In this interview taken over a week during the Agile 2007 conference, Deborah Hartmann of InfoQ interviewed Segundo Velasquez, co-founder of Mano a Mano Medical Resources (Bolivia), and president of Mano a Mano United States. Mano a Mano is a charitable organization which has developed many projects for the poverty stricken regions of rural Bolivia. Segundo Velasquez came to the Agile 2007 conference to meet with an Agile team which promised him help to design and develop a web application meant to build a stronger relationship between Mano a Mano and its donors.
Segundo Velasquez spent a week at Agile 2007 and talks about his experience with the Agile team through the eyes of a computer non-professional. They all started with Segundo's desire to have a web application accessible to his organization's donors, which would create an affective link between the donors and the projects they are donating for. They went thorough several design iterations, coming up with various ideas on how to develop the application, even creating some tests. Segundo shares his amazement on how quickly the whole process evolved.
You can access the entire interview here. (37 min.)
Community comments
I enjoyed working for Segundo's project
by J. B. Rainsberger,
.seriously ..kml file ..flickr, youtube integration in a week ??
by Hasan Kamrul,
Re: .seriously ..kml file ..flickr, youtube integration in a week ??
by Deborah (Hartmann) Preuss,
I enjoyed working for Segundo's project
by J. B. Rainsberger,
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I got the chance to work for a few hours on the Mano a Mano project and really enjoyed it. I happened to meet Segundo in the hotel elevator near the end of the conference, and it was heartwarming to meet a customer who truly appreciated even the small amount of work I did for him. I wish I had more customers like that.
.seriously ..kml file ..flickr, youtube integration in a week ??
by Hasan Kamrul,
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How many agile developer does it take to write a kml file ?
4 dev + 2 lead in a week without break and double shift
..u guys are f..ing brilliant man
Re: .seriously ..kml file ..flickr, youtube integration in a week ??
by Deborah (Hartmann) Preuss,
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:-)
Actually, the project had multiple objectives. Writing the code was just one of them. From what I saw there, I'd assume there were other objectives, as well, such as:
* write the code
* help advance a worthy cause
* show curious conference attendees what a team room looks and feels like
* let developers try TDD, pair-programming, refactoring and other practices in a non-threatening environment
* networking opportunity for those who participated
* learn now to set up the infrastructure for an agile team (servers, tools, etc.)
* spread the idea of using charity work to get experience and build your resume. Which, I think, is a great idea! No more whining: "I want to do Agile but have no experience - who's going to give me my first break?" To which, apparently, the answer is: give yourself your first break!
:-)