Living by Design

How do you get a large development team to make effective design and implementation choices? Often, it takes a short "walk in the shoes" of their most important audience, the user of the products or services they produce. "Our R&D staff need to spend more time in the field!", is the oft-quoted postmortem remedy. And of course while everyone is traipsing about the planet, blowing travel budgets, the clock keeps ticking as nervous sales organization wonder who will create the next value-add improvement that they can sell. Fortunately, there is a solution to the deadlock. The emerging practice of persona development has proven to be a great tool for accurately conveying a consistent set of user goals and behaviour to the implementation masses. Personas don't need to be fed, don't sleep, and will live inside of your development organization to continually help re-connect everyone with what's valuable to their users. Not using personas in your context...

The Challenge In an industry with over 35 years of software engineering experience, it's amazing that we have failed to produce any significant breakthrough that improves the ability of executing successful software projects . The brightest minds have been humbled battling the tide of anarchy that persistently undermines the progress of their complex initiatives. "Discipline and control", the gurus cry, will help curb our irresponsible creative surges. Envying their manufacturing counterparts, knowledge workers have reached out to embrace disciplines that have reduced the insanity while simultaneously eroding innovation and creativity beneath the weight of bureaucratic process and fragmented work distribution. In this protected environment, the "sigh of relief" eventually evaporates into a new level of panic, as emerging competitors run roughshod across existing markets with disruptive innovations. Successful assembly and delivery of complex artifacts is ulti...

Each year, millions of dollars dissipate via projects that provide little residual value to their sponsors and end users. The source of the problem: an ever-widening communication gap between complex business needs and convoluted technical capabilities. Yet there is hope. One of my favourite bridging devices is a powerful visual modeling standard called Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) . Currently undergoing acceptance by the OMG , BPMN aptly crosses the chasm, clarifying business value and contextualizing technical capability through the following characteristics: Uses a common modeling language, easily understood by business and technical stakeholders Facilitates efficient process knowledge sharing for Business to Business (B2B) applications Addresses problems with previous attempts in using "software oriented" UML notation for business modeling Provides round trip engineering with XML based business processing languages like BPEL4WS Download an HTML version o...

What does it really take to successfully launch a new business? In this extraordinary interview with Amar Bhidé , author of the book The Origin and Evolution of New Business , the editor-in-chief of Inc. Magazine draws out some incredible truths from the research done by Dr. Bhidé. Here are some highlights from the article summarizing 10 years of study that fly in the face of conventional wisdom: Most successful startups began without any innovative idea or product, with no specialized training and with relatively little capital. Critical success characteristics for entrepreneurs are: tactical creativity; adaptability and salesmanship. Successful entrepreneurs are very tolerant of ambiguity and find opportunities in uncertain "me-too" market niches, where they can offset risk to customers and other partners. The characteristics that propel a new business to initial success must shift to strategic planning and risk taking if the entrepeneur wishes to take the business from ...

An Open Door The Internet has created radical new facilities for individuals to collaborate independent of geographical and economic constraints. Riding on the wave of this capability, is the growing phenomenon of open source development and services. This altruistic, voluntary trend is impacting the economics of software production around the globe. Although some would trivialize these attempts as insignificant, many others are jumping through the open door of opportunity. How do organizations make money from open source software? This ZDNet article summarizes how: Selling related services such as packaging and documentation Selling support services Creating custom licenses for particular customers Producing proprietary software that integrates with an open source system Of course, the product mixing strategy requires specific due diligence for an organization to ensure that they do not compromise the open-source licensing with their proprietary distribution. Here is some helpful ...

I've long been fascinated by the effective use of Wikis to incubate and nurture research and information organically. Exposed to the power of Google search and the breadth of information on the Internet, everyone struggles with how to best interface their brain with the informational waterfall. Common approaches include: Bookmark mayhem - bookmark everything and then try to organize your bookmarks Tagging - a more flexible, generic style of bookmarking Gross capture - using cut and paste methods to copy verbatim information for future reference, hoping you can find it later. Wikis - value add contextualization to referential information in a searchable knowledge incubator. I was recently reminded of how crucially interdependent I have become on my personal Wiki in light of the number of projects that I'm juggling. I had switched to Microsoft OneNote for a couple of months, attracted to the ease of drag-and-drop capture from the Internet. Additionaly, OneNote automatically...

One of the key challenges of facilitating business startup ideas is having an effective, low-cost virtual collaboration capability. Emerging out of the Web 2.0, AJAX enabled Internet services is an exciting number of innovative offerings. I've been using several of these sites in managing virtual communications and projects. Not only are these tools effective, but they are also free! Here are three sites I've been using: www.Airset.com Airset is a collaboration environment centered around calendaring. They provide a convenient tool to synchronize with my Palm, allowing full control over which appointments are shared based on categories. You can readily create multiple groups and easily manage merged views. The system includes the ability to selectively share contacts, to do lists and traditional discussion forum tools. The service is free with no published limitations. The system does not include any collaborative editing or filesharing capabilities. I use this system primaril...

I've been long fascinated with David Allen and his " Getting Things Done " methodology. David has spent the last 20 years coaching executives on how to get their lives organized and more productive. Life in the information age requires the dual skill set of coping with an overwhelming amount of incoming data and managing a large volume of critical activity. A quote from the book sums up the challenge: A paradox has emerged in this new millennium: people have enhanced quality of life, but at the same time they are adding to their stress levels by taking on more than they have resources to handle. David's methodology, abbreviated as GTD, involves the following disciplines: collect everything explicitly, outside of your head process your inbox quickly, regularly and thoroughly decide outcomes and the next actions every time you review new information do quick actions immediately delegate, schedule or defer tasks to appropriate contexts break complex tasks into projects d...

Chaotic Behaviour When faced with complexity, many organizations and individuals resort to primal behavior. The queasiness of being out of control often generates these symptoms: Baby Throwing (along with the bath water). Wholesale abandonment of what was not working along with what was starting to work. The greater the sense of panic, the more frenetic the thrashing between various strategic initiatives. Each of these cycles is often accompanied with a fresh crop of executive managers. Paralysis. Lack of confidence in decision-making. A despair-ridden death march as profit margins slowly vaporize and innovative opportunities flit by ungrasped. Fascism. Charismatic leaders riding the waves of popular paranoia for personal benefit for questionable agendas. The shifting sands of complexity provide poor footholds for accountability and objective measurement. Cynicism . Change fatigue and the inability to connect with meaningful purpose often rapidly diffuses a creative workfo...

Humans have a number of ways of coping with complexity: We pretend it doesn't exist, and are surprised when our simple "cause and effect" worldview doesn't work. We dissect and fragment it. The bits soon take on a life of their own, often creating comforting rituals bereft of context and initial purpose. Occassionally, someone helps us re-synthesize and "get the big picture" once again. In striving to increase my ability as a "complexity visualization" agent, I have experimented with a variety of mediums, and watched how others have successfully transformed information. A company that has aptly demonstrated this achievement is Xplane . On their web site, they show how fragmented, prolific content can be transformed into powerful, information-intense visuals. Eduarde Tufte, the data visualization guru, also has produced some innovative work in visualizing complexity. On his web site , he demonstrates how sparklines (intense, word-sized, si...

Choosing creative, meaningful and available business names is not a task for the faint of heart. In my recent endeavours, I found the following tools to be very helpful: Marcia Yudkin has assembled a useful process that, although does not do the work for you, is rife with links to useful tools. Your best friends in this process are a thesaurus, homonym and cliche references, rhyming dictionaries, and various name databases. To check for domain availability, try out these web sites: http://www.internic.net/index.html http://www.makewords.com/default.aspx?src=business Good luck!

I have had the great privilege of participating in the rediscovery of key design principles through the recent renaissance led by the likes of Alan Cooper ( The Inmates Are Running the Asylum) and the folks at IDEO . Using a fresh emphasis on observation and the capture of customer behavior and goals, they have successfully realigned our methodologies of how to sustain success in this overengineered culture. The questions, "Why are we building this?" and, "How can we make this more compelling?" have gone far towards improving our existing offerings. More importantly, they have helped us connect with the core purpose of our products and services, a critical conduit to the value opportunities in an increasingly complex world. In addition to rejuvenating our production value, the same principles can also be applied to the organization as a whole. When business leaders help their teams effectively connect with their shared core purpose, it creates a significant synergy...

I began successfully using voice and screen capture over 10 years ago. At the time, we were doing experiments in alternative learning methods. Since that time, I've successfully used Camtasia for many projects. My most effective use of screen video capture was rapidly creating online training material. In the high-tech boom, recruiting and getting new team team members productive became priority one. Since we couldn't hire people fast enough, we added up to four co-op students per semester as well. How do you successfully bloat a knowledge-dependent team without being crushed by your own weight? It boils down to leveraging the Nyquist theorem and applying it to the disciplines of knowledge transfer. The theorem states: When sampling a band-limited signal the sampling frequency must be greater than twice the input signal bandwidth in order to be able to reconstruct the original perfectly from the sampled version. My application of this principle: To effectively transfer k...

There's been much hullabaloo about social networking, virtual collaboration and the magic that is generated by creative, informal teams. Many organizations and individuals see networking as a means to an end. How do I find a job or advance my career? How do we manage this complex project? How do we continue to innovate for sustained success? Although these are all worthy goals that have experienced some remarkable dynamics from social networking, what about the network itself? What about the relationships themselves? I believe an effective relational network has value on its own merit. As humans, we derive great joy developing mutual friendships that are both meaningful and interesting. Try viewing the relational network as an end in itself, and the things done together as means to reinforce and solidify healthy, enjoyable relationships with interesting people. In their article on Generative Relationships , the authors highlight the dynamics that turn relationships into magic. It...

Joel Spolsky has posted a list of business books that are highly relevant to the management challenges du jour. Worth a quick look. How many have you read? Reading List: Fog Creek Software Management Training Program - Joel on Software

Recently a friend and I were discussing how our culture reinforces passive observation, ever increasing the barriers for real participation. Not only do we have every form of mindless entertainment dulling our senses, but we are distracted with an overwhelming stream of information that is ravenously devouring our most precious comodity -- time. Some have attempted escape, hiding in their Luddite enclaves. Others are swept away by the mindless rush, occasionally surfacing to realize they've lost precious years. Hope still remains. A growing number of people are resisting and even leveraging the phenomenon that we live in. Here's an example of the discipline I've begun to exercise. It's a simple plan to engage the information that floods my mind each day. It looks like this: take a few minutes to to capture your thoughts for each book, significant article, movie or media experience you engage in. To support this activity, I use a flexible and powerful information manager...