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 - 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 - The Back of the Napkin

The European Business Analysis Conference was great. Lots of inspirational material, which I'll no doubt share over the next few months.

But I thought that I would start with the most fun thing! Penny Pullan gave a fantastic presentation on the role of the BA in Creativity, Engagement and Clarity - one of the many aspects covered was techniques for drawing.

Those of you who've worked with me closely will know two things about me; firstly that I'm a visual thinker - I simply can't resist filling an empty whiteboard. And secondly, that both my handwriting and drawing could do with some work - a sometimes messy combination!

The old cliche that a picture paints a thousand words is very true and I think it's an important tool for our roles in group facilitation to be able to bring concepts to life as clearly as possible. Two things that might help;

• Penny recommend a book (which I've ordered today), it's called The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures (Dan Roam).
• She's also collaborated with artist Venessa Randle and offering some free material at http://www.graphicsmadeeasy.co.uk/

Simple tips to make your white boarding easier, clearer and more impressive.

Sources and Credit
Penny of course - http://www.makingprojectswork.co.uk/

Penny and Vanessa's work at http://www.graphicsmadeeasy.co.uk/
European Business Analysis Conference http://www.irmuk.co.uk/ba2010/

Something for the Weekend - Applied Imagination

In 1953 Alex Faickney Osborn published a book called 'Applied Imagination'. In it he suggested a technique that proposes that groups could double their creative output through a process called brainstorming… a technique still commonly used (and misused) nearly 60 years later.

It's suggested that a Brainstorming session should generate between 50 - 100 ideas and that made me think about whether I'd actually ever been to a brainstorming session(!)… whether we actually allowed sufficient divergence in our thought processes to get all the good stuff out.

It sometimes feels like people aren’t prepared to share ideas (or even just thoughts) that aren't fully thought though and that a has to be a huge constraint to creativity. It also means that we lose the collaborative edge, and therefore the effectiveness of, brainstorming sessions.

I suppose the other question is whether we just stop at the first suitable idea (the quickest, cheapest, easiest) or whether we're prepared to spend another 20 minutes to carry on? Would that 20 minutes deliver the idea that's truly the best… perhaps the game changer?

In my mind, creativity is always enhanced through teams. And brainstorming, when conducted as intended, is a great first step in harnessing the power of collective ideas. So I thought it might be a good time to share the 5 golden rules which help in creating the best possible environment Click Here

I hope you can put them to use.

Sources and Credits
www.brainstorming.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainstorming

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 - 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 - 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 - 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