It’s the Mobile Gourmet’s favorite holiday – Thanksgiving!
A day of food, food…and more food! I’m so excited I can’t decide what kind of turkey to make this year. The past few years I’ve ordered a turducken (that’s a chicken inside a duck inside a turkey in case you’re wondering – highly recommended to try at least once), roasted a tasty heritage turkey (again a must try despite the high cost per pound), and cooked a fat goose just for a change of pace. Of course, leading up to the turkey dinner with all the fixins is a lot of hard work and skillful coordination – especially when you have a small New York City kitchen (no double wall ovens here!).
And let’s not forget about dealing with all the guests. Making sure they feel involved (‘Can I help?’) without slowing you down; keeping them happy, fed and entertained throughout the day. Some of these friends and family you may not have seen in years and even some that you may prefer not to see at all. Thanksgiving is truly a day where you use all your skills of project management, diplomacy, and conciliation. But when it’s all done, it’s well worth it to see all the happy faces.
There is no blueprint for ensuring a successful Thanksgiving Day, but fortunately for your mobile project there are a few valuable resources that you can turn to for help. One such key resource is from Antenna in the form of a whitepaper describing the Antenna Implementation Methodology (AIM™). Essentially AIM is an eight phase process born from over a decade;s worth of experience in working with large organizations implementing complex mobile solutions. It’s like someone who has hosted Thanksgiving Day dinners every weekend for the past dozen years and has put all that knowledge of the process into a simple guide.
This year I was determined to pull together and apply what I know about the mobile development process and what I know I need in order to pull off a successful bird day dinner - Jason’s Thanksgiving Day Methodology (What’s doubly great about it is that you can plan both Thanksgiving dinner and your next mobile project at the same time!) Here it is:
- Project definition/scope: Determine what your menu/theme will be
- Skills assessment and training: Make sure you have the right equipment and skill set to complete the menu (e.g. do you really know how to de-bone a turkey or have a big enough fryer?)
- Requirements gathering: Plan the seating arrangements and address any special dietary requests
- Design: Start shopping for ingredients and prepping
- Build and integrate: Roast, season, bake, season, braise, season, fry, season, poach, season, boil, season, steam…you get the idea
- Testing: Don’t forget to taste what you cook along the way
- Controlled introduction: As the chef and host you should definitely sneak in some snacking for you and your crew of helpers—otherwise you might not eat at all
- Production rollout: Finally, let’s eat!
Happy Thanksgiving!
∞
Tags: Business Process, Development, Enterprise Mobility, Jason Wong, Mobile Gourmet, Mobility - General
