Everybody’s project is big.

The other day, Russ and I were on site with a potential client and they made the comment, “Our project probably isn’t that big for your company, compared to other projects you do.”  Since this was our first meeting with the client, we had no idea as to how large the project was.  More importantly though, as Russ was pretty quick to point out, the project is critical to the client, and thus was critical to Visionpace.  The relative size of one project compared to another isn’t relevant to how we approach the project.

The size of the project has bearing on the number of resources involved and/or the length of time that the project takes, and thus overall cost, but all of Visionpace’s projects follow the same overall agile process. We conduct a user story session with the customer to discover the overall features of the project and then forecast and prioritize the stories to determine an initial release plan. Then we begin working on the user stories in priority order per the customer.  At the end of the iteration we review the remaining stories, remove any old ones and add any new ones. Then we review the priority, select the stories for the next iteration and begin the process again.  (It’s important to note, that this isn’t a magic ‘one size fit’s all process.’ Each project is unique, and the process has to be adapted somewhat for each project. The underlying actions remain consistent from project to project.)

This is a pretty high level over view of the process.  If the project is requires more resources, we schedule more resources to meet the desired velocity. If the project doesn’t need as many developers, we schedule for that accordingly too.  Of course with more resources working on a project, the customer has to also allocate more time for feedback, discussion and review throughout the iteration, and we help manage this too.

The customer benefits from this approach because a project that is forecast to take two developers three weeks gets the same level of expertise and attention that a project that is expected to take a team of six, one year to implement.  Conversely, the process that is honed in working with a client to implement certain features in a short time frame is also used in a large project to keep the focus on delivering working software and value to the customer on regular basis. 

Over the years doing software development in Kansas City, we have developed an environment where everyone must always continue to learn and grow. We have an obligation to our clients and each other to continually strive to be better at what we do and how we do it.  This goes hand in hand with our Perfect Vision process, because we’re able to inspect and adapt our process and benefit our clients, regardless of "how big" their project is.