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 - Learning

“We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” - Albert Einstein

A great quote and a reminder that we must constantly try new approaches and learn new skills and techniques to be best prepared to face the challenges of tomorrow.

So where can we obtain this learning?

• The best source has to be each other - as we, individually, try out new techniques and learn from them we should take the time to share those successes for others to build upon.
• Take the time to seek out the opinions of others. Events held by the IIBA (including September's European Business Analysis Conference) are great opportunities to hear industry experts speak about new developments.
• Simply take a chance on a good idea - if it works great, if not you've learnt something... perhaps a chance to adapt it and try again?
• Don't forget the soft stuff! - I'd say the role of the BA is a three way split been technique, knowledge and soft skills. Spending the time to hone questioning techniques, rapport building, presentation skills and communication will serve us just as well as the more technical disciplines.

Something for the Weekend - Anti-Theft Lunch Bag

A light hearted (though not very attractive!) one this week.

If you've ever had your sandwich stolen from the fridge at work you'll be familiar with the long standing issue of lunch pilfering! Anti-theft lunch bags are a new product to help combat that. By simulating mould on the bag, it deters would be thieves, and keeps your food safe!

Of course there are flaws - for instance, someone might throw your 'mouldy' sandwich out or you might actually be put off eating it yourself! However, the level of simplicity and creativity are impressive - a useful reminder that the best solutions are often the simplest and least expected.

PS. Sorry if you're having your lunch whilst reading!

Sources & Credits
FreshBump

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… 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 - 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