Why is it always so complicated? 10 steps to understanding.

1. Join in: This isn't a passive blog post that you can just read. This is an active blog post. If you want to get the most out of it, you're going to have to participate. Find a pen and piece of paper? Got that? Good. Lets get on.
   
2. Start Writing: Make a list of five people that you really admire. They might be famous people, they might be friends, they might be family. But write down five names of people, living or dead that you really admire.
3. Say More: Now. by each of these names, write a one-word reason that you admire this person. What is it about them that you really like? Their courage? Their kindness? Their laziness? What?
4. Don't Forget the Bad Guys: OK, now we do the same for the bad guys. Make a list of five people that you really don't like and don't admire. It might be that you struggle, it might be that you could write all day, but just for now, lets stick with five names of shame.


He's on my list

5. They have a name for people like you: Just like we did with the good guys, for each name on your list, write down one word to describe why you don't like this person.


And so's he - comedians and philosophers, what does that say about me?

6. Close your eyes: Now this is the part where you have to use your imagination. Look at the two lists of names that you've written and imagine that all ten of them are standing together in a crowd.
7. Imagine: And now imagine that this crowd of people you like and don't like is standing right in front of you, obscuring your view of the world.


He's on my list. But which one?

8. Look around you: Wherever you are, look at the other people who are around you and understand that all those people have a crowd of people in front of them. A different crowd of people that they love and loathe. And that for you and for them, this crowd of people, this list of things you hate and admire, acts as a filter to the world.


Grrr. So's she.

9. You'll be amazed: If you aren't already doing this, marvel how anybody manages to to talk to anyone at all.
10. The more you know: Understand that the more information you have about who is in another person's "crowd" and the more aware you are about who is in your own, the better your chances of communicating.

For further information, contact Mark@agilelab.co.uk (07736 807 604)

Re: I'm your software developer, and I'm listening - PS

Following on from this morning's post:

PS When you're writing down what your clients tell you, be very careful to write down exactly what they tell you. Lots of books on communication tell you to re-phrase what people tell you to show that you've understood, but this can so easily turn into defensiveness and make the client think that you aren't actually listening.

For example:
CLIENT: This project has been a complete disaster!
YOU: I understand that there have been a few problems.

Translates to the client as "I don't think this project has been a disaster, I think you're over reacting."

Much better (though requiring much more self control) might be:

CLIENT: This project has been a complete disaster!
YOU: OK, let me write that down. "Complete disaster." Which bits in particular do you think were disastrous?

As an old colleague of mine (who I never listened to) used to tell me,

"Make sure you've got all the poison out before you try to heal the wound."

For further information, contact Mark@agilelab.co.uk (07736 807 604)

I'm your software developer, and I'm listening

A lot of the people I work with have difficult clients, but I suspect most of them aren't really of the same calibre as the people that William Goldman has had to deal with. In his book "Which Lie Did I Tell?" he paints a brilliant picture of movie stars as very powerful, very rich and very very paranoid. As far as I can tell from the book, directors are pretty much the same, but because they get less public attention they can actually be even weirder.

Like this - only take notes!

So, imagine the scene, you've written the script for a movie which is going to be a vehicle for a big movie star and is going to be directed by an oscar-winning blockbuster director. You get a phone call, they want a meeting to talk about the script, what do you do? Well, what Bill Goldman does is he turns up at the meeting with a big legal pad and says "OK, tell me everything. Just tell me everything that's on your mind. Let it out."

And as the star, or the director, or the star and the director, or the star and the director and the star's astrologist make comments, he does nothing but write, write, write. No matter how dumb; now matter how insulting. Just because he's written it down doesn't mean he agrees with it. It does mean that he's taking the feedback seriously and dealing with it like a professional.

He listens, he writes.

Then he talks.

The point of this approach is that it works to take the heat out of the situation. Research shows that people are no where near as desperate to be agreed with as they are to be heard. The powerful temptation when people start criticising your work is to start defending yourself. But this is a temptation you should do your level best to resist.

Capture feedback, THEN process it.

If you try to process the feedback as it's being delivered, you probably won't be listening that closely. Whoever is trying to give you that feedback will sense this. Maybe they'll become more and more strident, maybe they'll become silent and sullen and you'll think you've won the argument. All you're doing is storing up trouble.








For further information, contact Mark@agilelab.co.uk (07736 807 604)

When the Hotel is Falling Down...

... don't blame it on the bell boy.

Before you start blaming your staff, especially your most junior staff, look at the numbers. As our American friends say, "Do the math." Why don't we look at a few together in this example (basically true, but changed hugely to protect identities)? Just to get you started.

One Third

They're going through the long, expensive and legally dangerous process of firing this guy. For incompetence. I bet he feels great. They hired him on a fixed-term contract at permanent wages, so I'd say paying roughly ONE THIRD of the going market rate. Guess what? Even in the depths of a recession it was hard to find someone. Guess what? When they did, he wasn't exactly a hi-flyer.

Two Hundred Percent, Four Million Pounds

Way before our troublesome junior even started with the company somebody promised the client that the company could triple the client's sales. That's right, increase sales by TWO HUNDRED PERCENT. For the client, that meant an increase in turnover of FOUR MILLION POUNDS.

Of course, the person that made that promise is now long gone.

One Hundred Times

And it's now the job of the junior member of staff to deliver on a promise of ONE HUNDRED TIMES his salary for the client in just twelve months.

Zero

Guess what? It didn't happen. And it became so obvious, so quickly, that it wasn't going to happen that the client pulled out and asked for their money back.

And so they shake their heads. While leafing through the guidelines on dismissal for incompetence, they say that they're very disappointed in the junior's performance. They say they were mislead. The junior lied on his CV, well he didn't actually lie but overstated his skills. Really? Whoever heard of such a thing? Who could possibly test it or take it into account in the interview process?

And what were his chances in succeeding in the job that he'd been given?

ZERO

Firing or disciplining your junior staff when things go wrong is going to teach you a lot about employment law, and perhaps the law surrounding wrongful dismissal, but it won't make you any better at your job. I know, I know there are some bad apples, but very often, not all the time, but more often that you'd like to admit, the system has created the problem with your employee. You're supposed to be managing at least some part of that system. Before you start reaching for the phone and ringing HR maybe it would be a good idea to take a look at the numbers and see if they add up.

Private Lynndie England, not the sharpest tool in the box

Some real life examples that don't add up:

• Torture in the Abu Grhaib prison is blamed on "bad apples" such as Private Lynndie England, a woman so stupid she can barely breathe. Curious how she managed to come up with a whole raft of psychological warfare techniques pioneered by the CIA in the 1960's all by herself.


• A double murder is partly blamed on a parole officer who had been in the job 9 months and had a case load of 127 cases.


• UPDATED 13/07/09: A PR disaster is blamed on an intern.

For further information, contact Mark@agilelab.co.uk (07736 807 604)

Six Things you Really Need to Know about Your Customers

I'm running Introduction to Agile Courses in London on 9th July and in Bristol on 5th August.

This post is mainly aimed at people who are trying to write software for their customers, but it probably applies a lot wider than that. When I run training courses on how to handle difficult conversations, I try to get across the idea that you should try to move a conversation away from message delivery, to information discovery. But when you do that, what information are you trying to discover? Well, these six areas aren't a bad place to start.

Timing

Following on from yesterday's post, it's a good idea to understand as much as you can about your customer's timing issues and expectations. This doesn't just mean time-scales and deadlines for the projects you're working on, but also the kinds of timings that are important in their business. It means anything else that you can possibly think of related to time. When do they get in the office? How late do they stay? In their business what is regarded as a reasonable response time for a query? 2 days? 20 seconds? What's the planning horizon for their business? There might be lots of different answers. For example, in advertising, pitches might need to be knocked up over night, but billboard space needs to be booked three to six months in advance for a campaign.

What are the timing issues?

Comprehension/Comodification

For want of a better clumsy term or two, what I mean is, is the business that your client is in a new, pioneering innovative business, or is it completely understood, a commodity, where competition has to be on price and efficiency and organisation has be to perfect. People who work in industries that are comprehended and comodified can find web and software development utterly bewildering. A common recent example is the experience of producers from television moving over to "produce" (i.e. project manage) web development projects. The costs of producing a 1 hour documentary or a 30 minute studio-based sitcom are well understood. The costs of producing a successful social media website aren't.

Is your customer's business a commodity business?

Money

How do your customers make it? Which of their activities makes loads of cash? Which of their activities make hardly any cash? What is expected of your software in relation to making money? What are their margins? They may not know some of the answers to these questions. Even if they do, they may not want to tell you. But the more you know about this, the better placed you are to deliver them the software they need, within a suitable charge structure. For example, if they plan to do the bulk of their business using your software over long period of time, maybe a maintenance and licensing deal makes more sense than an upfront fee. If they intend the website to be more profitable than any other business that they've ever run, they might have a problem.

Suppliers

What kind of relationship does your customer normally have with suppliers? Are these relationships based on good personal contact or on contracts? Does your customer make money by playing one supplier off against another to get the lowest price (as do, for example supermarkets?). What sort of response do they expect from their suppliers in terms of responsiveness, exclusivity, even level of formality?

Identity

Who are these people? How do they see themselves? Are they ruthless business people? Intellectuals? Great craftsmen and women? Artists? Teachers? Curators? Healers? COmmunicators? A large number of people that you meet in business never wanted to be in business and aren't in their post entirely for the money (or at least that's what they're telling themselves). You need to know why they're there, otherwise you're conversations with them will make very little sense.

How do you customers see themselves?

Software Knowledge and Experience

What knowledge of the internet, the world wide web or of software is there in the business? What knowledge is there of what the internet/web/software can and cannot do? Does anyone in the business understand what bespoke software is? Does the business have any experience of commissioning bespoke web, or any other kind of software in the past? Was commissioning software a good or a bad experience? What was good about it? What was bad about it?

What kind of technology do your customers consider to be "state of the art?"

This is a far from exhaustive list, but the better the answers you have to these questions, the better the chances for the project as it progresses. I also hope it's clear how important it is to know how your own organisation would answer these questions. What are your timing issues? How you do you see yourselves? What is your identity? How do you make money? How do you want or expect to be treated as a supplier? More to the point perhaps, what's your experience of software and the internet?

For further information, contact Mark@agilelab.co.uk (07736 807 604)

The Secret of Comedy (and Project Management)

One: Do you want to know the secret of comedy is?

Two: Yes, I do want to know what the secret of comedy is.

One: OK, I want you to stand there, opposite me and ask me in a strong, loud voice "What is the secret of comedy."

Two: What? Now?

One: Yes, now.

Two: OK, here goes. Are you ready?

One: Ready.

Two: Sure?

One: Certain.

Two: And what is it I say again?

One: [Through gritted teeth] What is the secret of comedy.

Two: OK, OK, secret of comedy. Got it.

One: All right then.

Two: All right then. [pause] What is the....

One: TIMING!

A friend of mine won a contract to build a website for a Mainstream Media (MSM) company. He thought things were going well. They had some kind of spec in place (this wasn't an Agile project). There'd been meetings the MSM guys had seem casual and relaxed. They didn't seem too bothered about contracts. My friend got the impression that this project was being done "under the radar" of normal corporate procedures. He was a bit surprised. He'd heard bad things about this company, maybe they were wrong, maybe he got lucky. They were just approaching two weeks before the site went live and everything looked to be going smoothly.

Then the telephone calls started. We've decided that we need all this extra stuff, by the end of the week. What about this? What about that? We can't host it in this country, we have to host it in this other country for legal reasons. Talk to our lawyers, they'll explain what they're going to do to you if you host it in the wrong country. What do you mean that's going to take an extra week? It can't take an extra week. Then the contracts started arriving. Extra clauses saying that the developer would bear the costs of any extra work, hidden on page 237 of a 400 page contract. Suddenly, when they turned up to meetings, there were five times as many people turning up from the MSM company's side and most of them seemed to be lawyers. And they weren't nice people. If my friend didn't do exactly what they told him, if he didn't sign the contract, they made it clear, he'd be out of business.

My friend, did what he could. Bravely, he refused to sign a contract he didn't have time to read. He agreed some kind of halfway house with the hosting, his loyal developers pulled several all-nighters to do all the changes that were required. They got something out for the deadline.

The first rule of comedy - timing

The next time I saw him I was expecting more tales of lawyers contracts, unexpected changes. But when I asked him about the project he just shrugged. "They seem to have lost interest."
"What?"
"That's how they work. They get all worked up before a release date, and they lose interest. They're straight on to the next thing. They're not worried about you any more. We've been to a few meetings, they're relaxed, just like they were three or four weeks before the deadline."
"Did you sign their contract?"
"No."
"Did they pay you?"
"Yes."

When I run my Introduction to Agile course over more than one day, (for example, the Managing Digital Projects Course) I start the second day with a discussion of negotiations and difficult conversations. One of the things that I recommend you try to do is to move from adopting a negotiation position to discovering value, to move from "message delivery" to a learning conversation. And I think one of the most important things for each side in a potential "difficult conversation" to learn about each other is their expectations of timing and time-scales.

For further information, contact Mark@agilelab.co.uk (07736 807 604)

5 Steps to Internet Innovation?

I was please that it was working. I could see how this might be regarded as a bit far outside the remit of "Managing Digital Projects". But as I mentioned that the key assumption that the newspapers had been hanging onto - that they could make money from selling content - had been pretty comprehensively blown out of the water. She started shaking her head and then angrily asked -
"But then how ARE we going to make money?"
"I dunno, maybe you aren't. Maybe somebody else who's got a business model that works on the internet is going to ruin you."
"But that's not fair!"
"No, maybe not, but that doesn't stop it being true."
She kept shaking her head. But finally she said.
"Yeah, you're right. You know, you should tell my boss this. I think he needs to do this course". She was all limp and defeated. [depression]

She didn't actually work in the newspaper industry but she was clever enough to see how the internet was going to affect how she made her living just as radically. She was in an industry that had once been the epitome of respectability and was now overrun with spammers and charlatans.

I’ve spent a lot of time recently talking to people who work in the publishing industry whilst teaching my course "Managing Digital Projects." The format of the course was a bit unusual: the first two days of the three-day course are separated from the last day by about 6 weeks. The idea is that people who attend the course can go away and try out some of techniques that I've suggested and report back.

The structure also has another benefit. It gives me a chance at the end of the two days to ask the course delegates if there was anything that they wanted me to include in the last day, if there was anything that I hadn't covered.

One question that someone asked me in the first 2 days was "What's the difference between a digital project and a digital product?"

I thought a lot about what the difference was between a digital product and a digital project. I realised that there was a kind of technical issue around how to create e-books if all you have is the hard copy. Lots of stuff to do with arranging for people to do double keying in the Phillipines and something I know absolutely nothing about. But I also suspected that hidden inside this question was a kind of assumption about what a digital project is - that it's just an opportunity to sell the same kinds of things that you used to sell offline - products, on-line.

And this lead me to think about about Elisabeth Kübler-Ross's five stages of grief (sorry, this is how my mind works).

Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance.

There's quite a lot of criticism of Kübler-Ross's account as a description of grief, first of all because most people who are grieving don't seem to be denying anything. But it strikes me as a brilliant and useful model for lots of other situations where somebody is being told something that they don't want to hear. And this interests me partly because, as part of the MDP course, I teach how to deal with difficult conversations, and partly because:

as a consultant and trainer that's exactly what I spend most of my time doing: trying to tell people things they don't want to hear.

I realised that people who are asking me to talk about what a digital product is are actually in denial. The web is going to bring about a massive wave of change in their world. And they don't want to know about it. In the course, I used this marvellous blog post by Clay Shirky about the terrible state of the newspaper industry to illustrate just how powerful and destructive denial can be. The newspapers have known that the web is going to rock their world for at least ten years.

And their main response has been denial.

To be honest, I was a little worried about this section, even though I put it in the "and finally" slot at the end of the day. Even for me, it felt a little bit off beam, but:

I don't think I could have got a better response.

Introduction To Agile Methods - Wednesday 5th August 2009 in Bristol

I'm running the newly updated version of my every popular "Introduction To Agile Methods" course in Bristol on Wednesday 5th August in Bristol. We're running the course in the excellent Watershed Media Centre, right in the centre of Bristol.

This is a one day course. Fees, £350 or (£300 early bird, before 15th July). Please contact me directly to book places.

The Watershed Media Centre, Bristol

Course outline

Course schedule


For further information, contact Mark@agilelab.co.uk (07736 807 604)

Everything you wanted to know about computers and the web...

Just finished putting together the finishing touches for my course slides (warning, this is huge file) tomorrow for "Managing Digital Projects" this is a course that I give to people in the publishing industry and this third day is an opportunity to cover issues that came up out of the first two days.

My Cheat Sheet for the course tomorrow (Click for full size)

I think this day is going to deal with some questions that a lot of people just feel would be too stupid to ask, but actually don't have very good answers to:

What's a computer?
What's a program?
What is software?
How does the web work?

Having laid all that down, we then go on to SEO and Analytics.

Finally (after taking the necessary 30 seconds to remind them that this applies to publishing) we look at how we can deal with a world that seems to be in permanent seemingly crazy and destabilizing change.


For further information, contact Mark@agilelab.co.uk (07736 807 604)