Agile Project Management is a trend, not really new in software development projects, but quickly gaining popularity in other areas.
Practitioners of the Scrum Methodology claim that once trained in “agile thinking”, it becomes a part of your everyday thinking process: it specially forces you to focus on the right thing at this point in time, while continuously anticipating later actions aiming for an optimal end result.
Although Agile is criticized for not being as formal as other methodologies, these critics are not really understanding the point.
Agile forces scope commitment at multiple levels and is a open to continuous adjustment and review.
In a simplified explanation, we would be for instance talking about having a running software as quickly as possible (let's say 2 weeks, where all phases will be performed: design, implementation, testing, correction...) and from there, use similar quick turnarounds to build additional features. I'm leaving many interesting characteristics out of this short explanation, but this incremental approach is the basis of my comments below.
Based on this basic idea about scrum that the team should get to an operative product as soon as possible, how would that "translate" into the localization industry? Should we aim to get "chunks" of translated content as soon as possible?
That would in a way go against the best practices from the industry (i'm leaving many activities out of this description...just to make this thinking as light as possible) :
- 1st phase: Translation of the whole content
- 2nd phase: Editing of the whole content
- 3rd phase: Proofreading of the whole content
Well... In fact in any demanding project, review starts before translation is completed.
So were we "scrumming" in the localization industry whithout knowing it? Like Molière's Bourgeois Gentilhomme: « Par ma foi ! il y a plus de quarante ans que je dis de la prose sans que j'en susse rien, et je vous suis le plus obligé du monde de m'avoir appris cela. » (M.Jourdain is surprised and delighted to learn that he has been speaking prose all his life without knowing it). Or were we just "fast tracking" the project and not really having an agile approach?
What about other situations where this could be "already" happening?
I'm thinking for instance of Content Management Systems where translated/reviewed/approved paragraphs can be displayed to the user without waiting for the rest of the content. Technology can make this work perfectly, I've seen it implemented at Nestlé for instance. Any company big enough to run a GMS could aim for it with the help of the proper technology partner and experienced team.
Need for speed
The trend for speeding up the reaction of translated content to created content is no doubt going to increase.
Technology will probably lead the change, and project management approaches will need to follow.
No doubt the "need for speed" will be exponential, which will influence the whole industry. Process will need to adapt.
There are of course top companies working with online TMs, Collaboration portals, etc... but the bulk of the industry still works with really old tools: Are you telling me that you are still not emailing your kits to the translators?
Clients will still ask for lightspeed... and they will get it...
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