Steve Neiderhauser

Real Options in Project Management

John Rudd talks about using Real Options to manage projects.  The options approach allows you to stage your investment… business case, R&D, development.

If your team uses Agile development – an options based approach – they will deliver working software every two weeks, giving executive management a biweekly decision point instead of once a year like some large projects do.

Are User Stories like Movies

Several months ago I heard an Agile consultant lecture that User Stories are like the stories we see in movies because there's three parts to a user story — Beginning, middle, end.

That's like saying a Rueben sandwich tastes great because it has three parts.  The first bite, the last bite, and all the bites in the middle.  In fact, story expert James Bonnet writes about the limits of the three act structure.

Here's two ways User Stories are like stories.

• They both revolve around problems. The problem in a movie has to be big enough to capture our attention.
• A good movie invokes surprise, delight,curiosity. The screenwriter avoids spelling out every detail, making us active participants in the movie.  User Stories are like that too.

Product Owners should write User Stories in a way that elicits a conversation with developers.  No need to describe every detail of a requirement.  The conversation assures developers actively participate in the design.

So the conversation concept produces some of the same benefits that screenwriters create by using implied dialogue techniques.

Software as a Service

A coworker asked about design concepts for software as a service. I pointed him to Getting Real.  A book by the guys from 37signals. Getting Real is a smaller, faster, better way to build software.

At one company I coached an architect on design and how important it is to build options into products from the start. He said, "You mean we want to have a lot of preferences the user can select."

The road to agility is not paved with user preferences.  Truth is, preferences have a cost, a cost to build and maintain.

Like a master chef, you should know when to hold the preferences.

Software Architecture

When I work as a software architect, I want direct contact with the customer, whether it be a consulting engagement or creating a product for a company.  I want to limit any filters a client manager may apply to the information so I know how to delight the customer.

This approach works when the architect has taken the time to learn marketing concepts and speaks the language of business. Architects must have the ability to anticipate needs of customer and create options allowing customers to respond to shifting business landscapes.

How does a software person develop his marketing chops? Start by reading three books.

Purple Cow - Your products need to be remarkable.

Creating Customer Evangelists - The perfect compliment to a Purple Cow. And with the rise of Agile Software development, the perfect marketing approach for Agile.

Flexible Product Design - Brings together the disciplines of architecture and product management. Also discusses real options and set-based design.

Minimal Viable Product

Roman Pichler explains how the lean concept of a minimal viable product translates to Agile development.

It entails creating a first product version to test the vision as quickly and cheaply as possible. This could be a throwaway prototype such as a mock-up or a product increment, working software that is tested and documented.

Some companies still spend three months writing a crazy-large requirements document that no one, including the customer, can wrap their mind around. They'll even poison the customer experience by asking customers to read the requirements and sign off on them.

In the Agile or Scrum development process, the product backlog — list of features — is derived from the product vision. The team implements the backlog and working software is given to the customer to evaluate. Now we're using Dr. Deming's Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle.

What's more, Pichler's Product Vision Board will help the product owner communicate her vision for the product.

Perhaps only one or two people in a company are truly clued in to how product development works. That's what great about Agile. Because when you have a talented Scrum Master, he'll teach everyone in the company how to score in the game of product development.

NoNo the Penguin

If you discovered an entertaining method to learn the ways of a change agent would you jump on it. Because our world is moving faster and faster with each passing day, your answer should probably be "Yes, I want to master the art of change."

Lucky for you, John Kotter has written a story called Our Iceberg Is Melting. Its about a colony of penguins who learn their iceberg is no longer a safe place to live. How does this melting-iceberg-cute-penguin story help you?

Well, story is like a central IV to your brain.  Story delivers insights that help you navigate this ambiguous world. Professor Kotter deftly uses story techniques to capture your imagination and inspire you.

Let's consider one of the characters — NoNo the penguin.

How did NoNo get his name.  One theory suggested his first words as a baby were not "Ma" or "Pa," but "No, No."  This perturbing penguin objected to every idea Fred (hero of the story who wants to save penguin colony from melting iceberg) came up with to solve the melting iceberg problem.

I told a coworker about NoNo the penguin. He replied, "Yes, we had a NoNo at the last place I worked.  That guy hated new ideas."  I bet you've endured more than one NoNo during your career.  In the IceBerg story, NoNo is an archetype.  Story consultant, James Bonnet calls this the holdfast or threshold guardian archetype.

If you're unable to overcome the resistance created by a holdfast, you may not be up to the challenge or ready to receive the benefits of change.

Show, Don't Tell

For a change effort to succeed, you'll need to do more showing than telling. Here again, John Kotter's story delivers.  Instead of lecturing that demonstrations are more effective than a briefcase of facts, Kotter creates a scene for Fred, showing the future of the iceberg.  To prove the melting ice could fracture into thousands of ice chunks, Fred fills a bottle with water and leaves it out overnight.

At dawn's first light, Fred retrieves the bottle and displays it for doubting penguins to see.  Shock rocks the penguins. The bottle is broken and fractured.  This could be the fate of the iceberg, and the penguins. So they take steps to act.

The hidden message? Instead of reading facts, get your audience to see, feel, act.

Our Iceberg is Melting shows Kotter's 8-step process for leading change. The story provides a context for rapidly learning the 8 steps.  You may want to share the story with a small team, and then provide the story to the entire group that must change.

Stories like Our Iceberg is Melting will help your teams develop ambidextroius skills, allowing them to switch between a story that motivates and the details needed to implement change.

Replace requirements with Stories

There's a movement in software development to replace large requirements documents with short user stories.  That's a good thing because stories eliminate hand offs and add a dash of fun.

User stories can also be used by marketing, event planners and other groups to define their product or experience.

There are three terms you should become familiar with to understand user stories — Stories, Epic and Themes.

Epics are large user stories that are too big to implement.  So you break down Epics into stories your team can execute and implement.  The smaller stories replace the Epic.

Read Mike Cohn's blog post for an explanation of Stories, Epics and Themes.

Career Advice from Seth

Seth Godin serves up three points for scoring a job at a small company. Small companies are the hiring engine for our economy.

What's my favorite tip?

"Learn to write…  There's more writing in business today than ever before, and if you can become a persuasive copywriter, you're practically a salesperson, and even better, your work scales."

Becoming a better writer and developing copywriting skills gives you an advantage over other candidates, or employees after you're hired. Consider the fellow who composes a two-page email reply while you accomplish more with two thoughtful sentences.

Stephen King tells us -- "Writing is refined thinking."

So whose emails, and ideas, will be read in the future?

Copywriting teaches us how to think about persuasion and suggests that we write like we talk.  Learning to write in a conversational style will help your writing in all areas -- memos, presentations, web copy.

Agile plus Cocoa equals Dev Heaven

I’m leading an iPad project where software engineers debated whether to write the app using HTML5 or Apple’s Cocoa framework.

The team decided to go with Cocoa.  I suggest you also start with Cocoa.

For those who think learning Objective-C and Cocoa is too difficult, take a tip from Agile Development. Do the difficult thing first.  I had a Scrum team that wanted to skip the sprint demo because they thought the demo would take too much prep time.  With a little coaching they gave their first demo.  Guess what? The team found that each demo took less time to prepare, and they started to enjoy them.  Their demo muscles grew and became stronger.  So will your Cocoa muscles.

In addition, new releases of Xcode and Cocoa creatively destroy features you may have written in another language.  Take a look at the benefits of Storyboarding.

What was one of original goals of object-oriented development?  Rapid modeling.  It’s taken computer science a while, but we’ve reached our destination.  Agile and Cocoa – A pair made in dev heaven.

Armed with a product backlog, a team of Cocoa developers can model features at light speed and elicit fast feedback from customers.  This tight loop will help shoot down competition.

Three Ways to Benefit from Apple’s Software Investment

(Note: I wrote this in 2002 and decided to post it here because I've received a lot of questions about what language to use for iPad development.  More on that in my next post)

 

Recently, several investment analysts rated Apple Computer a sell.  I have not read their analysis, but recall that analysts are not always right nor do they always understand technology.

I remember one well-known analyst who recommended Sun during the Internet craze.  He considered Sun to be a solid investment since they invented JavaScript.  Not really.  But then again is there really any difference between JavaScript and Java.  According to Mark Twain there is "The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter — it's the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning."

I tend to agree with Mr. Twain.  What's more, an understanding of technology tells us that Apple’s future looks bright.  Clearly their software strategy will play a large role in future success.

Software is the highest form of leverage a business can employ.  As you probably know, too much operating or financial leverage can increase a firm’s risk while reducing the ability to respond to changing business conditions.

Software leverage is the degree to which a company utilizes existing software in the development of new software.  Increasing software leverage reduces risk and enhances the firm’s ability to respond to change.  This is a paradox unique to software development, one that astute engineers take advantage of whenever possible by using objects.

The Subject is Objects

Object-oriented programming is a method of development that increases your ability to leverage software by reusing software objects.  Apple’s object-oriented frameworks provide trusted software that developers can use again and again.  Instead of releasing software applications riddled with errors, they can release solid new applications.

Software engineers at Next used existing objects to develop WebObjects.  WebObjects was developed in a relatively short time frame, but was also a

stable application server from the start.  Stability was derived largely from the fact that 70 percent of the software consisted of reusable trusted objects.

The same software frameworks used to build NextStep and NextStep applications.

Mac OS X uses many of the same software frameworks that were used to create the Next platform.  These frameworks along with many new frameworks are used to enhance OS X and create new applications.  Keynote, the new presentation application, was built upon software frameworks.  While building Keynote, additional objects were surely designed that can be reused by other Apple developers in myriad combinations.

The ability to use objects independently or in any combination is a rewarding way to invent products.  It’s like snapping together Lego blocks to create software.  You remember how easy it is to build a Lego house.

Apple’s Jonathan Ives tells us in a business article that other companies proffered job offers, but he has little interest in leaving Apple since all the necessary processes are in place to rapidly develop new products.

This is where the fun begins for many designers.  Once they've built the necessary infrastructure, they're able to derive immense satisfaction from creating hardware or software products rapidly.

The capacity to build software at light speed bodes well for Apple.  While objects are an interesting technical subject, how does this help you?

What This Means To You

Sure, the technology sounds cool.  How does it help you in business or at home?  Consumers are always asking, what’s in it for me? Objects are one of many OS X technical features that create user benefits:

• Enhanced versions of OS X.

• Steady flow of new applications.

• Reliable Applications

Enhanced Versions of OS X

Jaguar (the latest version of OS X) was developed in relatively short order.  The next version of OS X is due in the fall of 2003 - less than a year from Jaguar’s launch.  Apple's ability to introduce products rapidly creates a competitive advantage.

Users benefit from enhancements in several ways.  Tired of wasting your time deleting junk mail?  Use Jaguar’s Mail App to filter spam.

New Applications

iMovie and the other media applications are an example of some of the applications that have been developed for OS X.  Just as hardware needs an excellent OS, an OS needs application programs for it to have true value.

Many pundits believed that Next was hindered due to the fact that there were relatively few applications for the Next platform.  Apple is determined not to have that problem.  Evidence their latest application, Safari.  It is the fastest web browser on OS X and is only a beta version.  Other applications are sure to follow.

Reliable

OS X’s UNIX foundation and object-oriented nature make the operating system and applications more trusted and reliable.  You’ll spend less time pondering technical problems and more time solving business problems.

Summary

I have no idea where Apple’s stock price will be next year. Although, people who buy an Apple Computer will receive dividends for years to come.

Apple’s design philosophy creates options and leverage.  As long as Apple correctly positions products, they have the vehicle to drive significant benefits to customers.

Imagine the enormous investment Apple has made in software.  An investment that enables rapid software development that directly benefits OS X users.

What if you’re stuck on another operating system where the updates and benefits flow to you like blackstrap molasses on a Winter day?

 

Simply switch to OS X.

Scrum Lectures from Zurich

Jeff Sutherland and Ken Schwaber gave this Scrum presentation to an audience in Zurich.

Here are some key points.

• Goal of Scrum is to get 5 to 10 times productivity increase.  At 10 times productivity, your team is in hyper-productive state.
• Getting software done and tested at feature level so the end user can evaluate, will double performance.
• When product backlog is in ready state, that will double productivity again.
• Scrum is a disruptive technology... When you do it well you will put your competition out of business.

Adaptive Enterprise

Creating a company that's flexible and has the ability to adapt will help you get inside your competitor's business cycle. These companies sense needs of customers and respond to changes. I've create a diagram that shows some of the areas where flexibility is key.

If your company creates products, building options into products from the ground up enhances your ability to delight customers.  In fact, options in flexibility can be used in almost any product, from making malteds to making movies.

How do movie moguls use options?  Producers may have two different endings for a movie.  Instead of making an early decision and selecting one ending and playing it in theaters across America, they play the two movies in only two theaters, a different ending in each.  After the movie they interview patrons and discover what movie customers like best.

Producers learn from feedback.  Perhaps they adjust the ending or go with the one customers love.

Why story points are better than hours

Jeff Sutherland explains the benefits of estimating software projects in story points.

In fact, a manager's Gantt Chart will never survive contact with the battle of project delivery.  Jeff also points out that few companies know the velocity of their teams until they implement Scrum.

Update:

Jeff and some other members of the Scrum Foundation now teach that you can do estimation in three ways.

1.  Backlog in story point and no tasking (hyperproductive teams)
2.  Backlog in story points and tasks in story points (best current practice as teams are getting better)
3.  Backlog in story points and tasks in hours (the old way)

User Stories Rock

On Monday, I attended Mike Cohn's User Story class in Dallas. User stories are a concise, flexible way to write requirements for Agile projects. They take the form:

As a <user role> I want a feature so that <business benefit>

Agile is about software craftsmanship so even when talking about user stories we're also talking about design.  My favorite topic in Mike's class is tracer bullets.  Instead of splitting stories based on different technology layers, write user stories that provide a full slice of functionality.  With a tracer bullet, you shoot the tracer through all layers of the architecture.

What are the benefits?

• Reduces architecture risk
• Easier to prioritize stories
• Software application can be released early because features are complete

Agile Teams and Funding

During a training session, someone asked if Agile teams should be created per project.  I answered that instead of being project focused we should create a team, allow the team to stay together and develop a velocity… they would work on any number of software projects within a product area.

Being project focused also leads to flaws in funding.

In this article about project-based funding, Marty Cagan describes three fatal problems with the project-based funding model.

The true benefit of funding teams?  "The dedicated product team model will not only help your money go further, but most importantly it generates better results in terms of speed to market, degree of innovation, and business results."

Kanban

I often use a Kanban approach to help teams deliver services or zap software bugs.

I've created a short presentation showing a few Kanban benefits.

How to deal with vendors

There I was, sitting in an ISO Quality class when the instructor started talking about the quality of parts from outside vendors. Sure, you could try to implement a quality program at a company you have no control over.  Or you could create an option to switch vendors.

Apple has a history of switching CPU vendors when the parts are below Apple's expectations or specs.  Consider the latest reports of Apple possibly switching from Intel to another chip set that consumes less power.

Architects must understand the value of key product parts so they know where to build in the option to switch.