Scrum meeting snapshot.

I’m sure you know about apples and doctors and whatnot; I’ve also found that Scrums are just like that too.  It’s a foundational tool for any team that’s becoming “agile”, and a great starting point to work Scrum principles into an organization for a lot of reasons.

A Scrum is simple and wraps a lot of good ideas into itself.  The idea of a 15 minute meeting with a hyper-focused agenda with a few rules is something that can easily be applied in non-technology as well as technology groups.  To frame the benefits in a slightly different way:

• You’ll just get things done.
• Information is boiled down to the essentials.
• You can improve morale by empowering team members; they are free to self-organize for the rest of the day with minimal regimentation.

Here are some tips for organizations who want to start introducing Scrum into non-software-engineering teams:

• For project managers acting as Scrum Masters: Focus on impediment identification and resolution (action) as opposed to project plan maintenance (passive).
• For business analysts (or other team members in general) acting as Product Owners: Focus on getting everyone on the same page regardless of role and break out of the siloed information mentality as opposed to creating and maintaining over-wrought documentation.
• For the rest of the team members involved: Focus on progress, momentum, and constructive conflict as opposed to accounting for every minute of one’s time.

I realize that some people might argue:

• What about emergencies?  I would say that Scrum Master judgment can intervene to call off the Scrum as needed.
• What about getting to other topics?  That is not the point of the meeting!
• How do we make sure everyone has their say?  Team members (emphasis on team) will, as long as it’s brief and to the point.  Non-team members wait until the “parking lot” time that’s determined by the Scrum Master.

These (and their variations) are all excuses for ScrumBut, a horrible mutation that’s justified with weak rationales and a disdain for other folks’ time.  Respect the people you work with, and just don’t do it.

PS. Credit for the photo of the Scrum meeting goes to Jason Yip and his article here.

C. Minard's Depiction of Napoleon's Invasion of Moscow and Russia in 1812 and 1813

I recently finished reading Dan Roam’s “The Back of the Napkin,” which is a great introductory and reference book on communicating with pictures.  I also spotted Seth Godin’s blog post commenting on this NYTimes post and its validity.  And last but not least, one of my favorite examples of multiple dimensions of data plotted on a single illustration is explained by Edward Tufte.  I mention all of these examples because it’s easy to make a bad picture, but not too hard to make a really good one.

My career is filled with all sorts of illustrations to prove a point. Whether it was as pedestrian as a pie chart, or a project timeline, or a business roadmap, illustrations allow someone to demonstrate a few things:

• That you’ve researched the problem at hand, and know what you’re talking about.
• That you can show variations of the issue (by drawing on top of the picture).
• That your analysis is sound.

There’s an inherent danger to pictures though, which is that sometimes they lend too much credence (as Godin points out above) to a weak analysis.  Godin points out that

“reviews never reflect the product, they reflect the passion people have for the product. As Jeff Bezos has pointed out again and again, most great products get 5 star and 1 star reviews. That makes sense… why would you be passionate enough about something that’s sort of ‘meh’ to bother writing a three star review?”

The point for any viewer of the illustration is to be skeptical of the data that underpins the picture.  Note that the NYTimes post relies on shaky data, whereas the Minard illustration is based on mostly secondhand (but reliable) accounts.  Both require at least two passes across the pictures shown, and the biggest difference is that the NYTimes post discredits itself, whereas Minard’s builds on itself.

Conclusion: Check to see if your pretty picture relies on not-so-pretty data.  If it does, don’t be lazy; find better data (i.e. garbage in, garbage out).

I’m particularly interested in the product manager function both from an improve-my-everyday-work perspective as well as this-could-be-the-next-step-in-my-career point of view.  And what found today is this:

• Product Managers are the customer/are not the customer.
• Product Managers occupy a very interesting intersection between senior management, marketing, and development (mind you, this is biased towards my background in software development, YMMV when it comes to physical goods).
• Product Managers communicate a lot/do not communicate enough.

What do I do with this as a project manager in a Engineering organization (not a rhetorical question)?  More on this topic later!

Recommendation: Go ‘C’ the film!

One of the first harsh lessons I learned right away is that this type of remote is not forgiving to a novice.  If you don’t know what you’re doing, be prepared to have a lot of patience.  Despite the wizard’s attempt to outline the steps needed to get my equipment working and trying the remote out with a simple “All Off” activity, the wizard tool (Pronto Configurator) kept giving me a “There is an error with the configuration data. No valid configuration can be generated.”  Suffice to say, I wish that it would have specified what exactly the error was, and a great deal of restraint went into:

• reinstalling the software,
• installing ProntoEdit Professional to take a look at the code database (but not necessarily knowing what to look for),
• performing a lot of code “learning” for the code database, and
• being bewildered as at some point, the “My Database” set of codes wouldn’t populate with entries and I could not open alternate databases such as the One1R database.

After spending nearly 12 hours (spanning three days) tweaking and testing and revising, I was finally able to call my little project done!  Based on that experience, here are some lessons learned:

• Where possible, test out and stick with the Factory Database codes.  Only teach the codes that really don’t exist in the database and always duplicate the component before you start adding or changing things around.
• Expect a lot of trial-and-error when looking for a code set from the Factory Database.  Sometimes the codeset ID will map to a device’s model number, and other times, not at all.  I found that relying on the Component Type helped somewhat, but it would be useful for Philips to include information such as “Codeset xyz works with ACME G-500 and likely similar devices.”  That way, a user can at least test out codesets for devices that you might recognize as part of a product family.
• Think long and hard about your “Activities” (which are in essence your use cases).  I ended up making four Activities that involved multiple devices and mapped buttons that coordinated all of the devices in concert, but I also added four Activities to correspond to each piece of equipment.  Those activities’ sole purpose was to mimic all of the commands possible with just the device remote.  Where a hard button would not cover a command in an obvious way, I duplicated it on the list of additional “Screen Functions.”  This goes a long way in keeping me from reaching for the original remote.
• Make sure you download this little piece of software (here) provided by Philips.  It should save your sanity if you get the “There is an error with the configuration…” message.

Two hardware improvements that should be made:

1. The silver scroll wheel is a great idea, and its implementation is most of the way to where I think Philips should be.  Instead, I would suggest that the wheel either take the form of a thumbwheel next to the screen (scroll and click, like a Blackberry), or else to simply lower the profile and introduce raised bumps for the cursor arrows.  I found that pressing the cursor arrows usually shifted the scroll wheel to another Activity that should not be active.
2. Along the same lines for the scroll wheel, introducing a discrete instead of a continuous wheel (with slightly more resistance/friction) to give more feedback on the menu item selected and also let the user know of accidental movement of the scroll wheel.

Recommendation: Change the scroll wheel to be more flush with the remote’s surface and introduce a bit more tactile feedback.

It’s clear that a lot of thought and effort was put into aligning this product with the marketplace offerings and distinguishing it from the rest of the Pronto lineup of products to offer consumers a great choice.  With some touchups on the minor hardware and software issues, this would be a no-brainer choice for a universal remote without a touchscreen.

A recent WSJ article (may require registration) brings more attention to a lesser-known capability of cellphones: connecting your phone to a computer as a USB modem to gain access to the Internet, a.k.a. tethering.  This feature was critical to me in a fairly common setting in the consulting life: having spotty or no Internet access on the road or at the client’s office.  And I’m arguing now that wireless carriers should include this value-add service in all of their wireless data plans for free, not to charge a monthly fee for it separately.

A natural question of course is “Why should wireless carriers want to give this away for free if it’s so important?”  I would pose that it gives two big benefits to the carriers:

• Improved sales of higher-margin smartphones and use of data plans.
• A new software-based monetization opportunity.

By continuing to push so-called “unlimited” plans for cellphones, I think the carrier that makes their marketing more compelling by formally including tethering as a capability would improve their sales and retention rates.  At the same time, the carrier would have an opportunity to either sell configuration software to ease support of the tethering function, or else use the configuration software as an avenue for advertising, cobranding, or bundleware opportunities.

To give some context, I used to work at a client’s offices where I had to share a single desktop computer and Internet connection with multiple people throughout the day because it was a very locked-down environment.  Since I couldn’t use my own laptop to get things done, I found that I couldn’t keep up with either client project deliverables or extracurricular work that I’d be doing as well all while sharing a single computer.  That’s when tethering came to the rescue.  After buying myself a smartphone and fussing with the configuration for a while (drivers, registry edits, and the like), I finally got connected!  IM, e-mail, the Web, and online resources were available to me again after nearly 2 months straight of maddeningly working off of one computer.  It felt like a breath of fresh air.

Recommendation: Carriers should legitimize a value-add service that they have a hard time controlling as a part of their data plans to improve their sales and image as well as opening a new incremental revenue stream for themselves.

Being the astute reader that you are, you’ve probably guessed it: Chrysler is the best example of survival through innovation. Dodge Caravan/Plymouth Voyager were practically invented by Chrysler and still has fair market share and gas mileage numbers compared to sedans and compact vehicles (not counting the green stuff). Chrysler pushed the Jeep marque to gain significant traction in the early 1990s, leading to a surge of consumer demand for vehicles that could go off-road, carry everything plus the kitchen sink, and still get you to your destination in comfort (thus the original luxury SUV, the Grand Cherokee Limited). And finally, the Dodge Viper is an iconic muscle car that injected some American pride (and brute force) into the high performance automotive arena.

Chrysler had many opportunities to succeed in the past based on its innovation, but its lack of business savvy and missteps in the marketplace in manufacturing, partnerships, and brand marketing have significantly hampered its competitiveness. I hope that the Fiat alliance actually yields the following instead of “leaner management and overhauled manufacturing”: truly equitable technology and supplier sharing, the development of a breakthrough hybrid or electric vehicle, and the employment of lean manufacturing techniques.

Conclusion: Innovation can keep a company on life support, but it won’t do it any good if it doesn’t know how to make and sell its products.

Sources (background and pictures) include Wikipedia (Chrysler, Minivan, Jeep Grand Cherokee, Dodge Viper) and the Wall Street Journal.

Wolfram Alpha is a great way to find a fact and do some analysis about it. You might think that after 19 days of being available to the public that I would understand what it’s all about as a user. Just like Mathematica, I think this product is a tad ahead of its time. This quote from their site: “Wolfram|Alpha’s long-term goal is to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable and accessible to everyone” is now much more meaningful after having used the service: “immediately computable” means a whole world of analysis can be at your fingertips, and “systematic knowledge” is another phrase for data and facts.

Now, there are some recognized shortcomings but by-and-large, as a proof-of-concept, it’s fantastic! The above link should bring you to a query state that lists the following major US specialty retailers: Staples, Office Depot, and OfficeMax. Now what I was trying to do was to find information quickly about this particular sector of retailers, provide a basis to generate an estimate on the size of the market for office supplies, and see data points relative to each other. And of course, it did so beautifully.

There’s plenty more work to follow, however. I think there are two key high-priority enhancement projects Wolfram Alpha should consider for their next release cycle:

1. a simplified and standardized (mathematical?) grammar structure, and
2. a fact-drilling capability.

The first suggestion would greatly help users understand how to structure their input and reduce the incidence of the “don’t know how to handle the input” page appearing to users. After all, I can’t think of a single language that doesn’t have syntax with which to standardize expressions and context. And at the same time, I don’t think one system can understand every single kind of expression and context from a myraid of users without extensive effort into a (in my opinion) futile effort.

The second suggestion would be a means to offer transparency to the facts presented by the engine. Similar to Wikipedia and to the tradition of citations in written works, Wolfram Alpha should consider a way to cite every single fact in its database. After all, each one should be verifiable in its own way, and the source content would go a long ways to confirming that work. Good luck to the Wolfram Alpha team, I wish you the best of success!

Recommendations: Put in a grammar/syntax structure to help users understand how to input their queries, while keeping it at a minimum. And don’t forget the beauty of the Web being built on hyperlinks, so link to your facts where possible!

My perspective comes from lots of hands-on experience with each of the three groups. Creative folks need time to let ideas marinate and mature into thoughtful assets. Technical folks (good ones, anyway) need scope to build the best possible product (if only I had a dime for every time a developer’s asked me “Well, if I do it this way it can work okay, but I think it’s better to do it this way because [insert comment about future capabilities or cool functionality]“, I’d be rich!). And of course, we can’t forget business folks, whose tolerance for time seem to fall lower every day. How can you get the three groups working together?

Recommendation: Building mutual respect and condensing each group’s issues into soundbites for the other groups is my approach to handling any initial situation. Project managers must have a strong curiosity for new domains and the nuances of each group’s work and background, which will help them argue for each side. This kind of position will guide a project to success for all stakeholders since it strikes a good balance and effectively negotiates a lot of tension out of the situation. However, when I’m in between a rock and a hard place, I have to side with the money but not without a fight for quality and extensibility. Doing right by the client is my mantra and I would never sacrifice that until I’m kicked out of the building.

What do you think?

I’ve personally seen demonstrations or used the following tools:

• ActionMethod
• Microsoft Project
• Danube Scrumworks
• Rally

but they all serve some subset of functionality that could be addressed by a better integrated and streamlined tool.  Consider the following scenarios:

• The project is starting up, and you’ve identified all of your stakeholders.  Where does someone set up resource assignments for WBS planning?  Where does someone set up mailing lists for the team?  Where does someone set up collaborative workspaces for documents and deliverables?
• The project is in flight, and a new resource has joined the team to assist with a new stream of work that arose because of scope changes.  Where does someone make assignment changes on the planned tasks?  How does someone get the person up to speed quickly with his/her respective peers?
• The project is closing down.  How does someone close a collaborative workspace, draft/issue a final status report, and archive deliverables with a minimum of effort?

In many cases, all of this work is distributed across physical machines, distinct programs, and perhaps even in analog form (as opposed to digital copies).  Managing projects to success should be about the project management, not the tool management.

Recommendation: Combine or integrate:

1. ad-hoc organizational modeling
2. sophisticated communications tools
3. work breakdown structures, and
4. collaborative workspaces and their deliverables

to foster a project-oriented work environment.  Has anyone seen such a beast?