Last friday and saturday we, at Whitehorses, had our yearly DeveloperDerby. This beautiful and fun race for developers is for our developers, by our developers. This year we had an actual client case of one of our beloved clients, Ricoh. And this is where it all changed…
In previous years we developed an application for a fictional business problem. This year it was an actual problem and the client was there to help. Two Ricoh executives where available for questions, reviews and other interactions. Because the teams only got a minimum of information beforehand and they needed to deliver something that actually worked within two days, they where forced into agility. A beautiful process and very educational.
Using the moments with the clients, our four development teams got all the information that was needed. All teams where made agile because there was no information to be found, not on paper, not on the web, not by experience. We had a client case that was extremely challenging and the teams needed to show their creativity in order to really grasp and solve this problem, by adding value.
And value was found. Although, like everyone else, the client had a solution in mind, every team came up with a different way to solve the problem. By offering self service in a very accessible and fun way to the end clients of Ricoh, they would save money on sending personnel to their end users. Fun and pretty.
The Ricoh executives where taken trough the process by all our teams, they showed solutions and prototypes, talked about different ways of looking at the problem and got new insights in helping their client base. Managing relations and offering solutions to real live problems. In short: adding value.
In the end, a strange thing happened. Two of four teams where called winners. Both these teams interacted with the client on all occasions the had. Therefor had a lot of insight in what the client moved, what they would think would be sexy and attractive. Talking to them certainly helped understanding the complexity of that what really needed to be done and what was beneath it all.
Agility equals success.
