Do you have a looming deadline for a presentation that explains something new, exciting, and complicated — but there’s no consensus on the best way to explain it? Is your sales or investor relations team clamoring for a video that will speed up conversations with non-technical decision-makers? This may be the time to try agile video production.
We were contacted a couple of months ago by engineers at a startup. The team was preparing to introduce a radically unconventional streaming processor for compute-intensive applications like AI and machine learning.
The challenge
The deadline was tight. The challenge was to get agreement on how to visualize the chip’s internal workings, and then to quickly turn out a video that would clearly explain the impressive technical achievement in a way that could be easily understood by the sort of person who goes to AI hardware conferences.
An agile approach
As we were about to get started, we were surprised to be asked by our client’s team leader whether we prefer meeting every day or every-other-day! Not something we’d ever been asked before. Certainly not our usual approach, but one that came naturally to the folks we were working with.
Though no formal agile methodology was used, or even mentioned, the prospect of a daily meeting demanded that we produce working software (digital video) every day, in order to have something to test and evaluate. This eliminated miscommunication and greatly improved the finished product — all well within the tight schedule. Our customer was happy that their audience loved the video. We were happy that the unaccustomed high level of collaboration boosted both the quality of the video and the efficiency with which it was produced. You can view the video here: Groq Tensor Streaming Processor architecture is radically different.
When to apply agile video production methodology
This methodology may only be applicable to complicated tech solutions. Where the product message is locked in, choosing how to present it depends largely on taste, and daily testing is not guaranteed to improve it. But if everyone starts out unsure about what will work, agile video production can work for everyone.
