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March 06, 2003
DNS Hot Team Week 1
I have written recently about the concept of Hot Teams.
We started our first Hot Team experiment this week, tackling a project that has languished for years, a DNS system clean-up and refresh. The current system does not support the latest DNS standards, and has a cumbersome interface that requires a substantial amount of manual babysitting.
The focus of the Hot Team is to quickly and effeciently fix both the interface (by updating or replacing the existing tool) and then clean up all of the DNS irregularitles. DNS is one of the critical services to create a functional network (as important as routers and circuits), so this project is one of our most important.
Our first task was to evaluate some potential replacement DNS management tools. Some work had been done previous to Monday, so we had a bit of a head-start. By lunch on Monday, we had completed evaluation of about a dozen potential tools, and had narrowed them down to 2 or 3 possibilities. We completed the evaluation Tuesday, 3 days early, and decided to fix our current tools. In spite of the speed of the decisions, I felt that because of the focus of the group, these were well-researched decisions that would not have gotten any better by waiting longer.
By the 3rd day of our first week (we only met mornings the first week), we were able to aggressively move into the Week2 of our project, and pursue Week3 tasks in parallel. While one team member focused on revising the softeware, the others started work on the tedious process of cleaning up the DNS system. By the end of the week, we are well into both of these tasks.
We start the Hot Team again March 17, but this time we will be working full days on the project. I am excited for the rapid progress we will be able to make that week.
Some things I've observed about this initial Hot Team project:
- setting a hard deadline that requires focus and dedication to achieve motivates and focuses the team. Every decision is based made on our ability to meet that deadline (and milestones), with a result that at least meets the agreed-upon minimum expectations
- having the right people working closely together to make decisions and develop the solution is another critical success factor. I think we saved at least 4 weeks in the first 2 days, compared to how long those decisions would normally take us using traditional methods
- the people and deadline create an infectious amount of energy and enthusiasm around the project, that motivates people to work effectively and efficiently to get the project done right, and on time
This Hot Team is successful already, and at the rate we go, I'm confident we will reach our goals. I expect that this success will ripple into other projects, and I hope it will help us get more done better with the few people we have.
Posted by pete at March 6, 2003 02:33 PM
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