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cazh1: on Business, Information, and Technology

Thoughts and observations on the intersection of technology and business; searching for better understanding of what's relevant, where's the value, and (always) what's the goal ...

Sunday, February 14, 2010

Managing Change: Pick Something, and Do It Well

This is the first in an series of posts on Managing Change ... look for more over the course of the next few weeks ...

A common way of expressing the wholistic nature of a project is to talk about "People, Process, and Technology". I'm not sure who came up with this little gem, or in what context, but I've been hearing it a lot lately. No particular reason, I think, just that it seems to be gaining a bit of status as a second-tier buzzword or something.

I've noticed, however, that people seem very comfortable talking about People, Process, and Technology in the As-Is or To-Be states - but precious little time is spent about the difficulties in getting Change to happen in any of these areas. Project teams and project leaders need to be effective at making Change happen with People, Process, and Technology; maintaining the status quo is comfortable, and envisioning the "nirvana" Future State is easy, but the real challenge comes in making the transition from A to B.

Project teams need people that have Change skills:

  • People Change - Soft skills and Emotional Intelligence are typically required, but effective team leaders need to be able to command a room of strong personalites and competing agendas. Some meeting facilitators are direct, and can shout folks down and/or eloquently shift the group's understanding. Others work indirectly, creating understanding and acceptance in non-threatening, semi-private conversations.
  • Process Change - It's easy to say "automate a mess, and you get an automated mess", but the challenges of process redesign are known to many folks. A certain amount of patience and insight is required to ferret out muda (waste) in the process, to understand and identify the critical elements / tasks, and to aggressively involve the eventual process owners, cementing their commitment for implementation by making them part of the design.
  • Technology Change - Typically the easiest (and preferred) work area for IT folks, but for those who want to make a difference in IT, it takes the ability to understand and implement new technologies quickly, in a sustainable and supportable fashion. Points are taken off for quickly implementing a fragile system.

WIIFM?

Looking for ways to create concrete objectives for yourself or your teams? The significant Value Add that projects and project teams bring to organizations covers all three areas - People Change, Process Change, and Technology Change. Improvement and effectiveness doesn't come from raw skills in People, Process, or Technology, but a demonstrated ability to make Change happen in any and all of these three areas.

The opportunity, of course, is to pick one or two of these areas, and build your skills in making Change happen. If you aren't good in front of a group of people, and are more comfortable working directly with the technology, work on your Change skills by understanding new developments and methods, and figuring out how to use that stuff to make projects and processes happen faster, with higher quality and more predictable outcomes. Looking for a stretch? Get into Process design and development; it's not always about the bits and bytes, but systems thinking is a big plus, and Process skills are often a great way to bridge from Technology to People skills.

Do you express your value to your team, and your value to the company, in terms of People, Process, and Technology skills? If you want to be successful in IT, work on demonstrating your value by making change happen in those areas. At the very least - be able to articulate how you have succeeded / can be effective at making Change happen.

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Monday, January 18, 2010

Data Visualization: How (2 of 2)

The short answer, as you know, is that it's impossible to tell you how to be insightful and imaginative in a single blog post. All I can do is point you in the general direction, and (hopefully) ignite a little spark.

What's the Goal? and, Where to Begin?

I previously talked about the growing calls for effective data visualizations; we have access to all this great information, and there are insights in there somewhere - but we need just the right point of view to rise above the cloud of data and see the real opportunity. It helps if you have experienced that rush of insight when looking at a particularly impactful graphic; not just a good looking slide, it calls out something important in a particularly effective way. Haven't we all watched that earnest TV lawyer pull the winning argument out of the blue [right before the final commercial break] and win the big case?

Of course, it's not enough just to want it - you have to have a little reverse-engineering in your soul. You need confidence & bravado (I can and should be able to create those killer pictures), hunger & curiosity (how did they do that?), and confidence to know that you can - with a little hacking. It also helps to have the blissful ignorance to assume that it's within your technical grasp.

Step 1: Find Someone who Knows - and Follow them Around!

I'm a big fan of the "follow him around" method for learning new technology - not classroom instruction, more like a series of specific examples of applied technology. I had seen plenty of examples of presentations that I thought were very effective, but I didn't understand what was happening, what exactly was making them so effective. I had to find someone that could talk about putting together effective presentations - and had the good fortune to attend a seminar by Edward Tufte. Sure, you get some nice books, great to page through - but like most technical manuals, they don't really make sense until you've watched Tufte deconstruct the graphics. I learned the importance of taking extraneous ink off the page, and how scale, color and shape can illustrate and/or obfuscate. I didn't walk away from that experience with specific skills as much as clarified ideas - and a hunger and curiosity for more.

Step 2: Find Lots of Examples - and Steal some Inspiration!

Over the past few months, I've been following a number of blogs dedicated to ideas around information visualization - more skilled practitioners to follow around! The links below to take you to particularly interesting examples; your task is to subscribe to them all and regularly scan for ideas ...

Information is Beautiful
Cool Infographics
Flowing Data
EagerEyes.org
Chart Porn
  • Haiti This blog is just a non-stop source of interesting examples
New York Times
Step 3: Get Your Coding Hands Dirty!

Remember, after you are done being wowed by the presentation - figure out how you could build one.
  • The old stalwart Excel comes with an ever growing list of graph types. Can't find the one you want? Try to hack at the standard stuff using VBA!
  • Sometimes a blog post will point you to some utilities. No, I never heard of Gource, but you can bet I'm looking for a project to use it with!
  • Open source has a lot of interesting tools out there - from jQuery addins to full-blown BI suites - lots of tools to load up with your data.
Remember - get inspired, find some starting points, and get building! the only way to really understand how to create insightful, impactful visualizations is to do a lot of experimentation.

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Sunday, December 06, 2009

If I Told You a Fractal Solution, Could You Change the CEO's Mind?

As the new year approaches, debates over the "value" of IT and business projects intensify; it's not holiday stress, but the excitement of the approaching New [fiscal] Year. Lately, I'm hearing more about the struggle to quantify business value, especially when selecting those few projects that will "make the cut". We will definitely iterate on our scoring framework, adding a cost / benefit template to facilitate more apples-to-apples comparisons between projects (yes, don't scoff  - it is possible - more in a later post ...)

However, I think there's an interesting vision in some people's minds; a sort of value-optimization Utopia where, even with hundreds of project ideas on the list, the executive team has the insight and ability to select the best projects and fund them appropriately -  as long as they all have business values assigned.

I don't think assigning a value to every proposal is realistic, and certainly not something to aspire to - well, not directly anyway. There are a number of significant hurdles to deal with - the reluctance of people to commit to hard benefits, the lack of suitable productivity metrics for new technologies and methods, and the difficulty of communicating innovations to those who didn't think it up on their own (ie. close the patent office, we're done).

Yet, even if you did address all of those problems, and could easily measure impact and communicate effectiveness on 300+ terrific project ideas - how could anyone to claim the ability (or the time!) to rank such a list from "best" to "worst" (or, since I don't propose projects are bad to begin with - "most best" to "least best")? Truth is, they don't - most of the business leaders I've worked with have no interest in looking at 300 projects, and would be a tad perturbed if I tried to get them to peruse such a list. Do you appreciate it when your teams bring a thousand problems for you to sort through?

Rules of Thumb

Most people have a favorite way of eating their elephants. Yes, one bite at a time - but where to start? How to carve?

Deliver Small, Iterate, and Evolve: The agile among us would focus on short-term deliverables with small measurable steps to make incremental improvements. Speed and iterations will drive the quality and help focus on those areas of work that have the most short-term promise.

Focus on the Big Rocks:  The biggest and toughest problems - or the projects with the most benefit - are sometimes so daunting that they intimidate us into dealing with "the easy stuff". Clear your calendar and tackle these larger opportunities first, else you'll never get to them.

Focus on the Constraints: Understand which resources are keeping you from launching multiple projects at once. These are typically people - in key positions, with monopoly knowledge. Simplify things by prioritizing their projects first - but strongly consider launching efforts to remove the constraint, by having them document, train, or automate their knowledge.

Practical Problem Solving

As I proofread this post, it sounds like a checklist for common sense; no surprises, just a different level of detail depending on the organizational level you are speaking with. It's important to understand the fractal nature of business challenges; no matter where you stand in the organization, the number of items on your ToDo list (and/or the number of challenges you are juggling) is roughly the same. The sooner you can put yourself in the other person's shoes, and speak to them at the level of detail they (not you) need - the more effective your conversations will be.

Besides, they're paying you to solve problems, not define them.

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Sunday, November 15, 2009

Collaboration "in the Wild": Some Observations

An Enterprise 2.0 dream scenario: implementing a complex project across multiple sites, in two different time zones, with a large team (well over 100). The team was reasonably savvy with collaboration tools; core team members were quite comfortable with Instant Messaging, and we have been relying on SharePoint for many months. A centralized, coordinated document repository; a single source, very public bugs/issues list - the foundation was in place for some time, so our "go-live weekend" experience was pleasantly predictable.

During this critical time, we had to coordinate with the multitude, and we did that with a highly structured "hour-by-hour plan", regularly scheduled "all-hands" conference calls, and web-based meeting places so all could review Completed, In Process, and Coming Soon tasks. After a successful weekend, we received plenty of positive feedback, and some interesting suggestions for improvements:
  1. Conference calls were regularly scheduled, and featured tight agendas - which tended to limit individuals' ability to connect with the right person (until afterward). Since each location had a "war room" where the team gathered for the status calls, some suggested we leave the conference call open 24x7. I wasn't a big fan of this one, primarily because I'm the guy paying the long-distance bill ...
  2. Few on the team are actively using Twitter, but one of the project leads noted that IM was quite popular, and imagined a Tweetdeck-like ability to see instant messages and responses that have gone out previously; "threaded conversations" that could be visible to all, helping collaborative problem-solving and knowledge transfer. I congratulated him on inventing Google Wave ...
  3. Like most decent-sized companies, we have a highly structured Process for approving code changes into production - and like most decent-sized projects, we noted a few instances where promotions to resolve problems were delayed (while they worked their way through the Process). Might there be some streamlining opportunities here, since we are working on a high profile project with lots of oversight?
Of course, #3 was a non-starter, but the first two generated some good discussion, Yes, it's conceivable that we could augment our SharePoint site with a few new extensions or plug-ins to address the first two - but I'm actively working against any changes to our collaboration environments for a very simple reason - we're not finished with the big project. Phase 2 of 2 is coming in just a few weeks.

Am I being close-minded? Not really, I'm a huge driver of collaboration tools in the company. But, I'm also a realist - and I know two significant factors that argue against change at the time:

Prioritizing "Improvements": We are implementing ERP and other highly intrusive / foundational systems, and there's a lot of change that comes along with that. I understand that an organization can only take so much change at once - so why not focus on the stuff that's bringing real (ie. quantifiable, bottom-line, significant) business value.

New Collaboration Tools need Lead Time & Practice: Eight months ago, sharing files by e-mail and ad-hoc, unstructured meetings were the norm. To be fair, we were working smaller projects with teams of 10-20, and usually in no more than two locations. Over the past few months, as we were teeing up for Big Go-Live #1, we've been introducing the newer tools in small bits. For Go-Live Weekend, the team was already familiar with going to SharePoint for status updates, or recording a new Issue in the SharePoint list. The mechanics were old hat, and folks didn't need to think about it - which was nice, since we need them thinking about their Tasks. If we introduce new collaboration tools with little lead time before the Big Go-Live #2, Tasks will be interrupted with people struggling to remember how to communicate.

In the right setting, collaboration tools can clearly add value - even for the most conservative jaded technology users. However, you can't introduce something so new and expect people to "get it" in the short term. Better approach is to introduce the new tools early in the process, when there is no pressure. This lets the team build familiarity, understanding, and skills by the time you need to rely on these tools for critical communication.

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Saturday, October 17, 2009

Underwhelming experiences with Google Wave

Took some time today to work with the new communication meme - Google Wave. I wouldn't call it a fundamentally new way to communicate - well, not yet. I think Google is safe to continue with a "preview" label - clearly not even "beta" yet. No horrible bugs - at least on the Windows platform - but some obviously missing features. And, I am not all that impressed with the basic idea - it's just a mashup of Google Docs, instant messenger, and eMail.

Problems

All of my experimentation has been from a Windows machine - I am experiencing horrible performance issues with Firefox 3.5.3 on Ubuntu 9.04. I freely admit that this might not be a Wave issue - for the last two weeks, all of my Google sites (Mail, Docs, iGoogle, Reader ...) run brutally slow, timing out by graying the browser window. I know it's a weird issue because I can't Google for an answer (a disturbingly tight loop). Wave refused to even show me the stills from the introductory videos until I disabled Greasemonkey. Yes, I'm sure it has something to do with my setup, my installed plugins - I'm just surprised that the problems have been this stubborn.

So, to get anything done, it's back to Windows - still using Firefox, but no hint of platform troubles. Just an underwhelming experience with the fancy new toy.

I Am Legend

Interconnections on the internet are a wonderful thing; I put out a Tweet (sic) regarding my Wave invites, and a note in LinkedIn as well. Twitter generated the most responses, with folks I'd never met - great fun to connect like that. The following day, I got a note from someone looking to connect via Wave - I'm guessing from the information that I can see, this person saw one of my original notes via Friendfeed. Amazing how those copnnections were practically spontaneous ...

... while Wave feels like I'm in a walled garden. I still feel very cut off in the Wave world - a different domain from gmail.com means a new address to track, a new contact list to build. And it's difficult to find connections with folks you already know; I received another Wave invite from a friend, but since I didn't need it, I tried to figure out how to connect to him via Wave (I thought it a reasonable assumption that he, like me, has dived in). Unfortunately, I had to resort to an email message and some detective work to find out his Google ID - not something I could explain to most business users.

Yet Another Email Client

Yes, I am still at that opinion. Most of the opinions and articles I've scanned make it sound like we are working with a next-gen email client that does some of the basics right. I do note that the amplifiers tend to gush a bit, while the attenuators work hard to impress with wit.

Generally Pro
Generally Con
Maybe It's Just Me

One of my random invites went to this guy, who's review was a bit more positive than mind. Ok, maybe I'll jump into the with:public pool and wade around a while - it's probably the only way I'll really get it. However, I am very willing to be patient and continue the experiment - took me about 3 months to get Twitter.

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Tuesday, September 15, 2009

A Company is like a Sphere

Where do these great analogy ideas come from? Full credit - I got this one from a speaker at the SAP Research Center in Palo Alto, last spring.

A company is like a sphere.

As it grows, volume increases much faster than surface area, and the large a company gets, way more people get embedded and hidden from the end customer than are on the fringe, in customer-facing roles.

As a general rule, this is a bad thing. Well, maybe a less-than-optimal thing - what percentage of your corporate attention span is customer-focused?

Our Challenge is to poke some pockets into the surface, and get more surface area exposed to the outside air.
  • Will this help a company go farther? It seems to work for golf balls ...
  • Will this make the company more human? Perhaps, in a self-fulfilling / reverse fractal kind of way ...
  • Will rough edges generate incremental profit? Some counterintuitive friction ...
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Tuesday, September 01, 2009

Frustrating Paradox: Simple and Difficult

I think this is one of those fundamental concepts that, once it is pointed out to me, become self-evident and obvious (ie. why didn't I think of that). I'm curious if other people agree ...
When something is simple to describe, it is difficult to create.
When something is difficult to describe, it is simple to create.

I've seen these principles illustrated in different areas of business and technology; understanding this relationship can relieve frustration and provide hints on where to focus your efforts when working on a project.

Simple is Difficult

Simple Idea: My favorite example is the phenomenon of "smart part numbers", where organizations find it convenient to encode attributes about a product in the item / SKU number. This makes it easy for people to read labels and reports, find parts in the warehouse, and work with line items on an order. Unfortunately, implementing systems & processes that rely on "smart part numbers" can be problematic; reports and queries rely on multiple pieces of information embedded in a single field / column; SQL queries are tough to write, and reports & other programs become notoriously difficult to maintain.

"Lean" Process: Somewhat related is the phenomenon where business processes are rarely documented. Everyone in the group knows how to start with the Order, through Make-to-Ship, and back to the Cash. The problem usually hits when we experience turnover or some other staff change; our well-oiled machine starts to slip up, and performance gaps appear as the new team member doesn't fully understand know or understand everything that is required / assumed of them.

User Friendly: I've written before about documentation that insists on screen prints for every step of a process. I can empathize with the end-user on this; this level of hand-holding is extremely helpful, because it makes it easier to learn a new system or technique. Unfortunately, documentation at this depth is expensive and time-consuming to create & maintain - and is typically done best by folks whose primary job is documentation / communication (ie. not the folks who are asked to create this stuff).

Simple to Use; "Elegant": There is a related demand for software and websites that are easy to use, truly user-friendly and possessing intuitively obvious interfaces that everyone can just run with. These don't require complicated manuals, but they do require an awful lot of skillful programming to deliver such use and simplicity. I am working on a simple, small Web application (more on that later ...), where I'm trying to develop something that will elegantly solve a specific problem, yet be truly intuitive and obvious (dare I say fun?) to use. The challenge, however, is cross-browser compatibility; in the past few evenings, I've discovered some amazingly intricate problems with how CSS and PNG works with the Microsoft browsers - and have had to go to extraordinary lengths to make the website look the same on Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer.

Difficult is Simple

The reverse argument can be behavioral and cynical; "time is money" drives some to oversimplify. However, "agile" design and development can be a practical tool when trying to maximize sustainable output.

Difficult Idea: I think the time-and attention-starved workday contributes to an unfortunate amount of oversimplification. If there is a complex project or difficult issue to deal with, get ready for the unending stream of peers, partners, subordinates, and "higher-ups" asking about status and root cause. Unfortunately, these people have limited time available to waste on active listening and understanding; typically, they will demand a short summary. They just want to know that the problem is in hand and getting handled.

Rapid Development: McConnell notwithstanding, some teams use "rapid development" as a convenient shorthand for "quick-and-dirty programming that relies on hard coding, flimsy structure, and a lack of testing".
  • With some extra work, reusable logic can be modularized, interfaces can be abstracted, and simplistic, utility programs can be replaced with flexible, fault tolerant modules that can be reused and extended. This particular brand of good cooking takes time, and a bit of design foresight.
Hard to Use; Hard to Understand:  Of course, if you focus on Time to Completion, driving to get stuff done, focusing on deadlines over quality, it's not surprising that systems and processes are hard to use, and communication pieces are difficult to understand. As an old Army officer once told me, "if you want it bad, you get it bad".

IT's Challenge - Fighting the Good Fight

Of course, the "good cooking takes time" argument typically doesn't go over well with most businesses. The pressure on IT, really any business area, is to learn the local tools and techniques, and leverage work that has been already done. In addition, there has to be some points awarded for systems that don't require help desk support, processes that don't require handholding, and follow-up training in the weeks after go live.

Communication with management and the business is just as critical, just as difficult and just as rewarding when you get it right. Your counterparts in the business aren't dense - they just need things explained glibly yet completely. Master this, and Le monde est votre huître.

Faire de la bonne cuisine demande un certain temps.
Si on vous fait attendre, c'est pour mieux vous servir, et vous plaire.
Classique - - Moderne
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Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Training and Learning: A Different POV

The topic was training users for an upcoming project rollout, and the debate (as always) roamed back and forth between "traditional" (classroom training, scripts & workbooks) versus "experiential", pairing existing users with their counterparts (who are new to the system), walking through the basics (screen navigation, terminology, and step-by-step instructions for the most common required tasks). Training methods are a common area of debate and discussion with system implementation folks, and I can make a great case for any and all sides.

Task Oriented

(This is where I adopt my Pat Buttram voice) I remember back in the day ... we had "green screens", text-based terminals running applications that flowed like the languages they were written in; procedural, top-down, ordered and neat. There was only one path through each process ("This is the way you set up a vendor and cut them a check ... This is the way you set up a lease and charge the rents ... "). The training material was also very orderly - each step of the process was lovingly detailed, keystroke for keystroke. For more aggressively user-friendly documentation / training material, authors included a screen print for every step of the way.
    Documentation Lament Part 1 - I typically take issue with folks who insist on a large number of screen prints. Yes, it appears user-friendly, but it's brutally difficult to keep a document like this up-to date and relevant. Even in the green screen days, we saw basic changes to the application that altered the screen's appearance. Since we're providing these images to provide users comfortable reassurance that what they see is what they are supposed to get, each change means a complete reshoot of all the affected screens. More trees die as page inserts and updates are distributed - and electronic distribution is not much simpler, as the document files are quite large, with chunky .BMP inserts that presented a challenge to all of those floppy-enabled sneakernets (back in the day).
High Concept

I remember when my kids were in their early grade school years; I was impressed to learn that some of the first math classes that they took were all about pattern recognition. Brilliant, I thought - that's the best way to learn how to work with the gooey (graphical user interface, or GUI) applications that were supplanting the chewy (character-based user interface, or CHUI) apps from the old days.

As computers became more powerful, programmers built apps to take on event-driven, flexible format tasks that matched the environments they were implemented on. Sure, there were wizards to take you through some basic operations, but when you're typing a document, manipulating artwork, or laying out your spreadsheet, there's no start-to-finish process - you are "creating". Training for this software is not about step-by-step processes, but complex operations built with common component tasks. The Microsoft Office suite taught us all that there are certain patterns to modern software (ribbon notwithstanding) - all menu bars were populated with the same basic component tasks. Top left always had File Open / Close, Edit Cut / Paste - and Help can always be found at the rightmost position of your menu bar.

The challenge, of course, is that not all people excel (so to speak) at conceptual learning. Us old folks grew up memorizing multiplication tables, and we've built our careers on a certain facility (based on familiarity) with the step-by-step.
    Documentation Lament Part 2 -  The practical document author should see to flexibility and fluidity of GUI applications as a valid reason to forgo the screen prints. There is so much variability to what is presented on the screen - especially when the latest stuff allows you to customize the appearance of menu bars and other options. Alas, the well-meaning training teams still insist on copious screen prints that are even more likely to differ from what the user sees on their screen. Why can't everybody just adopt Microsoft's online help style? The vast majority of it is text based - no screen prints, menu options described with subtly layered in-line constructs like File, Open. Elegant simplicity, and much easier to maintain.
Follow That Guy Around

Of course, the most common training method of all is the modern apprenticeship - follow someone around that knows what they are doing. For companies of all sizes, it still amazes me how many important processes are not documented. Some might claim they are forced into this modus operandi by expedience and/or a slimmed down the workforce; I think it's just human nature. It's hard to get people to effectively document how they do what they do.

Don't get me wrong - I freely admit my preference for this approach, especially when it comes to new programming languages. I can read a technical manual with the best of them, but I do like to have at least one sitdown with an experienced programmer, watching over the shoulder as they take me through the development cycle (edit, compile, debug, run). Just show me on the screen how it works; once I can do my first practical [hello world()], I can grab the book, refine my skills, and catch up on the theory.

Good, Bad ... I'm the guy with the gun

Truly, there is no right or wrong answer here. Different people learn things differently; some react better to the spoken word, other prefer the printed, and some folks need to have step-by-step instructions laid out for them. Note that I purposely do not suggest that procedural versus object-oriented learning is a generational thing; I know plenty of old folks that do just fine with the object-oriented, creative, free-form, self-directed style of learning.

The key is that trainer / communicators must be facile in many different methods, and quick to understand which method will work best for your target audience.

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Tuesday, August 04, 2009

Perfect IT

I once met with a rather thoughtful Project Manager to catch up on things. An interesting person to talk to – it’s the cadence and style of his chat, he's a fairly laid-back guy. I asked where his Stress comes from - he shows no visible signs of any, and it made me Ponder. We ended up talking about golf, IT Projects, and the “Search for Perfection” in our work.

So, what is “perfection” in the IT world? Is it being able to predict what will come true, and then everything hits as you foretold? Or does it appear when the programming / configuration / cabling is done, and everything does exactly what it was supposed to do?

Consider time-boxed (or agile) projects versus the traditional waterfall style. Is “perfect” acheived by hitting the date (but not getting all the requirements), or should we value delivery of all of the requirements (but not in the originally estimated time)?

Back in the day, we would work to write code that compiled “perfectly” - no severity level 20’s or 10’s, as we used to say in RPG.

What about fault tolerance, scalability, or quality of testing? These "requirements" deliver business value when [bad] things fail to happen (some tao to jones on). Note that these also become bargaining chips when time is tight … ephemera less valuable than squeezing in one last combo box.

Obviously there's no right answer, but my calm PM friend and I feel that one’s definition of “perfect” says a lot about whether or not you experience stress at work; this is when the conversation switched to golf.

Why do we both like Pasture Pool? Neither of us are competitive by nature; it’s more of a way to search for perfection (or burn an afternoon, or get some bidness done). And the interesting part is, it could be this never-ending search …

Where do you go when you can par your favorite course – for a lower score, or the next course to the left?

According to the zen PM, “if I’m a 15 handicapper, I could get down to 20 handicapper with more practice” [ok, he clearly plays more than I do], which led me to ask what exactly is a “perfect score” – is it par golf? zenPM suggested that a perfect score would be birdie every hole; I thought perfection could be when you hit every fairway and green in regulation, and you're down in two.

So is perfection “peak performance” [on time], “consistency and predictability” [on budget], or “strictly following the rules” [no 10’s]?

Then we had to get to our next meeting … back to the stress …

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Monday, July 27, 2009

Technical Debt and the Cost/Benefit of Knowledge Retention

A rather rigorous, Financial-sounding title for a high-concept line of thought ...

Thanks to Jeff Atwood at Coding Horror, for calling my attention to this article by Martin Fowler on Technical Debt:
    Technical Debt is a wonderful metaphor developed by Ward Cunningham to help us think about this problem. In this metaphor, doing things the quick and dirty way sets us up with a technical debt, which is similar to a financial debt. Like a financial debt, the technical debt incurs interest payments, which come in the form of the extra effort that we have to do in future development because of the quick and dirty design choice. We can choose to continue paying the interest, or we can pay down the principal by refactoring the quick and dirty design into the better design. Although it costs to pay down the principal, we gain by reduced interest payments in the future.
Now, before you write off Cunningham as a techie snob or an academic hold-out for unattainable perfection, listen to this healthy dose of reality ...
    The metaphor also explains why it may be sensible to do the quick and dirty approach. Just as a business incurs some debt to take advantage of a market opportunity, developers may incur technical debt to hit an important deadline. The all too common problem is that development organizations let their debt get out of control and spend most of their future development effort paying crippling interest payments.
I think most of us have seen this phenomenon before; sometimes it manifests as an open willingness to trade quality as just another feature (as measured by the amount of testing before code is put into production). Documentation is another common sacrifice - too often we accept e-mail summaries or PowerPoint outlines as a reasonable facsimile for knowledge capture.

You've probably seen this phenomenon where you work, and not just in your IT organization. Many areas of the business will rationalize over-budgeted schedules by summarizing critical findings in a brief email - or, worse, in a Status Update Meeting. "This is an expensive meeting", I might quip upon entering the room, seeing the conference table ringed with upper-and middle-managers, each weighing in with their understandings and opinions. Don't misunderstand me - these are typically very effective conversations, with exactly the right people; the folks that know and live the issues, and fully understand the implications of any process change. But my witty entrée was tragically accurate; the understanding and decisions developed at this meeting are too often lost a few minutes after the meeting ends, ideas with a half-life approximately 10 minutes into the start of the next meeting.

Think of it as a knowledge expense (vs. depreciation, as value is lost rather quickly). The expedience and effectiveness of face-to-face communication, with everyone in the same room hearing the same thing consistently and able to ask questions to validate their understanding, typically does not scale beyond the attendees. It's like listening to a band vs. buying the album (ah, more poetic than downloading ...).

In his article, Atwood continues along the Fowler / Cunningham thought process, discussing the need to budget a certain amount of time to pay down our technical debt by going back and finishing that unfinished work; document the things that you sloughed over, rework the inelegant parts of your database schema re code interfaces that rely us a little bit too much on assumptions.

The same can be said for process design and problem solving sessions - remain aware of your level of knowledge debt and budget time to document your findings. I like to call these chunks of captured knowledge "white papers" - I'll pause while you admire that stunning originality, but there's a method to my blandness. Calling these things "white papers" helps folks understand the purpose and value of such a document;  reasonably short and idea complete. The sweet spot seems to be two to four pages, well-organized, not too wordy, but clear enough that it remains effective months after the design or process rework sessions took place.

Just remember, organizations do the expedient thing all the time, streamlining meetings and decision-making by going light on the documentation.  Every once in while, you'll pay the cost of rework and rediscovery; as our experience grows, and our patience for such "wasted effort" grows thin, task effort times will increase as we invest a little bit more time in better, clearer documentation.

Previously ...

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Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Real Business Users and SharePoint

Introducing buzzword-compliant technology like a wiki, or integrated collaboration spaces like SharePoint, will typically go well with a motivated audience like your internal IT department. But if you really want to understand how this stuff works, try it with "real people" - line employees in sales and marketing, operations, and finance.

Sure, you've heard complaints from these folks (they have better PCs at home, the SAP/Oracle UI is brutal compared to Amazon and AT&T U-Verse, and why can't they just connect their new iPhone to the corporate mail server?). Be warned; demanding users are not necessarily technically savvy when it comes to groupware.

Case in point; we are working a rather large project (many months in length, over 100 people throughout the business) using SharePoint as our collaboration space - and learning an awful lot about what we thought we understood about ease-of-use and intuitive user interfaces. Our collaboration space is a basic SharePoint project site, featuring the usual suspects - a Shared Document library, an Issues list, and an Announcements section. Simple right? Well, maybe not ...

Documents Check In, but they Don't Check Out

Just kidding, the actual check-in / check-out mechanism works fine. It's just very interesting that this basic concept of version control is lost on most end-users.

But let's start with the document library itself - it looks like a really nice version of File Explorer, but becomes very frustrating to folks when they try basic tasks like drag-and-drop. Yes, we found the simple solution - there is an option to open the folder in Windows Explorer, but since this menu option is buried right above the file list, it's hard to find - certainly not "intuitively obvious".

Version control was a difficult thing to explain - thank goodness for the tight integration with Office 2007. We found it easier to show folks how to edit documents with a simple double-click - that works just like their shared folders on the old file server! You can explain the concepts of version control quite easily, but the whole check-in / check-out, keep-a-copy-on-your-local-drive thing just gets too complicated. We did have to deal with the one-time task of checking in a new document after you upload it, but after that, they just open the files directly, and that's it.

There is one feature of Shared Document libraries that I really like - the ability to add custom attributes to documents that can appear as columns in the view. Makes it easier to sort / select / search on documents, and people "get it" relatively quickly. Just go easy on the version control.

... Here's a SharePoint Tissue

I think the most powerful and elegant feature of SharePoint is the flexibility you have with basic list management - even with WSS. Truly, this stuff should cover over half of the "fancy" automation tasks that folks are are asking for. However, I'm still surprised / dismayed by the fact that SharePoint doesn't include a standard graphical indicator - you know, the classic "stoplight" (green is good, yellow warning, red means um, er...). I've written about this one before - why can't I have a simple datatype (vs. putting together a sneaky little script to make it work).

I also have a significant warning / insight about trying to do too much with your Lists. Do you realize that most end-users in a typical SMB have older CRTs? I'll bet you still have a large number of 15" CRTs with slightly foggy tubes, on their last legs (but too expensive to change out for all but the executive staff) (ok, and IT too, sorry). In addition - well, let's just say that I'm not the only one whose eyesight is beginning to fail them; I can't tell you how often I've tried to talk folks into moving their screen resolution higher than 800x600 - but it just doesn't work.

What's my point? Before you put too many columns in your Lists, or too many gadgets on your Site, check with the average user to make sure that it looks okay on their Screen. Heck, before you even begin your design, use SMS or a simple script to poll the user community and find out what kind of screen resolutions have been set. Catering to the lowest common denominator is not a cop-out, especially when the point of a collaboration site is to get people to actually participate!

Push vs. Pull Messaging

(Another opinion:) I think most powerful aspect of collaboration sites is the aggregation of all knowledge about a project into a single, searchable repository. When people send project updates or resolve issues / hold discussions over e-mail, all that knowledge is buried and quickly lost inside people's inboxes. In SharePoint, a typical Announcements web part (yes, I know it's just another kind of List) is quite practical as a messaging medium, because folks can sign up for e-mail alerts.

Don't underestimate the attraction of the e-mail. People are used to getting information delivered to them in their inboxes - it's expected! All I'm saying with my Announcements list is that you have to subscribe to the information and pull it towards yourself (versus expecting me, the project manager, to remember to push it to you - and everybody else that might be interested).

Real-world learning: this concept didn't take long to grab hold in our project. It makes sense, people understand it relatively quickly.

On The Good Side

Don't get me wrong, there is lots of good that's going on. Now that the larger project is getting used to this new collaboration space ...
  • ... our issue tracking list gets better every time someone touches it - and now we have consistent consolidated issue lists for all aspects of the project
  • ... we are advancing our state-of-the-art for shared authorship; there is a lot more visibility to who is working on what, and we're getting more participation than a normal project
  • ... the combination of all these different pieces - shared documents, issues, announcements, and other things - are massively facilitating communication, and it is noticed by the folks on the team
Yes - these collaboration tools will definitely will bring huge value and streamline communications to your project. Just don't think it's easy or obvious.

Previously ...

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Monday, June 29, 2009

Over / Under Communication for Project Managers

It is often said that you can't over-communicate, but I'm willing to bet most folks - and especially your project sponsors - underestimate the cost and effort of this critical component of project management. Consider this fair warning - and a good checklist for folks wanting to get into IT, project, or functional management.

Media

To achieve any decent amount of success, you have to be a good communicator with both face-to-face and written / published media.

And by "good" I mean both "comfortable" and "effective". You should feel good in your own skin, confident that you can carry a conversation at all levels of an organization. And you also have to be an effective communicator - able to get your point across with the right amount of detail, not too much or too little. Another effectiveness challenge is the ability to balance between personalized, one-on-one written & oral communication, and insightful, understandable mass communication.

Translations

You may not realize how many different "languages" you speak - and effective managers must be reasonably fluent ...
  • Languages - Finance, Operations, Sales & Marketing; business groups have just as many confusing specialty words as the techies in IT
  • Dialects - Do you speak Oracle or SAPanese? Experienced in small companies or large corporations? Public vs. private? Entrepreneurial or slow growth? High volume low profit FERTs, or low volume, high margin custom products? The concepts are all the same, but sometimes the specific words are different.
  • Slang - Slightly different than dialects - all companies, organizations have local shorthand term so that over the years in their particular organization to mean very specific, nuanced things.
  • Sound Bites - A form of speech where a complicated topic is reduced to a single word or phrase. For example; ATP. Are we talking about master data, settings on time fences, the process of checking for availability, or the policies around A, B, C and D companies? Sound bites can sneak into conversations and you could be discoursing for 15 minutes before you realize you're talking about two vastly different things.
  • Strata - Management v. line, Middle v. executive management. Depending on what level of the organization you're talking to, you will need to change the level of detail that you go into. Typically, higher up in the company means a lower level of detail that they want to wade through.
Change Management

Volumes have been written on this topic, but most people have trouble coming up with a concise definition of what this means. To oversimplify - but drive right to point: change management is typically about delivering "bad news".

However, "bad" can mean different things. It can be "disappointment": the date will slip, we're over budget, or we can't fit this feature request into the schedule. However, adjusting expectations as early as possible is one of the basic skills of a good project manager. You need to be willing to deliver bad news like this as early as possible.

The other significant area of "bad" - walking into an organization, a group of people, or a individual's cube, and letting them know that the way they have been doing things for years is about to change. Sure, it's easy to say that "change is hard" and "change is inevitable", but you yourself probably don't like change in your established rituals. Empathy is the key here.

Lessons Learned

As with many other things, the more project communication you do, the better you get. Some of the more common lessons learned:
  • Defensive project teams will often negotiate for delay by asking for / waiting for More Communication, and complaining about Not Enough Communication
  • In any project plan, you will underestimate the time required for communication, the number of times you'll have to repeat the message, and the ability of the team to consume your communication in various forms of delivery media
  • You will definitely underestimate the time required for follow-up and follow-through to make sure it's Done
  • You will overestimate the amount and quality of existing documentation, and the ability of the project team to bridge the gap to the required level of documentation
Here's the killer -
  • If you try explaining to management about the problems / challenges of communication, they won't listen and/or won't understand (yes, that is a tight loop)
Machines will never replace us - but this is one case where sometimes, you might wish they could.

Previously ...

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