Agile and our office move

User Story: As a development team, we need to have enough office space and capacity to grow to over 2x our current size.

Ok, I’m kidding a little. Not in the above statement – which was our true ‘epic’ requirement over a year ago and one that we realized this past weekend in our move to a new office space.

Rather, I’m kidding in the simplicity in which the above was worded and in even calling this a user story to begin with. But as I was reflecting on our recent move, I realized how important it was to keep the original intent in mind as we wound our way through the myriad of requirements and details and change over the past 1+ years. Without a guiding intent – it’s easy to get lost and off track. To forget what you’re priorities are. To realize that all the project plans, contracts, designs and risk mitigation plans are a means to an end. The ‘user’ in me just wanted us to be in a bigger room. That’s all.

I’m also reminded that between an emphasis on a ‘plan’ vs the ability to adapt to change – I’ll value the ability to adapt to change over a ‘plan’ any day of the week. Mostly because our ‘plan’ changed daily.

At the start of this all, we got a project plan from our primary general contractor. But having a detailed project plan provided me very little comfort when I first saw it. It was impressive. There were lots of items on it, some I didn’t even know what they were or did. There were dependencies linking every which way. I think it was in color.

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Then almost immediately, change started to occur. I won’t bore you with the details, but I can think of few things that remained intact and can’t really estimate what percentage of tasks kept to the original sequencing. Honestly, I haven’t seen that project plan in a couple months. I’m sure it exists, it’s just not the way I (nor others) judged progress.

Now you can guess what gives Agile advocates like me a warm fuzzy feeling that progress is being made.I didn’t ask to see the updated plan. I didn’t ask what percentage complete each task on the plan was. Instead, I and others walked around the site as it was being built out. When I wasn’t there I got updates via ad-hoc walk-around pictures posted in one of my colleagues MobileMe gallery. Every few days I got a ‘release’ that I could see and assess. It was crude, but much more effective – because honestly; you either have the HVAC installed or you don’t. Wiring is either snaked through the drop ceiling or it’s still spooled up on the floor. The floor is either leveled, or covered in debris. The ‘demo’ wasn’t scripted or planned. It was a random assessment of progress. Yet there was a gut feel at how things were going that pretty much everyone agreed upon. And it helped us make day to day decisions based on our discussions and collective agreement on the progress the pictures represented.

Besides the ‘demos’ (reviews), we planned for changes that we hoped wouldn’t occur. There were daily stand-ups across shores and offices – not just the formal ones but informal ones as well. There were (albeit informal) sprints and work-arounds and annotated design documents. There were re-prioritizations of work based on project needs (e.g. bring up the phones first or the VPNs)? And there was a final delivery this past weekend. Oh – and of course there will be some minor bug fixing that will likely be occurring for weeks to come as we shake things out.

But the most important recollection of the experience is that there was change. Lots and lots of change. And as an Agile team – we adapted. And I’m as pleased with that as with the final result. Which was quite good.

Many thanks to our IT and Operational folks at Perficient (both in China and in the US). They took the job personally and to heart – and it showed. Thanks to the on the ground project teams – who went through every project and ensured we had continuity plans in place in case something went wrong.

The whole team displayed a truly Agile mindset in the way they approached the move. And the final ‘release’ showed just how competent they are and how powerful Agile as a mind-set it.

Thanks guys!

I’m sure a ton of pictures and commentary will be posted shortly. I can’t wait to see it in person in a few weeks!!