Safe neighborhoods and good schools are among the things that residents love about living in Winchester, but a reasonable cost of living is just as important for many local households. And finding affordable auto insurance is part of the equation. Nationwide's online tool can show you these price points based on your insurance coverage needs.
An affordable policy doesn't have to be bare-bones, minimum coverage auto insurance. One of our Winchester auto insurance agents can help you identify the biggest priorities for your policy as well as available discounts. No matter how you choose to shop for coverage, you'll discover why Nationwide has earned its 95% member satisfaction rating.
With several custom homes and a number of subdivisions from different periods of residential construction, seemingly everybody has something special about their home that they love. Maybe you're looking for standard homeowner protections. Or maybe you've heard about Nationwide's exclusive Brand New Belongings® and Better Roof Replacement® programs. Ask any of your policy questions to one of our Winchester home insurance agents.
Even in a relatively small city like Winchester, you can find a wide range of families with varying sizes, ages, and financial obligations. That said, one of four basic policy types can cover pretty much anyone's life insurance needs. Our Winchester life insurance agents are the local experts who know about the different priorities of local families and what these priorities mean when it comes to shopping for life insurance.
Winchester may not feel like an industrial or economic hub, but even many local residents may be surprised by the number of companies operating in the area. Between the mom-and-pop businesses, professional contracting services, and even the work-from-home entrepreneur, our Winchester business insurance agents will have you covered.
With over 35 years of experience in the insurance industry, I became an Allstate Agent to provide an even greater impact upon the lives of others. Our pleasure to serve extends far beyond our office walls and delights not only customers, but also our friends throughout the community.
We embrace the diversity that propels Houston as such a wonderful place to thrive. I have been married for 40 years to my lovely wife, and Houston is where we raised our 3 outstanding sons. I served in the US Navy for 9 years; however, you can find me today around town as an amateur bowler or playing my saxophone at home. Having lived a blessed life, rich with beautiful memories, I confess that I am usually the oldest guy with the youngest mind in the room!
The Dickerson Agency is purely customer-needs driven. Our purpose is to serve and build relationships through offering guidance specifically tailored for you and your loved ones. Spanish-speakers are welcome. Allow us to explore your unique needs!
Jerome Dickerson is insurance licensed in the state(s) of Texas. If you do not reside in the state(s) of Texas, please go to the Find an Agent section on allstate.com to search for another Allstate Agent or Personal Financial Representative.
When switching on the oxygen pumps, there was an explosion on board of the Apollo 13 space craft. A short circuit in a small module led to an explosion rendering most of the space craft useless.
For days, the crew frantically worked in cramped quarters trying to return to Earth. Tensions ran high, but, instead of blaming each other for the mistakes they made, they concentrated on the system of the space craft and how to work with what was left of it. Only that broad, holistic focus on the system let them survive.
The same is true for your development process. Focus on the whole system instead of blaming each other for slow releases of new features. Value-Stream-Mapping can help you shift your focus from fixing individual shortcomings to the optimizing the entire system.
It visualizes the whole process from idea to customer release as a series of connected tasks. Both value and non-value adding tasks should be defined and tracked from customer requirement to delivery.
By looking at the holistic representation of your complete development cycle, and whether or not the individual steps are adding value, you can create a visual model of your process and easily identify waste in the system.
To draw a Value-Stream-Map, everyone involved in the process comes together. Choose one feature you recently worked on. Try to remember the exact steps which resulted in the finished feature:
You’ll come up with a long, chronological list of actions and waiting times between those actions. Now draw that sequence as a step-diagram. Put the actions as lines above the ground line. And put the waiting times as lines below the ground line. Mark actions in green and waiting times in red for better visibility.
Now, you’ve got a visual representation of how that one feature came into existence. The longest waiting times (waste) should quickly become obvious.
Suddenly, operations folks will talk with QA and developers. How can we shorten that big gap? Can we skip it entirely? Everyone is engaged, because you’re trying to tackle an obvious problem instead of finger pointing.
Value-Stream-Mapping makes it visible that the biggest problems aren’t individual people, but the system they work in. It’s obvious that finger pointing does not address the biggest issue. Instead, everyone focuses on how to improve the system.
It was a typical feature we mapped out. While the actual time we worked on the feature was measured in hours and days, the waiting times between the steps were weeks and months. The biggest gap was created by our 6-month release cycle. It was adding at least three months of waiting time to every feature. And if a feature request came in just before the previous release, it waited for over six months.
It was immediately obvious that it wasn’t the fault of the consultants or the developers. It was the fault of our system having only two releases a year. Immediately, we stopped blaming each other and focused on the problem at hand: how could we reduce those long release cycles?
It didn’t take long and everyone agreed: Let’s try two month release cycles instead of six months. The risk seemed great, but the reward greater. Everyone was committed to the goal and we took that leap of faith.
It was a hard and bumpy ride – nearly breaking our necks – but it forced us to improve our work so that we survived those two month release cycles. A few releases later, surviving became thriving and we ditched the cycles in favor of continuous releases.
Yes, quality was a major issue in the early days. Initially, we stuck to manual regression testing cycles – each one a couple of weeks long. But not very helpful. We found out that by releasing every two or three days we had fewer bugs which were much easier to locate and fix. So from the customers’ view our quality went up.
Our customers didn’t have to fear those huge releases with hundreds of bugs we pushed down their throats periodically. Instead, we released a small feature and a few bug fixes every other day. Major customer complaints all but vanished. On the contrary, they were thrilled to get their features and bug fixes within weeks instead of months or years.
Gather everyone involved in bringing a new feature to your clients. Time all product development actions and the waiting time between those actions. Draw them on a step-graph and identify the biggest waiting time. Discuss how to change the system rather than blaming individuals for the delay. Only then can you reach your destination in one piece as the Apollo 13 astronauts did.