Something for the Weekend - Social Networks

Only last week the 500th Million user joined Facebook - with 85% of the UK population now online, what opportunities does that present to us as Business Analysts? 
 


Earlier in the week I watched three fascinating presentations from Clay Shirky on TED (links below). Without a doubt Social Networks via the web are revolutionary - for the first time in history communication can occur both ways via the same medium (One to One & Many to Many). Today communication is becoming more about convening likeminded supporters rather than creating and controlling content centrally.


Social media and networking is growing extremely fast in the UK. Eighty-five percent of the population are now online; they spend more than six hours on social media sites every month, nearly 60% of them read blogs and 64% have their own profile on a social network.


Through his three presentations Shirky shares examples of both profound (like social tracking of violence in Africa) and frivolous (LOLcats.com!) cases of groups of unconnected people coordinating themselves to create 'cooperative value'.
It's interesting to think about what's motivating people to take part. What is that drives people to stop just consuming media and start publishing content? Shirky attributes it to 'cognitive surplus' - it's an important part of intrinsic motivations for people to be able to share and help others so two way media is our natural preference. It no longer becomes the defacto position to spend spare time watching TV.


So how can we use Social Media to support ourselves as professionals and create 'cooperative value' for others;

• Register for www.Linkedin.com - a business networking site with some great discussion groups on there (recommend IIBA, IIBA UK, ModernAnalyst) that issue a weekly email digest of what discussions are trending.
• Register for www.modernanalyst.com - a useful source of news and discussion.

Sources & Credits 

Clay Shirky at TED
Mashable shares Simply Zesty research

Something for the Weekend - Waterproof Power Strip

I thought I'd follow up on last weeks SFTW on vision and fit with the real world with a great example of the opposite! www.wetcircuits.com offers waterproof power strips! A great safety increment on the standard power strip but as Wired.com explains 'Your TV isn’t going to be any safer when perched on the end of your bathtub'!

A great physical example of not considering the things that interact with your design (in this case the socket and the devices you might plug in!!).

So whilst we're at it, what are the factors that change data based thinking (waterproof power strip) into creative thinking (safer power)? I was reading a book by Tim Brown this week and he recommends a simple but effective model developed at IDEO. His book (Change by Design) is fantastic and I could never do it justice but here's a summary of the model:

• Inspiration - actively seek out sources of inspiration...That might be other industries who do something similar or even analogous situations. Comparisons are drawn in the book about F1 pit stops and A&E units. Be open to less obvious inspirations too.
• Observation - watch your customers in the real world without agenda. Observe the way they naturally adapt ways of working to overcome small niggles (keeping log books, labelling things, ordering items together to quicker serve customers, etc) and understand why they do these behaviours - they're rarely an accident!
• Empathy - take a different mind set, rather than considering what your customers need, imagine you are your customer, how you would feel and what you would need. Perhaps interview some of your customers to ensure you've got the right picture.

Small activities that lead to more creative solutions. If you want the book there's a link below, ditto if you want the power strip!

Sources and Credits
Wired.com
Wetcircuits
Tim Brown IDEO

Something for the Weekend - Henry Ford

Henry Ford was without doubt a revolutionary and left an indelible mark on the world. He changed the face of the both transportation and attributed quotations but I'd like share one in particular:

"If I’d asked my customers what they wanted, they’d have said a faster horse" - Henry Ford

That quote was taken just after the launch of the Model-T in 1908. The Model T was simple to drive, easy to repair and cheap to buy. A huge commercial success by 1920 the majority of Americans had learned to drive in a Model-T!

I've written previously on the difference between 'Listening Vs Understanding', and this acts as another great example of that, but I wanted to take a slightly different slant. What causes the need for revolution rather evolution? What makes the case for throwing it all away and starting from scratch?

There are obvious 'signals' that trigger innovation or more fundamental overhauls of something existing but when you look at true revolutionaries there seems one obvious commonality and that’s a clear sense of vision. An understanding not only of the product, the company or the customer but how the product fits in the world as a whole. In the case of Ford there are plenty of examples of this, one of his principles was about higher wages for his workers. It meant that he got the best workers but it also meant that they could afford to buy Ford products and act as advocates - something that would typically have been out of reach.

So what can we do as analysts?

• Root cause analysis - really understand the problem or opportunity and think widely about how the solution fits within that.
• Consider what might be required on the periphery to make your solution a true successes.
• Start operational designs early even if its just rough notes to help you discover the right questions to be asking - I'm a firm believer that you can't define the function until you've understand how something fits operationally and organisationally.
• Design visibly and iteratively - allowing you both to 'fail fast' and use the collective brain power of your SME's before you're too far progressed.
• Have the confidence to challenge the solution even if you designed it.

Sources

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Ford

Something for the Weekend - the Fail Whale

Apologies for writing two SFTWs in a row on the topic of failure but this week I wanted to share a story of UX that I love... and hope you will too!

I'll start by explaining what the Fail Whale is... When Twitter gets overloaded and goes out of service, instead of giving a techie failure message you get the friendly picture of the 'Fail Whale' (below), a polite apology and instruction on next steps.

The interesting thing is that it seems to absorb a lot of frustrations and, in fact, the fail whale now actually now has a cult following! Check out the fan club http://failwhale.com/ where you can buy the t-shirt! Or if you're really excited why not go ahead and get the tattoo Click here

Now, I'm not saying we need pictures of whales but here are a few thoughts to tie this back into our roles as BAs:

• It shows the value of spending time on actively designing the User eXperience for when things don't quite go to plan... giving the appropriate consideration to the 'unhappy path' as well as the happy one.
• Its a rare event that error messages make people happy and we can't stop all exceptions but we can be sure to handle them as well as possible.
• When things do go wrong use a style that's meaningful and explains to the user what's going on and, perhaps most importantly, what they need to do.
• Ensure that error messages can be communicated back to IT support teams in a meaningful way when required and that there are unambiguous (e.g. unique numbering) for as many outcomes as possible.
• It's important to consider this with process failure as well as IT failure. Can we automate the feedback of something going wrong in an operational process? (LEAN visual management techniques spring to mind)

Sources and Credits
Check out the designers page http://yiyinglu.com/
http://failwhale.com/
CNN http://edition.cnn.com/
www.twitter.com

Enjoy and have a great weekend-

David

Something for the Weekend - Fail Fast

In a recent interview with Wired magazine, Lee Unkrich (director of Toy Story 3) said something that reflects an important part of any truly successful team. It's also a principle that's deeply embedded into Agile Development teams.

Here's the quote:

"It’s important that nobody gets mad at you for screwing up. We know screwups are an essential part of making something good. That’s why our goal is to screw up as fast as possible."

Without doubt that's contrary to popular belief... People focus on getting everything to 95% before they're prepared to share it... but don't you find that often the 95% position still has flaws? And that often it's too late to really react to them? (Therefore is that really 95%?)

A few thoughts that underpin this:

* In true 'no blame' cultures having the freedom to take calculated risks means that some will pay off and some won't. The key to unlocking innovation and creativity lie in having a 'safe' environment in order to explore ideas.
* No one person should have a monopoly on ideas. The wrong environment can suppress ideas from all but the most confident.
* The trick is to seeing the outcome of any venture as positive, if it's paid off you've increased the quality of what you're doing, if you've failed you've learned from it.

What I'm not suggesting is that it's ok to fail overall... in fact, far from it! The key word in Unkrich's quote is "fast" - The very idea of failing fast is to guarantee success! So how do we do this?

Experiment openly and visibly (through documentation, prototypes, conversations, presentations) - ensuring that all failures become minor setbacks.
* Create a culture where small failures in the delivery cycle become successes in learning, consider them R&D! It's the only positive thing to do if they happen.
* Actively encourage the sharing of ideas - everyone has them.

Sources

Interview with Lee Unkrich in Wired http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/05/process_pixar/
Spotted via the 37Signals http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2348-its-important-that-nobody-gets-mad-at-you

Something for the Weekend - New in at #1

A slightly more businessy than the usual 'Something for the Weekend' this week, but I wanted to share some exiting research that gives recognition to the how important the role of the Business Analyst is in today's IT environment.

Research conducted by Forester and published in CIO Insight places Business Analysis at the number one slot in terms of the 'Most Important IT Roles'. I'll let you read the report yourself but I'm sure you'll agree it’s a staggering development.

Click Here

To further reinforce those messages I wanted to share two further recent research findings with you:

• 71% of failed software projects are traced to poor requirements*
• 40% of the effort in an average software project is fixing errors, and requirements defects account for 56% of re-work**

I'm feeling a distinct groundswell both internally (to my organisation) and externally in that recognition - A high note to finish the week on!!

Sources:
Main Article - CIO Insight
*CIO Magazine
**Butler Group 2005

Something for the Weekend - Simon Sinek's Golden Circle

This week, a simple technique to gain more effective and powerful communication.

Simon Sinek is the marketing consultant who developed the 'Golden Circle' - a model based on changing our natural communication style from talking about 'what' we do to talking about 'why' we do it. As he explains in his recent presentation at TED, this technique is a common trait across great leaders and organisations.



Understanding and explaining the 'why' is a really important aspect of our roles if we're to get the best possible support for the initiatives we progress. As Simon states a few times in his presentation "people don't buy what you do, people buy why you do it".

Two reasons I think this is useful to us:

• I've mentioned previously (SFTW - Solution Addicts - 4th May '10) that I believe it's an important part of our roles to help people who have pre-defined solutions (rather than problems) to articulate and back up why they want them. Not to provide unnecessary challenge but to aid a common understanding and perhaps find better, more effective options.
• As analysts our processes & techniques can seem a little abstract to the uninitiated - we know why we do them (I hope!) - Should we on occasion be clearer with our stakeholders in order to gain greater contribution / commitment?

Here's the link, it's 18 minutes long. If you can't spare that just watch the 5 minute segment between 2:00min - 7:20min.

http://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action.html


Enjoy and have a great weekend-

David

Something for the Weekend… Solution Addicts

Recently I've noticed an increasing amount of people coming to my desk with predefined solutions, whist to a large degree this is admirable, on further probing there's often a lack of definition about the problem is that needs to be addressed or perhaps more specifically the root cause of that problem.


It's logical that people do this… traditional business teaches that we shouldn't dwell on the problems but instead be taking action to resolve/improve them, and after a while it becomes a habit, and ultimately an addiction. - We start to think about answers faster, faster and stop taking the step back to really look at what we're trying to achieve. A really clear symptom of this is when new information (inevitably) emerges or challenges arise and U-turns are required on solutions as a result (or worse). Framing problems and root-causes up front help with this enormously… if your solution is addressing the root-causes of a problem, new information can only help to build and evolve a better solution.

It's our role as analysts to do this, so how do we go about it? The first is step helping people to admit they have problem (i.e. not that they have solution). I've attached an 8 min video to a presentation by lady called Mary Poppendieck - she's a prominent voice in Lean based software development techniques and in this video she does a fantastic recap of pareto charts & fishbone diagrams and the importance of testing your analysis by completing what she terms "Many Rapid Experiments" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhxyO6jUubQ.

These techniques will no doubt be familiar but digging them out of your toolbox and dusting them off is always a valuable thing to do.

If you've got any questions on the techniques Mary talks through do let me know.

Enjoy and have a great weekend-

Something for the Weekend - Emotional Connections (iPod)

As promised, I wanted to follow up on the last SFTW with some validation as to why creating an 'emotional connection' in what we deliver is equally as important as creating a functional one… an argument that the iPod can make without too much justification from me!

The iPod is often held aloft as a great design example… It's practical, intuitive, functional but also has the ability to engage with people in a way that's very hard to put your finger on… good physical design, creativity, brand, tactility, universal / consistent navigation, simplicity? - what is that x-factor? I don't know the answer but I know it's important!

Creating an emotional connection is not at all frivolous, it has huge commercial advantages. Apple have sold 260,000,000 iPod units worldwide and hold around a 70% market share of the global portable media player market (I want to say 'iPod market' which is a sign in itself!). Just imagine getting a tube or plane and not seeing the ubiquitous white headphones! To remain streets ahead of your competitors despite a higher unit cost is impressive.

In our world it's equally important to remember the importance of these connections… we need 'our customers' to feel a sense of satisfaction when using a system or process not just acceptance. I'm not sure there's a fixed recipe for creating this (or I'm sure I'd be a lot richer!) but I think a strong starting point is the recognition that 'functional' is not enough... Understand every detail, understand your customer and pursue perfection.

Something for the Weekend - Anthora Coffee Cup

Lesley Buck passed away a fortnight ago aged 87 - In the 60's Buck was Head of Marketing for the Sherri Cups company, an established disposable cup business. As a man with no design experience; he calculated that slathering a paper cup in Greek motifs and the colours of the Greek flag would help him crack into the ethnically-Greek dominated New York diner market. The gambit worked.

The sheer ubiquity of the cup (total figures are hard to come by, but Sherri Cup sold half a million of them in 1994 alone) has propelled the design into museums, T-shirts, and countless television show prop masters seeking a visual shorthand for hard-boiled detective, hard-working hack or Gothamite-on-the-go.

Reflecting on his success is relevant to our roles too. Buck had a real understanding of his customer base, not just what they needed (or asked for) but also what they valued beneath the suffice, perhaps even sub-consciously. Looking at other companies, Apple act as a great pioneers of this, fan's often quip that "you don't know what you need until Apple have invented it".

It's a concept that's I'm increasing embracing... we're great at delivering highly 'functional' things, and that's a good foundation, but to take things further we need to add that much needed 'emotional' connection to our work... more on that next time!!

Finally, I can't end this with out covering the issues with packaging waste! With 58 billion paper cups being thrown away each year, the challenge for today's paper cup designers is how to design a functional AND sustainable solution. People like Tom Farriday think they've got an answer with a cup made from 100% recycled, recyclable plastic! Read more…

Sources

NYTimes

The Graffik

Something for the Weekend - Visual Onomatopoeia

I thought I'd share something related that I spotted on SVN. Keith Lang gave a talk called 'The Science of Aesthetics' at UXAustralia last year and in it he talks about (synaesthesia) what I suppose are deep-rooted, even instinctive, human behaviors and how an understanding of that can benefit application design. The images below give a great example of what he's talking about...

... when the shapes of objects all look the same (worst of all friendly and rounded) it's hard to understand at first glance that they have different consequences. Make the big decisions look significant (in this case, like clicking it too fast might cut your finger!) and it breaks the autopilot behavior. It's almost like a visual version of onomatopoeia, objects can look like what they are. It’s similar to using ‘red’ for cancel buttons or ‘x’ to close windows, just a bit more dramatic!

As the tools we develop increasingly get deployed globally the challenge of understanding a users common 'frame of references' increases dramatically. The considerations we apply today only touch the surface when you consider your user to be just about everyone. Hooking UI into deep-rooted human instinct means we anchor on at least a small part of everyone's frame of reference.

If you'd like to watch the full video here's the link. Also check out the Kiki & Bouba effect if you're not familiar with it.

Something for the Weekend - Mystery Flavour

I spotted a great example of LEAN practices this week that I really wanted to share. You may remember before Christmas I wrote about the importance of establishing flow in processes with the article of the Empire State Building, this isn't quite as impressive as building the world's tallest building in a year but its good thinking all the same!

Dum Dums are a US lollipop and they started creating a 'Mystery Flavour' in 2001. Basically Mystery Flavour is a by product that the manufacturing process creates as it switched from one 'actual' flavour to another. So you might get a mix of Cherry Cola and Banana split… quite good fun but also a really good example thinking differently.

Two things are noteworthy with this example:

• The downtime of shutting down production, cleaning and restarting would obviously cost more than the waste - so they've got the LEAN flow principles down correctly by leaving the machines running and increasing production.
• Creating value from waste that can’t be removed is an interesting thought. Do we have unavoidable waste that could used to better effect?

Sources & Credits
Thanks to Dum Dums and the Signal Vs Noise Blog reflections on programming by products

Something for the Weekend....Andrew Kim's Eco Friendly Coke Bottles

There's not much in the packaging world that you can point to as inspirational. That is except for Andrew Kim's concept design for Eco Friendly Coke Bottles.

3 million bottles of Coke are sold worldwide each day - so savings, environmental or otherwise certainly add up. Whilst the current design keeps (albeit quite loosely) the iconic Coke Bottle design, it is cylindrical which means that lots of air is shipped in each box. Andrew's square, stackable and collapsible design means that an additional 3949 bottles could be squeezed in per shipping container (321,856,830 bottles of Coke shipped per year with a zero carbon footprint!). And when you've finished with it, you can squash it down, so you can make fewer trips to the recycling centre.

Even if you don't design packaging I think there are lessons here for us all the same. Probably more on the operational design side than technical but the crux is the acceptance that the decisions we take with process design can have long term operational cost and environmental impacts.

• When improving processes removing as many physical items as possible (most likely paper / stationery in our world) will create savings - each item has a cost and a need for creation, processing, storage, transport & destruction.
• Follow the 'life' of any physical items and remove 'waste' wherever possible.
• Just because something is valuable (like the brand aspect of the Coke bottle shape) doesn't mean it’s the only way to do things - it's always worth the challenge!
• Perhaps the most simple of all, remember that 'waste' is multiplied by volume. Even small improvements can make huge differences in our high volume processes.

You can read a little more on the coke bottle here. Lets see if Coke adopt it!!

Something for the Weekend - Technical Debt

Technical Debt is a metaphor developed by Ward Cunningham to raise awareness of some of the long term impacts of the decisions that we take to get project or technical change live. 
 Ward's metaphor refers more to 'debt' taken with ugly coding or patched together architecture but I think this concept expands well to design too.

We all take shortcuts in order to meet deadlines, restrict cost or work within other constraints. More often than not it’s the right commercial decision but the metaphor really helps to ground the decisions you need to take. 
So what is Technical Debt… imagine it as a bank account, if you take a shortcut with your project/design you go into debt and will, one day, need to repay that debt (correct your shortcut).

Also, just like an overdraft you incur interest... perhaps operational pain, perhaps defects in the code & most likely rework. The longer you live with the debt the more you pay. 
No ones saying you can't go into Technical Debt but there are rule…

• Make decisions that are deliberate - inadvertent decisions are just bad design (or worse)!
• Take the debt if its prudent to do so, if the commercial advantages outweigh the debt you're in the right place.
• Have a plan to repay the debt - a follow up release, back out, etc. Compounding the problem will just make it un-repayable.

This virtual bank account isn't really measurable in £ - it's unquantifiable productivity cost and therefore needs subjective judgment but I really like the concept to articulate some of the decisions we take and live with. 
This cover the basics but if you want to read more check out the links below.

Sources and Credits
http://martinfowler.com/bliki/TechnicalDebt.html
http://senses.thirdi.com/posts/225-what-is-technical-debt/

Something for the Weekend - A Community of Thinkers

Liz Keogh, Jean Tabaka and Eric Willeke are actively involved with the development of Agile Software techniques. They recently met up with the objective 'to give something back to the community' and this week I wanted to share what they created with you.

The output was a statement of commitment, a pledge if you will, for their group - Here's a copy of it:

“A Community of Thinkers”
I am a member of a community of thinkers.
I believe that communities exist as homes for professionals to learn, teach, and reflect on their work.
I challenge each community in the software industry to:

• reflect and honour the practitioners who make its existence possible;
• provide an excellent experience for it's members;
• support the excellent experience its members provide for their clients and colleagues in all aspects of their professional interactions;
• exemplify, as a body, the professional and humane behaviour of its members;
• engage and collaborate within and across communities through respectful exploration of diverse and divergent insights;
• embrace newcomers to the community openly and to celebrate ongoing journeys; and,
• thrive on the sustained health of the community and its members through continual reflection and improvement.

I believe that leaders in each community have a responsibility to exhibit these behaviours, and that people who exhibit these behaviours will become leaders.
I am a member of a community of thinkers. If I should happen to be a catalyst more than others, I consider that a tribute to those who have inspired me.
”A Community of Thinkers” by Liz Keogh, Jean Tabaka and Eric Willeke is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. Please attribute to the distributor of your copy or derivative.

Whilst I agree with the sentiment entirely (albeit a little manifesto-ish for my personal taste). The point that interests me particularly isn't as much about the code of conduct itself but the thoughts behind the need for a community in the first place... And the questions of whether we view that we're part of similar communities in our respective worlds.

The statement really acknowledges two things which I think are important to us as a community of Business Analysts (regardless of whether that involves IT development or not):

• Continuous Improvement - It's obvious but the way we do things today isn’t the only way that we can do them. We need learn from our combined success and our failures in equal measure. The world keeps moving and so must the disciplines and techniques that we use… weather that's for better product, better results or simply to do things faster and cheaper.
• Respect for Communities - A 'community' in this sense is just a boundary-less, hierarchy-free group of people who are committed to driving their industry forward regardless of their organisation, team or political agendas. The statement to me really embraces the old management cliché of 'people being our most important assets' and does this with conviction. The community are the root of the improvements, innovations and developments that we see.

Equality important is the recognition that we're all part of that community and with that comes an equaled responsibility to contribute & support it. The level of our contribution to the community directly correlates with our success (or failure) and how fulfilled we are by the roles we play both today and in the future.

Something for the Weekend - Weird or Just Different

Derek Sivers (musician, businessman and ex-circus clown!) gave a very short but effective presentation at TED last year and I've been meaning to share it for a while.

It's just two and a half minutes long and to me demonstrates a key point in effective communication.... understanding that people look at the world with different perspectives and with different frames of reference. The examples provided by Derek are particularly relevant as they show conflicting, but equally correct views, against our (western in this case) frames of reference.

Do check it out....

Click Here

I don't want to dissect such a short video too much but there's three key thoughts that crossed my mind when I watched it;

• Considering whether we truly search for other perspectives on the activities that we do or whether we just look for agreement.
• Whether multiple perspectives do actually provides a stronger end result?
• Whether we truly take the time to understand what people are saying and where they are coming from or just hear the words and think we understand.

Something for the Weekend - Understanding vs. Listening

I recently read an article from the Harvard Business School on elBulli. elBulli is constantly recognised as the worlds best restaurant, people travel from all over the globe for the 5 hour dining experience. Not just that, each year, some 2 million hopeful diners vie to be one of the fifty customers he serves each evening for the six months that elBulli is open (8,000 a year). The HBS report (some of it plagiarised below) had a marketing lens but I'd like to look at the same case from a LEAN perspective.

There is much about the restaurant that's inefficient, as MBAs are quick to note:

• They should employer fewer staff - (1 waiter per customer is unnecessary!)
• They should source cheaper ingredients
• Less complex cooking techniques
• The restaurant is a 2 drive through mountains from Barcelona - they should relocate to Barcelona and perhaps open another branch in Madrid.
• They should make the booking process easier (2 year waiting in some cases!)

However the study also recognised that if you stripped all that away what you'd end up with is, McDonalds! (if you put that logic on steroids). I'm not saying McDonalds isn't popular but certainly wouldn't wait two years for one!

There are number of interesting points that relate to this, in particular in understanding what motivates seemingly irrational customer behaviour but I'd like to focus on is one point in practical relating to LEAN and its Voice of the Customer principles and the difference between listening to the customer and truly understanding the customer.

To summarise Chef Ferran Adria's comments in the report he believes that if you listen to the customer they'll tell you what they want based on what they know and they'll be happy with it. But it'll never be a once-in-a-lifetime experience. I agree with sentiment, listening and delivering against expectations gives good service (Critical Success Factors) but GREAT customer service (enhancing features) is about something more, going above expectoration.

LEAN techniques, being grounded in manufacturing, are naturally efficiency based - I'm certainly a big LEAN advocate but I can't help reflecting on whether certain processes could risk being over-LEANed? Is an element of service orientated 'waste' acceptable if it provides a differentiator? Or should the processes and systems be slick and efficient and our people be the differentiating feature?

An interesting point to consider…

Full HBS report is available here

Something for the weekend... Paul Rand (Quote)

'Simplicity is not the goal. It's the by-product of a good idea and modest expectations'

Who was Paul Rand? Labelled by Steve Jobs as “the greatest living graphic designer,” Rand had a great appreciation and studied knowledge of European artists and advertising styles. Largely known for his famous corporate logo designs of the 50s and 60s. Rand is widely considered to have almost single handedly change commercial art into fine art.