I came from Google, search for interface between R&D and CS and apparently I came to the right place. Most of your article is clear to me as we are doing it day to day, more or less. Although I’m in the opposite chair (CS manager), I do understand the pressure on R&D as well as on CS. Question is, in an organization which has a habit of issuing new sub versions and major versions quite often (and of course CS attention for bug solving decreases) what can be done in order to assure timely bug fixes, as well as keep releasing new versions as often as possible.

The question of “how to manage frequent release cycles with minimal turmoil and maximum alignment (R&D, CS, Marketing)” is a good one. I highlighted our processes and best practices that worked well for my team. These should not be a surprise, as they are aligned with the agile development best practices. However, note that implementation and execution of these practices require vigor and disciple for all parties involved. I would love to hear from others’ experiences.

Depending on your situation, management and development processes, organizational structure, or a combination of both will help you build a solution that best works for your organization. Please realize the different roles and responsibilities that are needed for successful execution. With that, build the needed reward and recognition into your structure for all involved. At the end, it takes a team to deliver, even if on the surface some happens to spend more time at the bench than others.

Agreed upon philosophy and decision-making framework for managing releases.

You cannot minimize turmoil and increase alignment if there is no predictable schedule or decision-making process for product releases. Your framework should help to:

1. establish predictable schedules for minor and major releases;
2. differentiate between minor vs. major functionality;
3. outline a process for managing your “Big List” of functionality and capturing it as a product roadmap;
4. establish an escalation process for resolving conflicts;
5. publish and communicate the POR (Plan Of Record).

Small program team with regularly run scrums (2-3 times weekly) who prioritize, schedule and manage the “Big List” of functionality and upcoming releases.

Your small cross-functional team has the empowerment to:

1. establish an agreed upon theme and set of features for each planned release;
2. manage the product roadmap details (specific features and goals) for at least the next 2-3 release cycles (depending on your release schedule, of course);
3. resolve resource conflicts by re-prioritizing scheduled minor & major release features;
4. say ‘No!’ to urgent but unimportant requests, and follow up with ‘and here is what we can do instead’.

SCM infrastructure with a branching strategy to support your build & release cycles.

An effective branching strategy is needed to establish a structure for managing your code, delivering multiple releases and supporting parallel development. Note, this is a full time job (especially at the beginning) that also requires your senior engineers to be involved in the definition. Your branching strategy will impact your architecture, your code structure, how you version, how it fits with your build & test structure, and even how you document.

Test infrastructure, test automation and rich test library to support needs of your agile development.

Yes, a good test infrastructure is a must for quality assurance. However, to effectively support your branching strategy (creating new branches and merging back in), you need to pay even more attention to your test automation and test library by providing smoke tests, integration tests, compatibility tests, validation tests, regression tests, … Your engineers will thank you!

Organizational Structure

Effective management of engineering resources is required to support parallel development and multiple release cycles. Goal is to maximize engineering productivity by minimizing splitting of time between defect fixing and implementing future functionality. As it can be challenging to balance the short-term demands with long-term needs, many organizations establish a separate team to support the current products: Current Product Engineering (CPE) team. Focused ONLY on the current product bug fixes, minor product releases and closely aligned with Customer Support team, these teams usually have a separate reporting structure as well (to minimize distractions.)

As an example, to support our product customization needs (different than minor releases), we established a CPE team. This enabled quicker response to customers without impacting our product platform roadmap. However, it also further stressed our branching strategy and our release management process. In addition, the separation can increase the complexity of internal communications, as it means yet-another-team to coordinate and bridge silos with. Building your CPE team might be a challenge as well, as many engineers prefer to be on the cutting edge of development. However, right incentives and recognitions, along with focus on customer connection and satisfaction should help with your recruiting activities.

Final thoughts

In my experience, there is no perfect structure for managing frequent product releases with parallel development. As Deming’s cycle of: Plan, Do, Check, Act illustrates, this is a journey: it is an iterative process, that requires work and discipline. Hopefully these practices will help you get further on your journey.

What has worked for you and your teams?

Technorati Tags: product release cycles, current product engineering

Here is a quick backgrounder on the issue. Adobe’s Flash Video (originally developed by Macromedia) is a container format that is used for delivering video over the Internet. Many popular sites use this format to embed video and other content on the Web, such as YouTube, Hulu, Facebook, and Flash-based online games. Through Adobe Flash Player and browser plug-ins, Flash-Video is made available to users. Putting it mildly, Apple has no plans to support Flash on its iPod/iPhone family of products, while Adobe continues to push for its adoption. Instead, Apple has been pushing the HTML5 standard with H.264. For those that are interested, check out the Daring Fireball’s summary on the topic: Apple, Adobe, and Flash.

There are numerous examples of competing technologies: VHS vs. Betamax, Blu-Ray vs. HD DVD, GSM vs. CDMA, .Net vs. J2EE, various flavors of Unix and wireless standards, open vs. DRM, MP3 vs. AAC, AC vs. DC (no, not the music group but Tesla vs. Edison)… In many cases, competing technologies encourage innovation, arguably, sometimes at the cost of building a rich ecosystem. At the same time it is not uncommon for users to experience confusion over compatibility and interoperability, such as in the case with having too many multi-media formats and having to choose a player to match the video format. However, as a technology becomes more attractive, it will see a higher adoption rate, and increasing compatibility and interoperability with others as its ecosystem becomes richer.

This is all good, but as a technology company where do you put your money? As our computing infrastructure becomes more complex and interconnected, your customers are now looking for a total system experience: high-level of system performance and interoperability with others. With this, you need to not only control your technology but also influence and direct related technology decisions with your partners and competitors. To do this, you need to evaluate your technology strategy and decisions within the context of the purpose of your business, technology attractiveness and your ecosystem. 

The purpose of your business

“There is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer.”

– Peter F. Drucker; The Essential Drucker

With this, Drucker continues and states that, “Because its purpose is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two — and only these two — basic functions: marketing and innovation.” Lets apply that thought process to Apple. In a previous article, I highlighted that …By owning hardware, software, online services and everything in between, Jobs successfully controls the end-to-end customer experience, and thereby delivers on his core value: products that work seamlessly together and seldom break down.

Given this clear focus, Apple’s position on Flash-Video (remember, Apple does not use Flash-Video in any content delivered from iTunes store) and its tight control over the App Store is not a surprise (preventing developers from impeding or disturbing Apple’s ecosystem), especially with the iTunes Music Store universe it has created for its customers. Contrast this to Western Digital with a purpose to help you collect, manage and use digital information. This drives their product design decisions, such in the case with their Western Digital WD TV Live Network-ready HD Media Player which supports the widest variety of formats possible. Having purchased both toys (AppleTV & WDTV), I enjoy the freedom and flexibility I get from WDTV with its open architecture, vs. the restriction placed by AppleTV. With that said, I appreciate the ecosystem of the iPhone and its apps, and how well it plays with my MacBook versus my previous Motorola Pebl.

The government can also influence which standards and technologies you need to provide. It is common for governments to take leadership in technology development and standard setting, such as with the Chinese government’s initiative of the AVS (Audio Video Standard) compression codec, a competitor to H.264/AVC. If the standard becomes commercially successful, it would not only put Chinese electronic companies on the map, but would also reduce their licensing/royalty payments significantly. Standards, regulations and policies enable governments to:

• regulate goods for the safety of their consumers;
• encourage prosperity of local economy (by licensing domestic standards vs. paying for foreign standards);
• push for compatibility and interoperability (domestic electricity and plug standards) which benefits consumers and producers;
• sponsor development of emerging technologies (such as green-tech).

In summary, your technology strategies, along with your core competencies, need to be aligned to support your business purpose. Perhaps Facebook’s recent announcement on their HipHop for PHP technology development is a good example of focusing on core competencies (in this case PHP development) and building/leading technologies to lead with that strength (transform PHP code to optimized C++ for better performance and scalability.) Through this alignment, you can evaluate relevant technologies and start outlining your strategic position for each: lead/follow, in-house development/outsource/acquire, invest/divest/migrate, …

Technology attractiveness

Understanding and evaluating along these different dimensions and factors would help determine not only the attractiveness of a given technology, but also the factors and trends to watch for as technology implementation progresses. Scenario analysis and what if? brainstorming will help determine trends and identify critical potential inflection points to watch for. Take H.264/AVC digital video coding standard’s license and Mozilla’s stance on embedding the technology. Recently MPEG LA extended its license term where it will not charge royalties for Internet Video that is free to end users till December 31, 2015. What would that mean for competing technologies like Ogg Theora?

History repeats itself, and it could provide guidance on trends that will influence the technology adoption. It is always easier to identify inflection points once the technology war is over. The Adult Entertainment Industry (AEI) was identified as the decision maker in the war between VHS and Betamax. With Sony’s refusal to work with the AEI, Betamax ultimately lost out. As a result, all eyes were on the AEI when next-gen hi-def competition started (Blu-Ray vs. HD DVD.)

Richness of the ecosystem

In simplistic terms, ecosystem encapsulates the concept of a community of things and the environment in which they live. In the world of technology and business, this community includes organizations and individuals such as producers, suppliers, competitors, and other stakeholders contributing goods, knowledge, and other deliverables. Here is an announcement from Microsoft that captures their focus on the IPTV ecosystem from 2007.

The richness of the ecosystem certainly adds to its attractiveness. Again, take the competition between Blu-Ray and HD DVD as an example. When AEI selected HD DVD for their format (mainly driven by production costs), many assumed the format wars were over. At least until the Sony Play Station came out with a Blu-Ray drive, and the owners started to request Blu-Ray DVDs from the AEI. This newly expanded market, coupled with the fact that support from more movie studios reduced Blu-Ray DVD production costs, resulted in the AEI’s move to Blu-Ray.

Richness of the ecosystem can certainly influence/change your technology directions as well. These changes can be driven by your competitors, as in the case with Amazon.com introducing DRM-free music downloads, which resulted in increased customer desire, driving Apple to also provide DRM-free music on iTunes store. The richness of an ecosystem also influences new product concepts, such as Apple building on the strength of iPod and launching iPhone/iTouch family of products.

Thoughts on reducing your development risk…

As I mentioned before, there is no silver bullet when it comes to knowing which technology(s) to invest in. However, you can be smart on how you develop your products/technologies. These include, but not limited to:

• Adapt agile development practices, so you can rapidly shift as your products, markets and customers change. Utilize technology roadmaps as a guidance, and manage migrations as things change.
• Get your customers involved through controlled beta testing, such as with the YouTube HTML5 Video Player.
• Spend time understanding your product requirements and your technology dependencies, and establish a loosely coupled system architecture to reduce dependency.
• Leverage external relationships to reduce development effort and share risks.
• Don’t depend on the if I build it, they will come philosophy of just building the technology. Rather, help its ecosystem flourish with complementary technologies and products.
• Continuously look for ways to build economies of scale and improve your learning curve.
• Be smart about the cost of technology (direct, indirect and hidden). But also take this a step further and analyze the cost to your customers (Sony’s Playstation 3 consumes significantly more electricity than its competitors.)
• As important as standards are, your customers’ performance and functionality requirements come first. So focus on your customers’ needs while designing systems that are compatible and interoperate with standards.

Technorati Tags: technology strategy, technology competition

• Don’t make me feel and look stupid
• I need a dependable buddy
• Grow with me
• When you piss me off, say you’re ‘sorry‘
• When it’s time to part ways, don’t get angry

There are various opinions on what makes good software, especially from the perspective of developers and designers. I did stumbled upon Joel  Spolsky’s article titled Good Software Takes 10 Years. Get Used To it. Though Joel presents a valid argument, my own experience tells me the opposite can also be true: as software matures, odds are that it will become bloated, complicated and crappy.

Here is a question: what is in your top 10 list of great software? I truly struggled with my list, but here goes nothing…

1. Vi – yes, really!
2. Wordpress – contradictory to my previous statement, this software is getting better with each year
3. Django – love the development platform and the user community
4. Evernote – it just works, anywhere and even for free
5. Google reader on iPhone – it simplifies information overload
6. iSync – because it connects my life… when it works……..
7. … and that’s all I could come up with for my top 10

If we look at what makes bad software, it usually boils down to not knowing who your customer is. Even then, as my realtor used to say, “For every house there is a buyer. The trick is to be patient and to wait.” Given that premise, for every piece of software, there is a buyer. We just happen to refer to that person as the ‘visionary‘.

True, what makes great software is in the eye of the beholder. And when it come to software, there are many beholders: developers, testers, customer support, shareholders, users, purchasers, news media, your boss, your boss’ boss, ….  Perhaps there is a high correlation between beautifully written an documented code and a great software, but the reality is that your users rarely care about how well the code is written. However, research has shown that source-code metrics that show high internal design and code quality do correlate with maintainability of code. And your users do care about this from the aspect of backwards compatibility, quick time to issue resolution, time to market with new functionality and such.

Good software is as much about emotions as it is about the overall software quality, features, ease of use and such. Case in point, my own emotional turmoil as I struggled to program robots with the software product that shall be nameless…. Yet, in our product development process, we focus on what we can quantify (defect count, performance numbers, …) and less on understanding our users’ emotional feelings toward our product. To differentiate your software from everyone else’s, start paying attention to what emotions you stir in your customers.

Don’t make me look and feel stupid

Especially in front of a group of tech-savvy pre-teen boys! Fear is a very basic human emotion. We all want to be seen as intelligent individuals. We see our environment, our tools as extensions of ourselves. Not only we don’t want to be seen stupid, but we want our choices to shine as well.

Recently Strand Consult suggested that iPhone users are suffering from a form of Stockholm Syndrome – the condition in which the kidnapped begin to show loyalty to their kidnappers. Personally, I don’t understand how a built-in radio in my phone would make my iPhone better for me (yup, I am one of those sufferers….) But it does highlight the intimate relationship people build with their environment, applications and mobile phones.

If your product is preventing your users from experiencing your promise, you are making them feel and look stupid. In my case poor quality software coupled with poor documentation on how the programming environment interacted as a system resulted in very unhappy kids and coaches. The fact that the company charged for upgrades made the overall emotion even worse. It is one thing to be stuck with a bad software, it is another to actually have to pay for the privilege….

Need a dependable buddy

Our brains work on autopilot. We automatically search for patterns and respond accordingly. Given that, consistency is key to how fast we achieve mastery over our tools. Take Apple’s Aperture for instance. I recently moved from iPhoto to Aperture. And, I want to love Aperture… Yet, this software puzzles me, as with each new interaction I get a different pattern and response combination. I haven’t figured out its mystery, but I still want to love Aperture…

As your software gets feature rich and flexible, avoid the natural tendency to bloat it unnecessarily. But even more importantly, maintain the consistency and natural patterns that exist in your software and in your users’ environment. Your users have come to depend on them.  Take file system operations as an example. We are used to copying/moving/renaming files, so your software should not throw a fit just because I copied a file from one folder to another.

AND grow with me

Who wants to be a beginner forever?! As humans, we are wired to excel, to move quickly from beginner to intermediate and maybe even expert status. Face it, if we can’t feel competent using our tools, we move on. So what does that mean for your software?

Alan Cooper, Robert Reimann and David Cronin emphasize the need to optimize for the intermediates in About Face 3: The Essentials of Interaction Design. They indicated that most users are neither beginners nor experts; they are intermediates. With that, their recommendation is to:

• rapidly and painlessly bring beginners into intermediacy;
• avoid putting obstacles in the way of intermediates who want to become experts;
• keep perpetual intermediates happy as they stay firmly in the middle of the skill spectrum;

Looking back, if all I needed was to move a robot forward, backward or side to side for small well defined blocks, the software product that shall be nameless might have been fine. But as I want more, it’s time to dump this software and move on to one that will enable me to grow.

When you piss me off, say you’re ’sorry’

This is a basic and fundamental principle when it come to writing software. Yet, writing understandable error messages seems to be a lost art… Though I appreciate relaunching the program immediately in the case of a crash, why did you crash in the first place? And you look guilty — what else did you mess up in the process??!

When it’s time to part ways, don’t get angry…

Providing uninstallers and tools to migrate existing data/files to other platforms might go against common sense, especially when we consider the cost of switching as a competitive advantage. Yet, if your customer has already decided to dump you, the least you can be is courteous and polite. Think about it, if we stay friends, you have a better chance of being introduced to another friend of mine, or for me to consider another one of your products. And as you are leaving, do make sure to completely clean up after yourself….

Finally, remember the reciprocity rule of human behavior. Over time, people share similar attitudes and feelings towards each other. So, if you don’t respect and appreciate your users, eventually they will catch up and you will be out of a job! Next time you are evaluating the quality of your software, make sure to consider how your product makes your customers feel.

Happy Holidays!

Technorati Tags: software quality, good software

I have been spending my free time by going back to my roots: engineering and software development. My time is spent acquainting myself with the Django platform, reading about product design, and coaching a FIRST LEGO® League (FLL) team with my husband for a robotics competition coming up in December. With that, in recent weeks, I have been playing with LEGO® MINDSTORMS® NXT, including turning my dining room into a robotics lab! I have to admit, I am new to this, since LEGO® was not part of my life when I was growing up. And although my son has been involved with LEGO for most of his life, I have only been an occasional sidekick, helping out when he needed it. I must say, I missed out, but now I’m working hard to make it up.

Though we are coaching 10-13 year-old boys, I noticed an amazing amount of similarity between playing with LEGOs and managing engineering projects. I hope you enjoy my observations, and please let me know if I left out anything.

Note that I find job titles personally challenging… Though I specifically mention engineering managers, for me this covers anyone that has the duties of managing a technology and product combination, along with the responsibilities of people management.

Generalist.. Specialist.. Aha! Specialized Generalist!

This topic deserves a more in-depth discussion, as it is an area I ponder about a lot. I am a technology generalist with a specialization in technology management and product development. Yet, I wonder if I should have a technology specialization area, but then question what I would have to let go in return…

An engineering manager needs to be a generalist for successful commercialization of technology and its products. By definition, her focus should be on integrating and bridging technology, business, people and executing the engineering development life cycle. Yet, to be successful in this integration role, the engineering manager also needs to have sufficient understanding of the technology, product and industry, i.e. specialization. In her role, she must:

• Be part of the team: speaking the same language;
• Lead the team: defining and building the new language, norms and culture;
• Have imagination and creativity for what is possible;
• Understand practicality for what is doable given constraints and resources;
• Have wisdom to understand where the risks and challenges are;
• Have knowledge to educate, promote and close gaps;
• Be fearless to jump in, explore and show the way;
• Have the power to inspire, motivate and drive results;
• Have the ability to distill all for effective (and efficient) tools and processes;

All this is necessary to be a good engineering manager. I lost count of the number hours I spent surfing through different robot designs, learning about the parts’ strengths and limitations, figuring out how to best navigate the NXT-G software, and just understanding what it means to build a decent robot through hands on exploration and prototyping. It all helps to build the next generation of engineers and hopefully successful performance at the competition.

Design for modularity and reliability

Anyone who is a LEGO fan won’t be surprised to hear that there is a real science behind how to design LEGO systems, how to build them for stability, reliability and strength. My 11-year-old son seems to have the knack for this! He seems to know all the different LEGO parts, how to best put them together, how to make them modular and yet still attractive.

FLL challenges require different contraptions to navigate and complete FLL missions within a set (short!) time limit. This challenges your critical thinking skills in how best to design and engineer your robot. With that, modularity and reliability of your design drives the repeatability and performance of your results. Through experience and lots and lots of prototyping and testing, you learn:

• about real-life constraints (ambient light, inertia, gravity…);
• reliability and repeatability is king queen!
• how to setup for easy real-time product reconfiguration;
• that nothing goes as planned. So test, test, and more test!

Empower… Motivate… Time manage!

Organizational behavior and motivation is a complex and broad topic. Interestingly enough, the challenge of how to effectively motivate doesn’t seem to depend on age…

FLL challenge is about kids and driven by kids. As coaches, our role is to inspire, empower and motivate for results, with hopes to grow future engineers. It is amazing to see how moving a robot utilizing a touch sensor for navigation can brighten a youngster’s day.

Encouraging creative and outside-of-the-box-thinking is a primary focus of the coaches. Our success depends on how well we read each child, and learn what motivates them into action. Believe me, each has their own degree of focus, from some being extremely short to others who would shame many adults. With that, managing time is our most important element. We walk a fine line between providing enough space to explore/empower and minimizing wasted time. There is nothing more powerful than showing kids what they can achieve through careful handholding and directing. As they say, the more things change, the more they stay the same…

Building a productive workforce

Time to market is the new reality. Yet, many factors affect productivity, which is the key driver in time to market:

• environment,
• skills and experiences,
• tools and processes,
• external resources,
• quality, …

As engineering managers, our job is to understand the possibilities, assess the risks, and close the gaps in any and all areas. We also need to understand what is under our control, and make peace with anything that is not. Turning my dining room into a robotics lab is my way of controlling the physical environment, to improve individual focus and increase team work.

However, tools and processes also directly affect individual creativity and productivity. Tools can have natural constraints (such as with the NXT-G development environment), and processes need to fit within the team culture and capabilities. Tailoring tasks to align each individual’s strengths, motivations and weaknesses is key to building a happy and productive workforce. And for this age, perhaps any age, when everything fails, showing, demonstrating and proving possibilities works to kick things into high gear.

Value of rich ecosystems

“Ecosystem” refers to the concept of a community working and functioning together as a unit with its developers, suppliers, customers, users, manufacturers, competitors, research groups, … Anyone who has ever evaluated a new technology, utilized the Open Source community or just Googled an unexplained error message from your operating system understands the importance of having a rich user community.

LEGO has a strong universal brand with a very active user community. Even with their strong control of LEGO brand, one can find LEGO part suppliers, such as with robotic sensors (though, this is still small when compared to Apple’s ecosystem). At the same time, their brand strength doesn’t carry to LEGO’s education division, such as with legoeducation.us. I recently ordered two different LEGO robotics education set. It was quite humorous to receive two sets of parts and storage trays, where one set’s trays came in a mid-size blue plastic LEGO storage container, and the other was just trays in a generic brown shipment box. In addition, annoyingly enough, I cannot get a container for these trays, as they’re slightly too big to fit into any containers sold by the company. Fortunately, none of their building bricks seem to have this type of incompatibility…

LEGO has a very rich user base: LEGO Club, numerous blogs, LEGO Engineering, MINDSTORMS Community NXT, FIRST Forums, … This rich set of resources and a large community to share with makes the LEGO experience useful, interesting and fun for anyone and at any level of expertise. Just think what it would mean to you, if you could nurture and reap the benefits of a rich ecosystem and the strong brand of your product.

Building LEGOs are easy…

And, fun! They demonstrate the challenges an engineering manager faces, including topics that I haven’t touched like rewards, dealing with disruptive  children employees, agile development processes, introducing new tools and technology to your teams, testing and product quality, … Though they may seem like toys, they are real engineering projects, requiring curiosity, ingenuity and a lot of persistence.

Wish us luck at the upcoming competition!

Technorati Tags: LEGO, FLL, engineering management

From Fast Company’s Think.Design blog by Ken Musgrave:

• The Enduring Power of Brand: Leica vs. Panasonic — Power of emotional connection
• Beyond Design, 10 Skills Designers Need to Succeed Now — This list is not just limited to designers

From MIT Sloan Management Review’s special report on Design Thinking:

• Problem Solving: How to Become a Better Manager… By Thinking Like a Designer by Jimmy Guterman —  Interview with Nancy Duarte and Garr Reynolds. If you are thinking this is not relevant, look again. Here is a quick snapshot from Garr Reynolds: embrace restraints; take a risk; question everything; it’s not about tools.
• Designing Waits that Work by Donald Norman — A few tips on how to apply design thinking in your day to day people management.

From Core77, Parallel Universes: Making Do and Getting By + Thoughtless Acts (Mapping the quotidian from two perspectives) by Kevin Henry — information exists already in the world; great precision is not required; natural constraints are present; cultural constraints are present.

Technorati Tags: design thinking

Recently I was reading about the need to recruit I-shaped people and T-shaped people for innovation in these articles:

• BusinessWeek’s Innovation Calls for I-Shaped People by Bill Buxton
• FastCompany.com’s Strategy by Design by Tim Brown

As I glanced over them, I suddenly had a flashback to e-leadership, EQ vs. IQ and managing knowledge-workers. These were the terms for leadership competencies that were tossed around back in 2001. And, as part of my Management of Technology course work, I wrote an article comparing these leadership competencies from Deming’s philosophy on management, first published in the 1950s.

Demming’s leadership fundamentals revolve around the concept of “Everything is a system, and we are part of it.” His new leadership competencies are outlined by Scholtes in The Leader’s Handbook: Making Things Happen, Getting Things Done.

• The ability to think in terms of systems and knowing how to lead systems;
• The ability to understand the variability of work in planning and problem solving;
• Understanding how we learn, develop, and improve; leading true learning and improvement;
• Understanding people and why they behave as they do;
• Understanding the interaction and interdependence between systems, variability, learning, and human behavior; knowing how each affects the others;
• Giving vision, meaning, direction, and focus to the organization.

Back in 2001, I concluded that Deming’s philosophy from the 1950s represents the principle and foundation for leadership. For me, that still holds true today. We need individuals with empathy, who can comfortably deal with the complexities and chaotic nature of today’s systems and can integrate business, people and technology. We need people who can inspire with vision, focus on the details to get things done, and then learn from failures. We need individuals and leaders who can act upon their observations and intuitions, lead and facilitate the change that is needed to succeed.

What do you think? Are Deming’s ideas and philosophies really that timeless? Are we now just restating the obvious using new terms? Do the complexities of our current environment require new perspectives on leadership? Or is this just common sense, which is unfortunately not so common anymore…

You can download my original paper New Principles of Leadership?

Technorati Tags: leadership, Deming new leadership competencies

Just show up

As with anything in life,  showing up is the first step. You need to prioritize and schedule your creative time. This may not seem like an inspiration strategy, but what came first: the chicken or the egg?! With that said, you do want to tune into your natural creative rhythm to avoid swimming against the current. For me, trying to engage in anything before my morning coffee is a futile exercise (i.e., I am not a morning person). However, by mid-afternoon my creativity starts to flow and by early evening I feel intense focus. My challenge is to work my life around my creative rhythm; like weeding the garden, it’s never ending work…..

To discover your natural creative rhythm, you just need to pay attention. Pay attention to when you feel most creative, when ideas are flooding out and when you can tap into that energy with ease. Once you find that rhythm, figure ways to arrange your life around it, however you can. Your creativity and productivity will thank you.

And listen…

Curiosity, observation, reflection, and acceptance are part of the creative process. To inspire your creativity, you need to give it space and time to process itself. Write it, shape it, mold it, but let it germinate itself. My out-of-this-world ideas are not always that hot when I write them down. However, with time, they usually morph into something new, sparking new thoughts and taking new forms. So, listen without judgement, explore without constraints, share without attachment and use your intuition to shape and mold (more on this, see Meet your idea critics.)

Know your Achilles’ heel

Our strengths can also be our greatest weaknesses. In my case, my ability to focus on a specific area to the point of obsessiveness (such as the case of making time for writing) pushes my creativity to the back burner. Recognizing this, I have to consciously make time to show up, to reflect and to explore in order to fuel my creativity. This is a case where it is not the quantity of time, but the quality of time that really matters.

My variety of interests (including design, sustainability, creativity, innovation, technology, startups, digital photography, cooking, Zen Buddhism, travel, music and even some gardening) seeds my ideas from independent and unrelated sources. As I enjoy learning, I get curious about connections and inspired by possibilities. This is why ‘focus’ is my Achilles’ heel; when I focus on results, I loose touch with this exploration cycle that inspires my creativity.

I can’t comment on how to establish the perfect balance in ones life. I think that is very personal. Take work-life balance for example. For some, this means the complete and total separation of work from life. For me, I am most at ease when they freely flow and mix in and out of each other.

Creativity is a state of mind

Each one of us are different in what inspires our creativity and motivates our desire to produce. However, just like a faucet controlling water flow, our surroundings (light, color, sounds, …), our purpose, our boundaries, our own sense of urgency, … can positively or negatively influence the flow of our creative energy. When I want to inspire my creativity, you will find me in open surroundings, with lots of light and warm colors, usually listening to classical music or Last.fm’s opera radio.

However, I have to develop that mind set, that urge to create, and enable the right environment to maximize my energy flow. It is not about proving if I am creative or not, as we are all creative. But, it is about taking what is locked up in my head, capturing it in a way that is sharable, even if it is just for my own consumption. This process alone, enriches life, adds beauty, clarity and at times simplicity.

Be authentic… Be true to yourself. And trust the process

A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What one can be, one must be.

– Abraham Maslow

Lets get this straight, only thing your creativity wants is for you to be authentic, be true to yourself. It has no judgement, no expectations. It has no preconceived notions of what is good or bad, right or wrong. All these judgements are in your head; you bring them with you to the table when you sit down to create. For you to be inspired, you need to remove these artificial blockages from the system and just trust the creative process. You can’t drive across the city if you are constantly hitting the brakes!

Avoid sensory overload

We live in a world where distractions and interruptions are everywhere . Email, instant messaging, SMS, Facebook, RSS, google, reality shows, YouTube… are all fueling our information addiction. “You got mail.” is the new hit, giving us an instantenous rush, even though we know there are 57 channels (and nothing on.) Worse, this constant context switching is hurting our creativity and productivity. So, for creativity and productivity sake, put on the stop information addiction patch for a set period of time. Set clear boundaries: no browsing, no email, no messaging, no google, … and focus on your creative side. And enjoy the Sounds of Silence.

Build your treasure map

Ok, you are stuck. Now what? How about building your treasure map. In this case, your treasure is your purpose, it is what you want to achieve. The landmarks could be your milestones, and paths reflect where you need to grow and develop. Mind maps are also great tools for capturing your thoughts and ideas creatively. But, if you don’t know where you are, how do you know where you are going? And if you don’t know where you are going, this is a good time to get realigned. In the process of developing your treasure map, you will be inspired.

Don’t be blinded by your habits

Recently we stepped into the GPS age. It is a great device to find locations for soccer fields, coffee shops, and anything else that we may want to know that is around us. However, it can also be limiting, as it results in journeys from point A to point B in the most efficient manner. And in addition to eliminating the discovery of a wonderful point C (by getting lost), GPSs could also cause temporary blindness… Why would I need a GPS to tell me my coffee store is less than half a block right in front of me?! Because we give the GPS our complete focus, disregarding the rest of the journey. And, that is a true story

Our habits can become routine, automatic, and compulsory. So, shake things up a bit. Take a different route, leave the iPod at home during your run, pick up a new book, ask for a job rotation, get to know a new person, … As I am hanging around the university, I am learning from the youngsters how to carry my iPod, how to ignore public service announcements, and how to follow my own rhythm. See what I would be missing if I didn’t shake things up a bit!? And, who knows what that might lead to one day…

Love the process

See yourself as a creative being and enjoy the process. With apologies to Stuart Smalley of Saturday Night Live: “I’m good enough, I’m creative enough, and doggone it, I’m inspired.”

Technorati Tags: creativity, inspiring creativity

For me, there is something about the college environment, college town, … The diversity, intensity, energy, … it draws me in. For the next few weeks, I will be hanging around the University of Washington campus and University District in Seattle. No, it is not for my PhD, though that is something I would like to do.

Though I been to the University Bookstore before, this is my first time at the campus. It is quite large and very pleasant. Since it is the summer break, campus is also quiet. However, you will see many middle school kids running around (10-14 year olds) — future Huskies — which one of them is mine.

As I discover more about the area, I plan to upload photos to my Flickr account in the University of Washington set.

Don’t underestimate the significance of small distances. Our research shows that performance is noticeably lower for teams with people located in the same building but on different floors when compared with teams where all members are on the same floor.

Their research was focused on two areas: (1) When do virtual teams outperform colocated ones? and (2) how should companies manage dispersed teams? They identified that task-related team processes, including those that help coordinate work and ensure that each member is contributing fully, are most critical for the performance of dispersed teams. In addition, their research highlights the importance of promoting and emphasizing:

• Teamwork skills
• Self-leadership across the team
• Face-to-face meetings
• Global culture

In the past I wrote about my experiences in managing virtual teams, and best practices that worked for me when building high-performance teams regardless of spatial (geographical location), temporal (spanning different time zones), configurationally uneven (number of members differ) and culturally diverse separations. Below are the articles. Enjoy!

• 8 Rules for Building Globally Dispersed High Performance Teams
• Wisdom from the trenches: Managing geographically dispersed teams

Technorati Tags: managing virtual teams, MIT Sloan Management Review

Note: This article is written from the perspective of technology development and leading R&D teams.

Developing technology is a relatively simple task when compared to the challenge of getting it diffused and adopted throughout the intended ecosystem. Although there are others, understanding customer needs, wants and overall psychology is one of the big hurdles that has to be overcome for success. This journey starts at home with your Customer Support team. Yet, there tends to be a gap between R&D and Customer Support teams during the innovation process. Here are my experiences on where the gaps can occur and strategies that worked for me for closing (or, when needed, widening) them.

Prioritize Customer Support correctly

On the road to your product release, you may be tempted to prioritize Customer Support behind everything else. After all, what could be more important than schedule, cost, functionality, … Believe me, it will happen, I have been there. And everyone in the program team will agree to that prioritization…. However, for new products and innovations, it is the wrong decision. Innovation is about change. Your Customer Support team is there to help your customers manage that change effectively. By prioritizing Customer Support low, you are under valuing the role that they play in supporting and hand holding the users of your products.

Unfortunately the implications of this decision could go deeper than just a damaged relationship between two teams. If the Customer Support team does not have the knowledge to support your products, continuous customer escalations could impact your team’s morale, damage the product’s reputation, and impact schedules as resources are pulled to address various issues. So, perform a risk analysis of your product, and evaluate how challenging it may be for your customers. As optimistic as you are, remember Murphy will be there.

Get to know your extended family

Whether you call them partners or customers, customer support, field engineers, and your sales team are all part of your extended family and, in loose terms, are customers of R&D. They sit between you and your end-customer, managing the day to day relationship, activities and issues. If they don’t believe in your solution and your vision, they will not be able to sell it either.

Take your time. Get to know these partners. Learn to speak their language. Learn how to make them your eager customers, your cheerleaders. Definitely share the power and beauty of your technology and product. However, be ready to do that from their perspective using their language and reflecting on their experiences. Where possible, be ready to walk a mile in their shoes. Be prepared to learn a lot about your end customer through these experiences.

First impressions count

I have been a Wordpress user and administrator since I started this site. Over the last few years, the Wordpress team have done amazing work to improve the overall administrator experience during upgrades and infrastructure updates. Deployment, installation, upgrades and migrations may not sound sexy, but they go deep into your technology, product and architecture strategy. They also play into first impressions. Compare that to my Microsoft experience, where after 15 minutes of validating, acknowledging and thanking me for having a valid copy of Microsoft XP, the next product that they suggested I install started the exactly same cycle…….. Btw, did you catch Apple’s announcement on Mac OS X Snow Leopard: refined from installation to shutdown. First impressions count!

Make it timely

Documentation seems to be the arch-nemesis of technology developers. Yet, it is one of the time tested methods of knowledge transfer, especially in large corporations and virtual teams. Lack of documentation and support can make or break deals. Recently, I took a 3 week detour as I evaluated using Zope for a prototype idea. After giving my full attention, and trying to work around all the “lack of’s” (lack of working sample code, lack of newbie documentation, lack of knowledge on what functionality maps to which release version…) I moved on to Django. The difference is like night and day.

Knowledge transfer is one of those challenging areas that requires work. It doesn’t happen by itself! So, set up a methodology that makes sense for all parties involved. Establish a process to ensure right knowledge is being captured and communicated in the intended way. It can be as simple as an email snippet, a brown-bag discussion, or as formal as a documentation library managed by a volunteer librarian; i.e. an R&D engineer. Either way, make it work and make it timely.

Move in together

Good customer experience is key to your success. Achieving this can be quite a challenge during the early days of your product and technology. Sometimes you may need to ship your products with dedicated engineers, other times it might make sense to move in with Customer Support to ensure timely customer resolution and effective knowledge transfer. Some of my fond memories are from the time when I moved into a Customer Support team on a temporary assignment. I was leading a small, hand picked R&D team with the task to transition our technology and product knowledge to Customer Support.

This may sound extreme, however if the situation demands, it is the quickest way to turn things around, rebuild damaged relationships and gain internal support for your product and technology. It is important to note that if you are building a transition team, you need to ensure that:

1. You select bright and knowledgeable engineers from the actual pain points; i.e. where customers have issues.
2. You select at least 2 engineers with personality and style (and the ability to stay calm under the most stressful situations) to effectively interface with internal and external customers.
3. Individuals on your team must have good relationships with bigger R&D team, and willingly share their learnings with all.
4. At least a small percentage of the team must work full time to ensure successful transition of knowledge.

Managing the timing, goals and milestones of the transition team is crucial. You cannot afford to be there indefinitely. It is not good for either party. So, set goals and expectations on both sides and be ready to pull the plug if people are not pulling their weight. Needless to say, at the time I wasn’t the most popular person in the R&D organization, but through the work of the transition team we built internal support and established a shared vision.

Immerse yourself in their language

Sometimes closing the gap between R&D and Customer Support might require everyone on the R&D team to become part of Customer Support. Though this may not be the most efficient solution (and also not the most popular), establishing a rotation for R&D escalation support will ensure everyone in your team experiences the challenges and issues that Customer Support sees. If you do choose to go this route, make sure to dedicate an accountable resource to make sense of the constant change; in my case my QA Manager was responsible for managing the rotation.

Though it was painful at times, this process did help my R&D team to have a better understanding of:

1. How our customers were using our products;
2. What major issues our customers were seeing and why;
3. An insight into how the overall product worked (vs. just focusing on their own silos);
4. Building a one-to-one relationships with Customer Support;
5. Ultimately building a better product and technology platform.

In conclusion

Through experience, one can learn a lot about what not to do…. Innovation is a system, and it needs to be managed as such.

Technorati Tags: Customer Support, innovation customer gaps, knowledge transfer