In software development, people have gone from waterfall to agile: instead of building a system in months and years, they build a first version in weeks and then make small improvements and extensions depending on the feedback from actual usage. But can this also be done for hardware projects, such as building, planes and cars? The wikispeed has used the same processes from software to build a fuel efficient car.
Wikispeed was one of the contestants in the progressive Xprize competition. The goal of the competition was to get teams to design a car that would do 100 miles per gallon, or 42 kilometers per liter. Wikispeed unfortunately did not win the event (edison2 did), but they did make a very interesting car using a very interesting design process: they use an iterative, agile approach.
Agile and open innovation
Wikispeed was initiated by Joe Justice. His goal was not just to make a fuel-efficient car, but also one that you could use in real life: it had to be road-worthy, practical, safe and affordable. For a large car company, a project of designing such a car takes years, sometimes even a decade. Joe did not have the time and funds for such a project, so he took a different approach:
- First of all he decided to learn from agile and scrum methodologies. These methods have been used for software often, but there is nothing in these methods that cannot be used for other projects. So he used it for car design.
- Secondly he decided to make it an open project. The wiki in wikispeed means that the car is built by a large group of volunteers, who spend their free time in improving the car.
This combination of open innovation and agile works better than you expect: if you work with volunteers it is important that they see results for their work. Also it allows people to leave the team and join the team during the project, and not leave any work in progress. But the big question is of course: how do you do this for a car. Part of the secret lies in building changeability in the design. Normal manufactures select techniques for low unit cost: they want to design products that are cheap to produce. Joe Justice and the rest of the team knew that he would have to design lots of prototypes first, and more importantly they knew that ease of change would save them lots of time, effort and money in the long run.
Test driven development
The first car was built in three months. It looked like a box on wheels, but it was a fully working, two person open car. From then on, they have been improving the car gradually. They use test driven development (TDD): before adding a feature, the team thinks of the way to test that the new feature works. For instance before adding extra bars to improve the crash resistance, they think of what test they will perform. They do the test first before adding the feature, and make sure it fails. Only then do they make the improvement and then test whether it works. This way of designing, which is common in software development, makes sure that all improvements have a measurable impact.
Joining or supporting the effort
If you want to know more, you can watch Joe Justice’s TEDx talk and read the website. After that you can help the team in two ways: join the team and contribute your time and expertise, or place an order for the car. If you want to contribute, make sure you read and sign this waiver. It basically says that you donate your time: you might get money later if the team strikes gold, but that is not guaranteed. The car costs only 25.000 dollar (before European taxes, so probably 35.000 euro in NL) and is on sale now from their webshop.
About the author: Sieuwert van Otterloo (twitter: @entreprenl) is an IT and innovation advisor with a passion for agile, open innovation and startups. He gives strategy advice, agile coaching and lean and agile workshops via Otterloo Ventures
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