Lessons Learned

This page is for specific lessons that have been learned in one area that can be applied to other areas. If it's a lesson learned that only applies to the area it was learned in, then it's better to document it in that specific area.

Team Wikispeed

Wikispeed is a team of volunteers that formed around the work of Joe Justice as he competed in the Progressive Insurance Automotive X-Prize. His greatest innovation was applying lean/agile/SCRUM software program management to hardware, specifically the iterative design of a 100+ mpg passenger vehicle.

The dramatic success of Team Wikispeed's activities pretty much demands listening to what Joe has to say.

For clarity, and because I wasn't clear on this point until I researched it, it is important to point out that Team Wikispeed was eliminated in the first round of on-location testing at the X-Prize competition. "Without even bothering to look at the finite element analysis and computational fluid dynamics Justice had brought as proof of his design’s validity, the inspector rejected the car outright. Justice felt like he’d been slapped in the face. “It was like fireworks going off in my cheeks,” he says. “This is something I’ve had a whole lot of design input into, and this one person is saying, ‘This isn’t good enough.’...Rather than spending hours pulling apart the SGT01 to get to the suspension, the team simply unbolted the body, removed the suspension module, and began fabricating a new one. They got it done, too, just in time. The only problem was that as they finished, minutes before the deadline, Justice and another team member cut a wire in the electrical system. The car wouldn’t start, and Wikispeed’s run for the X Prize was done. They finished in a tie for 10th in their division." article

TED talk:

General

• First functional prototype built in 3 months.
• Existing manufacturing processes are slow to change because they're exceptionally expensive to change.
  • Major manufacturers typically operate on 10-25 year design cycles.
• Wikispeed uses 7-day design cycles.
• Iterated a process that brought the cost/time of a full structural carbon fiber car body down from $36,000/3 months to $800/3 days.
• Went from 1 guy in his garage to 100+ volunteers, in 8 countries, and a production-ready car in 6 months.

Specific

• Modularity.
  • Every system in the car can be separated from every other system as quickly and easily as changing a tire.
• Test-based.
  • The customer-value standard, and the test for it, is designed BEFORE the solution is designed.
• Use less stuff.
  • The parts for the frame of the car can be built with stock 4" aluminum tube, an $80 band saw, and a used-kit-built CNC milling machine.
  • Reduce costs in tooling, machinery and complexity wherever possible. This allows for improvements to be incorporated into the design immediately because there are so few sunk costs.
• Distributed, collaborative teams.
  • Use free online tools.
• Morale for velocity.
  • It's not additive or subtractive, it's a multiplier.
• Work in pairs.
  • Put a newbie with a pro and the newbie learns AS the job gets done. This eliminates time devoted to training. The pro gets help, the newbie gets hands-on experience.
  • Also eliminates the need for most types of documentation.
• Visualize workflow to eliminate any time spent not creatively solving problems.