How the Agile Process Helped Launch a Boat (Show)

The Agile Process

Scrum? Agile? Waterfall? Kaban? You likely have heard of these concepts and maybe adopted some version to your software, application or website development projects.

In its simplest form, Agile methodology is a project management process.

Scrum comes from the sport of rugby, where in a scrum formation everyone plays a specific role working towards a quick adoption of strategies. In complex projects just like on the rugby field, scrum facilitates team collaboration and iterative progress towards a goal. Teams practicing Scrum use Agile methodology.

As a Scrum Master, I make sure the team lives agile values and principles and follows team processes and practices. The responsibilities include establishing an environment where the team can be effective and clearing obstacles along the way.

For a look into how we put all this into practice, here is work we did recently in partnership with the nation’s leading trade association representing boat, marine engine, and accessory manufacturers, the National Marine Manufacturers Association.

The Challenge

The National Marine Manufacturers Association (NMMA) has an expansive ecosystem of websites across multiple business units and the boat, marine engine, and accessory manufacturer audiences it serves. Primary among these websites are more than 15 websites that serve the Boat Shows happening across the country, like the Chicago Boat Show (www.chicagoboatshow.com), which hosts hundreds of thousands of attendees.

Over the past two years, NMMA made significant investments in Acquia (Drupal’s Platform as a Service, PaaS) and moved its websites to the Acquia Cloud and Digital Experience Platform (DXP), with the goal of centralized site and application management and reducing the time required for labor-intensive infrastructure management.

Following the transition to Acquia, NMMA asked for Sandstorm’s support against clear goals for the project of providing centralized management of the multisite environment, uniform content blocks and streamlining code as well as fully optimizing the site for performance, SEO, user flow and content administration.

The Solution

The highest priority for NMMA was tackling the Boat Show sites, as there were UI updates and improvements that needed to be implemented. We also needed to re-architect the multi-site management so the collection of roughly 15+ sites used consistent theming, features and components along with the set-up of continuous integration. This meant creating a deployment structure to support clear data management of the different sites, including content blocks and forms and controlling the changes to be tested through one branch.

Given the time-sensitivity and breadth of the work needing to be done, Sandstorm and NMMA collaborated through an Agile development methodology, using the Scrum framework. This supported a combined Sandstorm & NMMA team with clear roles, an ability to prioritize what stakeholders needed the most, and the ability to adhere to a tight timeline with productive, incremental sprints.

Each sprint was prioritized by NMMA to include enhancements, structural updates, and process improvements while keeping close management of the backlog, so we could reprioritize as the needs of the business shifted. Sandstorm led a daily scrum where the full team communicated tasks, updates, challenges, etc., which provided a continuous cycle of teamwork-led solutions each day.

The Results

There were several successes from an agile-led partnership for both NMMA and Sandstorm, including:

• Improved administrative user experience and streamlined management of the NMMA Boat Shows websites within the multi-site framework.
  • Allowing for one branch update to affect multiple sites and changes to be adapted faster with no rework for the individual sites.
• Improved technical documentation. By managing development features and notes via Jira cards, we were able to instantly improve technical documentation and help structure the deployment processes.
• Stronger NMMA ownership. With an integrated approach and stronger team-wide knowledge and documentation of the systems and processes, NMMA was able to take more ownership of the product and had the tools in place to support current and future team members.
  • This was key for the multi-site deployment process and management of the separate databases per show site.
  • The development and deployment process can be controlled by the NMMA team and not one single team holds the keys to that process alone.
  • The NMMA team became sufficiently knowledgeable in managing their improved Acquia & Drupal 8 website’s structure and can stand on their own.
  • This allows NMMA to leverage Sandstorm’s expertise for future code enhancement implementations instead of spending budget resources on day-to-day management.

With this implemented Scrum framework, the combined Sandstorm and NMMA teams were able to build features efficiently, easily prioritize work and progress through the project quickly and successfully.

Want to learn how our integrated Agile and Scrum methodology can help move your development efforts forward? Contact us today to learn more!