The final day of Agile 2012 in Dallas, Texas and a morning of keynotes. It was announced that they had received over 800 submissions and selected 200 presentations. Also interesting was the fact that the band of volunteers have 2 daily scrums and self organise their sessions!

Keynote: Adventures of an Accidental Entrepreneur: A High Tech Teleradiology Venture from India

This keynote was from Dr. Sunita Maheshwari from Teleradiology Solutions, a video of the keynote is available here.

From Agile 2012

• there is no such thing as a crazy idea
• international teleradiology – started small, covered the night shift at Yale from India, considered too radical for Yale, decided to set up themselves
• the one closest to the future has the best view
• believe in yourself, if you can see the future and have a dream, push along with it
• focussed on quality, first Indian company to get the gold seal
• dream big, we are often constrained by the limitations of our own mind – built a big space to house a small company initially
• tempted to a million dollar buyout – money is a distraction, could have been a one way street to obscurity (Forbes India article)
• struggled with bandwidth, electricity, no senior management to lean on – stick it out
• anti-outsourcing sentiment, particularly from the media in the USA, realised that people only remember that you were in the newspaper, not what for
• Singapore had a shortage of radiologists – reduced turnaround from 3 days to 1 hour – quality wins, even when competition enters
• greatest need is in Africa – use the same domain knowledge for social good
• used one reading centre in India to cover multiple hospitals (efficiency of scale), covering USA night in Indian day, also have a team in Israel to have full day coverage
• Singapore was using the same technology but a different need (turnaround time rather than coverage)
• did not cause job displacement – freed doctors up to cover more patients locally
• implemented a 7 minute daily huddle to replace monthly meetings, had to break culture of not reporting bad news – hospitals liked the responsiveness
• do eco-friendly visits – use Indian electric cars
• HR Consultants said they were doing everything wrong – ignored them, broke existing cultures – hired full time masseuse, wear masks – its not just the paycheck it’s the small things that make people feel wanted
• people did not want to work on Sunday – despite double or triple time – need to find innovative solutions and constantly find innovations to stay afloat (Israel)
• built own product – if you have a great idea, get help implementing it – RADSpa
• internal software group – developers and doctors were not cooperating – told then to treat us like an external client, bid for the work (coopetition – cooperation in competition)
• set up a new clinic – no business plan, just a doctor and good quality service – not everything needs a business plan, every thing needs passion – do what you love and the money will follow
• radguru.net and e-teaching – doctors and students anywhere (LinkStreetHealth)
• the world needs pushers to take good ideas and get them implemented
• if you decide you want to spend time with the ones you love, you will find a way – make technology your slave, not the other way around

Keynote: Managing a Collaborative Multi-National Team in Real Time

Joe Justice from SolutionsIQ and Team Wikispeed delivered this keynote. A video of the session is available here.

From Agile 2012

• to improve our way of working, we need to fundamentally improve our institutions
• how do you develop a car in a garage that gets better mileage and is more aesthetically pleasing
• Wikispeed is all volunteers – some highly specialized, some just eager to help
• the Wikispeed CNC machine cost $20,00, big auto companies have machines that are over @100,000,000, that is 1/500,000 of the cost! – better not because of the tools but because of the way of working
• iterate every 7 days
• ideal is to make society a better place
• there’s a trend that is disrupting all industries, called Agile, all the 10 big IT companies are all or mostly Agile
• manufacturing is like software 10 years ago, products are based on what the customer wanted 10 years ago
• XM – extreme manufacturing – what the customer wanted 7 days ago – first manufacturing company to have that model
• manufacturing is slow because the processes are costly to change
• the Wikispeed car is built in 8 parts, completely interchangeable
• originally started to win the X Prize, came 10th, while other teams were planning, they built tests (TDD) – had initial design on the road in 3 months
• our approach – Agile – might be the biggest change since the industrial revolution
• all tools to run a  distributed team are free, did not exist 10 years ago
• newest shop is in New Zealand (none in Australia)
• history has been building up to Agile
• John Deere – open source modular tractors – call the process frugal engineering, when they built the 8030 tractor despite being over budget and people working over time they thought they had been successful – thinking about Wiki Deere now
• MakerPlane – open source aviation project, using Wikispeed model, Boeing looking at their approach
• Boeing visited the Wikispeed garage in Seattle – “our tooling is better, but culturally you are so far ahead of us”
• Tait Radio– devised using a recorder to record noises for testing of emissions, makes audio devices, now using Scrum to build products – text fixtures are cardboard, had been doing standups, introduced retrospectives and team stewards – developed a product in a week
• send middle managers back to product work , analytics and budgeting goo back to weekly funding cycles – get more nimble management
• safety iteration – initially took months, now takes days, cost $10k for a crash test so can’t afford to run it every 7 days, but they learn from real test and run simulations every 7 days
• went to Detroit auto show – was waiting for sarcasm but got “good job, go get ’em!”
• 2013 Roadster reveal – built in 2 sessions at the conference, only one person in the sessions had built a car, used pairing to learn – this vehicle is going to the Boeing museum in Seattle
• Team Wikispeed members spend 2-4 hours per week solving social good
• actively looking for product owners to find the next social good to join team wikispeed
• how do we change financial stupidity? – agile accounting, lean accounting
• using Honda parts so can be serviced anywhere

From Agile 2012

Here are some closer pictures of the other Wikispeed car that was on display near the Agile Alliance lounge.

From Agile 2012

From Agile 2012

From Agile 2012

And, then everybody parted ways, until next year…

Podcast

Finally, I recorded a short audio podcast for The Agile Revolution wrapping up Day 5 of the conference.