Thursday, April 19, 2018

Agile in 160 Billion Gallons: When Agile Principles Occur During A Disaster

While the Agile concepts may sometimes be easy, the why's and how's are a little trickier to wrap your head around.   I’ve unfortunately participated in three recent rising flood water events in Houston over the last three years. Employing my agile skills has had a profound impact on the "success of the project".  

Their are some agile principles that are naturally occurring during a disaster. The "product" is protecting your home by saving your possessions.  The backlog is all of your possessions and it is prioritized by how you plan on attacking it. Some examples might be most expensive to least, or from the floor to the counters.

Some agile principals, like self organized teams or iterations are partially present. And some principals are rarely applied at all.

The  demo, retro, and sprint planning, tend to fall away during a crisis, but I assert that those are most important for a successful product, as they are core to the agile principles of transparency, inspection, and adaptation.

Here are the full slide decks.
Houston Tech Fest ( 10/14/2017 )
Agile Leadership Network Conference ( 04/21/2018 )
Houston Tech Fest - Spring (05/05/2018)
Project Manager's Institute - Houston Conference (06/05/2018)
* Houston Tech Fest - Fall 2018 (9/30/2018)
* Houston Scrum Masters Alliance (1/28/2019)
* Agile Shift Conference (04/12/2019)
Houston Agile Leadership Network (7/18/19)
Houston Tech Fest (9/14/19)
Houston PMI October Meeting (10/9/19)
* Houston PMI August Meeting (08/19/20)
* Vivit-Worldwide Virtual Community Days - Agile, DevOps, and Testing Conference (12/2/20)


Video recording:
http://usergroup.tv/videos/agile-in-160-billion-gallons-when-agile-principles-occur-during-a-disaster


Saturday, March 10, 2018

Creating our Flood Plan

So having flooded three times, and being an Agile-ist, I'm always trying to improve.  This is the summary of my flood plan.

After my first flood, I spent some time (almost all of my time) thinking through the choices I made "in the moment" and how I could improve. So I came up with a flood plan, in case I ever flooded again. 13 months later, I had a chance to implement the plan. The plan worked very well. I spent some more time thinking about it and have developed the following.

Before diving into the plan, I need to set the context. When I'm talking about flooding, I'm talking about a rising water event. This is where there is a lot of rain and after some length of time (maybe several hours) that rain isn't able to drain away any more and starts coming into the house. This plan does NOT apply to storm surges or dam releases where the water rises into the house within minutes.

First lets start with the objective: "Save my stuff"

Saving my stuff is quite broad. Saving all of my stuff is not realistic. This is where I failed during my first flood. I tried to save everything, but only that didn't happen - much was missed. And the things that I did save, were not the most important. Clearly I needed to prioritize. Here are the ways that I can think of to prioritize the things to save in my house.

  • Irreplaceable -> Common
  • Expensive -> Cheap
  • Useful -> Unnecessary
  • Floors -> Counters
  • Front of House -> Back of House
  • Nearest (to me) -> Farthest away
For me, after the first flood, ending up in a barren apartment with nothing to sleep on, nowhere to sit, and a pile of boxes that I was unsure of what was even inside them. I choose Useful -> Unnecessary would be our prioritization. This means I will save the beds, sofas and chairs first and the stuffed animals and Pokemon cards that litter the floor, would be last. 


Step 1: Determine the prioritization


Now that I have my priority set, how do I go about saving my household. Beds, sofas, chairs and tables take up a lot of floor space. How do I get them off the ground and how high do I have to put them?


Step 2: Determine the minimum and maximum height


For us, we have a 1 ft flood plan, it worked quite well during the second flood, where we only had 13", but would have failed massively during Hurricane Harvey where we would have had 51".  If I had actually looked at and understood my elevation, I would have seen that my BFE was 4' and I should have planned for that all along.

(I say would have had, because we elevated our house the day before Harvey hit. We had been in the process of elevating since the 2nd flood, and were scheduled to lift 1 week later, so we were able to accelerate the actual date when Harvey was developing in the Gulf of Mexico.)

Just listing out our beds, chairs, and sofas, I quickly realized that we didn't have enough "up-space". And if we used all of our countertops for those items, where were we going to put the second and third tier of stuff. We needed to create more "up-space".

The sofa is long and more things can be stored on top of it, so lets start there. For us, the sofa can perfectly span the kitchen counter to the island. This takes up minimal countertop space and the bridge that it creates can hold more things.

We also reasoned that we could bring in the outside chairs, which are waterproof, and then create additional "tables" using our doors. We took the doors off their hinges, using the chairs as the supports, and created bunches more up-space for our inside fabric chairs.

The king size bed was tricky. It is too big and heavy (temperpedic mattress) to try to move to a counter top. We just have to lift the whole bed. We have a collection of cinderblocks that now live under the bed. We remove the mattress and boxspring, position the blocks next to the legs of the bed, then lift the frame on to the blocks, then replace the boxspring and mattress. Then the kids twin beds can fit on top of the king.

After wading around thigh deep during the first flood, a friend asked me what I would have done if the water kept rising. At this time, I honestly hadn't thought about it. I didn't have a maximum water height in mind. Which in retrospect, is kinda terrifying.  We now have an inflatable boat (with a power AND hand pump). We have also talked to our high neighbors and have arranged refuge in their house should we need it.

Step 3: Define your constraints, then brainstorm around them


The plan is coming together well, but to lift the furniture every time it rains is a non-starter. We needed a plan that including timings that dealt with the fact that most of the rain events wouldn't actually flood our house. We want to avoid throwing out our backs if the water is not actually going to come into the house.

Plan Requirements: Save the things based on our priority, yet be mindful of the saving effort and probability of actually flooding. 


So our plan is broken down into phases to account for the Plan requirements.

Phase 1: Clean up the counters. 

Timing: Anytime the forecast calls for heavy rain / storms

Phase 1 involves cleaning the house. Clean off all of the counters and tables. Put away all of the stuff. No dishes in the sink,  no homework on the table, no unfinished project laying about, no laundry in the hamper, no clothes / stuffies on the floor.

Put away everything to where it is supposed to be. Clean and put away the dishes, do laundry, clean up all of the toys, put away all of the art supplies.

The purpose of this phase is to prepare the house in case it floods. We found that during our first flood, we were trying to save things, but there was stuff everywhere on the counters and it made it difficult to clean as well as lift. We also discovered that when we did salvage what wasn't damaged by water, that similar things ended up being boxed separately. (For example all of the things that were in the dishwasher, ended up being boxed and stored totally separate from the rest of the dishes).

If it doesn't flood, which is the most likely scenario, we have a clean house -WIN. If it does flood, we have created space to put things and have returned everything to its home so that it can be kept together.

Phase 2: Prepare to lift

Timing: Expected flooding event about to start OR water over the curb

Phase 2 is preparing to lift everything, but not actually doing any "saving" yet. For us, this means that we gather the outside furniture under the awnings around the house and near the doors. They are still outside at this point, but they are moved from their normal homes to a point where we can dry them off and prepare them to come inside.

We also gather the saw horses from the garage and the pile of cinderblocks and bring them inside.
We pay close attention to the forecasts / data (weather.com, weatherunderground.com, bayou level monitors) to determine how far Phase 2 goes.

We might determine that preparation is done at this phase, or we might determine that it is worthwhile to go ahead and get farther in the lifting prep work.

Going farther would mean that we would first move the cinderblocks to the areas that they would be used. We would start stacking the cinderblocks near the furniture in about the same size or related to the feet or footprint of the item. The idea being when we go to lift (phase 3) that we could pick up the item and put it down on the blocks fairly easily.  We are not actually lifting furniture at this point though (though moving cinderblocks is not exactly light work either).

We would stop and check the data again. If it is likely that flooding will not happen, we stop here. Sure there is effort to move the blocks, but we haven't rearranged the house yet. It is easy to undo.
If the data still indicates that flooding is possible, or our worry or PTSD is too high, we continue to build the platforms.

Platforms consist of saw horses and outdoor furniture with doors spanning them. We will take the doors off the hinges and create spans between anything that makes sense. This could mean we span the saw horses, kitchen counter and island, dining room table and buffet, etc.

Not only does this create a lot of up-space, but it could also save the doors if it does flood.

Phase 3: Lift

Timing: Flooding potential unknown / water past sidewalks

I'd be remiss, if I didn't include my favorite sound engineer joke (it might be the *only* sound engineer joke). Why do sound engineers say "Check 1...2...    Check 1....2...."? Because on "3" you lift. :)

Start lifting, but follow your priority. We lift our beds and sofas first, then the chairs, then the rest of the furniture. After that we start pulling out lower drawers, things still on the floor,  then lower shelves.

I have strong spacial packing skills (I'm always in charge of the dishwasher and the ornament box :)). I make sure that I'm maximizing our up-space.

NOTE: Anything wood will float! Free standing book shelfs are not safe place to put things, unless the bottom is weighted (also another good use for cinderblocks)

At this point, if it doesn't flood, we feel good that we practiced our plan. I find that working the plan helps me tremendously with the PTSD. I might grumble (alot) about un-lifting the furniture, but I (and my wife) appreciate having had actions counteract the worry.

The kids might or might not be able to help lift during this phase. If they are not able to lift furniture, have them take pictures..... lots and lots of pictures. I told my kids I want at least 50 pictures per room. Take 3 pictures from every corner into the room, then 3 more from every doorway. Take pictures of every shelf. Open up every drawer and take pictures. Take pictures of the art on the walls.
Please note, you might have to coach them that they should be clear pictures, and not hold down the button as they literally run around the room creating 50 house tinted blurs.

Phase 4: Water in the house

We found that phase 4 is an odd emotional time, as water is actually in the house. At this point we continue to lift the things that we have missed. Maybe we tackle the second or third shelves based on what the predictions are.

We had left one leaf of the dining room table for the kids to hang out in where they are safe and dry. There they are on devices to their hearts content.

This is also the point we, the adults, start taking pictures and notifying social media of our status. Inside the house, we would notice and record the areas that the water is entering as potential places to address in the future. This is also the time that we would call the insurance company, figure out our new temporary housing options, and connect with the contractor.

I told the kids that I was going to teach them a bad word. FUUUUUUUUU...... they said they already knew it. I said, well now is the right time to use it.... and you have to hold onto the U and really draw it out. And don't say it in school.

We discovered that during phase 4, we needed to lock our doors. During the 2nd flood, the water pressure forced an unlocked door open. For what it is worth, doors and walls act as a really amazing filter. The water, for the most part, is a lot cleaner if it has to work its way in, versus coming through an opening.

We also discovered that phase 4 might involve slashing the carpets. During the second flood, all of our furniture was secured in an up-space, but some of those spaces were on carpets. As the water rose, air got trapped under the carpet. Then when we would walk through the room, that air bubble would travel to our cinderblocks and platforms. So we took boxcutters and slashed holes in the carpets so we wouldn't cause our furniture to fall.

Finally depending on the data, we would start planning our abort procedure. We have not actually got that point yet during any of the floods, so I can only assume that we would blow up the boat and contact our neighbors.

Phase 0: When we are not flooding

So for all of the normal times that we are not flooding, here is some of the things that we have done to prepare for the next flood event.

  • Take inventory pictures of the house every 6 months and store them in the cloud
  • Bought a 5 person inflatable boat for the 4 of us and the dog
  • Bought a portable pump to be used to help empty out water from the house. We use it to help move pooling water around in our backyard as well
  • Bought a dehumidifier so that we would have one in case it flooded
  • Scanned all of our photos and photo albums and stored them in the cloud
  • Converted all of our VHS tapes to DVD and digital copies. Also stored in the cloud
  • Everything stored below 2 feet is in a plastic bin
  • Everything stored below 2 feet is not important to us or decently water resiliant
  • We have some waterproof kayaking bags should we need to keep things dry during an evacuation
  • Hired a plumber and made sure all of our area drains were clean and in full working order
  • Don't keep any extension cords or power strips on the floor any more
  • We have sealed up the places that we noticed the water coming through
  • We have 2 sets of waders so it is easier (drier) to walk around during the flood

Collected ideas from others: 

Here is a list of ideas that other people have talked about
  • Make sure that (at least some)  toliet paper is stored up high
  • Get life vests for the whole family (and pets). Rescue boats often don't have them and/or if you have to make your way to a neighbors house.
  • Move cars to higher ground, Uber home
  • Valet park at the airport (making your car their responsibility), rent a car with full insurance coverage
  • Empty buckets for make shift toliets