In keeping with my recent (self-) promotion to Agile-Admiral (your days are numbered Agile Pirate) , I feel compelled to share with you what my colleagues believe will surely become next years hottest new Agile innovation.
Are you ready for: Periscope Programming?
It's pair-programming with a nautical theme.
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Business is good across the fleet. In order to keep up with demand we've recruited dozens of able-bodied sea-folk to help "row the boat" further and faster.
Only problem was, we had to find somewhere to put them.
We could have purchased a bigger boat ... but we got creative instead.
Specifically: two colleagues - scrum-captain Allen and cabin-boy Rafel - attacked this space-problem head-on by reframing it as a "space-opportunity".
We navy folk are, by nature, adventurous and have since at least the 1950s regarded space as "the final frontier". And, every good sailor knows (and believes in his or her salty old heart) the ancient nautical saying that "Tight Ships, Lead to less Project Slips" so they attacked the problem - ahhh, opportunity - with both vigour and vim.
[vigour and vim - the ships cats]
Innovation 1: Bunk Desks.
Scrum-Captain Allen told me: "You know, Agile-Admiral, Sir, too many people try to solve problems by thinking laterally or thinking outside the box. In the navy if you think outside the box, you drown. We did better: we thought vertically, above the box".
Allan and Rafal determined, after all these years wondering, that the 8th Lean Waste is in fact "Ceiling Space".
So last week, we doubled seating capacity aboard the good ship Livingston, by installing 200 bunk desks in the space directly about the existing desks.
Now, you all know this is happening in Scotland - the country that invented the TV, the Steam Engine, the bicycle, the deep-fried pizza - so you, with you quick mind, have surely figured out the next 2 innovations.
Innovation 2: No Kilts to be worn in the office.
and, just in case someone ignores innovation 2,
Innovation 3: Don't look up.
Which left us with another problem, ahhhh opportunity: how do the able-bodied developers communicate?
And that's when the lads invented Periscope Programming.
Next week, we install 200 periscopes, connect each lower- and upper- bunk-desk with it's vertical partner, enabling the developers to "peer up" and "peer down" (peer as in look) and see what their peers (as in colleagues) are doing ... without hurting their necks.
I shall report back next month and let you know how our "Navel Gazing" experiment is going.
