In the News: SolutionsIQ and Team WIKISPEED
Posted on Tue, Jun 26, 2012
by Pam Dyer
WIKISPEED is a green automotive-prototyping company that is currently building a 
mass-manufacturable, ultra-low-cost, 100-mpg commuter car. Based in Seattle and led by Joe Justice, a managing consultant at SolutionsIQ, WIKISPEED is an all-volunteer distributed Agile/Scrum team — members contribute their work from various locations and iteratively enhance the vehicle every two weeks. This model allows extremely high-speed development, especially when paired with rapid prototyping manufacturing tools.
In their recent article on Fortune Online, How companies ought to train their staffers, John Hagel and John Seely Brown delve into the four principles of agile employee engagement that have helped Team WIKISPEED be successful:
- Reach out to passionate people
- Keep timelines short
- Make the project modular
- Create opportunities for hands-on learning
Excerpt:
"If we only had a short-term vision," Justice says, "the team would have dissolved after the X-Prize." Instead, WIKISPEED has taken the mission further, teaming up with SolutionsIQ to apply some of these processes to other organizations even as they work on their own projects. Indeed, companies of all sizes can learn from what they managed to pull off.
We're excited to have Joe on our team and to partner with him in furthering his WIKISPEED success. He has the ability to exploit the full value of the Agile practices that have proven so useful in software engineering to new domains, including manufacturing.
Joe Justice Agile2012 Keynote
SolutionsIQ is a Gold Sponsor of the Agile2012 conference in Dallas this summer, at which Joe will deliver a keynote:
Managing a collaborative multi-national team in real time, 11am Friday, August 17:
Find out what happens when a consultant with mad Agile skills starts building a car in his garage in his free time. Not any car, but an X Prize car, that gets 100 miles to the gallon. Learn about the real, tangible ways Joe turned a dream into a game-changing auto manufacturing company, building a 100mpg, hot, sexy, sporty, road legal car. He's bringing his latest prototype to Agile2012! Don't miss this awesome story that is now unfolding in its latest, greatest iteration!
In addition to delivering his keynote, Joe will be displaying one of his cars next to the SolutionsIQ booth -- make sure you stop by and say hello!