Shinsato spotted this remarkable TED talk by Joe Justice on using agile processes to develop a legal (and amazing looking) car with exceptional fuel efficiency in three months.
He highlights how slow improvements are in conventional cars because their manufacturing processes are so expensive to change. One hybrid increases fuel efficiency by just 2 mpg over six years. It can take ten years for an engineer to change a door design. Development teams run on 10 to 25 year development cycles.
Joe describes an agile development process that has led to a car with all sorts of features that make it cheap and flexible. As he says all the methods he uses are free.
As Shinsato says,
These new methods of building stuff better, faster, and with more fun are coming and changing everything, not just the lives of some programmers. This video will give you a taste of how Joe did it – and why it’s profound – and how he’s also working to bring these techniques for social change.
As we see the massive failings of our big institutions to respond to our needs with integrity, things like this point to at least the possibility of an alternative way of working.
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