Volume 7, #2, March 2009
Wiki-Wiki!* We Need a Product Development Life-Cycle Process
How Ingenix Created, Tested, and Introduced a Collaborative System in Less Than 6 Months Using Wiki Technology
Wiki-wiki is the Hawaiian word for "quick."
At least a few of us recall the days when "looking something up" meant scanning the shelf for the encyclopedia volume labeled with the right range of letter combinations, retrieving the volume, and flipping through tissue-thin pages until arriving at the entry. And we remember the pile of open volumes accumulating on the desk as we tracked from one reference to the next.
Now, of course, we sit at our computers (or iPhones or Blackberries), type in www.wikipedia.com and the word or phrase we are looking for, and are transported nearly instantaneously to an entry written, edited, and maintained collaboratively by people who probably never met and who may be separated by continents. This entry not only explains the item we searched but also links to related entries that the authors think we might find valuable or interesting.
In this interconnected world of instant access and collaboration, healthcare information company Ingenix chose a new and different way of developing and documenting its product development life-cycle (PDLC) managing framework. Ingenix sidestepped a potentially long and complex process of software evaluation, selection, loading, testing, training, and rollout of a dedicated software application package and instead turned to a cost-effective commercially available wiki technology as the platform to build its new PDLC process. And Ingenix capitalized on the knowledge and expertise of an experienced partner, Product Development Consulting, Inc. (PDC), to guide creation and refinement of various components of the process.
Minimizing resources, maximizing impact
Like all companies, Ingenix wanted to ensure that its developers were building the right products in the right way to serve customers and market needs. The PDLC process would contribute to this goal. But Ingenix could not afford to take years to create the process, distract developers from their core responsibilities, or expend excessive time and resources on travel. It wanted to create the process rapidly in a way that was time efficient, effectively harnessed the wide-ranging capabilities of the organization, and smoothly incorporated best practices from outside the company.
To Dan Weaver, Ingenix's Vice President of Engineering and Organizational Effectiveness, who was involved with the PDLC project from the beginning, wiki technology (in particular the Confluence product from Altassian that Ingenix selected) seemed a natural choice to build the system. The advantages of wiki technology were its simplicity and that it allowed geographically dispersed project teams to collaboratively build, organize, and link web pages from anywhere and make them widely and virtually instantly available. Ingenix paired the technology selection with assistance from PDC consultant Richard Tait. By providing strategic guidance and key best practice tools, templates and insights to the Ingenix development team, PDC helped keep the project budget bounded while injecting critical knowledge at the right times. This combination resulted in a remarkably quick turnaround: Between June and October of 2008 a cross-functional team at Ingenix built a comprehensive web-based PDLC system that it is now rolling out to product development staff and key leadership.
Harmonization, not lockstep
Ingenix is an innovative and successful company that has grown rapidly through acquisition. Many product teams from different backgrounds have successfully developed and shipped software, but each has followed a slightly different approach. Putting together a company-wide PDLC process was an exercise in harmonization. Without eliminating flexibility or overriding the unique requirements for each product team, the use of wiki technology helped teams negotiate away redundancies, publish best practices as company-wide standards, and publish approved ways of varying from standards.
Where gaps existed in the process, Ingenix worked with PDC to create new best-in-class practices. This helped shorten the learning curve so the Ingenix teams could avoid wrong turns and inefficient approaches.
Creating the PDLC system began with the construction of a high-level framework with templates documenting major portions of the product development process. Each top-level template then was assigned to a leader in a particular process area who filled in the blanks by assembling his or her own cross-functional team. Within about four months, the team published a complete PDLC that followed a product from idea through to production. Anyone inside the company with access to the Ingenix Intranet was then able to see the entire process.
The team's previous experience working with and building process frameworks helped it avoid pitfalls, employ creative new approaches, and make early choices that made it successful. Some steps that contributed to the success included:
The right involvement
Ingenix created an organizational model that allowed the right people to be involved at the right time in sufficient numbers to do the work. Dan Weaver and two others were formally appointed to work on the project. Rather than carry out all the work themselves, they served as leaders, defining the problem statement and creating a "scaffolding" on which the answers could hang. Weaver comments, "I would say, 'Go to this link, you'll see a framework. All we want you to do is fill in the blanks." The wiki technology, with its capability to create templates, made this possible. Ultimately, more than 45 people helped build the system.
Working with Richard Tait from PDC rather than bringing in a large consulting team enabled the Ingenix team to retain ownership of the process. Tait's role involved coaching, sharing insights, and offering tools and techniques for moving the process forward. In the cases where PDC supplied templates and best practices, Ingenix tailored those to fit its approach and culture. Weaver says of PDC's involvement: "Richard brought the ability to know what a process ought to look like. We used his expertise to get us jumpstarted."
The Wiki technology made it possible to use this distributed approach in near real time. Sometimes, in a meeting, someone would say, "I need x." Minutes later, someone else would say, "Done!" The entire process benefited from this highly collaborative, real-time development.
Everyone an author
The team leaders immediately made everyone an "author" who was in any way involved in the PDLC process, giving them full rights to edit or add material. This avoided the traditional bottleneck that can occur when lots of people with good ideas, templates, or existing processes must funnel input through a small number of authors or editors. Because the wiki has a low learning curve, everyone can begin contributing right away.
Connections to other resources
The wiki platform, Confluence, integrated easily with other technologies such as WebEx and Microsoft Communicator, so teams could view pages while talking and editing in real time. This saved time and money on travel by eliminating the need to bring groups together physically. In fact, the team didn't even use videoconferencing technology. Since most of the key team members knew one another already, seeing people's faces was less important than being able to collaborate on work.
The wiki platform allows files created in other applications such as spreadsheets or presentation software to be attached to content pages, so related documents were instantly accessible. The team also took advantage of the ability to export one or several process pages or the entire PDLC into an organized manual in Microsoft Word or PDF format.
When documenting the process to write a business case, the blank template includes a purpose statement, entry criteria (what's needed to start) and exit criteria (how you know you're done). Linked to and displayed in the finished process page is a Visio diagram showing the work-flow for visual learners as well as a text-based table of tasks for text-learners. This attachment capability meant that lots of useful work could get done immediately using common office productivity tools.
Training focused on content, not how to use
Another benefit of wiki technology is ease of use, so training time focuses on the system's content rather than on teaching people how to use it. Ingenix's PDLC project was completed in late October. The team spent much of November and December training nearly 1,000 people worldwide in more than 35 processes (though people trained only in those specific processes related to their roles). Training and rollout continues in early 2009.
Built-in continuous improvement
The system has been well received during training and by the people who are currently using it. Weaver is confident that it will enjoy increasing approval over time. One reason for his confidence is the built-in mechanism for continuous process improvements. If a user discovers issues or has a better idea for how to do something, he or she can nominate process improvements by e-mail, by following the process improvement process, or simply by adding a comment to the bottom of the wiki page related to the suggested improvement. A process team monitors all the suggestions and initiates improvements quarterly. Wiki technology provides a democratic way to do this without inviting chaos.
High-level executive champions, grass-roots support
The PDLC project enjoyed extremely strong executive support from the beginning. As importantly, grass-roots support became an engine that drove the project to completion. "People came to me and said, 'I have an idea, I want to help,'" says Weaver. "I said, 'How about joining the team?'" The team used classic project management techniques, including group meetings, to keep the project on track during its relatively short development and deployment.
The team did exercise control over who could author and edit pages. Ingenix uses wiki technology for other corporate applications, so the first step was to create a "space" (essentially a root hierarchy) for the PDLC. The team began with everyone locked out, then as individuals were recruited – or volunteered – to help build the PDLC process they were added to the author list. When the process was done, the space was unlocked. Although only designated editors could edit content, anyone could read and comment. The team eventually will decide who can edit content directly.
The use of wiki technology allowed Ingenix to create, extremely rapidly, a flexible framework for product development life-cycle process management that is easy to use, deploy, and improve. Working with PDC as an experienced partner ensured that the framework reflected industry best practices and allowed Ingenix to capitalize on tested approaches. It's a model that's open to any development organization willing to embrace a new way of approaching an old process management challenge.
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Links
eWeek article on wikis in the enterprise
Wikis in corporations - InformationWeek article
Dan Bricklin interview with Motorola exec about use of Wikis
