Is Your organization ready to embrace Design Thinking ?

With the popularity of "design thinking," companies are encouraging their designers to be in the field interacting with end users. Like any other new methodology or process adoption, design thinking requires a fair bit of change in the mindset of designers along with some new skills.

One cannot change the process without changing the mindset of people nor giving them the appropriate tools to succeed.

One needs to analyze the skills and training needed to succeed with the new process.

Do you want to learn what these skills are and the necessary tools, read rest of the article  here 

    

Photo Courtesy: https://secure.flickr.com/photos/jakecaptive/

Lean and Agile Project Management using Scrum – Upcoming Course in Melbourne

 

There is an upcoming Lean and Agile Project Management Using Scrum Course in Melbourne CBD  on 30th Aug.  I highly recommend this course both for novice and advanced practitioners.

Get further details here.

Quick overview of the course below:

Scrum and Agile have been around for years, but organisations are still struggling to realise the potential benefits of using them. Much of this stems from the myriad of tools, frameworks, practices, methodologies and processes in the market that all claim to make your teams more efficient which, in turn, will lead to an Agile organisation.

The truth is that none of these things will achieve that. The only thing that will create a more effective, adaptive, proactive, productive, happy organisation is a genuine desire from the people of influence in that organisation to want better. A desire to remove tired old processes and procedures that do not exist because they are effective but because they have always existed. To optimise the whole, not the individual parts. To care.

Managers and executives need to jump on the continuous improvement train and start to create a more effective world of work for their employees.

Psychological impact of public criticism – AOL Story

 

A lot of people have heard of AOL, but until last week they may not have known much about Tim Armstrong, the company’s CEO. Recently during an internal team meeting of nearly 1,000 employees, Armstrong fired one his employees, Abel Lenz. This incident sent ripples all over the business world.

Some people believe that Abel was fired for taking pictures; others believe it is his association with the failing Patch project. Irrespective of the cause, this incident raises several questions: Is firing an employee in public the right thing to do? What are the repercussions of doing so in regards to the rest of the employees? What is the CEO’s role in the failure of a product?

This kind of firing,  impacts not only the psychological safety net of employees but impacts the employees morale, company’s bottom-line as well.

Read the complete the article on Techwell here…  I have shared many psychological research to show the impacts. In this article I have also covered different leadership styles impacting the employees.

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LAST Conference slides available on SlideShare

I have uploaded the Lean Agile And Systems Thinking conference slide “Does Agile help Innovation”  to Slideshare.  

Agile does help to an extent in building innovative products but overreliance would cause more damage than usefulness.   Based on my experience working in research labs building innovative products  and through well proven research data, I have shared many stories about raise and fall of  innovation  at  popular companies like 3M, Google, Amazon, CraigsLists, McDonald and LEGO

• It was good to see, so many people turned up during this presentation, which is a reflection of interest in Innovation.
• A meet up to discuss about  Innovation for social cause has been arranged in Melbourne next week, and looking forward to attend the same.
• The conference was very successful with more than 350 people turning up at SwinBurne University campus with tickets being sold out.

Look at reality and don’t get distracted with metrics

With the advancement of technology that improves user experience, all manufacturers are spicing up the user interfaces and dashboards of their products. Recently, I read this article from The New York Times about the increased distractions due to extreme dashboard makeovers in cars. This is not surprising at all.

On our Agile projects as well, the stakeholders get carried away with Vanity metrics like Velocity, Engagement scores, Agile Maturity assessments, etc.

Even though these metrics are important, they shouldn’t distract the stakeholders from the reality…

Read the complete article on Techwell here…. 

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Design Thinking - Chat ?

Any one interested in a catch up about  Design Thinking ?     If you are in Melbourne, drop me an email and we could catch up in person and, if you are oversees we could discuss over Skype or google hang out. 

My next article “What it takes to be successful in embracing Design Thinking”  would be available on Cutter shortly.

Design Thinking could help in building innovative and usable products.  Bringing a lean perspective, it helps in building useful features and avoiding wastes.

What am I reading ? Brick by Brick

 

As I am learning, experimenting and playing around  Lean Startups, Design thinking and Innovation, this book Brick by Brick, How LEGO rewrote the rules of innovation and conquered the toy industry provided additional evidence to support my thinking around innovation and creativity.

I have just finished couple of chapters in this book, and I could feel the energy LEGO stakeholders have invested to make this a great company. LEGO started as a small and family owned business in a remote European town. They were happy with a set number of toys they were selling in Europe and were leading a happy go lucky life. However, one day they realized that their survival is at stake as the world is changing fast.  Sometime during 2003-4, a highly successful company was on the verge of going bankrupt. The leaders were determined to rescue it and seriously looked at enabling innovation for survival.

They religiously followed all the key principles of innovation, and one thing which made a positive difference is about the diversity.  LEGO used to be a purely European owned and confined to Europe. To enable diversity, they opened branches in several other countries in the world, and hired people from diverse backgrounds.

 

 Diversity key for innovation

I can’t stress enough, diversity in thinking is critical for innovation. Most companies ignore diversity, and look at purely  technical skills while hiring employees into organization. Here is how the requirement for any project looks like:

C++ and Java expertise – minimum 5 years experience (in depth knowledge)
Windows development expertise
Unix (Solaris/Linux) development expertise
Scripting languages such as Python, Perl or Shell scripts
TCP/IP client-server development experience
SQL commands and database knowledge
Ability to work independently and multi task in demanding, time-critical environment
Excellent communication skills

I have read somewhere that many innovative companies, including Google hire people with background from Mathematics, Biology, etc.  Diversity in thinking is highly essential for innovation.

Let me ask you before I end this post,  Do you have diverse thinking people in your team ?

Difference between a Great leader Vs a Good leader

Recently came across an article which had excerpt from Steve Jobs interview.  Here is what Jobs says

At Pixar when we were making Toy Story, there came a time when we were forced to admit that the story wasn't great. It just wasn't great. We stopped production for five months.... We paid them all to twiddle their thumbs while the team perfected the story into what became Toy Story. And if they hadn't had the courage to stop, there would have never been a Toy Story the way it is, and there probably would have never been a Pixar. "We called that the 'story crisis,' and we never expected to have another one. But you know what? There's been one on every film.

There are some beautiful messages hidden in the above statement.

• I could see the Courage to halt things when things are not going in the right direction
• Taking a stand to make a product  perfect
• Willingness to take risks
• Admitting and accepting the failure
• Embrace the financial loss

The above mentioned great qualities I guess made Steve Jobs a great leader and inspite of his temper tantrums.
How many leaders do we see around in our organizations and projects who can courageously call off projects, provide a thinking time to redesign/rework and proceed later ?  

Most of the time, the companies are so focused on delivering the product on time within budget thus sacrificing the quality and customer satisfaction.
What's your view on this ?  
Have you worked with any leader with jobs qualities ?

Speaking at Lean, Agile and Systems Thinking conference, Melbourne

Lean, Agile and Systems Thinking (a.k.a LAST) conference is a popular conference for Agilists in Melbourne.  The conference is on 2nd Aug at SwinBurne University.

I will be speaking about my favorite topic : Does Agile help in building Innovative products ?.  Check out more details about this conference here
If you are in Melbourne, don’t miss the opportunity to attend this event.

photo credit: Bill Selak via photopin cc

Complexity theory at 30,000 Ft

Here is the complexity theory article published on  Techwell.   This is at 30,000 Ft Level.

Most of our view about the world is based on cause and effect, which in turn is a linear way of thinking. However, the world works in a non-linear fashion with multiple agents acting in parallel. System thinking addresses this non-linearity by considering different parts of the system, their relationships with one another, and the entire system itself to solve a problem or create a future state. Some of the tenets include holism and reductionism.

The complexity theory, based on the premise of non-linearity, is the study of complex systems. Complex science embraces life as unpredictable, adaptable, and evolving. The key difference to systems thinking is that the complexity theory tends to solve a problem or build the future state with the assumption of uncertainty. Patterns and abstractions are used to understand complex systems.

Another key concept discussed focused on innovation. Chaos and randomness are the foundations for all innovations. It is proven that a detailed plan with a highly structured process won’t help in building a radical, innovative product.

Constraints emerge from the system to manage chaos and randomness, and the right level of constraint leads to self-organization. However, an over- or under-constrained system is not good for agility. There seems to be myth for agile teams regarding self-organization. Many professionals believe that just allowing the team to function on its own will lead to self-organization. In reality this is partially true; the leaders need to guide and ensure that there is the appropriate level of constraint emerging from the system.

and remaining part of this article is available here

360 Degrees feedback

The maturity of the company depends on trust and courage of employees. If the company is still using anonymous surveys to collect 360 degrees feedback, isn’t it a reflection of lack of trust and courage ?

Do you know any organization who gathers 360 degrees feedback in person ?

Evaluating testers – Past and Present

Here is one of  my guest post on Zephyr : Evaluating  Testers: Past and Present 

Just a gist of the article is below,

Software testing has come a long way since 1960’s from debugging to defects prevention oriented approaches.  However, one thing that hasn’t changed much is the way the testers are evaluated. Let us look at the history and patterns of different evaluation techniques.

Let us being with the waterfall era. It was very clear that testers job was to catch all the defects introduced during the development stage. Testers had pretty much no options other than keep showing different metrics to prove their existence.

…………….and the complete article is available here

Image courtesy of ddpavumba / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

THE OATH OF NON-ALLEGIANCE

I recently came across the the Oath of Non-Allegiance.  Now we have different parties pulling the software industry in different directions.  Some of them include, Scrum, Kanban, Lean, ScrumBan, etc.

Each party is willing to bet that their practices will help in Nirvana forgetting the real customer. Even though Oath of Non-allegiance is around from some time, I came across this recently.  This non-allegiance accurately reflects some of my thoughts. We shouldn’t get carried away with the methods but do what is beneficial for the customer.   At the end of the day, the customer and the business doesn’t care the tool we have used, they care about their experience, bottom lines, quality and the value.

 

Here is the oath of non-allegiance

I promise not to exclude from consideration any idea based on its source, but to consider ideas across schools and heritages in order to find the ones that best suit the current situation. (See http://alistair.cockburn.us)

I added this to my blog as well.

Agile Maturity assessments – Boon or Bane ?

Recently I authored an article for Cutter about the Agile Maturity assessments.  This advisory article covers the following topics

1. How Agile Maturity assessments are conducted in the organizations ?

2. What are the pattern of questions ?

3. What are the maturity levels being used in the industry ?

4. Typical organizations issues impacting the assessments ?

5. How does a good Agile maturity assessment look ?

Read the entire article  here

Importance of radical innovation

Here is the recent article about radical innovation that got published on Techwell.   I am reproducing the same article below:

Have you ever imagined having a private cloud hosted from your home? If so, you should check out this article that details how to set up your own private cloud in less than ten minutes with OwnCloud. There is currently a mixed reaction to OwnCloud, but we may not be that far away from building private Facebooks and Twitters on our own terms. Revolutionary ideas and technologies like OwnCloud could potentially impact the commercial cloud storage providers.

I think radical innovation is essential for survival in this century. But no one has been able to come up with a formula or a process to build innovative products like the iPhone or Google Glass. Why is this? Because innovation is a creative endeavor and is people dependent. Steve Jobs is a classic example of a radical innovator. He had the unique ability and creativity to sense the end customers’ requirements.

In addition, Steve Jobs is one of the best product owners (PO) in the world. How many Scrum projects have POs with the ability to come up with innovative product designs like Steve? Most of the POs I have come across are glorified requirement analysts. Even the Version One Survey 2012 has confirmed that POs are the least knowledgeable about agile. With such a poor track record of product owners, sometimes I ask myself whether it is possible to build innovative products in such agile environments?

Collaboration and innovation go hand-in-hand. Agile environments are supposed to be collaborative. However, the common understanding of collaboration in a software delivery context is to help each other without causing friction. If someone in the team is challenging ideas, he immediately is branded as non-collaborative, which is wrong. To be innovative, the team must understand the concept of collaboration and especially these three types.

The job market is another area that is impacted by innovation. Recently, I heard about this innovative 3D-house-construction printer. As I read this, I was wondering what potential impact this printer might have on the construction industry. Can this printer build the entire house on its own with little help? What will happen to the construction workers’ jobs? I realize that it is critical for employees and workers from all industries to build T-Shaped skills for sustainability.

I’ll leave you with this: Can an innovative product be built by applying Scrum or XP in your current project? What is hindering innovation in agile projects?

photo credit: Håkan Dahlström via photopin cc

How waste impacts software delivery

Techwell, the popular Agile Magazine published my curated article.It is accessible from here as well.

I was shocked to read the news in Australia that constant delays at the Brisbane Airport cost airlines $75 million last year. It looks like the closure of one of the runways resulted in a bottleneck, which in turn led to scheduling issues at the busy airport.

Consider the fact that in lean terminology anything that is not adding value is considered waste, also known as Muda in Japanese. Now ask yourself the following questions: Is there a possibility that the $75 million cost to the airlines will result in higher airfare for passengers? Is it fair for passengers to pay more for a ticket when they are not getting any value? This hefty cost is not adding any value to the airlines or to the passengers.

As a software delivery coach, I see a lot of examples of waste in every step of software development. If you are unfamiliar with the concept of development waste, Craig Larman and Bas Vodde have written an article, titled “Lean Primer,” which is a good place to start. Additionally, the following YouTube video provides an overview of different kinds of wastes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAYMcSUDcX0

Many lean practitioners use a concept known as “value stream mapping” as the first step in identifying wastes. Over at the website System Agility, the authors detail some creative games for teams to play in order to both identify and deal with the software garbage.

However, there are some unavoidable wastes that we can never remove. To counter this, many companies are using the concept of “Lean Six Sigma” to deliver a high-quality product. This video provides a nice introduction to Lean Six Sigma.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xuo5Dv7iWA

Due to Lean Six Sigma’s potential to increase cost savings, there is currently a huge demand for lean consultants worldwide. Unfortunately, getting lean consultants and setting a goal for them may not be sufficient.

Several companies have burnt their fingers while trying the above approach. The following article shows several examples that highlight the attention needed during a company’s lean implementation; some professionals believe that Six Sigma killed innovation at the 3M Company.

To conclude, let me ask you this: What wastes have you seen in your company and what did you do to avoid wastes?

photo credit: mugley via photopin cc

Why software services organization can never be Agile ?

The key members from the technology group are waiting to hear about the new project that the director is going to announce. The meeting is about to begin, and the room is filled with silence. They know that the project has something to do with Java, Oracle, and the cloud. The director starts explaining the importance of this strategic project and delivering it on time to the customer.

Read the complete article on  Cutter

Helpful guide to Daily stand up

This article was published on  Techwell, the place to go for what is happening now in software development.

The daily standup meeting is a critical element of scrum teams. Its simplicity and benefits have even attracted the attention of practitioners of waterfall development.
The term “daily standup” originated from Extreme Programming (XP) while the term “daily scrum meeting” goes back to Scrum, of course. One should note that both XP and Scrum derived the concepts of daily meetings from software pioneer Jim Coplien and his paper on the Quattro Pro spreadsheet program.

In the simplest sense, a daily standup meeting is accomplished by having team members stand around in a circle with each person answering a few questions. But wait, life is not as simple as it sounds, and there are certain rules to be followed during these meetings. The rules cover the team’s time commitments, location of the meeting, and the meeting’s overall rigor, all of which make up the secret sauce for success.

Holding a standup meeting in a collocated environment is simple compared to holding a meeting with distributed teams, in which you need to be cognizant of time zone differences and language barriers. The use of tools—teleconferencing technology, webcams, and instant message software—can help you deal with remote teams. For more help on that front, you can read the Practical Guide to Distributed Scrum, which provides an overview of different tools and their associated pros and cons.

Most people recommend holding the meetings in the morning, keeping in mind what time the last team member arrives for the event. For some, noon seems to work as well.

As agile coach Rachel Davies explains, scrum meetings are not only about sharing yesterday’s work, but they are designed to help team members plan for the day and look to the future. If you’re working in a distributed environment, you might find help in this guide by Rally, which discusses fine tuning your meetings.

Keep in mind that there are several ways that daily scrum meetings can result in trouble for your project. For example, team members might stop attending the meetings or they could even complain that the meetings do not add any value or are a waste of time. The worst is when people make this a status update meeting.

There are several ways to fix these troublesome issues, including reinforcing the values and principles behind the meetings. Also, remember that command-and-control management issues might lead to many people-related problems, and you’ll need to address those issues if they apply to you.
Finally, if you still are having issues with standup meetings, Jason Yip, a principal consultant at ThoughtWorks, recommends a few good tips, like rotating the facilitators, breaking too much eye contact, and using improvement boards.

Building quality in – Do we need testers ?

Following article got published on  Zephyr recently.

During the waterfall era, at the end of development, the completed code was thrown at testers who in turn would identify defects. These defects would get registered onto a tracking tool. In response to these defects, the developers would swarm around them and fix all of them for the next  one week. This process used to continue until the QA team signs of on all the defects.   

Now with the popularity of the Agile, Lean and Continuous Deployment, the developers are required to be more vigilant while coding. They are recommended to follow practices like TDD, ATDD to improve the code quality, reduce defects among other benefits. Since these practices are supposed to reduce the burden on testers, a lot of people are questioning the need for dedicated testers in the software development.  

In this article, I will address questions around the need for testers, the value they bring in, and their role in the context of Lean and Agile.

Why do we need to build the quality in?
Let me begin with the Lean Principle #2, Building Quality In. Before jumping to solution mode, let us understand the ways the quality issues crop up and the cost associated with it.  Quality issues originate at the beginning of the project and the top 3 reasons could be grouped into:

1. Customer giving a wrong requirement and realizing it at a later stage
2. The developer writing wrong code due to misunderstanding of requirement
3. Developer understood requirement but coded a wrong logic

Irrespective of whether the mistake is by the customer or the developer, there is an effort involved in testing and rewriting the code. As per the 1:10:100 rule, the failure to identify the defect upfront could cost a fortune to the company.

Solving the quality issues:
First issue mentioned above could be solved by the development teams building the prototype and showcasing to the customer even before touching the code. Second and third issues could be solved by practices like TDD and ATDD.

If developers and customers work closely, ensure to fill the gaps and write quality code, can we still delivery a quality product without testers ?

In recent days, some of the lean startup companies have tried customer testing and crowdsourcing the testing without involving the testers. However, it is still not proven if this is the right model. A lot of people also agree that even the most experienced developers make mistake. The developers come with a specialized technical background and they won’t have the same eye as a tester. They are good at unit level testing, and they cannot effectively do the integration/system level testing. This is not something which could be improved by automating the tests.

Role of tester in Agile, Lean environment:
Many teams have tried building products just with developer testing and have got bitten badly as well. As one could see from this discussion, people have reverted back to include testers.

There is no doubt now that dedicated testers are needed in all projects. We still need testers to provide a neutral eye and their specialized skills to improve the quality. In fact, testers have now more empowering role to play than before.

To conclude:

• Testers look at preventing defects and not just identifying them in the end
• They get involved in the beginning of the project working closely with the product owners(PO) and developers.  They ask right questions about requirements and in turn making every get clarity on the requirements
• They write acceptance tests, they do smoke tests and exploratory testing
• They work as a support structure for the development team in ensuring smooth delivery of the project.
• They think beyond just testing and embrace tasks that help the team in smooth deployment to production

Image courtesy of ponsulak / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Does Agile help or kill innovation ?

In today's rapidly changing business environment, innovation is key for survival. Companies may become obsolete in no time in the absence of new and innovative products. A classic example of this phenomenon is the demise of Kodak. At the same time, companies like Apple and Google have not only contributed toward building innovative products but at the same time made their investors many times richer.

Check this complete article out on  Cutter