Henry Ford had a vision based on customer demand. In 1908 the Model T was introduced to the world and produced in a small, rented factory on Mack Avenue in Detroit, Michigan. Early models were produced at a rate of only a few a day by groups of two or three men working on each car. By 1913, Ford Motor Company had not only increased its man power, but also increased its efficiency by creating a moving assembly line which boosted annual production to 202,667 that year. Henry Ford’s vision and the Model T’s demand had developed the basic techniques of mass production.

Most web site development projects fail through lack of communication during requirements gathering. A disconnect between clients and programmers often occurs due to software being an intangible object. Unlike purchasing a car, developing software relies on clients describing desired functionality and programmers interpreting that description to create a tangible product.

Today in the TenSpot, we are taking Agile to a new level. Members of our staff recently underwent ScrumMaster and Product Owner training with Certified ScrumMaster extraordinaire Mike Cohn.

Cohn is a leading Agilist, having been involved with the process on an executive level since 1995. He has authored three books and led Scrum conferences and events around the world.

I recently went through Mike Cohn’s Scrum Product Owner training. I was a little worried I wouldn’t learn too many new things since we have already read all three of Cohn’s books. Mike, however, did not disappoint.

I originally listed several take aways from the training in this post. Then realized it was too long and that many of the take aways were a post unto themselves. So my plan is to cover each one as a separately.

1. 21st century Product Owners are now pigs

There's a project management revolution going on today, and it goes by the name of Agile.

Agile project management methodologies are an alternative to traditional waterfall project management, which is the style of project management used in the majority of web development and design projects today.

Large companies like Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, IBM, and Salesforce.com have already made the switch to Agile.

Why?

In this week's TenSpot podcast, we get down to the nitty gritty. Kayla Wren discusses running the Scrum process with a blended product backlog, and Dustin Currie discusses some of the problems with project estimation, and some strategies for creating better estimates on your next project.

Power Tip

Contrary to popular belief, I say the best day of the week is Monday. Not Friday, not Thursday, and certainly not Saturday... Monday. Why is it my favorite day, you might ask? Because on Mondays, I get to review and edit our fantastic weekly podcasts. Sure, I usually know the topics ahead of time, and most days, I even participate in the podcasts, but in a world where yesterday's news may as well be last year's news, a refresher is always good.

Our production team recently made the switch from waterfall to agile. While there were some initial hurdles, it has proved to be a good move. But one of the biggest challenges we have using scrum in an agency environment is deciding who should be the product owner.

There are two camps: Client as Product Owner and Account Manager as Product Owner.

Client Camp

It has almost been a year since LevelTen decided to go agile and implement the Scrum process to tackle development and marketing related projects. Throughout the learning process we have made some slight alterations tailored to fit LevelTen’s needs. Most recently, we have introduced an “Internal Scrum” to keep track of the never ending tasks that need to be taken care of around the office – fixing IT equipment, documenting processes, documenting software, office organization, decorating, etc.