Net Promoter Scores - Do they work ?

    

Net Promoter Score (NPS) is as popular as engagement surveys.   There are several people who vouch for the benefits of  NPS. This is such a simple system that when I heard about NPS for the first time, I felt, this cannot be so simple !  There might be something I am missing.  The reality was, it is a simple system.   

The Ultimate Question 2.0 covers a great deal about the subject with tons of benefit. 

Interestingly we have few naysayers doubting the benefits of NPS as well.  Check this presentation out, where the authors seem to have data to prove the benefits of NPS wrong.

Another research paper here  has finding which says  “Contrary to Reichheld’s assertions, the results indicate that recommend intention alone will not suffice as a single predictor of customers’ future loyalty behavior. Use of a multiple indicator instead of a single predictor model performs better in predicting customer recommendations and retention.”

I hear that most successful companies like Apple, LEGO, Facebook, eBay, etc are using NPS.  I am sure there would be arguments – counter arguments on both sides for NPS. 

I am more inclined to believe the naysayers. We live in a complex world, and there could be multiple things impacting the loyalty, customer behavior, satisfaction etc.  It is not correct  to see a liner “Cause and effect” between the NPS score and the revenue generation(other benefits). This is like the Peltzman effect where “wearing a seatbelt induces people to drive less safely”  causing accidents, which goes totally against the linear “cause and effect” thinking.

Why do good people become bad bosses ?

I am sure all of us have come across  bad bosses at some point of time or the other.  But in reality, they are not really bad people at heart. The pressure and the stress pushes them to snap at people and ending up with “bad boss” title.   Here is a must watch video by the famous author  Annie McKee about this subject.

    A few take aways from this video
    1.  Bad bosses are good people under pressure

    2. People really like to change, unlike the popular assumption that people resist change

    3. People will change provided they are properly supported

    4. Don’t allow bad bosses to hurt your self esteem, dignity and confidence. Put your foot down to protect yourself

    5. Mindfulness is the key to success

Scattered meeting day syndrome

I have observed that the most un-productive day would be to have scattered meetings all throughout the day.  

For example:

• 9- 9.30 AM   First meeting
  10 – 12  Second meeting
  <Lunch break>
  2 – 2.30 another meeting
  3 – 4  last meeting of the day

After the first meeting, one would rush to get a cafe to prepare for the second one. By the time you grasp the second one, bell rings for lunch break. The day continues with meetings with a break of every half an hour, and end up with a pile of “real work” by 4 PM, causing too much stress. This leads to too many meeting syndrome. 

This is exactly what the Agilists dislike.In fact I have heard people calling Scrum has too many meetings !!   As per various researches, the task switching could cost nearly 40% productivity loss.

Solution

Personally I found that blocking a chunk of a day provides me the well deserved and dedicated focus.  Not sure if others have seen this happening ?   Have you experienced this ?  How do you deal with this scattered meeting syndrome  ?

Image courtesy : http://blog.officeformac.com/a-new-outlook-on-calendaring/

Can a process fix the broken trust ?

The last weekend, I approached concierge of our apartment complex to get permission to use the functional hall. The concierge pulled out a print out and asked me to sign it.  I have used the functional hall many times before and haven’t seen this new process of signing a form. 

The new form had things like  “The furniture if broken has to be replaced by the tenant”, “ Ensure to throw the trash in the bin”, “No smoking allowed in the functional hall”  and stuff like that. These rules makes sense but was curious why now ?   

I asked the concierge about the rationale of this process, and it seems the previous week some users of the functional hall created a bit of raucous. To avoid those issues in the future, they have brought this new process into place.

I had an aha moment when I heard this.  Is this not the same way our organizations and countries work by creating new rules and processes reacting to a problem ?    In the case of our apartment, Initially the body corporate  trusted the tenants and gave the freedom to use the functional hall but some where in between the trust was broken.  I am wondering now,  does this new process build the broken trust in any way ?   Does this process stop any such problems from happening again ?   Is this the right way to handle such issues or is there a better way ?

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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Access all my articles on Techwell here

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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Read all my Articles on Techwell by clicking 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