Sunday, February 26, 2012
Measuring purpose. Measuring customer delight
Posted by Simon Baker
Power is shifting in the marketplace from the seller to the buyer. The rules of business are changing. Increasingly, customers know everything about the companies they buy from. Customers are taking charge and the new business bottom line is customer delight. It's no longer about pushing features at customers, it's about achieving the experiences customers desire. It's no longer about concept to cash, it's about how long it takes to go from concept to customer delight. It's no longer about output, it's about outcomes. Delighting customers is everyone's responsibility and whether you realize it or not, no matter what you do, you're working in customer services.
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Friday, February 24, 2012
Stop pushing features and start delighting users
Posted by Simon Baker
Focus on outcomes not output. Stop pushing features and start delighting users.
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Sunday, February 19, 2012
Lost without a goal
Posted by Simon Baker
I can't operate effectively without some kind of goal. Let me clarify that. Without some kind of goal I am directionless. I'm easily distracted from any focus I might have started with by other things that crop up. I end up flitting from one thing to another, multitasking. I become anxious and frustrated. I lose my sense of priority. I end up working on things that don't add value and I create lots of work-in-progress. It only gets worse the longer I go without being able to check in against some goal. I suspect most people are like this.
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Saturday, February 18, 2012
Emotion creates the common language
Posted by Simon Baker
The challenge when dealing with people from different backgrounds, with different experiences, qualifications, roles and domain knowledge is speaking the same language. When we face together a problem or opportunity, or given a certain need, we talk about what and how - what is the solution? How will we meet this need? We each think we see the same thing. We each believe we are talking about the same thing. When we talk about what it is it's often a case of the five blind guys and the elephant. Together we work hard to overcome our individual perspectives and structure a common language we think describes the what and the how.
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Sunday, February 12, 2012
Five sneaky ways to kill an initiative
Posted by Simon Baker
1. Declare victory
Regardless of whether something has been successful or not the quickest way to kill it is to publicly declare it a success: “The initiative has been completely successful. The team responsible is no longer needed. The values have been internalized.”
Thursday, February 9, 2012
Pursuing features increases total cost of ownership
Posted by Simon Baker
I suspect lots of decisions are made because they bring short-term benefits despite there being long-term risks. I've seen agile teams pushed for feature after feature with the business owner citing business value prioritization. Certainly there is commercial pressure for features but how many of these features have been validated with users? Is the demand real?
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Monday, February 6, 2012
Organization complexity is a waste farm
Posted by Simon Baker
When people are pooled in specialized silos more process is required to get things done. Responsibility gets diffused and transaction and coordination costs go up because there are more handovers and sign-offs as work is passed around; more meetings are needed to keep people involved and informed, and it's more difficult to gather people together; it's more time consuming to chase people for responses. Work is stop-start. There's little flow and lots of waste.
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Sunday, February 5, 2012
Managing costs provides a false sense of security
Posted by Simon Baker
In the software world, budgets are mostly about headcount and capital expenditure. Headcount is managed by cost per unit, where a unit is a person considered to be more or less a uniform resource capable of producing fixed output. On a cost per unit basis maybe 100 people offshore are cheaper than 10 onshore. But in my experience, more people means more waste.
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Friday, February 3, 2012
State of Agile survey for 2011 tells a familiar story
Posted by Simon Baker
One particular chart in the State of Agile survey for 2011 tells a familiar story. Have a look.
