than hundreds and often tens of thousands. Within this timescale, we have to: collect and analyse the client's materials; synthesise it into a coherent interactive experience; design and program the graphical interactions in Macromedia Flash; all the while ensuring the intellectual, pedagogical and artistic integrity of the whole, in collaboration with the client. In more conventional terms, our process encompasses analysis, design, build, install, accompanied by QA and test. Real software projects, but shorter! So what could go horribly wrong? - Their application changes while we're developing its training materials - The client's key messages become clear only towards the end of the development process - The client doesn't start to get engaged with the content until they see it graphically - New requirements (e.g. bandwidth constraints) are introduced very late - It becomes painfully clear that developing the training material isn't the client's day job. All these projects are fixed price so re-work, caused by a misunderstanding or mis-statement of requirements, can be a killer. That's the "why". However we are assuming that you don't want to come and hear a lecture about "how"; you're loooking for something more practical. So our objective in this session is to introduce you to some techniques that we employ to manage these kind of short-timescale projects while keeping our clients happy and making a profit. And we're going to make you do much of the work, through trying out these techniques on work-related (or personal) projects of your own. | ||
| Audience background: | The only pre-requisites are an interest in agile development and a willingness to look at a somewhat different type of project. | ||
| Benefits of participating: | What you will gain from this session is an appreciation of the project management techniques that we have found to be necessary to develop a "complete system" in these short timescales. we don't know of anyone who has failed to find these techniques useful. Now there's a challenge! | ||
| Materials provided: | There will be a short "essay" about our experiences in the delegate pack, though it's not pre-requisite reading. | ||
| Process: | The session is intended to consist mostly of exercises, and highly interactive presentational material. The expected timetable is: 00:00 - 00:05 Introducing ourselves and why we introduced an agile process 00:05 - 00:10 Short Exercise: Commitment culture 00:10 - 00:15 Feedback from exercise 00:15 - 00:30 Presentation: The stages of introducing an agile process 00:30 - 01:00 Long Exercise: Quality culture 01:00 - 01:10 Feedback from exercise 01:10 - 01:15 Summary There will doubtless be a break sometime in the middle of the long exercise but you'll be too engrossed to notice. | ||
| Outputs: | The outputs will be a set of miniature but realistic milestone plans for the selected work products discussed in the long exercise. The history of the development of those plans will be as interesting, perhaps more interesting, than the plans themselves. | ||
| History: | There has been no previous presentation of this session, though some of the ideas that we will present have also been included in the Stehle Associates courses that we have written on Project Management. | ||
| Presenters | |||
| 1. Nicholas Simons Saffron Interactive |
2. Hanif Sazen Saffron Interactive |
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