Building a 100 MPG Road Car in 3 Months  It would be easy to admire Joe Justice. He’s managed to be successful following his passion - and as a result - made his dreams true through his achievements following Agile Principles.
Joe is the CEO of Wikispeed, a company that has built a gasoline-powered vehicle (the SGT01) that exceeds 100 Miles per Gallon (MPG) in three months using Agile. Joe started with the ambitious idea of joining the Progressive Insurance Automotive competition in 2009 that offered a $10 million prize for the winner in building a vehicle that exceeds 100 MPG using UDDS federal standards (followed by all car manufacturers for selling in the United States.) While Joe’s constructed car reached 10th place out of 136 entrants, Wikispeed, grew from just one “above average” Joe to over 110 volunteers in seven countries and gained international recognition. Note - this isn’t a one man lightweight glider, but instead a car that can reach up to 194 MPH, has a five star crash test equivalency, sits up to four adults, has plenty of cargo room (with AC and a radio to boot!)
What made Joe Justice different from his competitors was that he didn’t follow the rules of big companies like Tesla, Ford and Chevrolet but instead employed modular, iterative Agile building practices such as Scrum, Kanban and Pomodoro. Joe’s “secret sauce” as he put it, is the ability to quickly modify and improve parts within a seven day release cycle instead of the typical 10 years old designs delivered by major automotive companies. He honed that ability through his “day job” as a computer developer / architect in an IT company that only employs Agile principles in their delivery. Wikispeed employs the intelligent and frugal use of tools such as a blog on Scrum retrospectives, YouTube videos, Facebook, Free Conference, Dropbox, GoogleDocs and many more.
By using interchangeable parts (and help through an online community that grew at a viral pace in helping Joe improve his designs), Wikispeed produced a vehicle that could have its chassis replaced in the time a tire is normally changed. This allows the team mechanics to switch from a car to a truck or a four seat car to a two seat car in minutes. Wikispeed took this concept to all the primary aspects of the car that have to do with efficiency, from door dye molds to power requirements and near zero friction brakes.
Wikispeed also used pairing and swarming to improve output. Joe adopted pairing from Extreme programming to have the mechanics always work in pairs. Swarming happens when a mechanic gets stuck and everyone available in the team coming to help until solved and perhaps surprisingly, it always gets solved. Joe purchased three of every tool to ensure no one has to ask for the tool to try something and have any awkwardness result from asking for a tool to try something. This kept team morale high as when one person fixed an issue, everyone felt like they won together!
Wikispeed’s international attention has resulted in being placed on the cover of Automobile magazine, being interviewed by Discovery channel http://youtu.be/9c_XWlVwdTc and being showcased in car shows next to the major automotive companies. Joe also spoke as TEDxRainier http://youtu.be/MkmyKmQppq8 to a standing ovation! As Joe put it, the results of Wikispeed are like King Kong giving a high five to Jaws in front of a nuclear explosion! Nice!
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