A day at the Opera - what an amazing theme I thought sitting at the train that morning. I was going for a kick off regarding the new cooperate Intranet - the top layer, the "hub" connecting all other 50 Intranets. The conference room was called Carmen and full of excitement I entered the foyer. But it was empty - except for the three beautiful "ghosts" above.
I work for Västra Götalandsregionen and we own the Göteborg Opera - something we are very proud of. That is why I went to this building when I was going to a conference room called after an opera. Not a single soul at entrance or backstage had heard about that room so I was pretty confused. I started to walk eastwards...along the stream...to next conference centre. Lilla Bommen´s.
The Opera is a small part of Västra Götalandsregionen's business. Mainly we run health care. We are also working with making the region to an attractive place to live and run business in. My own department - Regionservice - is a huge facility management provider (or at least FMS provider to be). We are working hard with integrating our business processes so we efficiently can provide the heath care with everything except for health care. We run the computers, restaurants, the logistics, the laundry, the cleaning, the administration of salaries, the conference centres, the receptions, etc. We also provide the region with project leaders and different kinds of resources for rental. We have about 42 000 customers (IT). There are 56 000 employers totally.
Later that day I was back at the Opera for a marvellous lunch and a guided tour.
The guide Rolf - is an opera singer as well - had lots of amusing stories and facts to tell. The opera employs 1200 persons. It has 11 floors - 30 000 square meters to clean, 1100 rooms and the walls is painted with egg tempera made of 5500 eggs. It is a beautiful building placed right beside the stream splitting Gothenburg in two halves. Most of the materials in the building is nautical – except for the cherry wood floor. No one knows why it is cherry – pretty stupid since it is a such a soft material.
Rolf told us lots of amusing stories about the opera, artists and other study visits - especially those with kids. But you should have seen my face when he started to talk about incremental system development. Or at least that was what I heard since I read a blogpost the night before written by Alistair Cockburn: Incremental means adding, iterative means reworking
So when the guide held up that model - I burst into laughter and no one understood why except for me. It was just as at a cinema where I often happen to laugh at exactly the wrong moments just because I see something no one else sees (very painful for my kids).
Incremental development process
It takes six month to build a new stage design. It all starts up with sketches in design studio then they build a model. Then the big problem starts how to figure out how to build the stage. The one above was realized with that kind of polyurethane plastic you use to keep your butt warm while sitting in the snow.
And then the material arrives. The building starts in one end of the building and is slowly transported to the other end.
The product is refined at each station - value is added - on its way. This is an incremental process.
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| The transparent plastic used for walls is painted |
Like carpets, curtains and other textiles
And like 50 huge dirty bloody Opera rats
The ones that are going to be beheaded (project members?) are prepared carefully - massage and painkillers. This is a so called decremental development process.
Then one day all pieces is gathered right outside the scene and the final build of the stage design can start...
And the performance can start.
We were not allowed to enter the stage this time since they had rehearsals. But we got a spontaneous song by a singer just walking by.
An opera's stage design is an example of a partly incremental development procedure. Each phase is adding value to the final solution. But lots of things are happening totally isolated from the main process also adding value to the final solution.
So now we have been speaking about incremental and touched decremental development processes (*giggling*) - lets talk about iterative system development
Iterative development
This is a statue of Gustav II Adolf - the king that once founded Göteborg.
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| Copyright: www.fotoakuten.se |
When making such a costume hours is spent on making the patina - the color, the texture, the dirt and the shit from doves and seagulls. These treasures cannot be washed (I am speaking about the costume now - not birds). Not even dry cleaning and treatment in the ozone chamber might be enough.
Then the designer put small patches in the armpit of these kinds of costumes. When it starts to smell they simply removed that piece of fabrics and add a new one.
This is iterative development even if the only added value is getting rid of the smell and stained fabric. You remove and then add a new solution adding value in iterative development.
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| It is amazing – every year the opera sells 5000 costumes. The wardrobe is any how full...to our amusement this day. |
So know you know all about incremental (adding stuff giving value), iterative (replacing stuff adding value) and decremental system development (beheading project members :)
The only model missing now is instrumental system development....but lets keep that to another time. I guess I have to make another study visit before that blog post.
I had an amazing day at the Göteborg Opera. And I we had an awesome conference. A day to remember and a day when I was proud working for Västra Götalandsregionen.
It has to be fun, or else we cannot make it
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