Marketing Department vs. Agile Development part1.

-Background
Lack of resource. It seems that every company that I have been involved with seems to have one common problem. Lack of resources in the production level to execute marketing plan. With recent hype with scrum methodology, it seems even harder for marketing department to execute ad hoc campaign that needs to be executed in short time period.

-Execution
I am currently leading a small design team and I have implemented the scrum methodology in conjunction with our IT department. Each sprint is 2 weeks long and we are utilizing the point system to determine the workload and velocity (amount of work that can be done in one sprint). We determined that 1 point equals, the time it takes to create a simple graphic banner when the all the visual elements are given (half day.. approximately).

-Reason for Scrum

Clear understanding of future plan & execution - The team already foresees what tasks are coming ahead. We can now easily distinguish between the executable tasks and epic size pipe dreams.

Better communication and improved reporting system - Any upper management staff can take a look at the burndown chart to see the team's daily performance. (assumption: the staff must be presented at the planning meeting)

Protect individuals from working too hard or slacking off too much

-Issues

Once the sprint is planned and points are assigned, it is hard for the team to take on any other projects that may have higher priority.

One underestimated task can affect the whole sprint.

-Solutions

We had to make sure the backlog is a live document. It means that even when the point is assigned on a task, it can be changed in the middle of the sprint. When we figure that we have overestimated on a task, we need to change the point and commit on other tasks that did not make on this sprint.

--- part 2 on the way... Share

'Look and Feel' Design Meeting

Business owner is not happy with the fact that she is not deeply invovled in a design decision process. I agree with her that I have been dictating the look and feel of the site from the beginning without much suggestion from BA groups. I have set up a bi-weekly design meeting between I and other BA groups just to focus on the look and feel of the site.

Let's define the term, 'look & feel'. Look is what the site should 'look' like. Color, shape, fonts, and other visual elements that makes up the site should be considered as 'look' element. Then what does 'feel' refer to? In my opinion, 'feel' is consist of many 'look' elements. For instance, google home page has simple 'feel' to it because of very little 'look' elements. Bank of America has very patriotic 'feel' to it because of its 'look' elements: red, blue, white, and usage of US flag through out the site.

Now we have better understanding of what 'look and feel' refers to, I'd like to dig into the design meeting and its functionality.
1. Design meetings should occur bi-weekly parallel to the Scrum concept.
2. Each meeting needs to happen no later than 2 days after the Scrum planning meeting.
3. The designer must foresee the upcoming sprint and collect all the mock ups that BA group needs to review.
4. Because of time constraints, BA groups will only have one day to review these mock ups. There need to be some discussion at this point among BA groups, but the final decision and confirmation would be made at the meeting. Both groups must review the mock ups at least once prior to meeting.
5. The meeting will start by addressing the agenda for the meeting.
6. I, the designer, will drive the meeting by discussing the purpose of each design elements and its functionalities.
7. BA groups will make suggestions during step 6.
8. I will make the modification according to the discussion in front of BA groups using Fire Works.
9. Final design will be presented and final confirmation will be made at the end of the meeting.
10. I will upload any necessary files on the share point site for future reference.

So the first meeting is Tuesday... and I have low expectaion from this first meeting because of poor prepartion on myside. I only had one day to work on the mock ups... but we will see how this meeting goes. Share