Creating and Implementing D^5: Develop
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With questions answered, ideas sketched and everyone sick of me asking, “why?”—I moved to developing D^5. I returned to my flow-charting tool and mapped out a new process with an accompanying user story. While still in draft version, I begin collaborating with Ryan—our other PM.
We met regularly to review the latest draft and he did his best to test the new process’s validity. He poked holes in its’ theory and questioned the philosophy. Over time each draft became harder to nullify.
Around this time I was pulled aside by Robby and the design team, who was coincidently were working on re-branding How We Work. This was perfect timing. Together we re-created the marketing portion—renamed and gave a memorable structure to the work process already under development.
Soon we had a full work process and a slick slideshow, user story and flow-chart to explain it to just about anyone. When Ryan could no longer stump the process—we moved forward with a team meeting (the processes’ UAT period).
We held a team lunch and went over the work process beginning to end. The team was asked to poke and prod the process, just like Ryan had done.
“Tell us what we missed. Tell us how to make it better.”
And they did—and we did our best to fix them. With bugs fixed, we were ready to deploy.