The road from our neighborhood to the main road (Niwot Road) is getting a new water system. Moving water from a reservoir to the west to the water treatment plant 6 miles to the east. It's a two lane road, no shoulder - bad for bikes - and typical overhanging cottonwood trees, bounded by stables and farms, a golf course or two and the IBM Global Services Plant.
I drive this route most mornings when I go to the office in Denver. I finally noticed something. The construction company would dig a trench for the water pipe - a 48" diameter blue plastic snap together segment. Place the pipe pieces in the ditch, laid on sand, cover is up, pack down the top soil and cover that dirt with hay.
That's do a couple 100 yards a day. In the evening all the equipment was back in a storage area in a farmers field. There was evidence of work, but no open ditch, no partially completed work. All the blue pipe stacked neatly ahead of the next days work.
At the crack of dawn - around 5:15AM here in the mountains, the work began. Around 6:00PM the sweepers where finishing off the final clean up for the day.
I thought tonight on the way home
100% completion at the end of each day
No wasted materials, effort, or motions
Agile water project! If they can do this, why can't IT? Good question.
There are lots of moving parts, supervisors, dump trucks coming and going, road graders, ditch digging machines, pickups with plans and schedules on the hoods in the morning, people in hard hats walking the side of the road with radios in their hands in the late afternoon. Pickup trucks parker everywhere along the side roads, in fields, and the ubigtuous flag-man directing the one-way movement up and down Niwot Road.
No "self organizing teams," no "cow boy developers," not a customer in sight. OK, one Left Hand Water district pick truck parked up the road.
