From Storming to Norming

By Hassan Syed
ISIS Assistant Director

At the end of this week we will complete the four-week code-writing phase of Sprint 2 (taxonomy screens). Then we will enter a week-long testing phase followed by 11 days of bug fixes. We will deliver Sprint 2 on time by 27 February. Then we will head into the increasingly challenging work of Sprint 3 (enclosures).

It has been fascinating to assemble the ZIMS team from many countries and many cultures, but all speaking the same language of technology. Our team stretches between Minnesota, USA and Gurgaon, India, but the individual members live all over - from Austin, Texas to Istanbul, Turkey, from New Orleans in the southern USA to Surry in the south of England. Communications technology, augmented by the occasional airplane flight, allows this far-flung team to work together for a common purpose - to build ZIMS for you.

In the mid 1960’s a psychologist by the name of Bruce Tuckman proposed that every group passes through certain observable phases as the members of the group learn how to work together. It has been intriguing to watch Tuckman’s descriptions come true for the ZIMS team. Tuckman’s phases are:

· Forming: Group members learn about each other and display a variety of commitment, concern, confusion and excitement.
· Storming: As group members deepen their interactions, they engage each other in arguments about the structure of the group, sometimes highly emotional. Struggle for status emerges.
· Norming: Group members establish implicit or explicit rules about how they will achieve their goal. They address the types of communication that will or will not move the group toward its goal.
· Performing: Group members move into cohesion and activities and interactions become more smooth. Creativity, fun and high morale begin to display themselves.

It’s a bit humbling when science predicts human behavior so accurately, but it is also very reassuring, when we are in moments of tension, to know that our working group is evolving normally! I would say that the ZIMS group is passing from Storming to Norming as we continue our work on Sprint 2.

ZIMS Meets Its First Major Deadline

If you are looking for the most recent ZIMS video podcast, please click here

By Jaime Meyer, ISIS Communications

We told you a few months ago that Sprint 1 (the first of seven ZIMS development “bursts”) would deliver a working piece of software on January 2, 2009. We delivered. We met our first major deadline. Sprint 2 will be delivered February 23. We will meet that deadline. After seven sprints we will deliver “ZIMS Release 1” (Animal Management for Zoos and Aquariums). Click here to see the entire sprint schedule.

When we say “delivered” we mean that the software is working and it meets the business requirements as set out in the specifications document. In contrast, the first development process took 21 months to deliver a “build” that did not work, partly because the process used was designed to deliver a massive, buggy build with 1,000 screens and a million lines of code that would then be tested by scores of people over months to find and correct bugs. But the simple fact is now, under our new development process we are seeing working software far, far sooner which allows us to respond to problems, or, in some cases move even faster than planned.

It cannot go unsaid that a big reason we are able to work faster now is that so many in the community worked so hard to set the specific parameters for what they needed from ZIMS. We are working faster now because this development process leverages that global “brain trust” in a far different way than in the previous process. So, once again, thank you to all who have put their energy into making ZIMS a reality.

ZIms Podcast # 3 - The Wonder of Components

This 6 minute video brings you up to date on where ZIMS is right now as "Sprint 1" ends and "Sprint 2" begins. It includes a rather mind-boggling example of why we re-designed the ZIMS development process the way we did.

Click on the "play" arrow. It may take 30 seconds to download. Please be patient...

If you'd like to read a printed version of the podcast narration, click here.