Agile Development Blog

On March 19th, I was fortunate enough to be able to attend 1 day of the  Engineer’s Without Borders (EWB) National conference.  EWB is an international organization founded in 2002 by Bernard Amadei, my Engineering Geology Professor from the University of Colorado.  EWB-USA has 250 Chapter organization, 12,000 members and 350 ongoing projects; it uses college students and professional engineers to address engineering problems in developing nations.  (Take a look at their Projects section of their web site to search and see some of the great work done by these great volunteers, Chapters and Sponsors.)

In addition to browsing projects, talking with students and sponsors, I was able to catch Bryan Willson from Colorado State University give the Plenary talk.  It was very inspiring blend of my favorite topics; great engineering, sustainability, global change, social entrepreneurship and agility.  His group at CSU has built a number of social enterprises to help commercialize solutions for the large-scale global change.

These three areas of commercialization include:

1. 2-Stroke Retrofit is a fuel injector kit that reduces CO2 in two cycle engines by 90% and increase mileage by 35% for the 100 million engines in the developing world alone
2. Clean Cookstoves are solid fuel cookstoves that can reduces CO2 by 75% and increase efficiency by 35% for 600 million solid fuel, including wood, dung and coal, stoves in India, China and Africa
3. SolixBioFuels – A system for growing and turning algae into bio-fuels that is 7 times more effective than open ponds.

All three of these stories provide proof that commercial mechanisms, social entrepreneurship and Agile Product development can change the way our global society runs.  His team created these innovations by seeing the large-scale systems, collaborating across boundaries and creating something new, not just trying to solve a problem in the current broken system. Finally, his call to action for all the EWB members was to be the eyes, and ears on the street with regard to these solutions in the developing world.  For folks in the Agile Community, you can think of the EWB engineers as the proxy to the customers.  It is not that Mark’s team does not have a test lab, work in small batch cycles or reach into the field to see their products in action, but at the scale of 100′s of millions and scope of these global issues you need all the feedback you can get.   What a great partnership!

I encourage you to explore the EWB, SolixBioFuel and Envirofit webs sites.  I would especially like to thank Cathy, the current Director of EWB-USA, and Bernard for inviting me to attend this amazing conference.  I look forward to future collaborations.

I have a friend who was my Engineering Geology Professor and his name is Bernard Amadei.  Bernard found his “good work” right about the time I was starting Rally.  Bernard has a wonderfully friendly manner and a great French accent.

In early 2000′s, he took a trip to Mail to help a village engineer a solution for potable water.  Upon his return, he started working on Engineers Without Borders, which is now a movement.  At the beginning of this work, I collaborated with Bernard as he started the chapter at the University of Colorado and wove it into Bioneers.

At that initial collaboration, Bernard said he was forcing engineers to ask the question, Why? So often engineers just focus on how and what.  He was starting Engineers Without Borders to help give engineers a stronger sense of purpose in solving the world’s systemic problems. (Please see the YouTube video)

Bernard and Paul Hawken had a huge influence on me as I worked to draft the vision for Rally. You can read about my thoughts on the purpose of Rally on my Agile Commons profile page or listen to my BlogTalkRadio interview.

Without a clear vision and mantra , it is hard to answer the question, Why do you develop and operate software?

As you and your software team/organization undoubtedly ask the core versus context questions in your business, I have been providing thinking tools for analyzing your portfolio in these turbulent times.  As Israel Gat pointed out in his recent post, “Can you afford the software you are developing?“

You do not need to take a long time to do this work, but it does provide a checklist of things to ask before you decide what product/code lines you might STOP DOING:

Things to ask before you decide what to stop doing:

1. What are your core values and vision?
2. What is your core purpose – Why? (this post)
3. What is your receipt for sustainable shareholder value?
   
4. What is your approach for getting your software organization leaner and getting stronger in 2009?

Once we have taken all the costs savings from distracting/mis-aligned efforts out of the portfolio, it is time to figure out how to increase the performance of your software development organization.  Jean and I will dedicate most of February to making the “Agile development cuts costs” case for groups that are working on core/mission critical efforts.

While you think about those arguments, I ask you to reflect on Bernard’s point:

Have you found your “Good Work?” and does that match up with your core work?