Agile design planning in hardware product design is also possible within design firms. Designers feel very much involved in the visual self-management of projects. This makes it possible to better respond to changes in requirements demanded by customers. Visual scheduling makes it possible to distribute the load according to available capacity and to more effectively and efficiently manage multiple projects in parallel.
Agile design and co-design with the client
I am telling you about the case of a design firm that develops complicated plastic product designs for major companies.
They develop products in co-design with customers until they are industrialized, which is necessary for mass production, and develop molding equipment,
Projects undergo frequent changes as customers update requirements.
This is accompanied by continuous stoppages while waiting for instructions or approvals accompanied by restarts in development.
To complicate matters, the design is also tied to the vendor’s machinery that will print the product.
The supplier is often decided during product development itself.
Faced with this variability, the natural choice of the study management was to assign only one designer to each project.
Designers manage multiple projects in parallel because they switch from one project to another when they are waiting for information or approvals from the client.
The number of projects in work, is greater than the number of people, because of the continuous Stop and Go just described.
This allows great flexibility accompanied, however, by the difficulty of accelerating development when necessary.
Indeed, Brooks’ law born from the observation that, in the software world, “adding manpower to a lagging software project delays it further” applies in all types of projects.
In my experience, this law also applies to physical product or hardware projects, so much so that I would argue that adding more people, is often unnecessary and even counterproductive.
This is because new people, who are unfamiliar with the project, require from those already working in the project, the information they need, slowing development.
There is also technical learning time to fully enter the project and more time for development team meetings.
Agile design planning
The solution found was, taking Brooks’ law into account, to move from project management assigned to a single designer to management assigned to 2 designers. Of these, one employed predominantly in the project and the other 50%.
The second designer is then engaged on 2 projects in parallel.
In this way, if there is a need to accelerate developments, the second designer can switch full time to the single priority project without slowing down.
The other project has slowed by 33 percent but does not stop because it remains the prevailing designer.
This is handled with a printed story mapping board for each project.
Previously, the firm’s owner was continually prioritizing the work of his designers.
Now designers self-organize by managing project boards independently.
They do weekly planning on Mondays and a daily meeting every day of the week.
For such small teams, establishing the roles of Product Owner and Scrum Master does not make sense. It is much more effective to bring the designer to deal directly with the client, who is in turn represented by a technician.
The owner intervenes only for major change requests that impact cost and time
Agile self-organization of teams
What surprised me positively was the spirit of initiative and mutual help that quickly arose among the designers.
Breaking down the work, which they used to do only with the owner, has become a normal thing.
Estimating work has become a natural thing. Managing priorities and bottlenecks independently is now a reality.
Here is a summary of what the holder of the introduced change writes to me:
I would say that it is helping us a lot because, never before this year, I have seen continuous program changes from clients.
…last week, knowing that he was going on vacation, he did (without my presence and on his own initiative) the sprint review on Friday instead of Monday, and so when I returned I found the meeting already done (great indeed!).
However great programming system and great results, fast, simple programming, great overview, no time wasted on things that will change so much.
Beautiful this mindset change, because it is really about a change in people’s mindset.
It is win-win for the people on the teams, who are thus much more motivated, and also for the owner, who can take more care of business relations with customers and company development.
