Project Team Blog

I’m going to put in my two cents regarding the sexification of enterprise software.  The argument of whether enterprise software needs to be sexy (to keep up with consumer products) is still on the table.  See the CIO article below.  I vote “Yes” and here’s why…

CIO article by Brian Watson: Newer innovations like software as a service, Web 2.0 and mobile applications are broadly available to those outside the IT department. For those consumers of business software, freshness and flash are key selling points.
http://www.cioinsight.com/c/a/Foreward/Why-Enterprise-Software-Must-Be-Sexy/

Enterprise apps are made to serve a specific purpose.  They track project time (like Standard Time®) or access human resource records (like SAP®), or any number of specific jobs.  People use them every day, and their value lies in the depth of service they provide.  Apps that do a lot, command the big bucks.  Try to replace them, and you’ll have a huge battle.

But still, people have to use them every day.  And if they don’t like them, they gripe.  That huge battle to replace them suddenly looks pretty small compared to dealing with unhappy employees.   No big app can last forever in the face of employee dissatisfaction, regardless of its value in the enterprise.

And guess what?

All those employees have consumer items they compare the enterprise apps to.  Cell phones, big screen TV’s, PDA’s, cordless phones, etc.  They begin to expect the big enterprise apps to employ some of the sexy usability enhancements they find in their personal consumer items.

Think about it…  Would you rather use an enterprise app with 80’s-style “VCR” controls or those of your cool new MP3 player?  That’s why enterprise apps need to be sexy.

–ray

For product development teams, outsourcing almost always means “buying time.”  Every project has three aspects in contant tension: Time, Cost, Quality.

1. If you want to save time and get your product to market faster, you can pay more (cost) or make a smaller product (quality).

2. If you want to spend less money, you can delay the delivery date (time) or cut features (quality).

3. If you want a high quality product, you can spend more money (cost) or wait for it to mature (time).

Outsourcing clearly cost’s money.  So why do it?  To get your product to market faster, that’s why.  You are spending the money now, so that you can recouperate it earlier.  Beat the competition to market.

No?  You’re not doing it for that reason?  You’re using India as a cut-rate development shop?  Oops, that may be a mistake.  Remember the other aspects in constant tension?  Quality is one of them…

–ray

I once worked for a large company as a QA manager.  One day word got out that our VP of Customer Service was on the war path because damage complaints were up over 33% year to date!  It was costing us a lot of money to resend orders that were damaged upon arrival at our customer’s locations.

 I was a mid-level manager at the time and only heard rumblings from my superiors from high level meetings they attended.  I was instructed to change product packaging to hundreds of items, perform drop testing and all sorts of comparisons to reduce damage complaints.  Nothing worked.  After about six weeks of panic and fact finding no one had arrived at a reason for the problem .

Then one day I sat in on a high-level meeting.  I recalled a friend of mine that worked in our  call center telling me how we started resending new items, instead of coupons for damaged products.  It just so happened that our system calculated damage complaints based on resent items, not coupons.  I mentioned this during our meeting; we crunched the numbers and determined that damage complaints were NORMAL!  No increase had ever occurred, only the way we calculated them!!

I would have given anything to avoid those six weeks.  We invented new procedures, hired consultants and changed all of our packaging!  If only we would have talked about this before we initiated the changes!  Communication, although not always easy, is always essential.

–Warren

The four C’s of diamond cutting are Color, Clarity, Caret, and Cut.  Every stone is judged on these characteristics, and the price set accordingly.  My assertion is that these qualities also apply to the art of product development.  Engineers and Product Managers, listen up!  The value of products for your customers follows the same principles as cutting and polishing a beautiful stone.  Indulge me, and I’ll explain.

1. Color.  People expect beauty in the products they use, and will always choose a pleasing product to an ugly one.  This aspect of project development refers to the almost imperceptable touches of style you add to your work.  As left-brain engineers, we often overlook this.

2. Clarity.  Have you applied a ‘usability test’ to your product?  How clear is it?  How easy is it to navigate and complete the basic tasks?  Consider using a digital camera to study people using your product.  You’ll learn a lot about clarity and usability.

Polish: Refers to any blemishes on the surface of the diamond which are not significant enough to affect the clarity grade of the diamond. Examples of blemishes that might be considered as ‘polish’ characteristics are faint polishing lines and small surface nicks or scratches. Polish is regarded as an indicator of the quality of as diamond’s cut; it is graded as either Ideal, Excellent, Very Good, Good, Fair or Poor.

3. Caret.  Is your product full-featured?  Is there a lot of value?  Consider building it out to offer more for the money.  But listen closely to customers before launching into your build-out program.  Find out what they want, and add only those features.

4. Cut.  There a dozens of ways to present a product (i.e. cut the product features for use).  Choose an ugly one, and customers will look elsewhere.  They want new ways to approach their problems.  After all, they have exhausted all the conventional wisdom, and are looking to you to solve the real jawbreakers.  Do it, and they will reward you.

–ray

Blogs, wikis, and social networks top the list for collaboration tools among project team professionals, right?  After all, they bring the entire team together in ways nobody ever thought possible.  But that’s not what the latest Ziff Davis study found.  In fact, “shared project management tools” was in the top ten, up there with simple old email.  Didn’t know that?  Check out this article by Allan Alder at CIO Insite.

http://www.cioinsight.com/c/a/Research/Collaboration-Unlocking-the-Power-of-Teams/

It’s buried on page five, but the zinger quote below tells it all.  Check out the chart on page 5 too.  It tells us that products like Standard Time® really are important!  They are the ones bringing project teams together.  “Shared project management systems” ranked at #8, while “MySpace” was at #27, just above “None of the above.”

Shared project management systems, workflow systems, real-time document collaboration tools and knowledge management systems are considered more important than any Web 2.0 technology: They are widely used by project teams and, to a slightly lesser extent, by co-workers engaged in business processes.

I’d like to see the list of collaboration tools you find useful for your project team.  If you are not using Standard Time, what are you using?  I’d like to hear!

–ray

A huge number of projects, usually small ones, die ugly drawn-out deaths simply from distraction – and nobody knows.  Yeah, people get distracted and forget them!  It’s true, I’ve seen it happen dozens of times.  Here’s how it happens. First, the big boss decides he wants something.  A new product or policy.  A new way of doing things.  An improvement in procedure.  He’s sure it will save the company money, so he launches a new initiative (a project) to get it.  He assigns it to one of his people, and expects to hear some status in a while.  FIRST MISTAKE! The employeee may have no strong allegence to the new initiative, and gets distracted and never completes it.  He’s bored, and doesn’t want to mess with it.  The boss forgets he asked, and the project is effectively dead.  Every seen that happen?  That what I thought…  So, how do you fix it?   Tip #1: Document it. If you don’t write down your project initiatives, they can easily be sabotaged by bored employees.  If there is no record of them, employees can safely ignore them without any consequences.  And they will.   Tip #2: Don’t pile on. Giving your employees too many projects means they won’t do them when asked.  I’ve seen managers throw so many projects at employees that they simply ignore them until asked later.  If the big boss never asks, he must not want it badly enough.  They simply wait him out and deal with only the important ones when he asks.  Yikes!   Tip #3: Reduce the chain links If Joe is to do the job, but needs input from Britnney and Travis, and they can’t get to it until Keyshawn obtains his status from Lisa who gets her materials from Joe, you may never get anything.  Don’t believe it happens?  It does.  There are sometimes so many links in the project chain that the effort fizzles out, simply because one person can’t get what they need.  Of course, they never bother to find out why, but you need to realize this can happen.   Bottom line: you need a project champion who walks everything through its paces.  If you’re the big boss, that may be you.  No champion?  Well… chances are the project will die of distraction. –newshirt