Scrum and eXtreme Manufacturing

On July 24^th Scrum Inc. is pairing with Joe Justice from Team WIKISPEED fame to broadcast a Webinar on Xtreme Manufacturing. Joe will also be teaming up with Scrum Inc. later in the week when he co-trains a Scrum Master course on the same subject. Given all the activity around this topic, we thought it would be interesting to give you a sneak peek.

Joe coined the term eXtreme Manufacturing (XM) to describe how he works, combining elements fromBlending these three philosophies, Joe has proven the XM concept by building a car in just three months on a shoestring budget (just a few thousand dollars,) with some basic equipment and an all-volunteer staff, who are now located in 20 countries around the globe. Oh, and his car gets over 100 mpg! The ramifications of this method are revolutionary. Cars developed using traditional methods require a project life span of decades. XM can shorten time-to-market, reduce labor costs and spur innovation.

The diagram on your right shows the elements Joe combines to generate the process efficiencies XM achieves.  As you can see most of the concepts like iterative development, continuous improvement and pairing are familiar to Agile developers. What Joe adds to the equation is object-oriented architecture.

Modularity allows for innovative design while building on iterative development. For example, the Team WIKISPEED car uses eight different and independent components. That allows the team to re-design the suspension system, speedometer or car body at any point and not have to tweak the chassis or dashboard to make the improved components fit. Modularity prevents engineering challenges from rippling through the entire design process. It also allows the team to swarm on the most important improvement without affecting the rest of the car.

Contract First Design: The interfaces between the different modules of the Wikispeed car are negotiated beforehand and the “contract” between how the modules interact with each other (bolt locations, data sharing, etc.) remain fixed until they need to be re-negotiated to accommodate a more significant change.

XM leverages Design Patterns in two ways: 1) by re-using mature designs with a proven track record; and 2) by reducing the number of different designs wherever possible to reduce complexity. Basically, don’t re-invent the wheel. If a particular bolt worked well fastening the suspension system, use it again and be done. And, if that bolt could also work reasonably well fastening the crush zone to the chassis, use it there as well. It is better to have some solutions a little over-designed than to maintain hundreds of subtly different and customized solutions. This reduces waste, saves time and lowers costs.

These manufacturing approaches help create more customer-centric products, produce cost savings and lower the threshold for bringing innovation to the marketplace. Some large defense contractors and commercial manufactures Companies are moving in an XM direction already with many competitors likely follow.  So tunein Wednesday July 24^th as Joe and Scrum Inc. Chief Product Owner Alex Brown bring these concepts to life.