Something for the Weekend - Grin and Bear It

Innovation is quickly becoming another Holy Grail of business, something that everyone wants to tap into, but few can reach. I strongly believe that creativity lies in everyone and that simple environmental changes can really help to make creativity a daily event rather than the specialist realm of the few. Geoff Butler kindly shared a story with me last week, it goes a little like this…

In the wilds of Canada during heavy winters or ice storms, thick ice builds up on power lines to the extent that the lines snap under the weight - costing the power companies dearly every winter. Clearing the ice manually is expensive and dangerous. A brainstorming group was formed. The first engineer, having had a few run ins with bears, suggested that getting them to climb the telegraph poles would create enough vibration to shake the ice loose. Another engineer suggested that to get the bears to perform such a feat would require some meat or honey to be placed at the top of the poles. And to get the bear food to the top they proposed using helicopters to drop it from above.

And that’s when the solution was born, they realised that the helicopter at low altitude would create enough down draft to break the ice off the lines and that both the bears and the food would be redundant.

I can't trace the validity of the story (although there are some references out there connecting the story to Pacific Power & Light) but I understand that is actually the solution employed today saving huge repair costs each year and keeping employees (and bears!) safe.

There are lots of lessons about creativity in the story but the one that particularly stands out is about creating an environment were 'non-linear' thinking is encouraged. Trusting that a tangent can be explored as part of a group to get to a fully formed idea. A true belief that there are no bad ideas, rather than assessing feasibility in the same breath as generating an idea.

A fun idea to play with if nothing else…

Something for the Weekend - Legally Pointless

The link below contains a great article from the Economist that explains that email disclaimers are 'legally pointless'. 'They are assumed to be a wise precaution'. However, 'Lawyers and experts on internet policy say no court case has ever turned on the presence or absence of such an automatic e-mail footer in America, the most litigious of rich countries.'

A good reminder that not everything requested add value, and could even detract (huge amounts of wasted paper in this example). It shows that it is as important to understand the value of requirements as it is to understand the requirement itself. In fact, something we've started doing recently is adding a 'benefits' column next to each requirement captured to allow those details to be noted and shared with others, creating meaning to requirements, and therefore stronger collaboration on solutions.

http://www.economist.com/node/18529895

Sources and Credits -
Thanks to Cherky for sharing the article with me
http://www.economist.com

Something for the Weekend - You don't have to be mad…

Just a quick quote this week...

"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results"

- Albert Einstein

Thankfully, that makes a lot of sense(!)… As much as industries are calling for (in fact need) innovation to take competitive advantage, there appears to be a reluctance to accept it's inherently risky alter ego...disruption. Surely, asking for innovation without disruption will just lead to doing the same thing as before… only on iPads.

If we need to innovate, we need to accept disruption.

Something for the Weekend - handshakes over handovers

I've started to notice a common weak point in many processes that I wanted to highlight, and perhaps you've spotted it too? It comes when tasks are passed over from team to team (or actor to actor is you prefer). Often, it's not that something is inherently wrong with the handover, all the information's there, the tasks flow, people know what they are supposed to do... it's something else. That something appears to be a combination of lack of ownership around the customer and sole focus on task.

With so many contractual or pseudo-contractual arrangements (SLAs, quality targets, incentives, etc) it's easy to forget that it’s a customer and not just a task that's being dealt with.

The symptoms are likely familiar. People performing steps in a process where they don't know what happens next, high levels of repair or worse lost requests, complaints and rework.

Obviously there are huge frameworks on getting processes correct and efficient but one very small step is to encourage the handovers to be considered as 'handshakes'. There's something very different about how you'd introduce two people than how we pass tasks. A clearer duty of care perhaps? A moral obligation? Certainly more ownership. Whenever there's a handover in a processes between 'actors' consider how we might make it feel less mechanical and more human?

Something for the Weekend - Gorillas in our Midst

You've probably seen this... It's one of the best known experiments in psychology and really illustrates how little of what goes on around us we actually notice. The invisible gorilla is an experiment created by Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons to highlight 'selective attention'. It’s a short video in which 6 people (3 in white shirts, 3 in black shirts) pass a basket ball between themselves. The audience is asked to silently count how many times the people in white shirts pass the ball. Halfway through the video someone in a gorilla suit walks across the screen. You'd assume that nearly everyone would notice this however when the experiment was originally conducted at Harvard University only about half of the audience noticed the gorilla!

It really goes to show how when you're focused on the task you can miss the most obvious signals. The challenge is how do we overcome this? One of the easiest ways has to be peer review. Having one or more professional peer's provide their review of analysis, documentation, concepts & ideas. On the whole, people agree with the principle, but unlike the academic arena, they rarely happen in the business environment. A likely reason is time - there's rarely enough time to allow for someone else to critique your work and some might be nervous of receiving comments.

Here's a few tips:

• Plan in the time, agree the reviewers, the scope and the duration. It's really obvious but lack of time will always be one our biggest inhibitors.
• If asked to peer review, there are few things you might like to consider, check out this advice from the University of Wisconsin
• Peer reviews don't need to be offline or static - try planning them as walk-through removing the effort in providing comments.
• Participation should be positive for all concerned - make your reviews feel valued and accept any comments in the spirit of improvement.

A small step to ensure we see the gorilla, close the loop and improve quality in our work.

Sources and Credits
Find out more about the invisible gorilla at http://www.theinvisiblegorilla.com/
Watch the video on YouTube by clicking here

Something for the Weekend - Why do planes crash?

I had the great pleasure of attending a lecture by Martin Kalungu-Banda on Wednesday and I wanted to share one of the stories from his talk which I thought was fascinating. Malcolm Gladwell conducted some research into why planes crash and the findings were astonishing. The obvious causes that we all think of are things like bad weather, engine failure, pilot error, etc but they found something different when they listened to the black boxes. 90% of plane crashes happened due to what he refers to as 'High Distance Power' - quite simply, peoples inability to challenge the expert (in this case the pilot) - especially in cultures where hierarchy plays a bigger part than here in the West.

One of the examples Martin shared related to a flight with a faulty altimeter. The co-pilot informed the captain of the fault and the captain responded that it was nothing to worry about as the co-pilot was used to this familiar route. The co-pilot acknowledged this but then explained that in his experience around about this time they should be approaching a high mountain range. Before any action could be taken the plane struck a hillside. The co-pilot didn't feel he had the right to instruct the captain that they must climb and quickly. A very brutal story but it really illustrates a deep rooted reluctance to step outside official roles even in the most desperate and critical cases.

I suspect this plays out in much lower risk scenarios too and in cultures with 'Low Distance Power' like ours in the West.

• There are cases when we must all break with protocol and inform superiors not just what we 'know' but we 'know the answer to be' before it's too late to recover the position. (the captain didn't want to fly into the hillside).
• It's vital that we always remain open to others being able to set direction when needed.
• When working with different cultures (esp. those with stronger social hierarchies) around the globe we should be more sensitive and open to information veiled as a course of action.

Sources and Credits
Thanks to Martin Kalungu-Banda
Malcolm Gladwell- best selling author of The Tipping Point, Blink and Outliers

Something for the Weekend - Whilst the Bonnet's Up

Our use of clichés in general language and specifically business is fascinating. The source of the word cliché comes from the days of the manual printing press when words were formed from individually carved letter blocks 'clicked' (hence cliché) together to form words, the typesetters found that certain words and phrases were used so frequently that they retained them in blocks rather than individual letters to form stock words/phrases.

The thing that particularly strikes me is how strings of words can often go unquestioned because they're generally understood to have good or bad connotations. Let's take an example, when someone says "you'd be putting all your eggs in one basket" you automatically assume it to be a bad thing… it normally is… but is that always true?

One particular well used phrase that often falls into this category is 'Whilst the bonnet's up' - and the assumption that it makes anything else in that area inherently easier. It's true, there are often synergies and efficiencies that can be gained by colliding similar initiatives but it is important that we never assume that's always the case. In fact if we play with the car analogy a little further we'd all agree that the only thing we'd save by getting other things done on our cars 'whilst the bonnets up' is the second trip to the garage. The cost always changes and the time always changes.

Whenever that phrase is employed I'd urge that we all step back and consider if it applies in this case, remembering that all things are not equal. Do the additional initiatives really justify the cost, resource implications and complexity risk? We risk de-LEANing our delivery cycles by loading lower-priority development and adding more potential failure points.

Of course, if the value stacks up against the cost, time and risk, congratulate yourself on some synergies realised!

Something for the Weekend - Trim Tabs (Bucky Fuller)

About this time last year I had the good fortune of spending a few days in Montreal. Whilst I was there I visited the Biosphere designed by Buckminster (Bucky) Fuller for the '67 World Fair Expo. A truly impressive structure even today, located on the Île Sainte-Hélène.

Fuller was ahead of his time in many ways not least on environmental issues - much of his work focused on using technology to do more with less. Self supporting Geodesic structures are just one example of his widely inspirational work.

Trim tabs, which if you’ve never heard of them are found on large ships, are also a great example of technological efficiency. Using something small to move something much bigger through another force. Basically they are smaller flaps (at the rear of the main rudder) that through the drag of the water and the ship’s own population make the steering much more efficient. They're manoeuvred via a small 'push' force in the opposite direction to that you're trying to move in causing a much larger 'pull' force in the direction in which you want to go. You can see an example here. Next time you see a large ship in dry dock look out for them!

Trim Tabs are a great analogy for driving cultural change, so much so that Buckminster Fuller actually has 'call me trim tab' engraved on his headstone. I guess partly a reflection of both his efficiency based design outlook and partly the change his thinking helped to impress on the world.

I think that analogy scales into our world too, in order to influence thinking and bring about cultural change we may not always need to do something big to effect a change in direction. A series of smaller actions to create a 'pull' may be much more efficient than 'pushing' all the way.

Something for the Weekend - Pizza Teams

My uncle was visiting from the states over Christmas (seems like such a long time ago already!) and he mentioned that a friend of his used to work at Amazon where they had whiteboards in the lifts for colleagues to share ideas or suggestions on their way between floors.

I love stories like that as they really act as a symbol of different organisational cultures, same people different rules. So I googled their CEO, Jeff Bezos, and found a great sound bite that summarised his thinking on effective teams:

"If you cannot feed a team on two pizzas it's too large"

Fundamentally he's saying that an effective, high performing, team should be no larger than around 5-10 people and I wondered if they ever really are? I've worked in project teams of upwards of 50 - 60 people but thinking back there's always a nucleus that are the glue holding the project together. A group who've got each others backs, work well together, make decisions and are pulling towards a single outcome. They're normally the people that the outcome matters to most personally (and I mean neck on the line, rather than 'allocated resources' or vested interests) and they are always the people that you can count on to get the job done. The 'pizza team' ARE the project... highest risk if something goes wrong, but most importantly, the highest sense of achievement when it all goes right.

These teams aren't the ones that organisational charts or contractual arrangements define but the ones that form organically. Obviously we don't always need to be part of the 'Pizza Team' for everything we work on but it's useful to recognise that, on the whole, we choose ourselves whether we are or aren't.

Sources and Credits
http://www.gadgetopia.com/post/357
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/85/bezos_2.html

Something for the Weekend - Citizen Collaboration

Happy Birthday to Wikipedia which celebrated it's tenth birthday last Saturday! Accessible to anyone with an internet connection, Wikipedia is probably one the biggest global collaboration projects ever conducted. It also contains an inconceivable amount of common interest and specialist knowledge topics, in total it has 3.5m articles, received 400m hits a month and has been edited 438bn times!

The idea of crowd sourcing fascinates me. I recently read that Ohmy News, a South Korean news agency, uses 55,000 'citizen journalists' along side it's pay-rolled journalists to provide local perspectives on the countries events.

It seems to me that certain industries are very much embracing the idea of social collaboration. And the pattern / format is largely the same, a core group who provide structure and a large network of contributors.

I wonder how much this way of working will come into play in traditional industries over time? Perhaps setting up so groups of employees (or even end customers / public) would help positively shape services that they are offered by commercial organisation.

Great BAs always look to gain insights from colleagues or customers and therefore our roles are likely to be closer to this type of work than many others. The biggest challenges today are no doubt how wide you can cast the net and how much effort needs to be invested. How do we ensure that we can gain a representative sample of opinion? How do you get to the one superb idea? I wonder if online collaboration and perhaps a clear reward structure could facilitate a whole new era of insight, innovation and idea sharing.

Sources and Credits

http://www.wikipedia.org/
http://www.ohmynews.com/
http://www.thestateofwikipedia.com/

Something for the Weekend - Hans Monderman

I've been researching traffic engineer Hans Monderman, there's an article below which gives an overview of his work and concepts. What's particularly interesting is that his concepts initially seem counter intuitive but have been hugely successful inspiring similar projects the world over. Removing safety barriers, curbs, signs, lights, etc doesn't feel like it would make roads safer but it works.

Click Here

I guess the thing that went through my mind was; what happens if we move some of these concepts from traffic systems to computer systems (or even operational processes)? Do we restrict and clutter our systems with pop ups, control limits, etc to the extent that they actually become more confusing? Do we make our systems so fool-proof that users stop thinking (i.e. if I'm not supposed to do this the system won't let me, and if it does the systems wrong and not me)?

It also made me think about whether faster is really faster? We push to make processes as slick as possible and remove the thinking time but do we introduce errors inherently with that approach?

Something for the Weekend - Customer Experience Resolutions

If you haven't already made your New Years resolution (or you've given up already!) this article comes at just the right time. It’s a list of 10 Customer Experience Resolutions published by Bruce Temkin for companies wanting to take their Customer Experience to the next level;

Click Here

There isn't a word of it that I could argue with, as there's always more that can be done. I'm sure if we each adopted just one of these for ourselves it will make a significant difference to our projects over the next 12 months.

Something for the Weekend - Off Your Trolley?

Many of you will have seen that one of our projects from last year (CDD Online) won a Financial World Innovation Award last week. It's a great achievement by all those involved and adds recognition to the relentless quality focus and sheer effort of the team.

I've been thinking about the recipe for that success (too long to share here) and about innovation and creativity generally. David Owens shared a video with me* which I really think sums up some of the key processes of creative teams in just 8 minutes. It's a few years old (note the hair!) but follows IDEO tackle a project to reinvent the shopping trolley in just 5 days. Check it out here

Here are the key things I observed:

• They started with a clear problem statement covering what's wrong today and clarity on constraints (e.g. if it's not stackable it's not viable)
• The brief was kept as open as possible 'how might we improve a shopping trolley' not 'we need a shopping trolley with a scanner' - leaving room for creativity.
• Cross functional teams of experts working together with equal voices, as opposed to a room of engineers or designers in common agreement, or worse, everyone looking to a single person (probably the most senior) for the answers.
• Time spent with experts (some unexpected) and observing usage to gain insights.
• Not narrowing in on a single solution immediately - you'll notice in the example they divided the group into four and each focused on a particular problem and then brought together the best of each towards the end. Creating divergence before converging on a single solution.
• The leader takes a facilitation role - carefully balancing creativity with productivity without imposing themselves.

It seems to me that going forwards creativity will be major factor in setting competitors apart, those who can understand their customers and offer something new and refreshing... a great space for BAs to work in and a terrific aim for all projects.

Sources and Credits
* David Owens - via IIBA Group on LinkedIN
IDEO
Financial World Awards

Something for the Weekend - "we don't need any more fart apps"

I was kindly sent an article from the BBC on the use of language (link below). In it the journalist cited a recent excerpt from the development guidelines for Apple's app store. "We have over 250,000 apps in the App Store, we don't need any more fart apps. If your app doesn't do something useful or provide some form of lasting entertainment, it may not be accepted." as the writer points out 'the tone is direct, comic and elegantly threatening.'

The article gives some good comparisons of the communication styles of other companies (so do give it a read) but the point I reflected on was our use of language in our every day roles. Do we follow Microsoft's example ("Architected to run HTML 5, the beta enables developers to utilise standardised mark-up language across multiple browsers") or do we communicate clearly and concisely all of the time? I'd guess the majority of us could admit to both at some stage. Our landscape is littered with acronyms, technical, industry and business terms and it's hard for them not to migrate to our vernacular.

In her conclusion Lucy Kellaway points out that the language used by companies doesn't directly impact their success which may well be correct but I'd argue the opposite is true for us as Business Analysts. Our brand constantly needs to be focused on the creation of clarity. Being able to absorb terminology and jargon, understand it and then.. the hardest bit of all... communicate without it!

Sources and Credits
Thanks to Vince Marrows for the BBC article
Lucy Kellaway
Image from the telegraph

Something for the Weekend - IIBA Barclays 14th October

For those who couldn't make it to the IIBA event we held at Barclays on the 14th October all is not lost! We recorded the lot and thanks to Simon Ward they're now on YouTube.

Due to the time limits on YouTube they're broken into parts;

Building BA Communities - David Avis with opening comments from Gill Reed.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3



Agile in a Nutshell - Portia Tung - Emergn

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3


Closing messages - James Archer

Click Here

Something for the Weekend - Don't be Evil

As we know, Google are one of the worlds computing superpowers, constantly delivering world-class user centred tools and services. But did you know that the unofficial company motto is 'Don't be Evil'? One simple rule which underpins their whole proposition. They mean that they want top be transparent, make it just as easy to opt out of services as it is to opt in, top notch UX, building both reputation and credibility. Something which not all of their competitors can say. It’s a recognition that you can only damage a customer relationship by undermining it for a short term gains once.

Three little word of inspiration I think we all aught to adopt with the products and service we're involved with too.


Sources and Credits
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don't_be_evil

Something for the Weekend - Documentary Makers

It surprises me how often the Enterprise Analysis phase is missed from BA activity - probably because of project pressures or just because it’s a phase that doesn't produce standardised deliverables. Enterprise Analysis is a phase of finding out about the organisation or business areas that your forthcoming project will impact. Understanding the structure, what the culture is like, what they do, how and why they do it. It’s a chance to build up some valuable domain knowledge to shape thinking before the detailed work starts.

Every time I look for definitions of what Enterprise Analysis entails I only find dry lists of 'artefacts' that could be collected… But there's a really simple and engaging way to think about this phase... become a 'documentary maker'. Think of the process as being more about the relaying of the information you learn to others. Develop the narrative of the story with the raw information you've gathered and overlay it with insights gained to really bring the information to life (it obviously doesn't have to be a film!!).

How will this help?

• Going through the process of communicating the information makes you (and others) ask deeper questions and improves your own knowledge.
• In the same way that good Enterprise Analysis acts as a solid foundation for good quality requirements and designs for BAs, sharing the information with the project team has to ripple out into other activities and deliverables too.
• Creating this shared 'team memory' will aid in decision making when the project is in full swing.

Credits & Sources

Thanks to Sean Blezard for the Documentary Maker analogy

Something for the Weekend - Data is the New Oil

Just a very quick one this week... I came across a fantastic TED talk last week by David McCandless called 'the beauty of data visualization'.

McCandless shares some great examples (such as the 'billion-dollar-a-gram') of how to bring large and meaningless data to life visually. Data is rapidly increasing in value across organisations, gathering more data and working with it smarter nods at trend. Volumes and complexity of data won't be decreasing any time soon and those who can demystify and tap into it stand to carve a niche.

Click here to watch the talk

I'm not sure that data visualisation is generally thought of to be a typical BA skill - but we all know how hard it can be to communicate the complex to the uninitiated. Some great thoughts and ideas here to make your messages more impactful.

Something for the Weekend - Something Special

I was having a conversation earlier this week about Montblanc pens. The conversation reminded my of Robert D. Austin's fantastic keynote speech at BA2010 - 'Competing on Differences'.

It's becoming harder for companies to compete on price points alone, there's only so far you can LEAN a process, so far you can cheapen a product or service until it hits rock bottom (both cost and quality). And perhaps most importantly once a company and all it's competitors hit rock bottom where is their left to go? The world would feel a very grey place if everything was homogenised, generic and predictable.

Much better to focus on the creation of Value. Key points in an experience or interaction where the customer feels their expectations have been exceeded or perhaps just something that no one else can offer. One things for certain, companies who focus on value are most likely to have a strong and loyal following / advocacy.

Let's look at the Montblanc example… it's not just about buying a pen. It's not even about the writing. As a customer you're opting into the belief of quality, craftsmanship, history, a good purchase experience and an even better after sales process. There's also a large degree of exclusivity and perhaps on some level it's about what Montblanc communicates about you...

Personally I'm agnostic in the LEAN vs. System Thinking debates (a fan of both for the right contexts) but I am starting to see industry generally take a turn back towards value creation. The language I've encountered in the past month alone around 'Moments of Truth' and a respect for 'running in' and the creation of 'experiences' is a very promising signal. For those of us who think business design is about more than just ruthless efficiency and who are prepared to deal in the non-quantifiable with confidence there's a horizon of opportunity… a chance to create something special.

Something for the Weekend - BA Communities

This week I wanted to share the opening thoughts from my presentation last night to the IIBA on 'Building BA Communities'.

Leaving the European BA Conference a fortnight ago I was really exited by the breadth and depth that the BA role is talking on and the pace at which it's changing. It's amazing how far the industry has come along in the last 12 months.

Hard skills such as Business Process Management, Agile, Business Rules, LEAN and Six Sigma are really coming to the fore in the BA world now. And that's being supplemented with a plethora of soft skills such as facilitation, creativity, innovation and even ethnography.

To me the wideing of the skills spectrum is a really exiting time for us as it should allow Business Analysts to fulfil the full value and potential that the role has to offer. I particularly enjoyed Joseph Da Silva's presentation at BA2010 entitled 'Nobody Knows Your Business Like Your Own Business Analysts' - Over the past two years at Skandia they've been using a subset of BAs to act as an internal consultancy organisation for the identification and resolution of business problems. - Just one of many functions BAs could perform.

Leaving the conference I've been asking myself two questions;

1) Why are all these skills moving into mainstream Business Analysis now? At first I thought it was just environmental. The economic position over the past few years has meant that organisations have been challenged to do more with less. The rapid pace of consumer end tech is raising exceptions of the tools we're delivering. Increased regulation over many sectors is providing it's challenges.

And then I thought again... that may be prompting change but it's not what is promoting these skills, that is actually our communities. As BAs face new challenges in their practices they're finding new ways to overcome them and sharing their learning for others to build upon.

2) What will happen to the role over the next 18 months? It's easy to speculate about a fragmentation and specialism of the role or perhaps pen portraits of some form of 'uber analyst' who can do everything! It's very difficult to predict accurately but one thing is for sure , it is our communities that are going to be crucial to that evolution. Key in terms of shaping but also in making sure that we develop and learn together as a global community.

Powerful stuff that the people working in the profession are directly shaping it's future. Having strong, effective Business Analysis Communities is more important than ever...