30 Second Blogs from @erandycox

Is it a book or a load of laundry?

2011-02-08T05:57:00.001-08:00

I sometimes hear my clients use the terms "project" and "operations" interchangeably. I was thinking about this as I was reading a book, recently. Even if I read only one page a day from a book, I call that progress. If I do one load of laundry a day I don't see that as progress--I see it as keeping up. What's the difference? Easy. The book has an end. At some point I will get to the last page. Laundry just keeps coming.

A project has a beginning and an end. Operations keep going. Getting everyone in accounts payable to switch from using software package A to B is a project. Processing the A/P is operations. This can start to get fuzzy when you look at a big production line that is cranking out the ABC model this month and then switches over to producing the DEF model next month.

Being able to make the distinction between a project and operations is helpful because each domain has its own skill sets, areas of study, credentials, and vast bodies of knowledge. There is some cross-over, but ideally you'd like to put your Operations Research major running the production line or handling logistics and not your newly-minted PMP (and visa versa). If you're truly fortunate, you have some individuals that are equally comfortable and capable in both arenas. These folks are ideal in situations where you need to kick off an initiative as a formal project, and then transition that into daily operations down the road.

So if you're ever wondering what type of work you're doing, ask yourself if it feels more like reading a book or doing laundry.

Another business lesson from the kitchen: the order matters

2011-02-04T17:37:00.000-08:00

I mentioned in a previous post how I love to cook and often have a cooking show on while I'm preparing dinner at night. I was watching Emeril as he made a bolognese sauce (which I tried along with him and it turned out fantastic!) and he commented that when you start by putting the olive oil and bacon into the pot you need to wait to add the onions and garlic and other ingredients. If you add everything all at once the moisture from the vegetables will prevent the bacon from crisping which needs to happen in order to get the full desired flavor.

In other words, using the proper order matters just as much as using the right ingredients.

Let's switch gears. Business. You're trying to make something work better, cheaper, faster. You've got a gal that's a black belt in Six Sigma. You have a guy who did a stint at Toyota and loves Lean. And you've got another gal who loves the Theory of Constraints or TOC. Do you throw them all at the problem all at once and say, "have at it"? You can, but I wouldn't.

If you have those three skill sets in-house you're fortunate. You have the ingredients you need. But the order in which you deploy these resources matters just as much in business as it does in cooking. The research that's coming out in the continuous process improvement literature strongly suggests using TOC as a focusing mechanism to determine the optimal place to start. You can't work on everything all at once and you need to know where to focus first. Bring in your TOC expert. Then bring in your Lean SME to reduce waste, then your Six Sigma person. These results will typically yield far better results than trying to "cook" the approaches all at once.

What works even better is to have a person, a firm, a team that not only knows each discipline well but also how they work together--the Integrated TOC/Lean/Six Sigma (iTLS) approach pioneered by Bob Fox and others. Instead of having one person cook the pasta, someone else come in to make the sauce, a third to make a salad, and someone else to plate it, you just bring in a chef who can do it all. Ideally, bring in a chef that can teach you how to make the dish yourself the next time.

Business Lessons from my Kitchen

2011-01-28T13:24:00.000-08:00

I love to cook. If I had to estimate how much of the household cooking I do between breakfasts, packing lunches, dinners, and snacks for impromptu jam sessions when all my teenage son's rock band friends show up hungry...I'd peg it at, say...100%. I do it all, and I enjoy it.

That means Dad is watching lots of cooking shows at night to get ideas. Which means I see all these gorgeous, well-stocked, hyper-organized kitchens on TV (well on Apple TV, we got rid of cable). I took a look at my own kitchen the other day and realized how disorganized the drawers and pantries were and made a little run to Bed Bath & Beyond and Williams-Sonoma and came back with a bunch of containers, trays, and Lazy Susan turntables. A few hours later and my kitchen is now way more organized and much more usable.

"Good for you Randy! I'm just so glad I took the time to read your blog today so I could learn about your kitchen cupboards!", I hear you thinking to yourself. Well here's the first point: I'm a 40-year-old reasonably intelligent man who spends lots of time in my kitchen. It took me years to really get organized. And here's the second point: even after I got things in order and began feeling a sense of pride every time I opened the pantry door my fridge was a complete mess! I didn't think to put a Lazy Susan in my refrigerator to organize all the jars of sauce and jams and capers and olives until TODAY! Why? I guess because Lazy Susan's are for cupboards, I don't know. I'm still scratching my head as to why it took me so long to figure this out. Don't tell anyone. But I can say it's like 50 times easier now to find stuff in my fridge.

There are a few lessons here. Maybe you're the warehouse manager of a 100,000 square foot regional distribution center and are going on your seventh year with the company. Or maybe you've worked your way up to running a 23 person accounts receivable division at a large firm. Regardless of where you find yourself, I'll bet you're so busy you have a corner of your responsibility that's basically a junk drawer--something that bugs you but not so much that you stop what you're doing to fix it. Consider fixing it. I've found over and over that often times one of the most productive things I can do when I'm feeling overwhelmed is to pause and take a few minutes to get organized. It's amazing how those few minutes can then affect all the rest of your work minutes from then on.

The second lesson is that there are probably simple, tried-and-true, relatively easy-to-implement solutions from other industries or disciplines that would apply really well to your shop that you don't know about. Or worse, maybe you know about them (the Lazy Susan) but have not connected the dots to see how they would apply to another problem area of yours (the fridge). This is where I think consultants often earn their money. Sometimes the main source of value they bring is to walk into your situation that you know like the back of your hand with a fresh set of eyes and a memory full of solutions and best practices from lots of other companies and situations and help you see patterns or opportunities you could not on your own. Consultants sometimes get a bad rap for walking over to the cupboard and taking the Lazy Susan from the shelf and putting it in the fridge and then sending you a nice invoice. But then cooking life from then on is so much better. And if it were so easy why had no one in your firm done that already for the past 12 years you've been in business?

So there you go. Life lessons from my kitchen.

What is the Best Project Management Model?

2011-01-27T06:19:00.000-08:00

When I worked as an IT project portfolio manager for The Washington Redskins I was fortunate to work for a great IT Director and probably one of the most capable executives I've ever seen up close. He had been the CFO and was now the COO and just one of his dozens of duties was to manage all stadium construction. When Mike (the executive) inherited the IT department he treated our projects just like he'd treat a stadium renovation: you don't put a shovel in the ground until you've got a complete set of blueprints that you and everyone else has sweated over and reworked until all the key stakeholders are satisfied. His approach was to deal with the architect first, then bring in the construction crew.

Now we did some very cool stuff with IT while I was there, things that were the first of their kind. As far as I could tell from a distance, Dan Snyder was not that involved in the day-to-day operations of the franchise--he had really capable executives for most of that. But man could he connect the dots. He really could look out on the larger business landscape and see patterns and opportunities and potential connections where others couldn't. Hence the innovative uses of IT.

If you are interested in project management approaches and methodologies like I am you're also aware of the ongoing discussion we have amongst ourselves about what model we should align ourselves with. Should we follow the construction model mentioned above? Or maybe we're more like product design where you know you need to bring something of value to the marketplace within several design constraints, but at the outset you're not sure what that will look like and you go through a process of discovery along the way. I've always thought one of the premier student's of project metaphors is Alistair Cockburn, and I like his notion of projects as cooperative games.

In my opinion, this is a fun academic discussion that I enjoy as much as anyone (just ask the patient folks that work with me), but the real answer on which approach is "right" is, "it depends."

Projects are not operations. Projects have a beginning and an end. Projects are like films (there I go with metaphors again, sheesh). You might be an accomplished director and have several films under your belt, but this film with this exact crew and talent and market dynamics and script have never been done before. So there are principles you can follow that apply from film to film, but you also need to adapt to the unique dynamics of the moment and pull from your toolkit what you think the situation needs.

There are times when it makes sense to spend six months writing and refining a requirements document. There are times when it makes sense to just start moving and adapt as you go. My next blog post will probably go into these scenarios a bit more, but the point is that we often get way too rigid and ego invested and almost religious about "the one true way" of managing projects when the reality is that there's merit in all approaches. You can adopt one way of doing things and become an accomplished XYZ technician and that's fine. But you've just boxed yourself in, professionally. Or you can take the harder road and learn waterfall, learn scrum, learn critical chain, learn getting real, etc. and be a technician in several approaches and an artist--pulling in a practice here and approach there from multiple perspectives and doing what you see the situation calls for.

What we should be religious about is scope, schedule, and budget.

Which Projects Should We Work On?

2011-01-26T05:14:00.000-08:00

So you've adopted some form of the three column planning model and you have a pool of proposed projects you could work on at some point, a select project or two you're actively working on (your work in process or "WIP"), and now a regularly-growing list of completed projects. You're about to wrap up the main project in your WIP and need to move something from the pool over to the active column. How do you know what to move over? What criteria do you use?

Traditional wisdom says to pull out the trusty HP calculator and start doing some NPV/IRR calculations to see which project is likely to give you the best ROI. I agree you should have the HP handy, but these numbers and estimates (educated guesses in many cases...come on, be honest) should be put into context.

Suppose you have five possible projects you could work on from four divisions. (I know, wouldn't that be nice if it were really that simple?) Let's call them A, B, C, D, and E. And let's further suppose you bring in your 27-year-old newly-minted MBA who just started in Finance to run all the calculations on each. The numbers are solid (or as solid as estimates can be) and let's say B comes out on top. What else is there to consider? You pick the one with the highest return right?

Hold your horses. We need to consider context and constraints. Systemically.

Now the book Let's Get Real or Let's Not Play: Transforming the Buyer/Seller Relationship does a decent job overviewing these two concepts from the sales angle. Goldratt and in particular Bob Fox deal with this directly better than anyone out there. But here's the gist for my already overly-nice-and-tidy example: suppose you map out what Bob and Kevin Fox call your organization's Throughput Operating System or TOS so you know what type of flow you have (they come in four basic flavors). And you also know where your constraints are. (There's about 20 blog posts or more of material in those last two sentences.) Now lay your proposed projects out on the TOS. Suppose proposed projects A and B are upstream of your main constraint. Proposed project C would work directly on your constraint. And proposed projects D and E would be downstream of the constraint/bottleneck.

This changes things. We learn from constraints management that if we increase capacity upstream of a bottleneck we're probably going to make the overall system worse and whatever improvements we gain locally will be cancelled out (see my post on how process improvements are like iPods in cars). Improve a downstream process and there may be no systemic impact at all. Improve the constraint and the whole system is better off.

In the real world this is awfully messy and complicated. But this notion of thinking systemically and including lessons from constraints management along with your trusted calculations when you try to determine what to work on next is super important.

Are PM's in the Services or Experience business?

2011-01-25T20:37:00.000-08:00

I recently read The Experience Economy after hearing Tom Peters refer to it in an old speech of his I try to listen to annually. The book talks about progressing from selling commodities, to products, to services, to experiences, and ultimately to transformations. One of the things that struck me was the notion of what you leave behind or what does the customer/client get to keep or come away with after the transaction. With goods they obviously get to take home the item they purchased. With services it can be s a bit tricky. Maybe they get a new haircut or a fixed car. When you buy an experience you take with you a memory (say of your Disney vacation) or a new skill (like a certification). After a transformation you walk away with a new outlook or a new organization.

It got me thinking. As a consultant coming in to manage a portfolio of projects for a client, what business am I really in? Frankly I think I've framed what I do as being in the services business. My client gets projects done well, on time, and within budget. My firm bills for the hours I work. I get paid. Services rendered.

Hmmm. What if I wanted to be in the experience business instead?

So now I still manage a portfolio of IT projects on time and within budget. But with my new paradigm I've started to also spend focused time with the business analysts, project leads, vendors, and the executives I work with slowing down a bit and training them on various aspects of what I do for them. I'm leaving behind useful skills in the organization and in their partners that will allow my client to analyze situations, manage projects, lead changes, and do a number of other related things they may not have been able to do before. I want my clients to have the memory of being part of a well-oiled team working toward something that matters. In short, I want them to think back on this time as me having orchestrated a great experience they were fortunate to be a part of--not just as someone who managed a bunch of projects.

This is something I continue to work on. The next step is to create transformations through my consulting.

What business are you in?

Managing vendors is a lot like house cleaning

2011-01-19T07:07:00.000-08:00

My wife and I are teaching my teenager how to really clean a house. We've been kind of teaching him for a long time, but now we've really got our sleeves rolled up and are taking this seriously. My first step? Go back and watch Don Aslett's video (literally, a VHS tape) Is There Life After Housework and review one of his books. My next step was to try out what I was about to teach.

One of the tips that stuck out for me from Mr. Aslett was the simple idea of doing a little cleaning every day instead of leaving all the cleaning for one big multi-hour cleaning session on Saturday. For instance, I bought one of those plastic cleaning caddies, put all the necessary cleaners in it, and keep it in my bathroom instead of under the sink and on various shelves in the laundry room. Each day before I shower I take two minutes and clean something. On Monday, I might clean the mirror. On Tuesday, wipe down the sink, etc. Doing it this way means the bathroom never gets too far out of whack and I don't even notice the time it takes.

Managing vendors in a software project can be very similar. If you bite off huge amounts of functionality in contracts or task orders with delivery dates way off in the future, and one big demo scheduled at the end you're asking for trouble. Every vendor can bill you like clockwork for hours they burned over the past month (or two, or three). They can even itemize exactly what part of the code they worked on for each hour. But not every vendor can actually DELIVER, get something actually coded, tested, done, and ready for prime time. Some can't handle the pressure.

So part of your job as a PM is to find out which kind of vendor you're dealing with: a burn hours and bill and bill and bill vendor or a focus and deliver vendor. The best way to know is to give them a small piece of work with a deadline and hold their feet to the fire. If you're dealing with a burn and bill vendor, you want to know that pronto so you cut your losses and move on.

The well known consultant Ram Charan refers to "operating mechanisms" in his book Know Hows (which I just finished and enjoyed). Jack Welch described an operating system he developed at GE in Straight From the Gut. Each of these experts is describing a series of meetings, training programs, and retreats scheduled throughout the year on regular intervals where various parts of the business are analyzed or dealt with. In other words, they clean a little bit of the organization every day or week or month so it never has a chance to get too far off track.

After you've had your kick-off meeting and have the project charter or user stories in hand, the PM needs to do the same thing: put an operating system in place. This may mean daily stand-ups with on-site employees and contractors, weekly GoToMeetings/WebEx calls with off-site vendors and remote teams, weekly status reports out to project sponsors, and monthly higher-level project portfolio reports to management. Each PM will work out what works best for her/his situation. The point is not what your operating system looks like; the point is that you have one and that the feedback you're asking for is more than just "did you bill some hours last cycle?" Of course they did. When dealing with vendors, you obviously need to address general scope, schedule, and budget issues, but you specifically need to know if they produced their agreed-upon deliverable for this specific iteration or not.

So keep some Windex handy in the bathroom and your vendor's direct line on speed dial.

Making software smarter sometimes pushes customers away

2011-01-13T11:41:00.002-08:00

A colleague and I were talking about how MS Project tries to anticipate, intuit, and proactively rearrange your project plans for you--and how often this goes wrong and just ends up frustrating us to the point of doing what we were doing at the time: looking at a simple gantt chart I'd built and shared with her on a competitor's product (in this case smartsheet.)

We have to be careful about how we try to make software "smarter". Done wrong, we can make the user feel too dumb to use it and drive them away.

37signals is famous for (among many other things) their approach of deliberately trying to "underwhelm" the competition by doing less, saying no to most feature requests, and keeping things so simple, so clear, so easy-to-use, so mission-focused that it does its job REALLY well and that's it.

Think about your phone. I was talking with a gentleman the other day who'd just bought a smartphone and realized after a week it was way too much for him; he was complaining about how hard it was to find a phone that was literally just a phone.

It's okay to put all kinds of sophisticated intelligence in our software. Enterprise-class problems are complex and require a solution that fully addresses each need. But we need to keep in mind the old Naisbitt idea of High Tech/High Touch and ensure we spend at least as much brain power on making it usable and friction-free. "Smart" shouldn't just mean logic and rules and number crunching on the back-end; it should mean we've arrived at the simplicity on the far side of complexity in our interface. Sometimes it just means let me do it myself, thank you very much.

How iPods in cars is like process improvement

2011-01-13T07:58:00.000-08:00

I have a 15-year-old son who is also a talented musician. Whenever he's in the minivan he assumes he's in charge of the sound system and grabs the long cord we have plugged into our auxiliary port, plugs it into his ever-present iPod, and begins blaring Led Zeppelin or Pink Floyd (fortunately he has good taste!). Now I like loud music from time-to-time, but not ALL the time like he does. So we play this little game where he slowly cranks up the volume on his iPod and I slowly notch it down via the volume controls on the steering wheel.

Process improvement is a lot like that.

It used to puzzle me to no end how I could go into a given functional area, reduce the required man-hours to process a given widget from dozens or hundreds down to a handful, and then watch as no discernable impacts made it to the bottom line--or even downstream! Then I discovered the Theory of Constraints (TOC). Now I know it's all about the iPod example.

TOC teaches us to think systemically and see the organization as a whole. It then gives you the lens to see that the parts that make up the whole come in two flavors: those that have a capacity equal to or greater than the demands placed upon them, and those with a capacity less than their respective demands. Then, you're able to look at the latter group and find the bottleneck, the constraint.

If you improve the throughput of a resource upstream or downstream of a bottleneck it's like you've just turned the volume up on the iPod but then the bottleneck turns it back down on the radio dial; it cancels out the benefit. In fact, improving the throughput upstream could actually be making things worse--you're just building the pile of work in front of the constraint higher faster.

The Integrated TOC/Lean/Six Sigma (iTLS) approach most notably outlined by Robert Fox in his new book (as well as by others such as the book Velocity) uses TOC as a focusing mechanism to first see where should we focus our improvement efforts. Then we can bring in Lean to reduce waste, Six Sigma to reduce variability, and technology to automate and streamline (maybe that should be changed to iPIT for Integrated Process Improvements and Technology? Or maybe TiP for Technology integrated with Processes?) . Taking this approach gives you the comfort of knowing anything you do will have an immediate systemic effect and that someone else doesn't have their hand on the volume control downstream.

Lessons in business analysis from MS Courier

2010-04-19T14:49:00.000-07:00

I'm just as excited as the next IT gadget geek to see what Microsoft releases with its upcoming dual screen Courier Digital Journal. But rather than speculate on what features it may or may not have, I want to pause to observe something about the preliminary videos we're seeing pop up--particularly the ones found on engadget.

Watch the videos, and even without sound you get it. You know what this device should do. You have a good idea of who it's for. How many pages of written requirements would it take to convey all the information you just received from this short video?

Watch Joe Levine's TED talk on a proposed mission to Mars and you come to the same conclusion: in a few minutes of video you find yourself saying that's possible. You are previewing the future. It's a simulation, but somehow tangible at the same time. How many words would it take to convey the same information? And how long would that take to digest?

I've spent a lot of years writing requirements documents for software and technology projects. They still have their place. But what is the single most important skill for business analysts of today and tomorrow? Film making.

Lessons from West Coast Customs (Part One)

2010-04-19T05:47:00.000-07:00

I don't get to watch much TV, but when I do, I enjoy the show West Coast Customs. I love watching craftsman of any kind bring their considerable skill and creativity to a new project that has its own unique requirements and constraints. There is so much to learn about project management from this show.

The point I'd like to make today is how important one word can be: what they call their final deadline.

But for those who are not familiar with the program, essentially people bring their (often very expensive) vehicles to West Coast Customs to have them customized in some way--they are definitely one-of-a-kind when they drive away. The customer drops it off, West Coast works on them, the customer comes back to see how it looks and to pick it up. The show documents the steps, the challenges, and the process to get from drop-off to pick-up.

Everyone in the shop calls the final deadline for the project "The Reveal" knowing the customer will be at the shop on a given day to see and pick up her/his car--and they will want something truly amazing.

I like to encourage my clients to use a lot of outside vendors in the projects I manage for them. When I'm setting up the ground rules for a new vendor relationship I like to schedule a weekly status update call where we get on GoToMeeting or a similar product and talk about what was accomplished last week and what we'd like to get done the coming week. We talk about priorities, who is responsible for what, any internal pressures we need to consider, etc. Most importantly, we ask the vendor to be prepared with an on-screen demo of what they accomplished last week.

This helps keep the vendor focused and on track in several ways. It also helps them remember we're business users and often only see tangible business value through interacting with an interface--coming back with a demo of a bunch of database tables or infrastructure they built without tying it to some button we can push to make something happen makes for an awkward phone call that usually doesn't happen again.

I think I'm going to start calling the weekly calls "Reveals" instead of status updates.

(Note: I will now also require all current and future vendors to read this blog post [and watch one episode of the show?] before we begin working together.)

From Backlog to WIP Part One

2010-04-18T22:21:00.000-07:00

So let's assume you've been following my recent blog posts and have put in place a "Three Column Planning" or "TCP" system as I've outlined. You've got a growing list of things you could work on (your "Backlog" or "Project Pool"), a nice tidy list of what you're actively working on (your "Work in Process" or "WIP"), and you're starting to see a steady stream of items hit the "Done" column. Today I'd like to touch upon when you should move something from your Backlog or Pool into your "WIP".

The first thing to keep in mind is that this is a business decision. In my prior blogs I've talked about "drive-bys" where the VP of a given division pops his head into your office on his way to a meeting and drops an IT project on your desk in a high-level 20-30 second description. If you've implemented the TCP system appropriately, these encounters are very different now and the VP's dropping by are very clear all they are doing is giving you a head's up and not putting something directly into your WIP.

So the first step is to give your internal clients a good sense of your capacity and how much of it is dedicated to "keeping the lights on" and how much can be deployed to new projects--your reserve capacity. In most cases, it becomes clear you and your team can't do everything anyone in the organization can think up right now. Some things will need to wait. Others might not happen at all. Priorities need to emerge.

Too often this process is delegated to the IT Director or CIO/CTO along with project execution. When business unit managers/VP's/members of the Executive Team can come up with an idea and dump it on IT without having to think through and articulate the business value this new IT widget will provide, the opportunity cost of doing this instead of some other Executive's pet project, the budget and other resource implications, etc. it just means someone else has to because you can't do everything. Usually this means the IT Director spends time trying to read minds and keep everyone happy. I suggest that's too much to ask of an IT Director or CTO. I suggest these are questions that need vetting by the Leadership Team. Peers need to work together to share a finite amount of IT resources and to prioritize according to what's best for the enterprise--not necessarily for their division.

In an upcoming blog post I'll describe the process I've implemented with my clients that seems to work well. As a preview, it involves getting all stakeholders around a table or some online collaborative workspace to weigh proposals next to one another. For today, I just want to make the point that the IT Director or CIO/CTO should certainly have a seat at the table, but they shouldn't be driving the boat on this yet. That comes after the next step when the business is clear on what IT initiative we should be working on right now.

Just Add Water

2010-04-10T21:29:00.001-07:00

So I'm in the grocery store looking for some household cleaner and come across Arm & Hammer's Essentials. At first glance it looks like they are selling an empty bottle.

Then I notice the tiny little extra bottle attached to the empty one that apparently contains the real cleaning agent. It dawns on me that all the other "full" bottles on the shelf are trying to sell me water. Hmmm.

I would imagine this product (although not a new idea, really) kind of upsets the apple cart in the cleaning solution industry. It changes the game and makes all the other guys look bad. I may be wrong, but I'd think selling water + special sauce is fairly profitable vs selling just your concentrate. But it was bound to happen. Better to be the first one in than play catch up on this.

So here's a company that deliberately put out a product that would cannibalize its profits. But it positions itself as the brand that's on the side of the consumer--not other cleaning solution suppliers--and that's significant. Customer trust and loyalty go way up. And there's now kind of a dark cloud floating over other "full bottle" brands that wasn't there a few moments before. But the point is that the consumer still ultimately gets a full bottle of cleaner--but cheaper.

It made me think about some advice I got early on as a new consultant: a good consultant comes in and solves a problem. A great consultant comes in, solves a problem, but does it in such a way that she/he teaches you how to solve part or all of that problem on your own in the future. There will probably always be some special sauce that you have as a consultant that your client will not--even if it's just the perspective you have that comes from dealing with multiple clients across many industries over several years or the skill or "touch" you've built up over time that can't be faked (watch a good drywall guy and you'll know what I mean).

So here's the takeaway:

If you're a business using outside consultants, ask yourself if she/he is leaving behind some capability with your internal people. If not, find another consultant.
If you're a consultant, ask yourself what is something that you do that you charge for that you could transmit to your client over time and start letting them add their own water.

Imagine a plumber or an electrician that comes to your house to fix a problem, but rather than just diving in and taking care of the issue while you're off checking email or something, they offer to show you how to fix it so you can save a $100 trip charge if that problem ever comes up again. In my book, just the offer would be enough for me to designate that person my plumber or electrician for life.

Jason Fried from 37signals has been talking about similar ideas for a while now. I'd encourage you to watch or listen to as much of his content as you can. And just boil your service offering down to its essentials.

We're All in the "Done" Business

2010-04-09T23:23:00.000-07:00

In prior posts I've talked about the idea I got from Allistair Cockburn which I now call Three Column Planning. I proposed that the "Done" column is the one that really matters. I've received some push back on this notion from some--citing having multiple irons in the fire shows how busy we are and that we're productive.

Suppose you were the new sales manager for a paper company in say...Scranton, PA. You could send your sales team to every parking lot of every grocery store in town making sure a flyer about your paper made it on every windshield. Heck, by doing this you've even given all those prospects a product sample, right? You could even coordinate an intranet-based staff calendar where you send your staff back at different times of day in order to try to maximize the number of people you're likely to reach. You could bring your staff members who have some desktop publishing experience together to create two or three versions of the flyer so you could do multivariate testing analysis on what works best. You could create a war room covered with printed Google maps showing aerial views of local strip malls and place neatly prepared color-coded push pins to show which sales associate is assigned to which area. And you could hold training sessions in the company parking lot on the proper way to lift wiper blades so as not to set off car alarms and at what angle you should place the paper to get maximum notice from the driver. All of this could keep you and your staff super busy. Just think of the meetings you could create around this.

As your turn comes in the Monday morning staff meeting you could pull up a PowerPoint showing both cumulatively and by week how many reams of paper you've been through (where the bars in the bar chart are actual stacks of paper [clever, I know!]), show pie charts of parking lot penetration, and even submit expense reports for all the shoe soles that now need repair.

But quite obviously, that's not what the CEO wants to hear. She wants to know if the sales team sold anything.

This goes back to the old adage of not confusing being busy with being productive. When you focus on the "Done" column you get focused. You notice what's working or not and modify your approach. You invite the other father who showed up at the cub scout meeting last week to play golf remembering he's at a decent-sized law firm in town (that goes through lots and lots of paper). You adapt. You evolve. Quickly.

When you focus on the "WIP" or "Work in Process" column, you wind up doing what Dewey Tobias used to call "majoring in minor things" and creating ribbons for who posted the most flyers this week. In sales, it's easy to see the scoreboard. But I submit we're all in the "Done" business--regardless of what we do. We're paid to get things to the finish line. And the smart one's watch carefully what got them there and make sure they start spending increasing amounts of time on those things; they let the other things fall by the wayside for those who see the world through the "WIP" lens to do.

This is one of the central themes of Brian Tracy's Eat That Frog and the popular Tim Ferriss book The 4-Hour Work week. It's what Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan talked about in Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done. And it's the theme of the Covey seminar called Focus.

There are two mindsets. I'm convinced the "Done" paradigm is the perspective of true leaders. The "WIP" mindset makes for a great sitcom.

Spening Too Much Time on the Backlog

2010-03-31T22:54:00.000-07:00

Spending Too Much Time on the Backlog
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Books mentioned at UTC CTO P2P Forum

2010-03-31T16:12:00.001-07:00

I mentioned two books at the recent UTC CTO P2P Forum--both from the company 37signals:

The first is Rework which just came out and is already a bestseller. This is more focused on running a business.

The second is Getting Real which is their first book and talks primarily about how they build software. You'll find Agile principles all throughout both books. Enjoy!

Two vs Three Column Planning

2010-03-23T22:16:00.001-07:00

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Agile and Critical Chain Similarities

2010-03-22T16:42:00.001-07:00

In my previous post I shared slides from my recent remarks at the Utah Technology Council CTO P2P Forum. I used a three column planning model with "Backlog" on the left, "Work in Process" or "WIP" in the center, and "Done" on the right.

One of the principles I outlined was to keep the WIP column "clean" so when project work comes in, all (or at least sufficient) resources are deployed to get it completed ASAP. I mentioned that too often we load up the WIP column with as many projects as humanly possible thinking that's a virtue. Author, speaker, and consultant Alistair Cockburn who taught me this model believed (as do I) that getting things to the "Done" column is what really matters--not how many plates we can keep spinning. How many staff meetings have you sat through where the PM essentially itemized the baby steps he's taken with all 23 projects he's juggling but he has nothing to demo, nothing Done!

I was watching a video, recently, of a speech author, speaker and consultant Lawrence Leach gave at the 2009 Continuous Process Improvement Conference. He pointed out how counterintuitive two tenants of Critical Chain Project Management are:

Waiting to start some projects actually helps them get done faster; and
Reducing the WIP increases overall project throughput

Obviously, Agile and TOC have some very similar philosophical roots. One of the first principles of Lean Project Mgt (LPM) and even Covey's Four Disciplines of Execution is to provide those you manage with the luxury of clear focus. Tell them that for a given period of time they can just put their attention on this module, this problem, this functionality and at the end of that period of time we'll be demonstrating it live in production to a client.

This principle works for a number of reasons which I might attempt to enumerate in a future blog post, but suffice it to say, when you provide clear focus on who needs to get what done by when, and you give your folks a transparent scoreboard where everyone can see how everyone is doing, things get done. When you tell your team to work on these 12 "priorities" all at once, you paralyze them and create what David Allen calls a rapid refocusing nightmare for them.

I'd like to clarify (as they do in the Four Disciplines seminar) that this principle applies to each team or resource in an organization. If an enterprise has a dozen teams, it will have a dozen or more projects in its collective WIP. But if you were to ask a given team what they are working on, their three columns are very clear--with only one or two items in WIP.

I'll post another time about what happens when an organization tries to matrix individuals to multiple teams and implement this model (hint: not pretty). I'll also post in the future about how giving each team a secondary item and sometimes even a third relates to the "buffer" concept in TOC production theory.

#UTCAgile Presentation

2010-03-21T19:27:00.000-07:00

First, thank you to everyone at the UTC who invited me to speak alongside with Chris Marsh at the recent CTO P2P Forum on March 12th.

Second, my thanks to Chris Marsh for being such a pro about collaborating and presenting.

I think we posted eight or nine topics we could speak on when we started. I have not seen the final list, but by the time everyone posted their own topic areas I'd guess we'd have about 20 or so. And I think we only covered two or possibly three areas in the time we had. If you'd like to do another session to cover additional topics please contact the UTC and let them know. In the mean time, I thought I'd post the slides I used to cover the first topic:

You'll recall this topic related to what to do when multiple stakeholders (e.g., divisions within an organization) need to use the same IT resources.

I sincerely hope Chris and I are invited back. But if not, I intend to cover some or all of the topics you posted that we didn't cover here. More to come...

Gift wrapping tip for golfers

2009-12-18T07:57:00.000-08:00

If you're like me, you keep your putter or two in your home office with a decent home putting machine. I just realized golf clubs are perfect for holding the wrapping paper down as you're trying to cut it to size.

Agile Project Management and Golf

2009-05-02T07:08:00.000-07:00

I've just had two similar experiences: one working with a vendor on a software development project and another working with some of my wife's staff on setting up some hardware and software. In each case, what they considered "done" is not what I would call "done" and it's caused some problems.

In an agile approach, you bite off a piece of work for a given amount of time (a sprint), design it, build it, test it, make sure the user interface is complete, and that all the code is in a production environment. In other words, you deliver something that provides immediate business value. On the software development project referenced above, the vendor would come back with most of the code working, most of the user interface done, some system testing accomplished, and the code would still be in a development environment. They would take the approach that they had some "tweaks" to wrap some things up but "we get the idea...".

I tried to relate this to playing golf. Suppose you're on a 450 yard hole. The approach above would be analogous to hitting a 250 yard drive, then maybe a 185 yard shot from the fairway to put you within striking distance of the green, and then picking up your ball and walking to the next hole saying you got close enough. Looking at it from the distance perspective, 435 yards is obviously 97 percent of the way there. But depending upon how well you execute, those last 15 yards could take a chip onto the green and into the hole (if you are really good or really lucky), or multiple chips and multiple putts. From the number of strokes perspective, being 15 yards out could mean you're two-thirds of the way there at best or maybe even only one third of the way there if it takes you two more chips and two more putts.

The point is, you've got to do the detail work to get the ball into the hole before you move to the next hole. We don't play all the big driver and fairway woods shots for the whole course and then go back and do all of our short game work. I think project management works best when you play it the same way.

Software is like Tic-Tac-Toe

2009-02-16T08:25:00.000-08:00

We just taught our three-year-old son how to play tic-tac-toe. I was in the beginning stages of the very lengthy porcess of putting him to bed the other night, and we were taking turns drawing on a little refreshable drawing pad when I drew a tic-tac-toe board. We played a few games. Then it was his turn to draw and he decided to draw a "better" tic-tac-toe board with more lines on the playing board so you would have to get five in-a-row to win instead of three. I chuckled because I remembered doing the same thing as a kid. But it occurred to me that traditional tic-tac-toe where three in-a-row wins was, in fact, the best (and maybe only really usable) version of the game. There is an optimal point where you hit "enough" and putting more complexity into the game makes it worse and sometimes not even worth trying to play.

The company 37signals has been an advocate of this same idea in software for some time: a given application should be about getting certain things done. The developers should find the easiest, fastest, most intuitive way to do just that and stop. Adding more lines (in this case, lines of code) to the game does not make it better. It buries the core functionality so that the software becomes too complicated, too hard to find the function you need in all the drop down menus, too much of a hassle. And we wonder why user adoption is so hard. I think the winners are those, like 37signals, who find that point of "enough" on the curve and deliberately stop while they can.

24 is Agile

2009-02-13T11:19:00.000-08:00

The director speaking in a short film from the bonus DVD of Season 2 of 24:

In that 12 hours I gotta figure out how I'm gonna achieve everything I need to achieve in blocks of two hours and three hours. We do what's called a timeline, and we give ourselves a certain amount of hours to work on every scene. And we need to try to get to those hours to make our day--to stay within our 12 hours of shooting time.

Then as the day goes on you're constantly changing--things aren't working out, you look for a shorter way. A sort of more economic way to shoot a scene.

Keifer Sutherland speaking in the same short film:

When you actually put something on its feet, logic issues will come with the physicality of the scene that might not come up when you're simply reading it. Stuff hopefully is continually changing until the very last moment until we shoot it, and I think your ability to adapt in those specific situations and certainly adapt at speed in many cases is the difference between your ability to do something well and not.

The genius of Ken Burns

2008-12-17T07:09:00.001-08:00

I've just finished watching the Ken Burns film Thomas Jefferson. In my mind, Mr. Burns is the preiminent historical documentarian. In the special features section of the DVD I found two short films on him and his work. Here are some notable excerpts:

Listen to the photos
One of Mr. Burns' trademarks is taking a still photo and either zooming in or out or panning across it in some way while the viewer hears an audio track. It's now even called the "Ken Burns effect" in filming jargon. There's a whole lesson in just this point on embracing constraints (see a chapter on this in 37signals book). But Burns says he would stare at a photo and "listen to it." He elaborates by saying the trees in the photo had a rustling sound, the boat going by, the people walking and chatting in the background all would have been making sounds. He even goes so far as to ask, "What did the dust sound like?"

Find an emotional connection

My work is not just interested in the dry dates and facts and events of the past, but the emotional archaeology--and I call myself an emotional archaeologist--because we know that's the glue that makes these complex past events stick in our minds and in our hearts and become permanetly a part of who we are now.

This is very similar to the approach author David McCullough takes to his work.

History is

History is, not was. We're never going to change what happened...But the way we engage our questions now about it tell us who we are right now. (now quoting Harry Truman) The only thing really new is the history you don't know.

Meaning accrues
When asked about the length of his films in general and his slow, gliding shots in an era of quick frenetic cuts:

We realize that all meaning accrues in duration. The things that we are all proudest of, the work we've done, the relationships we have, accrue in duration. It's the things we've given our best attention to, and we realize in the end the only thing we have is our attention.

Think wrapping paper is a commodity? Think again...

2008-12-13T09:45:00.000-08:00

I'm trying out some premium wrapping paper we bought off a school fund raiser. It's maybe a tad thicker than the Walgreens cheap stuff, has the snowflakes on the front, yada, yada...but wait...flip it over to start actually wrapping and what do we have here? One inch dotted gridlines are lightly printed across the whole roll. Now, even though I graduated from pre-school many years ago, I can actually cut a straight line so my packaging doesn't look like it was done by a bonobo. It's remarkable how simple and yet useful that is.

Just set up new twitterfeed

2008-12-12T22:16:00.000-08:00

I place short "what I'm doing" updates along with quick thoughts and observations on twitter. Things that take a bit more explaining make it onto this blog. I've now added a twitterfeed so that blog posts are mentioned in twitter. Regardless of how you follow what I'm saying, I thank you.

Moving away from PowerPoint?

2008-12-11T08:57:00.000-08:00

After reading The Back of the Napkin I'm giving serious thought to moving away from slick PowerPoint (and my actual preference, Keynote) presentations and moving toward real-time diagramming of my ideas on a white board, flip chart, or piece of paper. I just did an experimental film using simple hand-drawn pictures on a series of index cards and laying them in a rough prototype of a proposed workflow for a client and it seemed to have worked just as well, if not better, than trying to do the same thing in a more polished, "professional" way. I'll keep experimenting with this notion. But I'm more inclined to move toward this intuition of mine based upon this great blog post. I love this representative quote:

[Speaking about others showing up with portfolios of their past work and him showing up with a paintbrush...]

It not about the past; it’s about the future. It’s not “build me something like you’ve already done” but “build me something from your imagination.” Calatrava came with a paintbrush and a vision, not a PowerPoint of his projects.

The challenge isn’t putting together the slickest presentation. The challenge is having the imagination and the ability to converse with clients about what their future will be. Those are the paintings that will win commissions.

Thinking with your hands

2008-12-02T09:59:00.000-08:00

I was listening to a TED podcast this morning from a gentleman from IDEO. He described a design session where an IDEO team was meeting with surgeon's to discuss a new surgical instrument they would like developed. Someone from the design team left the room and in a few minutes returned with a dry erase marker taped to an empty film canister that was taped to a clothes pin in the rough shape of a gun. The designer gave it to the surgeon's who passed it around and begin offering very constructive feedback on how the device should sit in the hand, how it should be shaped, what it should do, etc. IDEO calls this behavior "thinking with your hands" (and this eventually turned into a real device).

It typically involves making many low-resolution prototypes very quickly. Often by bringing many found elements together in order to get to a solution...And so this behavior is all about quickly getting something into the real world and having your thinking advanced as a result.

This dovetails precisely with the Getting Real approach advocated by 37Signals. Tom Peters has been an advocate of this for years. And it explains why the Back of the Napkin approach of visual thinking works so well.

IDEO takes this idea seriously and has "protyping carts" around filled with Play-doh, tape, Legos, colored paper, markers, etc. ("the stuff we all had in pre-school") so desingers can begin prototyping objects whenever they want. They also apply this approach to designing a service experience through rapidly jumping into role-playing various scenarios.

Do you think of what you do as an art form?

2008-12-01T13:31:00.000-08:00

I just finished watching the John Adams miniseries from HBO (Adams is a hero of mine). There is a wonderful short film about author David McCullough on the last DVD. Here are my two favorite pieces of wisdom contained in the film:

I think of writing History as an art form, and I'm striving to write a book that might, might, qualify as literature. That's the aspiration. And I don't want it just to be readable, I don't want it to just be interesting, I want it to be something that moves the reader--moves me.

Mission accomplished.

Next, in speaking about each of his writing engagements:

You've got to marinate your head in that time, in that culture. You've got to become them, in effect.

The guy is a true pro. If only more of us could have that same approach to our work.

New way to think about tasks

2008-11-30T21:21:00.000-08:00

In the freezer: Stuff we need to get to at some point in the future
In the fridge: Stuff we'll be working on in the next few days
On the stove: Stuff we're actively working on right now

Is the teacher learning?

2008-11-27T08:42:00.000-08:00

I just listened to a captivating TED talk from a gentleman who voluntarily did not speak for 17 years. As one would imagine, he has some interesting things to say about listening. During his silence, he was a college professor where he would write and use a make-shift sign language to communicate. He said many times as he would make signs and gestures the students would play a kind of guessing game trying to make out what he was trying to say. Many times they got it right. Sometimes they would not. Frequently, he would think to himself, "That's not what I was trying to say!" And then he'd catch himself and think, "...but it probably should have been..." as he realized the students had struck upon a critical angle or point he was overlooking. His point was that if you are not learning while you're teaching, you're probably not really teaching.

Seth Godin and Cosmetics

2008-11-11T08:22:00.000-08:00

My wife is legally blind and often comes to me with a handful of frosted glass cosmetics jars of every shape, size, and color as she's getting ready in the morning asking what each of them are. I'm continually amazed at how specific (and frankly creative) many of these products can be.

At the same time, I'm reading Tribes--Seth Godin's new book. Seth is one of my favorite authors and a common theme of his (and Tom Peters for that matter) has been to find and dominate micro niches (or some small territory along the long tail) rather than taking on Ma Bell. Basecamp or Highrise from 37Signals (one of my favorite companies) is a much better bet today than trying to take on Word or Excel.

So that got me thinking: if Revlon can sell a cream for women of a certain age to place just around their eyes--only at night--how many possible creams/lotions/potions are there? And if they can do that with their market, why can't I do something similar with mine? How many ways can you slice and dice your target market? And after you've done that, you're sure to find at least one of those micro market niches is underserved at the moment. And Seth would say there's a "tribe" waiting for you to be their leader.

Time Management from the Inside Out: Julie Morgenstern

2008-07-29T18:11:00.000-07:00

Organizing time is exactly like organizing a closet: there's only so much room for things to fit comfortably and you only need three to six categories.

Julie provides the following seven tools:

Tool One

Self-Assessment (be specific in precisely what is out of balance)

Tool Two

Ask "How long will this take?" for each task. Don't just enter a task on your To-Do list, block out the amount of time that task will realistically take.

Tool Three

Apply the "Four D's":

Delete
Delay
Diminsh (Julie suggests we learn the art of "selective perfectionism" where we get okay with a "down and dirty" job on 80% of what we do and really go for perfection on the 20% of tasks that really matter)
Delegate

Tool Four

Develop a Big Picture View

Simplify life categories (Note: Covey calls these "roles") down to three to five
Create a few goals for each category
Plug in the necessary activities to accomplish each goal into your schedule

Tool Five

Create a Time Map/Weekly Plan (either horizontal [traditional] or vertical [with a different emphasis for each day]).

Tool Six

Apply the SPACE formula:

S - Sort (put incoming items into their appropriate life categories)
P - Purge (learn to say, "no," delegate)
A - Assign a home for everything (Julie does not like master task lists. She suggests putting each task on the date and time when you intend to do it)
C - Containerize
E - Equalize

This works for both organizing a physical space and organizing time (Julie's key insight, in my opinion). With time,

Tool Seven

Choose just one planner/device. She suggests what she calls "visual/tactile" people use a paper planner and "linear/digital" people use an electronic version.

Deadwood is Dead-on Agile (Part Two)

2008-02-28T22:14:00.000-08:00

Elizabeth SarnoffProducer/Writer talking about being in the writer's trailer when David Milch is "writing" a scene (meaning he's slumpped over a pillow on the floor looking at a screen, dictating dialogue to an assistant who types the lines for display).

There's no way to know what's going on unless you're in there, because everything here changes 600 times a day. We change the actors that we need on an hourly basis, we change the scenes that we're doing, who is in the scenes, and if you're not in there with him you don't know. You're just helplessly behind.

One principle of Agile is "co-location"--meaning rather than the business sponsor staying in one office building and the developers staying in theirs and possibly the testing team and/or DBA's are in another set of cubicles on another floor, everyone moves her/his desk to a common "war room" or conference room or at least adjoining desks. It's not for everybody. But traditional barriers between silos (e.g., marketing vs. IT) come down, a team begins to form with a common purpose, symbiosis occurrs as you overhear challenges another member of the team is encountering, etc. It's very similar to the quote above--if you're not in the room, it's very difficult to grasp the complexities, the iterations, the need for changes, etc.

4 Questions to ask for any technology implementation

2008-02-28T16:10:00.000-08:00

Taken directly from speech by the founder of the Theory of Constraints (ToC) Dr. Eliyahu Goldratt:

Dr. Goldratt based his entire speech on the premise that technology is only valuable to the extent that it eliminates or diminishes a limitation. He argued that the following four questions should be explored before any technology implementation:

1. What is the power of the technology?
2. What limitation will the technology diminish?
3. What rules, business processes, procedures, etc. have we put in place in order to accommodate the limitation?
4. What should the new rules, business processes, procedures be after the technology is in place.?

He also argued most software vendors, business sponsors, and members of the IT implementation team stop at question two.

30 Second Book Summary: Confronting Reality: Doing What Matters to Get Things Right

2008-02-27T21:02:00.000-08:00

Success in business comes down to being able to properly adjust one's internal operations and strategy in order to meet one's financial targets within the realities and texture of one's current environment--over and over again. It all starts with being able to clearly see what's so about one's situation--to "get real" about the landscape, challenges, and opportunities one finds oneself in. There are six main reasons people can't confront reality:

Filtered information
Selective hearing
Wishful thinking
Fear
Emotional over-investment
Unrealistic expectations of capital markets

Thanks for the opportunity

2008-02-12T10:16:00.000-08:00

For many months I have been reading this blog. Ok, well there was a break in posts that left me wanting more, but that was because Randy was moving across the country- so understandable. I have had the great privilege to work with Randy and I am fascinated by the way his mind works and his passion for understanding and improving process. Sometimes I am convinced he is the Yin to my Yang when it comes to working with groups- but more often than not we are aligned in thought. I can remember one of my first "real" interactions with him after a few team meetings- he looked troubled. When I asked him about this, he shared with me that he thought a lot of the meeting was a waste of time as it was not focused on specific project work. Disclaimer- I am sure that this is not exactly what he said- but this is what I heard. I believe very strongly in the power of a team and I feel that a team that shares work and personal experiences grows closer together, is more prepared to be a strong team if good and bad times, and generally creates an atmosphere where people want to work. However, I have thought many times about what I heard from Randy and use his observation to ensure that I am balancing soft meeting agenda/discussion and specific project work. To be fair- this interaction occurred very early in our working together. I cannot write about his observation of my meeting style once he lived it for a good period of time. What I can say is that I was impressed by his honesty and ability to communicate his position (which seemed opposite to mine at the time) in a way that did not make me feel like I had to go on the defensive.

I want to thank Randy for the opportunity to be a guest poster on his blog. I am currently reading the book, "Death by Meeting" by Patrick Lencioni and will have a review shortly.

Doug

Permanence

2008-02-08T22:13:00.000-08:00

If I were an 11-year-old kid wandering around what is now Utah a century ago I could take some basic tools to a nearby rock wall and begin chipping away a picture--what we now call a petroglyph. Let's say it took me an afternoon. I'd do it once, and it would last for over 1,000 years.

11-year-olds today may take an afternoon to make and upload a numa-numa song to YouTube. But how long would that last? Back it up to an external hard drive? Temporary. Put it on a CD or DVD? Temporary. Is there anything we're doing today that will last 1,000 years? Guess I could go grab a chisel.

The trick to amazing photos

2008-02-07T19:21:00.001-08:00

I was listening to Robert Scoble talk about the genesis of his photowalking project on a recent podcast. He said he was at a party of about 500-600 people and there were maybe four or five people walking around taking pictures. He looked at several of the photos online afterwards and right away noticed one photographer's work clearly stood out. This intrigued Robert, so he asked to trail the photographer, Thomas Hawk, with a video camera to document his process (http://thomashawk.com--thank you Robert for the comment/clarification). One thing stood out about Thomas: he took a friggin' ton of pictures--like 2,500 per hour! Yes he was talented. Yes he had the best equipment. But it was also a numbers game. He'd load up several 8GB memory cards on any given shoot and then go back to the studio to find that literally a handful were worth keeping.

The same principle seems to apply to finding the right political candidate or pop star, picking a winning investment portfolio, or lining up a winning roster for a professional sports team. We tend to forget or diminish the work behind the talent.

Incidentally, one of the reasons Robert is so interesting to listen to is he scans/"imprints" 1,300 feeds a night (not a typo, 1-3-0-0 a night!).

Thomas and Robert remind me of a quote from Hyrum Smith--one of the founders of FranklinCovey:

"Success is the willingness to do that which unsuccessful people are not willing to do."

Hiring advice from Google

2008-02-07T19:05:00.001-08:00

I was just listening to remarks from Google's Irene Au about her hiring philosophy on the IT Conversations podcast: hire "T" people--meaning hire individuals who demonstrate a broad interest in a variety of fields and disciplines and an intense curiosity (the top, horizontal part of the "T") and also have a demonstrable, deep competency in a given area (obviously the vertical down stroke of the "T").

Creativity

2008-02-06T05:44:00.000-08:00

Creativity begins when a zero is cut from your project budget.

- Maverick designer and urban planner, Jaime Lerner in a 2007 TED speech.

Objective Criteria

2008-02-05T08:48:00.000-08:00

I've just completed the fantastic book Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In by Roger Fisher and William Ury. Within a few days of finishing the book I was listening to Stanford's Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders podcast and came across a speaker who had trained with Mr. Fisher at the Harvard Negotiation Project (which was the body of work from which the book was derived). One of the key principles that struck me was the value of using objective criteria. This hit home at about 4 AM a few nights ago when my two-year-old son had woke up for the second or third time (it was a blur) and my wife suspected he had an ear infection. She placed her hand on my son's forehead and said he had a fever. Knowing that she likes to sleep with approximately eight vertical inches of goose down comforters and is still cold I suspected any reasonable body temperature probably felt warm to her. I naturally placed my hand on his forehead and he felt fine to me (but I acknowledge I'm probably at the other end of the temperature spectrum [we've yet to find a happy medium temperature while driving in our van]).

My wife thinks my son has a fever and wants to take a logical course of action based upon that assumption: give him some Motrin. I think he's fine and that we should all just go back to bed. The solution? Appeal to an objective standard: take his temperature. Turns out he did have a minor fever and so I was able to adopt my wife's course of action without losing face.

I know this is a trivial example, but the principle is powerful and nuanced. The obvious take away is to attempt to have a meta-conversation about the structure of the negotiations before actually beginning to discuss particular issues. One point to attempt to find agreement on is that both parties would acknowledge and abide by objective criteria and standards. Then you could engage in a conversation on what those might be.

A more subtle take away is that we often are guilty of criticizing someone's intended course of action--assuming that they see the situation the same as we do and are recommending something that just doesn't make sense. We are sometimes even guilty of thinking that by suggesting something so illogical the other party is revealing a flaw in or limits to their intelligence. For instance, it would be illogical for me to suggest we give my son Motrin if I think he does not have a fever. It is much safer to presume that the course of action, or position the other party is taking is, in fact, a logical conclusion to draw from how they see the situation. If their position doesn't make sense, it's a red flag that you need to dig deeper to understand their paradigm.

Deadwood is Dead-on Agile (Part One)

2008-01-31T20:45:00.000-08:00

Quotes on the making of the Emmy award winning HBO series Deadwood:

We often start filming and don't have a script.

Stephen Tobolowsky who plays "Hugo Jerry"

The story doesn't get written in advance...past what you show the network executives. They say okay and then you start filming. It grows as one thing happens as a result of another. In fact, an episode may start with one single scene. How that scene plays out then suggests what's going to happen to the writers.

Jeffrey Jones who plays "A.W. Merrick"

Agile projects often start with "one scene" or a bite-sized deliverable to be produced in a short period of time: a week or a month. Then the team comes back to the table with a demo of a workable, tested, piece of business value. The landscape could have changed for the business sponsor in that time (and often has). Priorities could have shifted. Budgets could have been adjusted. An emergency could have emerged. A key person could have left. So the business stands back, takes into account the current topology and constraints, and decides what's the most important thing to work on right now for the next increment of time--the next "scene." Maybe that means stopping on this project and moving to another. Perhaps 80 percent of the potential business value is met within the first two increments and the opportunity costs associated with pushing for that last 20 percent just don't add up.

I'm working with a potential client right now that has as its top two priorities items that were not even on its radar three months ago. I venture to say that is not uncommon. Some say how can an Agile approach possibly work? Others say how could it work any other way?

30 Second Book Summary: We Don't Make Widgets

2007-09-08T05:36:00.000-07:00

The essence of the book is in this paragraph from page six:

The three myths--we don't make widgets, we don't have customers, and we're not here to make a profit--prevent us from seeing the reality of our organizations. Simply put: organizations, both public and private, are collections of systems. Systems are processes (including the inputs, suppliers, and employees who work in the processes) that produce widgets for customers in order to achieve some desired result or outcome. The way we improve an organization is to improve its systems.

(My comment: it would be interesting to contrast this thesis with that from the book Systemantics--maybe another time).

On page 13 Mr. Miller phrases this another way which I believe is telling of the rest of the book's approach:

You can't improve government by looking at it from 30,000 feet. The problems with government aren't visible at that level. It's only when you open up the roof and see the factories inside that you can find the opportunities. Improving government is a battle that is won on the ground, not through the air.

On page 30 Mr. Miller quotes Robin Lawton from the book Creating a Customer-Centered Culture: Leadership in Quality, Innovation, and Speed when he describes a widget as:

something created by work, which can be given to someone else to achieve a desired outcome.

On page 35 Mr. Miller further summarizes what he sees as our only options on how to improve:

If you want better results (outcomes), your options are actually very few: change what you produce (the widget), or change how you produce it (the process).

Memorable Quotes:

The best way to get meaningful measures is not to ask for measures, but to ask for answers--answers to questions that everyone wants to know.

-Page 43

Aggressive measuring changes the learning and behavior of a human being to the same extent that meteorology can change the weather.

- Peter Block, "Someone to Watch Over Me," News for a Change, March 2001

Vision is not enough, it much be combined with venture. It is not enough to stare up the steps, we must step up the stairs."

-Va'clav Havel, Communist reformer in the Czech Republic

Lessons in Agile Project Management from Big Wave Surfing

2007-08-22T21:20:00.000-07:00

I just finished watching a great surf film called Riding Giants by Director Stacy Peralta. I had to stop the film a few times and transcribe some of the quotes because I thought they captured a few principles of Agile project management beautifully:

Big Wave Surfing Legend Micky Munoz on the first rides of Waimea:

Everything is moving. Everything is in flux. Nothing is constant. It's so dynamic that you can't pre-plan it.

Director Stacy Peralta on using a film printer to print hundreds of photos of archival film footage:

We wallpaper our offices with all these photographs. When I'm putting together a sequence I can go all over the office and say, "I need that photograph, I need this photograph, I need that photograph" and also by coming into the office and looking around these walls your constantly getting input from these photographs and it starts to get into your subconscious head. You know you kind of start to drink this stuff and it's really helpful in the making of the film.

Editor on using drawings to depict events for which there was no footage:

When you have a great story that you want to tell, but you don't have the coverage for it, was a lot of the things that we came across--especially with Macaha in 1969--and so, we use drawings; that's when we went to story boards.

Director on same topic:

One of the shots that we wanted to get in the film is we wanted to figure out--we wanted to see what it looks like--wiping out at Mavericks. Of cource we couldn't afford to get a camera down there, and even if we did get a camera down there we'd probably need a lot of light because the water's so murky and then I don't even know if we'd get the shot so we just thought, "Why don't we draw pictures? Have somebody draw pictures of what it might look like down there. Shoot the pictures on a motion mat camera, and cut it together. Just pure experimentation. Let's see if it works. If it works we'll use it, if it doesn't we'll throw it out. "

So I had an artist draw pictures like this. And he sketched them out at first, and these are all different pictures of what it might look like of a guy wiping out at Mavericks, and that led to more ideas of more drawings of, you know, sketches of guys holding onto leashes and
things like that. There was a process of experimentation--let's see what we can do--if it works, great, if it doesn't work it didn't cost us that much money to experiment.

Agile and Spaghetti Sauce

2007-07-25T22:15:00.000-07:00

I recently discovered TED. I have no idea how it's not hit my radar until now, but I can't listen to and watch the talks fast enough. I was watching Malcolm Gladwell talk about a personal hero of his, Howard Moskowitz, and the role he had in discovering the value of providing calculated varieties of a product versus trying to find the one, "perfect" product that will meet the needs of the majority of the market. With Seth Godin's work and The Long Tail we tend to take this idea for granted today, but Malcolm does a wonderful job of taking us back in time to a point where this paradigm was uncommon and even revolutionary.

One of the many anecdotes that impressed me was when Mr. Moskowitz concocted nearly endless varieties of spaghetti sauce using variations on sauce thickness, amounts of various spices, introducing bits of vegetable chunks, etc. and then fed 10 bowls of various varieties to a number of subjects. When he worked through the data of people's preferences he found they fell into three groups: plain, spicy, and chunky. He concluded this latter category represented the preferences of about a third of the population--and there was no sauce on the shelves with chunks of juicy vegetables at that time. Prego went on to release such a product and make a fortune, but the lesson I want to focus on is one observation Malcolm makes in his narrative: no one had mentioned they would like a chunky spaghetti sauce in any prior focus groups. The lesson Malcolm draws from this is that people don't really know what they want until you give it to them.

This conclusion is reinforced in protracted software development projects that follow a rigid waterfall approach. The requirements analyst asks the business users what they want and their answers are often within an implicit and many times unconscious context or menu of what they've already got in an existing system or think would be possible based upon a limited understanding of possible system features. In other words, they say they want a good tasting sauce.

In Agile or more iterative, prototype-rich methodologies, the user would be presented with rough drawings of user interfaces, story boards, and HTML and/or PowerPoint mock-ups, over and over again throughout the very initial stages of the process. In other words, the developers spend a fair amount of time up front cooking up a ton of varieties and keeping the business users taste-testing. Now the possibilities are open and we're getting several quick cycles of real-time, visceral feedback. Now we can get from the 40-50% approval ratings Malcolm mentioned are the usual result of a homogenized solution to the 75%+ delight ratings of people who get what they didn't know they really wanted.

Tom Peters mentions how Ritz Carlton aims to "fulfill the unexpressed wishes of its guests" in a few of his books. The Japanese have a common practice of insisting on finding seven viable solutions to a problem or challenge before they select their approach.

It is incumbent upon those of us in the IT solutions field to translate what is really a collection of abstract ideas in the beginning of a project into tangible value and options in the minds and senses of end users as quickly as we can.

A Lesson in Project Management from Automatic Sprinkler Systems

2007-07-25T21:46:00.000-07:00

I recently moved into a new home that has an automatic sprinkler system. I broke down one day and read the manual (well, most of the manual) to try to understand how to program the thing. After I felt confident I understood the various zones of the yard, how long the water would be on in each zone, and the sequence of which zones were watered in what order and for how long, I stood gazing out my front window at 8:59 PM to admire my handy work and watch the sprinklers in zone four (a portion of my front yard) come on at 9:00 PM. I waited...checked the time on my BlackBerry...9:02...nothing...hmm...9:10 and still nothing...

I went to the garage to check the settings and sure enough it was supposed to start with zone four at 9:00 PM sharp on this day of the week.

It wasn't until I unpacked my atomic wall clock a few days later and decided to mount it next to the sprinkler control box in the garage that I thought to check the internal clock of said control box with the atomic clock. I found the times were not synchronized--not even close. Then I remembered how I'd unplugged the power cord for the control box in order to use that wall socket for another tool while doing yard work. The internal clock lost power during this time and when I plugged it back in again it simply picked up where it left off--but now a good chunk of time off track.

Then I thought about how that's like project management in a way. Let's say you're the PM and you've given a directive for a particular task to a project resource. You feel like you've spent the time to understand the big picture, you've worked through task precedence and resource leveling issues, and now you're going to sit back and watch the project begin to unfold according to plan. But it doesn't. You scratch your head. You go to the resource and they're shocked you think something is wrong. In their mind they are doing exactly what you asked them to do. But you forgot you "unplugged" at some point--you failed to keep in sync for a period of time. The resource begins working precisely at 9:00 PM (by his watch). But in reality, it's 10:17 PM.

Frequent check-ins with team members and status updates/real-time dashboards for stakeholders make sure everyone's watches stay synchronized and we're not all doing the right things at the wrong time or visa versa.

30 Second Book Summary: How to Remember Names and Faces

2007-05-04T07:34:00.000-07:00

We don't forgot people's names--we never really hear and remember them in the first place!

Five Rules When Being Introduced:

1. Be sure to clearly hear their name

2. Try to spell the name

3. Make some comment about the name, when appropriate (e.g., I had a friend in college with that name...)

4. Use their name during the initial conversation

5. Use their name when saying goodbye

Remembering Names

There Are Three Types of Names:

Names that already have meaning (e.g., Carpenter, Rivers, Cook)
Names that sound like something (e.g., Woodruff [think of rough wood])
Names that just seem like a collection of sounds (e.g., Petrocelli, [visualize a pet rolling in jelly] Mangalaro, [visualize yourself mangling an arrow)

Create Standard Visualizations:

Smith = black smith (visualize a hammer or anvil)
Jones = picture yourself owning something (Jones/owns)
Gordon = Garden
Bill = Dollar bill
Carson = Picture a car with a little car (it's son) next to it
...berg = Picture an iceberg
...stein = Picture a beer stein
Mc... = Mack truck
...witz = Brains (for wits)
...auer = Clock (for hour)
...ger = Lion (growling)

Examples:

Macmillan = Picture a bunch of Mack trucks milling around
Capatenakis = Imagine giving the captain a kiss
Zackavich = Visualize putting a witch in a sack (sack a witch)
Carrothers = Think of a car with udders (like a cow)
Jeffries = A chef freezing

Remembering Faces

Make eye contact (not the left chest area looking for a name badge) and look at their face
Select one outstanding feature of the person's face (e.g., an unusually large nose, puffy eyebrows, etc.).
Tie the visualization from above to the outstanding feature (e.g., if Mr. Petrocelli has a large nose, picture your dog rolling in jelly on his nose).

Suppose you meet two Mr. Smith's--one has large ears and one has large lips. You may picture taking your blacksmith hammer out to pound down the ears closer to the man's head for one, and giving the other a fat lip with the same hammer for the other.

Remembering comes down to paying attention; the above tips are just tools to pause, focus, and anchor.

30 Second Book Summary: The Dip

2007-05-03T09:25:00.000-07:00

In the beginning, starting something new is fun. Then it gets hard (what Seth calls "the dip"). Then eventually it gets better. Lots of people quit when they hit the dip. That makes it somewhat rare to find folks who've made it through to the other side. That scarcity creates value. We should "lean into the dip" and go for it when we have a chance at being the best. Otherwise, quit as fast as you can and move on to something where you can be number one because in today's micro-fractured markets, being less than the best is basically worthless. Quit all cul de sac's (dead ends) as well. They sometimes feel like dips but in the end they just waste resources that could be thrown at getting through a promising dip.

And being the best in the world is subjective and defined by the consumer. "The world" to them, can mean who has the best bakery within a three block radius of their home (the distance they are willing to walk to on a Saturday morning).

In Tom Peters' book Design, Seth puts it this way:

Think of the smallest conceivable market and describe a product that overwhelms it with its remarkability. Go from there.

Book Summary: How to Get Your Point Across in 30 Seconds or Less

2007-05-03T06:50:00.000-07:00

Mr. Frank says there are three main elements to any good message:

1. Have one clearly defined objective.
2. Make sure you're talking to the right person who can help you accomplish your objective. Know all you can about them and what they want.
3. Use one clear approach.

He makes several other points that help to reinforce and make the above three elements more effective:

Start your message with a one sentence hook. This is a statement or question (he prefers questions) specifically designed to grab the attention of your audience.

The body of the message should answer the who, what, where, why, when and how questions. Use the following tools to make it more interesting:

Imagery
Clear, simple language
Personalized stories and anecdotes that help demonstrate your point
Emotional appeals

You should end with a strong close where you ask the audience to do something:

Ask them to take action
Ask them for a reaction
Use a "hidden close" if appropriate
A combination of the above.

From Piano Practice to Self Expression

2007-04-27T07:31:00.000-07:00

My 11 year old has turned a corner on the piano. Instead of having to remind him multiple times a day to practice and setting up job charts as reminders with rewards for doing it, he stumbles downstairs first thing in the morning and begins playing before he's even spoken to anyone. He sits down and plays when he gets home from school. He plays a few times throughout the evening. The difference seems to be that he's finally hit a tipping point in his skill level where he can play a handful of songs well from memory and he's beginning to feel the release of self expression through his music (I can't think of many motivators more powerful than self expression).

The next time you notice resistance to some new business processes, instead of reiterating the "why we did this and why it's best for the company" speech, try helping the individuals in question gain more skill at using them. Help them to become more proficient.

Big Waves: Drown or Drop-In?

2007-04-26T08:35:00.001-07:00

What goes through your mind when you look at this picture?

Are you thinking, "How insane must those people be to be out there?" or are you wishing you were one of them so you could drop in on the next one?

What would mean certain death for one looks like fun to another. It's a matter of perspective.

Trained professionals look for the big challenges to test their skills. Small shorebreak would be boring for these surfers.

So what do you think of when you hear of a really large project coming down the pipeline? Are you hoping secretly your boss doesn't tap you as the PM or are you dropping hints you'd love to take that one on?

A Remarkable Shoe Buying Experience?

2007-04-26T07:23:00.000-07:00

The other day I decided to get a bit more serious about my running and felt it was time to get my first pair of real running shoes. To date, I'd just go to the local big box sporting goods store and buy a pair of general purpose name brand shoes and wear them for just about all sports.

I got a recommendation from a colleague who's an avid runner to visit the Falls Road Running Store. I was in for a treat.

I was greeted by what I later found out was a staff made up of decorated and dedicated runners. I was asked to stand, walk, and run on a treadmill barefoot while my advisor carefully knelt down and looked at my gait from all angles. Within minutes, I had an analysis of how my foot made contact with the ground and had three pair of shoes designed to correct a slight defect I have in my step. I then repeated the treadmill test with each pair of shoes--each time under the supervision of the same advisor. Throughout the whole process I'm asking fairly detailed questions about recent articles I'd read on various shoes and learned right away what little homework I'd thought I'd done was a drop in the bucket for what there was to know. I learned a little about running form theory, recent historical trends in essentially running barefoot vs. using specially designed supportive shoes, that when you run your feet swell so you need to buy them one size larger than you would other shoes, etc. As I checked out, I was greeted by the owner who asked about my satisfaction with the transaction and offered some additional training helps and tips.

For the few minutes I was there I felt like I was in the hands of experts and could have been a professional athlete being sized up for a wind tunnel test at Nike HQ or something. Needless to say, I'll not be going back to a big box retailer for my shoes.

Despite being hard to find and literally a hole-in-the-way store, they've transformed shoe buying into a remarkable experience. Can our customers (internal and external) say the same thing about what we do?

The Style Changes Every Day!

2007-04-26T04:42:00.000-07:00

My son is at an age where he's beginning to get interested in hip hop, breakin, and dancing in general. I have all the classic breakin films from when I was growing up in the 80's but was intersted in learning about and seeing some of the newer forms of dancing such as clownin or krumpin, myself, so we rented the movie Rize. I found the documentary inspirational as you see kids opting to form dance crews rather than join gangs, members of a church congregation take in a child whose mother just went to jail, an older brother stepping in to protect his younger brother from getting involved in a local gang, and an ex-drug dealer clean up his life and start a birthday party business where he shows up as "Tommy the Clown" and is basically a hip hop pied piper for inner city youth.

At one point in the film a group of guys were being interviewed about their style of dancing: krumpin. They mentioned how they had begun under Tommy's tutelage but broken off from clownin to form their own "brand" of dancing (I must say my untrained eye couldn't really distinguish between the two), and gave some insight into the energy and frustration they vent through its expression. One young man commented that, "the style changes every day" and went on to elaborate that if someone took even one day off and was essentially disconnected from the crew, everyone would notice it in his style when he/she came back.

With the growing emphasis on value-added, creative, innovative solutions in today's business world, we could learn a thing or two from these young people. It's all about being different, unique, and executing with flair and confidence. It's about going head-to-head with your competition in a public forum and letting go to find self expression. It's about community and heart and doing it to avoid the alternatives. It's about being positive in the midst of adversity. It's knowing that what you did today will not cut it tomorrow and having the self reliance that you'll be able to constantly think up something new.

Maybe Tommy the Clown should expand his business from doing inner city birthday parties to corporate retreats on innovation.

The Final 1%

2007-04-26T04:07:00.000-07:00

My wife and I recently sold our modest town home in Baltimore. We spent about three weeks preparing for the sale by doing all the things we'd wanted to do while we lived here (i.e., painting, putting carpet in the family room downstairs, etc.) as well as by throwing out and donating a ton of stuff we realized we no longer used or needed. It was impressive to see what a big difference these relatively small steps made in the home's appearance and livability. What's interesting is that the sales price was in the low $300K range and it only cost us about $3K to fix the place up.

Now maybe real estate is totally unique and the lessons learned from this sale can't be extrapolated to other environments. But it certainly should give one pause to think that putting in that last one percent of effort and attention to detail could perhaps make the difference between making the sale or not. Or, like in our case, making the sale in one day for a bit more than list price.

I think I'll take a look at my next project deliverable a bit differently now and go over it carefully one more time before turning it in to see if there's anything I can throw out or get rid of or "paint". Incidentally, I've got to thank a recent 37Signals blog post for pointing me to a recent Semeiotica blog post re: the "smallest effective difference" which addresses the above phenomenon from the perspective of molecular biology and psychology.

Anyway, when we were done with the above improvement my wife and I looked at each other and asked why we hadn't done it months before! I probably also need to take a look at other areas of my life where I might be able to make a very small investment in order to enjoy an improved quality of life.

Are you a Time Teller or a Clock Builder?

2007-04-25T18:43:00.000-07:00

I was a boy scout as a kid (and yes I got my Eagle) and loved to camp and learn about outdoor and survival skills. I remember, once, hearing about how some explorers could tell time by looking at the position of the Sun. I used to try doing this while I was out mowing yards (which seemed to be pretty much all the time) and I was always way off.

In the book Built to Last the authors propose that it really would be impressive if someone could look up in the sky to gauge the position of the sun and tell you what time it is. It would be even more impressive if they could do it consistently and with great accuracy. The person may even build a traveling show around it where they perform this feat for audiences all around the globe. But eventually, the "time teller" is going to retire or pass away and the traveling show will take its tent down for the last time and all the support cast will be out of a job.

The authors continue by suggesting an approach with a longer-term view: build a company that builds clocks.

Now, to be fair, I'd hate to see Andrea Bocelli stop all public performances and set up a school for aspiring tenors. This metaphor has some obvious limitations. But it's useful for us to take a look at our own work and honestly see if we're trying to hoard the knowledge, the power, remain the one and only subject matter expert, or if we're sharing, documenting, and collaborating.

The authors point out that the first approach is self-centered while the latter is focused upon the customer/employee/enterprise and their collective well-being.

Quick test to compare brands

2007-04-25T18:17:00.000-07:00

Two quick thoughts as I'm reading through the book Built to Last by James C. Collins and Jerry I. Porras:

First, the authors ask the reader what comes to mind when you hear "Disney." For me it was Walt Disney, Mickey Mouse, Walt Disney World, and for some reason Michael Eisner. Then the authors ask the reader to do the same thing for Columbia.

Hmm...I've got nothing.

I don't think I've run across a better, quick test to determine the power of one's brand. This should give us all pause as we think about what image or associations our past and present supervisors, colleagues, vendors, etc. have when they hear our name. What brand image do we have? Is it, "Oh he's probably the most organized guy I've ever worked with..." or more like, "ummm...is he the one that was in purchasing a while back?"

If you follow Tom Peters (and I think we all should), we should be just as concerned about building a brand in our own little world as Disney was and is about there's.

Another test the authors propose is how woven into the fabric of your culture are you? In other words, it's hard to imagine popular culture without a Disney. It's pretty easy for me to imagine life without Columbia. How hard is it to imagine your field, your industry without you?

Isolate and Duplicate

2007-04-25T13:41:00.000-07:00

A large part of troubleshooting can be summarized by two words: isolate and duplicate.

Can we make it do whatever it did the last time when it didn't work right--again? And again? (duplicate.)

And under what conditions? What about when we're not doing the "happy path" or normal use case and are on this particular variance? In other words, does your engine light come on all the time or just when you're at a stop light? Or even better, when you're at a stop light in 95 degree heat, etc. (isolate.)

We could all save ourselves and the growing number of technical support staff we must appeal to on a regular basis to get through our day-to-day lives if we try to do these two things before we make our appeal.

Do I need all my keys?

2007-04-25T11:14:00.000-07:00

I'm just about to head out for lunch and went to grab my key chain. I've got this really cool key chain from Brookstone that has quick release rings where I can pop off a given key ring very quickly (but I hardly ever use that feature). I thought about how I always take all my keys with me instead of just the one I know I need for the job at hand (e.g., I don't need the key to my storage garage to go to lunch--just my car key). Then I thought about why. For me, it comes down to two reasons:

You never know when you might need the others
(This one is by far the biggest reason for me) I want to keep them all in one place so I don't lose them.

This got me thinking about the differences between the FranklinCovey and GTD time management systems. FranklinCovey was about bringing your whole planner or key chain with you everywhere whereas it seems like the GTD approach is kind of like taking the key along that you need for right now (knowing, of course, that you'll have whatever key you need when you need it from your trusted system).

Imagine if your car door, house, office, PC, etc. were all biometric and you got into what you needed to get into just by being there--without having to carry a key chain for each eventuality (kind of like the world depicted in Minority Report). Now imagine sitting down to your work or home PC and all the tasks you need to do at that particular PC emerge (and only those tasks). Your phone tells you the calls you need to make. You can pick up a shopping list from a kiosk at the front of your local grocer that's connected to the list you keep on your refrigerator when you stop in to get some milk.

Are you comfortable with your system being distributed or do you need to have it on you?

Mopping the electrical room

2007-04-25T09:02:00.000-07:00

On my way back from the water fountain down the hall in my office I noticed a maintenance man finishing up his mopping of what appeared to be an immaculate floor in the room that contains our electrical or telecom stuff (I'm frankly not sure exactly what's in there but I saw a lot of pipes and wires from my glimpse).

It made me think about what it means about a company that will ensure that even its rooms that very few ever see or use are spotless. Then it made me think about my garage or basement and how I'd kind of let that go because it wasn't really visible when guests come over. Then I thought that my email inbox could use a little Spring cleaning, and I may have some mail stuck in a drawer at home...

I suppose I've justified not bringing some things up to par with others from an opportunity cost stand point. But maybe I should re-think that if a large, multi-national company can take the time to mop a utility closet.

The mailbox was right there!

2007-04-25T08:49:00.000-07:00

I live in a town home in Baltimore where the mail is delivered to your door but not picked up--you have to drop off your mail in one of the few official mail boxes scattered around the neighborhood.

For almost a year, now, I've been driving to the local post office (about two miles away from my office building) during lunch, as needed, to drop off my mail. I just noticed, today, on my way back from the lunchroom (I work in building three on a corporate campus where building four contains the lunchroom) a woman pulling her car up to the front entryway and dropping off her mail in the official USPS mail box I'd never noticed before.

How many time savers like this are there right in front of our eyes that we just don't see?

And isn't it true that sometimes we have to see someone else doing something before we notice it and determine it will have value for ourselves?

Apple: How to improve audiobooks on iPods

2007-04-20T06:22:00.000-07:00

I've got a few beefs with how the iPod handles audiobooks:

I want to be able to bookmark certain passages as I go through the book. I may be listening in the car and hear a great quote I'd like to go back to when I get home. I'd like to be able to reach over, press a button, and have that marked so I can jump back to it later.
I want to be able to navigate through the book more easily. For instance, I'm re-reading Jack: Straight from the Gut with a particular interest in picking up any tidbits re: GE's Six Sigma initiative. I finally reach it at like seven hours into the book. I'd love to have a Table of Contents screen I could get to by pressing the center button that would allow me to scroll through chapters and jump right to a particular section--it would be much more useful than being able to push the center button to see a slightly larger picture of the book cover!
I want sections to be meaningful. By pressing the forward or back buttons I can jump between sections of a book. Instead of these sections being equally divided chunks (e.g., a five hour book may have five one hour sections) the section markers should be at the beginning of each chapter. For instance, even if I couldn't get to a table of contents screen as suggested above, I still should be able to press the forward button enough times to jump right to the beginning of the Six Sigma chapter.
I want to know where I'm at in the book. Some podcasts are enhanced--meaning they incorporate some additional tags and/or images in the input file that translates into additional text or images appearing on screen as the program progresses. It allows the podcast to be almost like a slide show instead of just an audio program. I'd love to see some kind of chapter name either float over the screen like the letters do when you're scrolling quickly through a list of artists in your music library or to have it appear on screen in a way similar to how enhanced podcasts display section headings.

I realize some of what I outline are enhancements that may not have surfaced until we had working audio book in our hands. However, some of this is a prime example of how the provider did what was easiest for them and not want was truly value-adding for the end consumer.

For example, I'm sure someone probably suggested sections markers in a planning or design meeting. A developer probably thought about it and said he or she could create an algorithm that would take the audio length, determine how many sections to create based upon certain length parameters, and then equally divide it. It's automated and done. He/she then got to mark off the feature as delivered on the project plan and marketing got to put "comes with section markers" on the marketing material. But it's not useful. It's not want I want.

It would take time to work with digital audio suppliers to get them to incorporate chapter markers in their audio stream that could then be incorporated into the internal design specs, or to create the abstraction of chapter markers in the digital audio provider industry, or to simply have an intern sit and listen to each book and write down the time stamp of each chapter.

Lean and Agile teaches to start from the perspective of the customer and find out what they want and consider valuable. Then you work from there to provide that and only that--really well. Everything else (like being able to see a picture of the book cover) is considered wasted time, effort, expense, and functionality (muda in Lean terms) from the consumer's perspective.

Two Quick Tips

2007-03-26T08:30:00.000-07:00

I'm finding it much easier to work with "Page Breaks" in Word vs. "Section breaks > Next page." The latter seem to go away when I update my Table of Contents or Index references and/or turn on the paragraph marker viewer (I'm not exactly sure which). However, the Page Break seems solid.

Also, Highrise has yet to get the printing right. I tried to print a contact I knew I had to call and the "Tasks" section shows bullets but no text.

Highrise and GTD

2007-03-26T06:50:00.000-07:00

Just a quick post to reinforce a great feature of Highrise--the new light weight CRM system from 37Signals. If you're into David Allen's Getting Things Done (GTD) approach to time and life management and are familiar with how he suggests you categorize your tasks by context, you'll love the Tasks feature in Highrise.

First off, you get a drop box of intuitive time frames to choose from that make it super quick to determine the "When it's due" part of the task. Then you get a second drop box of commonly used categories and the ability to create your own (I've added "After Work" and "During Lunch" among others in my list). These categories or context cues are then placed in small black boxes in front of each task making it easy to scan very quickly.

Six Sigma Net Promoter Metric and Tom Peters TGR/TGW

2007-03-23T06:47:00.000-07:00

I was listening to episode six of the Six Sigma Pointers podcast by Thomas Pyzdek, this morning, (which I highly recommend, btw) and he was talking about the Net Promoter metric. Essentially, you ask a customer if they would recommend your product or service to a friend or colleague--asking them to respond on a scale from zero to 10. If the customer marks a nine or 10 they are considered "promoters." If they mark a seven or eight they are considered neutral. And if they mark a six or less they are considered "detractors." The metric is derived by subtracting the detractors from the promoters.

The podcast elaborates on how closely this metric correlates with business performance and on how many of the Fortune 500 have adopted it. But what I found most interesting was when Mr. Pyzdek mentioned how one goes about improving this metric. Obviously from a pure math perspective one can either increase the number of promoters or decrease the number of detractors. But each group seems to respond to a different driver. Detractors seem to respond to just getting the basics right and not doing things wrong. Promoters tend to respond to providing a "Wow!" level of service and doing things right.

I think Tom Peters has the clearest description of this distinction in chapter eight (Beyond TQM Toward Wow!) of his book The Tom Peters Seminar. He gives some great examples and insights which I won't attempt to recite here (it's really worth picking up the book!) but his thesis is basically that we need both sides of the equation and when Americans began really looking at quality as a competitive driver we were almost entirely focused on eliminating the "things gone wrong" (TGW) from our systems and processes. And that's important. He makes the point you shouldn't have crumbs on the floor and missing towels when you walk into the hotel room. But that's not enough. We also need to look at "things gone right" (TGR) and find ways to "delight and provide even the unexpressed needs of the customer" (e.g., such as Tom walking into a hotel room where he would be giving a speech the next morning to find a projector and screen set with cables carefully taped down so he could practice his presentation.)

Dr. Goldratt mentions a similar paradigm in Beyond the Goal when he says there are really only two things to worry about:

Things that shouldn't have happened but did; and
Things that should have happened but did not.

It's simple, but hard to pull off. And it becomes even harder when you consider that Tom will probably expect a projector the next time he stays at that hotel chain for a speaking engagement. So now today's "Wow!" is tomorrow's expectation.

Three Days: Product Overhaul or Just a Meeting?

2007-03-22T09:32:00.000-07:00

I've been posting about the new CRM solution from 37Signals called Highrise and complained how the "Cases" feature was only available to premium accounts. Apparently a lot of others didn't like it either. So today, three days after launch, Signals sends out an email informing everyone they're giving cases to everyone, dramatically increased storage limits, even created a new user category and corresponding pricing structure. Their ability to take the pulse of the community and respond quickly and iterate is impressive. Imagine a "big" company doing that...naw, I can't conjure that up either. I'm willing to bet in most companies it would take three days just to find an open slot on everyone's calendar to have a meeting about if we should consider modifying the product.

It reminds me of Tom Peters' example of Paul Paliska's Professional Parking Service, Inc. in The Tom Peters Seminar (page 139). Essentially, Tom showed up to speak at a luncheon at a very busy Orange County Marriott and despite all the traffic and people he noticed everyone was parked in very short order. He complimented Marriott on it during his speech only to learn afterwards that Marriott hadn't parked the cars--Paul's subcontracted parking service had. Tom mused that since Paul and his crew were so focused on and good at event parking they probably got better insurance rates than "giant" Marriott. So he posed the question, "Who's really the big fish in this picture?"

Seth's saying about the same things these days. And I expect we'll get more of that with his new book The Dip coming out in May. Excellence comes from focus. The question is how big can one get before you're no longer nimble? Maybe when you can't pass the rework and relaunch your whole product in 36 hours test?

Follow-up on Highrise: Emailing Notes--Where Have You Been All My Life?

2007-03-21T10:33:00.000-07:00

Highrise has this feature where every account is given a unique "drop box" email address. Simply include this address in the Cc or Bcc fields and the email text is sent to the appropriate contact as a new note. It then shows up as a mail icon in the contact's overview.

I mentioned in yesterday's post about Highrise that I'd had some exposure to evaluating enterprise CRM systems. When I was investigating various options and interviewed a number of existing users and their managers about the adoption rate of whatever system they had installed, one issue kept coming up over and over again: integration with Outlook.

"My people just live inside of Outlook. They already have to have one or two other windows up for silo systems that allow them to view or perform transactions, when we gave them another CRM window--they just didn't use it."

Even if you try to use Outlook Contacts to keep notes on and set flags for every significant contact you have with a person, it was always double entry: send the email, log that you sent it in their contact notes pane. Even if you use the MS CRM product you still have to toggle the "save this email" off and on. So once again, 37Signals has embraced constraints and found a simple solution where others wrap lots and lots of features and code around it. And I haven't even tried emailing tasks yet...

Now as a caveat I will say this feature is not "perfect." On my first attempt it missed the body of the email and only included text from my auto signature down. After consulting the Help screens I realized the feature was optimized for Plain Text emails (and I insist on using HTML). I switched the format to Plain Text, forwarded it to my drop box, and that did work perfectly.

37Signals Launches Highrise, I experience "just right"

2007-03-20T13:11:00.000-07:00

It's here! We can finally give Highrise a spin. After doing a fair amount of analysis on commercial CRM packages for past employers I was really anxious to see how 37Signals would approach this. I wasn't disappointed (except for the price [more on that in a second]).

I logged in and started pulling business and 3x5 cards out of various pockets where I'd been keeping notes and reminders about my upcoming move and had it all into Highrise in about five minutes. Then I looked around a bit and experienced something I rarely get to experience with software: I was done. There were no more pull-downs to explore, no features I'd yet to uncover, no stubborn formatting hacks I had to research on Google to learn how to work around, I came in, did precisely what I needed to do, and that was all there was to do. I was done. Beautiful.

Now, I really wish I didn't have to shell out fifty bucks a months to get access to Cases. But I've run the budgets on other systems and know this is literally pennies compared to most CRM systems. It's just that I'm using it to keep track of our family's move so it's not like I had to compare this with installing a Siebel system. Seems like they should want individuals to use all the functionality so they'll want it at work.

Also, I wish I had the same formatting options in notes that I have in Basecamp.

And finally, I'm going to be really interested to see if Highrise was necessary or if the new features could have been rolled into Basecamp as optional settings.

But overall, good job guys!

Using Basecamp for Requirements Analysis

2007-03-15T09:34:00.000-07:00

I'm working on a project now where we're moving from System A to System B and 17 groups within the company will be affected. We naturally set up meetings with each group to explain the motivation for the changes, outline the proposed architecture, and more importantly analyze their current processes and requirements so we can foresee their needs in the new environment and the impact the intended system would have on their workflow and systems. Usually at each meeting we'd have representatives from the stakeholder as well as from the sponsoring business unit who are responsible for the new system--all taking notes.

I wanted the requirements to reflect all of our notes so I set up a Basecamp site for the project and created a Writeboard for each of the 17 groups. I then posted my notes as Version One of the Writeboard and invited the members of the business unit who attended to review/edit them by a deadline (which I posted as a Milestone). This worked remarkably well. Some went in and edited the text while others just added comments at the bottom, but it saved us from having 17 Word files with track changes turned on bouncing around several people's inboxes.

When the deadline came, I simply exported each Writeboard to a network drive and summarized the notes into a requirements document (which I posted in the Files section).

I used this same approach with the project charter.

Email Inbox Hack

2007-03-14T07:41:00.000-07:00

I've found the GTD principle of keeping your email inbox clean does help me focus on the task at hand. I'm finding that when I have a pile of emails in my view I have the tendency to always be in what David calls the "emergency scan" mode or surfing back and forth over this list instead of just buckling down and getting one thing done.

I always try to use the two minute and touch it once rules but despite my best efforts, after a few days of cleaning my inbox down to empty I've got 15-20 just sitting there again. Usually I've looked at them and know what project they pertain to but they would have taken longer than two minutes to complete and so they sit.

What I've been doing lately is to set up a "1.0 Need to File" folder under each project folder. I then stick emails from my inbox into the appropriate need to file subfolder. I know when I block off time to work on Project A one of the Next Actions is to tackle that folder.

Personal Productivity, Time Management, Effectiveness, Email Hack, GTD, Getting Things Done

Free Conference Calls

2007-02-15T07:34:00.000-08:00

Cool service I just found where you get a temporary (but renewable) phone number where up to 96 people can call into at once--for free.

Cool Online Collaboration Tool for Graphics

2007-02-06T12:55:00.000-08:00

This looks like a really promising site dedicated what appears to be real-time, online collaboration around graphic files. Love the concept and the approach.

Personal Productivity, Time Management, Organization, Effectiveness, GTD, Getting Things Done, ConceptShare, Online Collaboration

Online Mind Mapping Tool

2007-01-29T13:44:00.000-08:00

Mind mapping is super valuable tool for brainstorming or just capturing ideas and connections between concepts in an organic, free-flowing manner. I use a few client applications (one on my PC at work and a different one on my Mac at home) but I've been looking for a web-based solution. I've just come across bubbl.us and although it's still a bit clumsy in parts it's simple and shows promise.

Personal Productivity, Time Management, Effectiveness, Scrum, Agile, GTD, Getting Things Done, Mind Mapping

What's the Big Deal?

2006-10-31T21:47:00.000-08:00

I tried to take a fresh look at this and other similar blogs that I follow to see what someone without an organization/productivity otaku must think about them. I mean, what's the big deal with all the little tips and hacks and ways to shave three minutes here and seven minutes there?

To answer that I'd like to share a passage from the beginning of a book I'm reading (via DailyLit.com) entitled How to Live on Twenty-Four Hours a Day by Arnold Bennett. He's talking about the discipline of getting up earlier:

Rise an hour, an hour and a half, or even two hours earlier; and--if you must--retire earlier when you can. In the matter of exceeding programmes, you will accomplish as much in one morning hour as in two evening hours. "But," you say, "I couldn't begin without some food, and servants." Surely, my dear sir, in an age when an excellent spirit-lamp (including a saucepan) can be bought for less than a shilling, you are not going to allow your highest welfare to depend upon the precarious immediate co-operation of a fellow creature! Instruct the fellow creature, whoever she may be, at night. Tell her to put a tray in a suitable position over night. On that tray two biscuits, a cup and saucer, a box of matches and a spirit-lamp; on the lamp, the saucepan; on the saucepan, the lid-- but turned the wrong way up; on the reversed lid, the small teapot, containing a minute quantity of tea leaves. You will then have to strike a match--that is all.

In three minutes the water boils, and you pour it into the teapot (which is already warm). In three more minutes the tea is infused. You can begin your day while drinking it. These details may seem trivial to the foolish, but to the thoughtful they will not seem trivial. The proper, wise balancing of one's whole life may depend upon the feasibility of a cup of tea at an unusual hour.

It's the last line here that contains the profundity. Sometimes the difference between getting your exercise in for the day or not boils down to if you left your running shoes in front of the bathroom door so you'd trip on them when you woke up in the morning. The difference between getting the new client account or not may come down to remembering some detail about the client relationship that was on the index card you had with you to read in the waiting room before the meeting.

To paraphrase a quote from Dr. Covey's 7 Habits book,

"I see so many big results coming from such little things I'm persuaded there are no little things."

Or to put it another (albeit a bit more obscure) way, in many Eastern traditions they believe the hidden path to enlightenment is found through the mundane.

If you're so overwhelmed that you can't relate to the above then read what David Allen and Covey have to say to learn how to block and tackle. But after that, the big "aha's" and breakthroughs are hard to come by and our hunger for more must be satisfied with a crumb here and there. But that's okay because often it's the strategically placed straw that breaks the camel's back or can make the difference to put us over the edge or to reach the tipping point.

Personal Productivity, Time Management, Organization, Effectiveness, GTD, Getting Things Done

User Story Cards and Traceability

2006-10-26T20:56:00.000-07:00

In Agile practice it's customary to use user story or task cards as a quick and easy organization tool. On the face of said cards it's also customary to include a concise description of the story or task, some kind of estimate of how long it will take to complete, and perhaps some initials of who is responsible.

I keep a stack of blank cards and a Sharpie at my desk so that if I'm talking to the client or a member of the project team and a new story/feature/enhancement/task/whatever begins to surface I grab a card and start writing. I fill out all of the above, but I also like to flip the card over and jot down the current date and time as well as the person I'm talking to. That way I have traceability for each requirement.

Incidentally, I'm hesitant to add any "required fields" to cards as folks tend to get carried way (as in this example) and over time what was supposed to be a light weight, easy system takes on so much complexity and beuracracy and card police that it misses the point. Mike Cohn put it well when he said (and I'm paraphrasing) that story cards are not full blown use cases--they're reminders to have a conversation with the needed subject matter experts on a given topic.

Personal Productivity, Time Management, Organization, Effectiveness, GTD, Getting Things Done, Agile, Scrum, User Stories, Business Analysis

Quick Lifehack for Dry Cleaning

2006-10-24T21:41:00.000-07:00

Keep a pack of sticker dots next to where you collect your clothes to take to the dry cleaners. The next time you get a spot of spaghetti sauce on your tie or your toddler son comes up to give you a hug and smears mashed potatoes on your suit pants place a sticker dot on the spot before tossing into the pile. When you get to the dry cleaners you'll be able to quickly tell them which clothes you've brought in for standard cleaning and which need special attention (and where).

Personal Productivity, Life Hacks

Reduce Junk Mail and Plant Some Trees

2006-10-23T21:12:00.000-07:00

I first got wind of this cool service from a recent post on The Trend Junkie blog. I've posted before about effective ways to deal with the continuous river of junk mail that shows up in our mailboxes. This service is designed to eliminate much of it and plant trees in the process--all for a dime a day. I've just signed up and will post in the future on if I can tell a noticeable difference or not.

I've noticed on some other blogs questions re: if it's worth paying anything to eliminate some junk mail from our lives. Let's say you spend three minutes a day, six days a week, 50 weeks a year on junk mail. That adds up to 15 hours a year! Any time spent handling junk mail is a waste so if I could even reduce this to 14 hours annually it's certainly worth $36.

Personal Productivity, Time Management, Organization, Effectiveness, GTD, Getting Things Done, greendimes

Promising Online/Offline Organizer

2006-10-23T07:00:00.000-07:00

I'm looking forward to taking a test drive with this tool; if it lives up to the the preview movie it looks like the AJAX features alone will put it in a class of its own (at least until someone else catches up [which in Internet time is probably less than a week after launch]).

It also looks like it may put PocketMod (see prior post) out of business with its "PaperSync" feature.

Personal Productivity, Time Management, Organization, Effectiveness, GTD, Getting Things Done, Scrybe

Promising online collaboration tool

2006-10-20T07:57:00.000-07:00

Just heard about this tool from the Agile Toolkit Podcast and tried it out as soon as I got to my desk. The idea is that there are times when we just can't get everyone on the project/Agile team together in the same room to sort through, add, and edit a pile of index cards with user stories or brainstorming ideas on them. Sometimes, team members are remote. This tool is designed to create a virtual space where everyone can deal with the same set of cards.

The interface is super simple and well done and it was quick to set up. But I couldn't save my cards from session to session and it seems the security permissions of my workplace prevented any collaboration with colleagues...which was obvioulsy the point of the whole exercise.

The developers readily acknowledge this is in early beta testing so I'd give it a bit more time to mature before using it as a serious tool but it's promising in that it's the best tool I've seen thus far to do what it's designed to do.

Personal Productivity, Time Management, Organization, Effectiveness, Agile, Scrum

Meeting Tip

2006-10-17T23:15:00.000-07:00

I just got back from a meeting where one of the key participants was late and I didn't have his number memorized or with me. Duh! So, today's tip is to make gathering the phone numbers of the meeting participants and placing them with your agenda and meeting materials part of your regular meeting preparation so that if you arrive on time and others don't, you can make a call to get things going without having to get back to your desk.

Personal Productivity, Time Management, Organization, Effectiveness, Meetings

This Guy Gives New Meaning to "Moving the Fulcrum"

2006-10-17T07:08:00.000-07:00

If you've ever wondered about how some of the large engineering feats of ancient times might have been accomplished check out this YouTube clip on "The Man That Can Move Anything."

Basecamp To-Do Hack

2006-10-16T23:04:00.000-07:00

Ever have a list of To-Do items in Basecamp that have varying priorities? At times I've used naming conventions (e.g., "a_Task 1, b_Task 2") or simply placed an "[A], [B], or [C]" in front of each item and both options work fine when that's the only dimension you need to display.

But I have a case right now where I'm already distinguishing whether a list of requirements are more format or appearance-related (which I mark with an "[A]") or if they are what I like to call "plumbing"-related meaning they deal with getting data from Point A to Point B (which I mark with a "[B]").

So now I want to designate two dimensions for each To-Do item: priority, and type (and obviously the name of who the To-Do item is assigned to is a third dimension).

I simply created a To-Do item that I called "***TOP PRIORITY TASKS***" and another called "***MEDIUM PRIORITY TASKS***, etc." and assigned each to "Anyone" so no name appears in front of each item. As the priorities change on a given item I simply go into the "Reorder" function and move the tasks to fall under the appropriate heading.

Basecamp, Productivity Hacks, Personal Productivity, Time Management, Organization, Effectiveness, GTD, Getting Things Done

Two Riffs on using Basecamp for GTD

2006-10-13T22:12:00.000-07:00

Two useful posts on using Basecamp for GTD.

1. LifeDev's post
2. Patrickrhone's site

Personal Productivity, Personal Productivity Tools, Time Management, Organization, Effectiveness, GTD, Getting Things Done

50 Minute Goals

2006-10-13T21:16:00.000-07:00

I love this blog post I found today. I'ts similar to my earlier post about 100 Day plans. For some reason, having a finite amount of time to get something done often makes it more approachable. I guess we feel like we can handle a sprint but not a marathon.

Personal Productivity, Time Management, Effectiveness, GTD, Getting Things Done

Physical Burndown Chart

2006-10-13T07:27:00.000-07:00

One of the many commonly-used tools in Scrum is a burndown chart. This is basically a graph or table that has the tasks to accomplish down the left side of the page and a column for each day going from left to right across the page with the far-right column being the last day of the project, the milestone, the deadline. As each day goes by the idea is to shade in or denote the expired time along with accomplished tasks in some visual manner. This provides a clear, visual way to quickly determine the progress and remaining time on a project.

I've got a big deadline coming up toward the beginning of next month so I just placed a Post-it flag protruding vertically from the file folder (in my tickler file system) of the day it's due. As I go into my filing system each day I'm visually reminded of how far away I am from the deadline.

Personal Productivity, Scrum, Agile, GTD, Getting Things Done

Inbox Plaque

2006-10-13T06:55:00.000-07:00

I got my teeth cleaned yesterday. I know this is weird, but as I was enthusiastically and carefully brushing the front and back of every single tooth before bed last night I was thinking about plaque. I had just spent 30 minutes or so going through my inbox cleaning up old emails and I started thinking about the parallels.

When I reclined in the dental chair and opened my mouth it took my dentist all of about 75 seconds of probing around to tell me very accurate details about my private, home dental habits. You can brush as vigorously as you want right before the visit but the plaque doesn't lie when you've got a trained eye (I should probably trademark that phrase).

I don't pretend to be as expert in this area as my dentist is in his, but I can sense a great deal about a person's private, personal productivity habits by looking at her/his desk, files, and inbox. I realize and have posted about the fact that everyone has his/her own style so I'm not saying everyone's desk should look exactly the same. But what's the difference between not brushing and flossing properly every day and not keeping up on your mail or paperwork? In the first case, plaque builds up on your teeth and begins to erode your dental health. In the latter, email, IM's, voice mail, and paperwork (a.k.a. "plaque") builds up in our work life and begins to invade our creative, proactive space and becomes a drag on our effectiveness.

Personal Productivity, Time Management, GTD, Getting Things Done

Quote from Benjamin Franklin

2006-10-13T06:33:00.000-07:00

When speaking about his dilemma of being on a strict vegetarian diet and smelling freshly cooked cod (and eventually eating and enjoying the fish):

So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do.

This reminds me of the marketing axiom that people want a logical reason to justify their emotional decisions.

Quotes, Benjamin Franklin

Using Three Ring Binders

2006-10-12T22:35:00.000-07:00

I've got 18 three ring binders on my shelf right now at work and several more at home. Office colleagues sometimes ask me about why I'm always carrying a binder into the meeting instead of the proverbial legal pad and when I use a binder versus a file.

If I were to answer in reverse order I'd say whenever I decide in my workflow that I need to save a piece of paper I almost always start out by putting it into an alphabetized file. But as soon as I start to get paperwork around a project or a theme that has more than one category I reach for a binder with tabs.

I've found that if a project or reference area needs two categories it will probably need more soon so I keep several blank tabs or binder dividers at my desk (I prefer the Avery Clear Label Index Maker Presentation Dividers designed for laser printers). I also keep a shortcut to the Avery template Word document on my desktop so I can quickly go into the file, type up the new labels, and then print and apply them in a few minutes.

I find that flipping through large files with several pieces of paper that fall into multiple categories is not the most elegent way to respond to a question. However, when you are consistently able to turn right to the right piece of paper at the right time in a meeting or when someone stops by your desk your credibility goes up.

Incidentally, the GTD idea of keeping a small labeler at your desk for files also applies to binders. It just makes things look more organized when the spine of every binder has a uniform label.

Personal Productivity, Personal Productivity Tools, Time Management, Effectiveness, GTD, Getting Things Done

The Delete Mindset

2006-10-12T07:26:00.000-07:00

Ever notice when you're moving from one house to another and you're up to your elbows in cardboard boxes and packing peanuts that your inclination to throw things away or put aside for a trip to the Salvation Army drop off goes up? The cadence of the mantra, "When in doubt throw it out" starts to increase as one gets closer and closer to the actual move date and the reality of how many little things still need to be packed sinks in.

Contrast this to when you've been in your home for three or four years. Something new shows up and we don't think to throw something old out. We add our new item to the pile.

I find the same dynamic at work with a clean inbox. When I've worked to reduce my email inbox to zero emails I'm much more inclined to delete messages in order to keep it clean. If I've let it get out of hand and I've got 200 or so sitting in there I tend to let the new emails sit thinking, "What's the point? One email won't make a difference."

Sometimes I think the most productive time spent is investing in clearing out the inbox, the garage, the basement. It may not seem like it rises to the level of importance of other things at the time but the ripple effect of this invested time very often does.

Personal Productivity, Time Management, Effectiveness, GTD, Getting Things Done

PocketMod: An ingenious, free, disposable planner

2006-10-11T08:00:00.000-07:00

Just ran into super-cool little web app that allows you to easily create a customized eight-page mini planner from one piece of paper. The version I used was 0.4 beta and still needs to work on getting the spacing of each page exact but it's such a cool idea and riff on the hipster I wanted to post about it.

Personal Productivity, Personal Productivity Tools, Time Management, Effectiveness, GTD, Getting Things Done

Control and Perspective

2006-10-11T07:11:00.000-07:00

I "attended" a WebEx seminar yesterday where David Allen presented some basics of the GTD system but focused more attention on the role that mind maps have in his overall process. I found one of his opening remarks simple and yet powerful: his system has a two-fold mission--to gain control and perspective.

Most of the time we focus upon the control aspect of our personal organization system. In fact, in my mind this is one of the key differences between GTD and the FranklinCovey approach. GTD realizes until you gain some modicum of control over the hundreds of tasks, projects, committments, pieces of paper, etc. that we all have to deal with on a minute-by-minute basis we've really got no space to deal with what David calls the "Horizons of Focus" or the bigger picture questions of meaning and mission. So he advocates starting in the trenches and working your way into a place of "mind like water" where you can deal with the more profound aspects of our existence in an empowered frame of mind.

I found the FranklinCovey approach took the opposite stance and asked participants to start the process by discerning and documenting one's mission and governing values and then extrapolating from them key long-term goals that eventually make their way into the day-to-day task lists of the system.

I believe the difference is significant.

When I clean my actual and email inboxes to nothing it is then I'm free to take a step back and get into what Covey might call the Quadrant II arena where I can suggest proactive ways to improve a project or a key relationship. When there's 150 emails staring at me I'm not too concerned with improving a working system. I'm more concerned about fixing what's broken (the urgent).

I spent some time volunteering to help the unemployed in my local church congregation become gainfully employed. I noticed something similar: people don't have much of an attention span for discussions on spiritual growth when they're not sure how they will feed their family tomorrow. We often must deal with the mundane before we can reach the sublime. Control allows us to gain perspective.

Personal Productivity, Time Management, Effectiveness, Franklin Covey, GTD, Getting Things Done

Open Source Time Management Wins

2006-10-11T06:38:00.000-07:00

It occurred to me today as I was browsing through a website devoted to collecting digital and analog GTD tools that Getting Things Done has taken on a life of its own. There are now so many interpretations of GTD that I wouldn't be surprised if David Allen or his consultants don't scratch their collective heads at times as they encounter these tools and blogs and attributions to things they suppossedly said but didn't.

The creativity, development time, and talent that's been devoted to what can now probably be called a movement is staggering and probably couldn't be bought--it had to be given.

I believe this is fundamentally due to an explicit "planner agnostic" approach that was about a philosophy and not selling pre-printed forms.

Contrast this business model with that of FranklinCovey. Back in their hay day when their only real competition was DayTimer it seemed they couldn't be stopped. Visit the corporate headquarters in Salt Lake City and the probably now abandoned Covey Leadership facility in Provo/Orem and you'll see evidence of the confidence of the firms (and eventually firm) back then.

It's instructive to note that both Franklin and Covey entered the market with its proprietary philosophy and corresponding training programs as its core unique selling proposition (USP) and the planner was a steady, residual profit center (contrast the original light green Franklin pages with DayTimer's to see that the USP was not in the forms). It seems, however, that over time the profit margin of selling $35-50 refill packs of paper may have overshadowed the difficult-to-come-by-seminar seat and the firm became a paper, purses, and binders company with a small, struggling training component. Not to mention that our work environment became fractured with some data being kept in digital tools, other types of data on the web, still other data in paper, etc. and the philosophy didn't keep pace; it still centered around keeping everything in the planner.

The "open source" version of time management (a term David Allen dislikes [he prefers "self management"]) represented by GTD has the traction, passion, and buzz behind it right now. If I were FranklinCovey I'd be looking to either create some kind of partnership with DavidCo or open up my shop in some way to the masses.

Personal Productivity, Time Management, Effectiveness, GTD, Getting Things Done, Franklin Covey

Next Action: Overcome Procrastination

2006-10-10T07:03:00.000-07:00

At times I find myself putting off non-urgent, large projects. One of the main causes is that I don't have a bite-sized first step to take so I keep circling the wagons trying to find a way in. Over time, I've found a great way to start working on an intimidating project is simply to tell myself I'm going to organize what I've got.

This usually means getting out all the paper I've collected on the topic, forms I need to fill in, reading materials, etc. I then sort through it to find what needs action and what is purely reference. Invariably, the mountain I was facing a few minutes before is now reduced to three or four surmountable foothills. I then feel like I've circumscribed the problem and sometimes stop there for the day. However, in other cases little two-minute jobs have jumped out at me while I was sorting through papers and I've handled them as I go.

Within a relatively short time I find the project is not as impossible as I was making it out to be and I'm much more likely to jump into it the next time it's appropriate.

Personal Productivity, Time Management, Effectiveness, GTD, Getting Things Done

Climb for Hope

2006-10-06T23:48:00.000-07:00

I wanted to take my hat off to a colleague and his team of adventurers who are organizing the Climb for Hope--climbing Mt. Cotopaxi in Ecuador (the world's highest active volcano) to raise money for breast cancer research. Jon's blog will track their progress and promises to be a great and inspirational read.

Amazing Drawing Interface

2006-10-05T07:08:00.000-07:00

If you're into diagramming at all you've got to check out this video clip from YouTube. It's a large screen upon which you can draw with a light pen or stylus of some kind. The objects drawn are then avaiable for instant animation.

I would love to see something like this for data flow diagrams in the future.

Teaching Your Kids the Tickler File System

2006-10-04T22:55:00.000-07:00

At our house we call the stacks of permission slips, tests we have to initial, school planners we have to sign stating homework was done, and fund raiser order forms "parent homework." In the past this stuff would come out of my son's backpack and into my growing pile of paperwork to wade through--usually not until the weekend (see prior post)--and I was missing deadlines for book order forms and field trip permission slips. Not the way to foster good family relations. ;-)

So I taught my son the tickler system and when he comes home he files papers I need to sign in the file for the day ahead of when it's due. For example, if it's the 10th and an order form is due on the 20th, he'll file it in my 19th folder.

I also set up two files with his name on it: one is put in today's hanging file and the second is placed in tomorrow's. My wife and I made index cards for his daily chores (taking out the trash, practicing piano, etc. [one card per chore]) and placed them in his folder. When he gets home from school he pulls out his folder and starts working on whatever cards are there. As he completes a chore, say taking out the trash, he'll place the card in tomorrow's folder with his name on it. At the end of the day we move his folder to two days out.

BTW, this works great for making sure library books come back on time, as well. We have a card saying...

Return school library books tomorrow
(file under next Monday when done)

...in my Monday's file (they're due on Tuesday). When I go through my Monday file that day I see the card and place it in my son's folder for that day. When he's done gathering his books and putting them in his backpack he files the card in next Monday's folder.

One good way to judge if a system is simple and smooth enough to be sustainable is if you can teach it to your kids. If the answer is, "no" it might be too much for you too. Not too much to understand but too hard to maintain.

Personal Productivity, Time Management, Effectiveness, GTD, Getting Things Done

Tip for Filing Receipts

2006-10-04T22:33:00.000-07:00

Ever buy something, bring it home, find out it isn't quite right or it breaks and you need to return it, and then spend two hours tearing the house apart trying find the receipt?

I've created a "Receipts" folder that I place in the hanging file labeled with each month. (See my Tickler File post for details). As I come home and empty my pockets I put all receipts that have anything on them that I could possibly need to return in the appropriate "Receipts" folder (e.g., October receipts go in the "Receipts" folder in the "October" hanging file).

When I need to find a receipt I know within two months of when I purchased it and can find it quickly.

Parenthetically, I take the receipt out of the "Receipts" folder and drop it into my "Errands" folder so it's with me the next time I'm out and can do something about it. I also usually grab the item in question at this point and drop it in front of the door.

Personal Productivity, Time Management, Effectiveness, GTD, Getting Things Done

Hands Free Etiquette

2006-10-04T22:21:00.000-07:00

You'd think after being around hands free devices for however many years now I'd be used to seeing someone walking down the hallway at work, alone, with both hands in his pockets, and seemingly talking to himself. Or you'd think glancing around in a traffic jam and seeing someone talking with both hands on the wheel and no one else in the car wouldn't strike me as strange. It still does. I'm still looking for someone to be holding a phone to her ear to determine if she is on a call or not (and if it's appropriate to begin speaking to her). How long will it take before we look for the tell-tale blinking blue glow surrounding one's ear instead?

Mark Hollander's 100 Day Plans & Scrum

2006-10-04T06:54:00.000-07:00

Just found this site through one of the GTD consultant's blogs I read daily. I've got no idea if Mr. Hollander is effective or not but his notion of a 100 day plan sure seems to have intuitive, self-evident merit and reminded me of an Agile/Scrum approach to a project vs. the traditional approach.

100 days or any relatively short, finite period of time is doable. It's bite-sized. It will end. It's approachable.

It's one of the main reasons Scrum works so well. It's not a long-term multi-million dollar committment. Just give us the resources to run for one Sprint and see what we produce. If you want to continue at that time then fine, we'll do another Sprint. If you're done after one Sprint we move on.

Personal Productivity, Time Management, Effectiveness, Scrum, Agile, GTD, Getting Things Done

A-Z Filing: A Surprising Relief

2006-10-03T23:56:00.000-07:00

I used to dread the mail. It was not uncommon for me to spend an hour or more on a Sunday afternoon going through a box of mail and paperwork that had accumulated throughout the past week or so. Then I read the GTD article on General Reference Filing. I bit the bullet one rainy Saturday, made a trip to the office supply store and then sat down with my files, labeler, and large pile of papers to give this a try.

I picked up a piece of paper, say my phone bill, and the first name that popped into my head is how I labeled the file: Verizon. As David likes to say in his seminars, (paraphrasing) "Could it be filed under 'P' for phone bill? Yes it could. Could it be filed under 'V' for Verizon? Yes it could. Could it be under anything else? Probably not."

Before, when I had elaborate schemas of sections and sub-sections within my files it got to a level of complexity that I literally just started throwing paper into a box to file on rainy days; it was just too much effort.

Now, I can get home from work, grab the mail on my way in the door, and have it all filed in the appropriate place in less than five minutes. The end-to-end workflow path is clear and easy and, not surprisingly, it gets done.

After this worked so well on my paper files at home, I replicated this at work and in my email inbox and network drive filing systems.

Personal Productivity, Time Management, Effectiveness, GTD, Getting Things Done