2008

What not how

  • Thursday, 17 January, 2008
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All too often the business thinks in terms of the “how” rather than the “what”. But why should they care how something is to be implemented? Why doesn’t the business state their requirements in terms of their desired outcomes? What is it that they want? Then, and only then should anybody think about the “how”.

Sadly, focusing upon the how rather than the what is a driving factor behind so much of the mediocrity in enterprise software. Rather than stating “what” (they want) in terms of their dreams and aspirations, the business express their requirements in terms of what they perceive IT can deliver. “What” could never be the design quality of Apple (visionary) because they believe the “how” (their IT team) is not Apple (mediocre). But wouldn’t your average developer rather be building something visionary than something mediocre?

The best CIOs don’t care about IT

  • Tuesday, 15 January, 2008
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One of the (many) things about ThoughtWorks developers is that, whilst they are passionate about technology, (and will happily argue for hours amongst themselves about the relative merits of REST over SOAP or ruby on rails over django), more often than not when they start a conversation with a client, technology will be at the back of their mind. I think it is safe to say that generally the primary driver in the ThoughtWorks mind is business value:

  • Why are we building this application?
  • What are the business objectives?
  • What will deliver the greatest value in the shortest timeframe?

Once the requirements of the business are understood, and framed in terms of their business value, then (and only then) should we turn to the technology. This can often be a challenging message; IT professionals like to think in terms of architecture and platforms, yet often these constrain the ability to truly deliver what the busines really needs.

The development team may be a Java shop and only does Java, yet the end users live in a world of Microsoft. So what happens – IT develop user interfaces that expose data in a web browser only for the business users to copy and paste it into the tools of their trade – Microsoft Office. And because IT only do Java that’s the way it has to be.

Value is lost in this thinking. It is easy to argue on the cost to expand the team requiring new skills by introducing .net into the architecture. But what is the cost to the business of time spent through inefficient work practices? All to often IT is an end unto itself, rather than the means. IT needs to remember it only exists to enable organisations. The most refreshing CIOs are those that recognise this. Those who focus upon delivering business value and question every big decision – what value is this giving to the whole organisation rather than thinking in terms of their IT silo. In fact, the sort of way that ThoughtWorkers think.

Paired introductions

  • Monday, 14 January, 2008
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Starting a meeting or workshop with new people will almost certainly commence with introductions.  Usually I will ask participants to say not only who they are and what department they are from, but also why they think they are at the meeting.  If someone is not sure, or says “because my boss told me to attend” there might be an issue.

Last week I attended a workshop run by a couple of our developers from China.  Because paired programming is a fundamental practice to what we do, they asked the participants to do paired introductions.  Participants paired, were offered a minute to talk to each other and then introduce their colleague.  Because the team already knew each other, they didn’t need the minute to prepare.  As each participant introduced his colleague, he emphasised the persons strengths and good points.  At the end of the introductions there was a tremendously positive vibe in the room which set the meeting up for success.  It might have taken a little longer than just doing the straight introductions, but the value was clear; get people to introduce their colleagues – it breaks the ice, promotes the positive (and as a facilitator gives you another hook by which to remember people).

Enterprise twittering

  • Wednesday, 2 January, 2008
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I’ve been interested in Twitter for a while now – it is probably one of the flagship web 2.0 innovations, (and its Ruby on Rails). But I’ve had a problem with it; I can’t answer the question “what’s in it for me“. What is the point of Twitter? I signed up a while ago and invited a few friends, but the responses were generally along the lines of “what’s wrong with FaceBook status” (one tweet read, “[name] doesnt understand how this is any different from his IM or facebook status). This is a good question. Instant messenger can change the way an enterprise communicates – what’s wrong with IM? Why not put your status alongside your IM ID? Staying with the enterprise theme, you can’t walk into an investment bank without seeing someone scanning their blackberry. Why would an enterprise need Twitter when eyes are glued to the ‘berry?JP Rangaswami has been blogging a series of articles on Twitter – I commented on one post asking these sorts of questions. In a follow up blog, he has answered my questions. I’m beginning to see the point of Twitter – more to the point, when I’m talking to clients about enterprise 2.0, I’ve got a more compelling Twitter story to tell. So (borrowing from JP), why Twitter?

1. Publish – subscribe. Unlike email where an author publishes a note to a group of people she feels will be interested in it, with Twitter people can choose whether to subscribe to what the author writes. If they like what they read they can continue to consume the ‘tweets’. But how is this different to subscribing to a newsgroup? With a newsgroup you can only select to subscribe to the topic, not the author. Unless you use some clever filtering, you can’t choose whose words you read. And filtering takes time and is rarely straight forward; bringing on the second point for Twitter…

2. It is easy.

3. It is multi-device. Not only do I choose who I receive tweets from, I choose how I will receive them – via SMS, email, rss etc.

4. It is succint – 140 characters is not a lot of words to write with

Anyway, an enterprise example…

Today:

Jack Fiction knows something – he’s learned a great insight about a potential client. He sends a mail to people he thinks might be interested in this insight. He includes a copy to the Business Development email interest group that was set up by IS
– It is a closed circle. People not on the cc list will never learn of the insight.
– It doesn’t mean anything to them at that time. They delete the mail. It has no history.
– Many interested people are not on the IS email list
– People who are no longer interested still get sent mails to the group.

Twitter:

Jack knows something – he’s learned a great insight about a potential client. He tweets about it.

– It is public
– It has history

Jack doesn’t need to think who will be interested in what he writes; people who value what he does subscribe to his Twitter. They can see an archive of his previous tweets on his Twitter space. If they no longer want to listen to what Jack says they unsubscribe – the UI is elegant and simple.

This model assumes thats people interested in the insight know Jack in the first place, but that is generally the way that social interactions work. Let people communicate between themselves – it is far easier to choose who you want to listen to, to who you want to talk to. And in doing this it is far easier to cut out the noise.

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