Innovations at Identropy's 1st Fedex Day

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Earlier this week, Identropy hosted its very first Fedex Day.  Instead of our normal quarterly meeting, we decided to add a twist a la Atlassian's Fedex Day.

The idea is simple: in an attempt to follow the spirit of Google's 20% playtime rule (each Google employee gets to spend 20% of their time to work on non-core projects which might lead to future gains for Google), Atlassian provides its employees an opportunity to select any project they want to work on, select their team, and provide a demonstrable deliverable within 24 hours (hence the name Fedex Day. For more info, watch the video above).   The results have been fantastic, read more about it here and here.  We decided to give it a whirl for ourselves.

Identropy's Fedex Day Rules:

1. Participants pick any project that they want to work on. There are absolutely zero rules on the project selection, except that it returns a demo-able prototype within 24 hours.
2. From 2:00 - 3:00 on Day 1 of Fedex Day, each team presents 1 slide for no more than 5 minutes describing the project and the problem it tries to solve.
3. From 3:00 Day 1 until 3:00 on Day 2, each team works on the project in whatever fashion they deem appropriate.  We booked a large conference room at a nearby hotel for 24 hours, which gave the teams the flexibility of working as late as they'd like.  We catered all meals, and kept the room stocked with drinks and munchies.
4. On Day 2 at 3:00 sharp, each team had 10 minutes to "show off" what they had put together.
5. Lastly, we voted on who won. The winner received a healthy dose of bragging rights.

The Results

My prediction was that the hardcore coders within Identropy would be heavily recruited as teams were being formed.  Surprisingly, that didn't happen. Many teams didn't work on pure technical problems and worked on "process engineering" projects - which in hindsight seems obvious given that the IAM problem domain has a heavy business process component.  Here are a few projects that I found interesting:

Access Governance App Info Gathering

Sri (Identity Architect) and Charles (Program Manager) explained that gathering data from application owners in an an Access Governance project can be tedious.  Typically, this data is captured through spreadsheets and follow-on interviews with application owners.  Managing all those spreadsheets can be cumbersome, but a web application that centralizes the data, manages versions, and provides progress of overall completion would significantly streamline the process.  Sri and Charles were pretty impressive, and whipped up a prototype in 24 hours using Oracle's APEX (an online rapid app dev tool).

IAM Services {Assessment/Component} Framework

Frank (EVP) and Phil (Identity Architect) worked on developing a framework to comprehensively "identity-enable" applications.  Frank worked on the description of the framework, while Phil worked on incorporating a portion of it into our Co-sourced IAM Platform (SCUID Lifecycle).  Frank's presentation included a slide that described identity services, their respective interfaces, and their relationships with various IAM use cases.  Phil demonstrated how this could be used as an Assessment Methodology to streamline the adoption of identity services at an app level, as well as describe the current state integration level of various applications in our clients' environments.  He topped it off with a demo of how SCUID Lifecycle could be used to integrate client apps at those various pre-defined integration levels.  Very impressive, (although we suspect that Phil cheated a bit and worked on this before Fedex Day started!).

Time-Tracking Google Cal Plugin

Since we didn't restrict projects to the IAM realm, Azeem (Identity Engineer) and David (Identity Engineer) worked on a pet peeve for most of our consultants: entering time into the time tracking system. Why not create a google cal plugin that allows us to enter our time on the cal, and have that feed Clarizen (the time-tracking software we use)?  It was a pretty ambitious project since it required the ability to write to 2 APIs (Google's and Clarizen's).  Within 24 hours, they were able to show the workings of an interface plugin on Google Calendar, and retrieve the time entered. Unfortunately, time ran out on them as they attempted to write to the time-tracking system.  Valiant effort, and a they gave a great demo.

Macro Automation Wizard

In any IAM project, certain scripts/macros need to be developed as part of the customization efforts.  Mike (IAM Practice Lead) and Kerem (Identity Architect) worked on developing a tool that automates the creation of macros depending on the target system selected.  Mike created a plugin for the Admin Console that can generate well-formed macros on demand, while Kerem took the programmatic approach of updating configurations directly in the configuration database.  Both approaches captured the imaginations of consultants in a lively conversation regarding how this not only adds to our efforts to standardize deployments,  but also provides quicker time to implementation for new projects.

How an Opportunity Becomes a Project

In an effort to minimize any gaps in communication between the Sales and Professional Services teams in regards to transitioning opportunities into projects, Helaine (Sales), Christopher (Director of PS) and Clint (Identity Project Lead) worked on formalizing a process and strict guidelines to ensure that this handoff occurs with maximum efficiency.  Their process included the involvement of Professional Services in the sale at specific points in the sales cycle, the assignment of risk scores to SOWs, as well as how all of this interacts with our CRM and Work Management systems. 

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All in all, Identropy's Fedex Day was fun and a great learning experience (take a look at all the smiling faces!).  Everyone had a blast even through many worked into the wee hours of the night.  We've already started conversations regarding how some of the projects could make their way into Identropy's formal product line, and are already preparing for our next Fedex Day.