Clarke Ching - Split Infinitives and Beyond.

Eli Goldratt's new book "Inherent Simplicity"

If you're eager to discuss Dr Goldratt's new book "Inherent Simplicity" then pop over to a new group I've just created: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/InherentSimplicity/

I think the new book is important enough and it's audience different enough that it warrants it's own list. 

Five copies of Cialdini's YES! to give away ...

One of the benefits of being a virtual blabber mouth is that every so often publishers offer me free books to review.  The downside for me is that I'm also an amophile (I've just made that up - I mean a person who has an unhealthy interest in amazon.com) is that I've usually already bought the book.  The upside of that is that most publishers are even happier if I give the book away as a prize.

So ... if you'd like to win 1 of 5 copies of YES! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive, by Noah Goldstein, Steve Martin, and Robert Cialdini (one of my favourite authors ever - he wrote Influence) then send email me at clarke.ching@gmail.com or leave a comment and answer the following question: "Y-fronts or boxers?"

I'll notify the publishers - Free Press, a division of Simon & Schuster - on Tuesday next week.

And, just in case you think this whole thing is rigged in anyway, I'm happy to announce that the first winner is Andy McKee who I planned to meet for lunch YESTERDAY but didn't because I incorrectly thought the meeting was today.  Well done Andy.

Chapter 5 of Rolling Rocks Downhill podcast

http://media.libsyn.com/media/clarkeching/RollingRocksDownhill_Chapter_5.mp3

Building trust by making different promises

Many projects and products fail before they even start to deliver.  They are setup to fail.  They make promises, up front, that rely on faith and finger crossing, and so, sometimes they fail.  That's simple statistics.

Some don't.

1 -   A couple of days ago Google announced a few very minor functional improvements to gmail* and the media went crazy.  Today Apple is going to do something new with their iphone - the media has been going crazy with anticipation and will no doubt go daft for another week or so after the announcement. 

Both of these companies are making a different type of promise: they're promising to WOW you every so often, but they're not being specific about how.  That promise leaves them plenty of wiggle room - neithor the press nor their customers can say "but they failed because they said it would be red, but they only delivered black"; they can drop or delay entire features (entire products, even) as it suits them, so long as they deliver on their bigger promise to WOW! you. 

It's far easier to WOW! if you have wiggle room.

2 - Last year I worked with product company which consistently disappointed their customers by making firm commitments, way in advance, about what they would deliver ... but then never kept those promises.  Their customers weren't silly and they took the promises with a grain of salt never expecting anything to arrive on time or in the form promised.  The customers had learned that it was safer for them to have very low expectations, to always be a little disappointed, rather than a lot disappointed. 

They never expected to be wowed!  They always expected to be just a little disappointed.

3 - I failed in that company.  I briefly managed one of their releases (for about 3 weeks, as a favour) while they were recruiting someone to Project Manage it.  During that time I helped the project's owner to see that making firm, detailed and confident sounding promises to his customers, that still required everyone to cross their fingers was worse for his customers than making less firm, less detailed, promises that they customer could still plan around. 

I helped him to rewrite the standard "pre-release notice" which went out to his customers so that it unambiguously promised the project would prioritise the work-packages and would only include the lower priority features if there was time.  He bought in to the idea, but by the time the release notes had travelled around a number of internal departments, the the language had been watered down so that the promise was once again very firm and detailed, but it had an ambiguously written "get out" clause. 

So I failed.  If I'd done a better job then I would have helped him to argue his case better, but I didn't.  I was disappointed at the time but, in retrospect, the only person I failed was me.  I'd promised myself that I'd wow! the guy but all he really wanted was someone to baby sit his project for a few weeks.  In the end that release came in very late, just like the one before it, and the one before that.  The customers got what they expected and they were only a little disappointed.

And you know what?  My solution wouldn't have worked anyway.  One of the highest priority features, which was about one third of the total effort, took roughly 4 times more effort than estimated.  They need a slightly different model for that.  It's closer to, but more transparent than, the model Google and Apple use.  It's something closer to what, say, air traffic controllers might use.  I shall write that up one day.

* It's true that the functional improvements in GMail were minor, but the whole lab concept is very clever because it allows them to conduct experiments without making commitments; they get very fast feedback (ten zillion people disabled the xyz feature today - why?) which allow them to make better decisions; if they decide to retire a failed idea (a hypothesis, I suppose) then no one is surprised.

Progress

The great thing about technology is that it does tend to get better over time:

According to manufacturers, the latest model, the Zeppelin NT07, is safer and more advanced than earlier models such as the Hindenburg, which famously crashed in New Jersey in 1937.

[from today's UK times story about Zeppelins flying over London during tourists season.]

Getting the Agile Basics Right - date confirmed.

I've more than covered my bare minimum for my "Getting the Agile Basics Right" course later this month.  It will be held in Edinburgh City Centre on Thursday 26th of June.

Elmo

[apologies for this ... but I think this is a good example of how operations can appear to have a capacity bottleneck ... but only because of a bad policy, or in this case, a misunderstood policy]

There is a factory in Northern Minnesota which makes the Tickle Me Elmo toys. The toy laughs when you tickle it under the arms.

Well,  Lena is hired at The Tickle Me Elmo factory and she reports for her first day promptly at 8:00 am.

The next day at 8:45 am there is a knock at the Personnel Manager's door. The Foreman throws open the door and begins to rant about the new employee.

He complains that she is incredibly slow and the whole line is backing up, putting the entire production line behind schedule.

The Personnel Manager decides he should see this for himself, so the 2 men march down to the factory floor.  When they get there the line is so backed up that there are Tickle Me Elmo's all over the factory floor and they're really beginning to pile up.

At the end of the line stands  Lena surrounded by mountains of Tickle Me Elmo's. She has a roll of plush Red fabric and a huge bag of small marbles.

The 2 men watch in amazement as she cuts a little piece of fabric, wraps it around two marbles and begins to carefully sew the little package between Elmo's legs.

The Personnel Manager bursts into laughter.  After several minutes of hysterics he pulls himself together and approaches  Lena ...

'I'm sorry,' he says to her, barely able to keep a straight face, 'but I think you misunderstood the instructions I gave you yesterday...'

'Your job is to give Elmo two test tickles."

Am I a tool?

I just opened the May issue of Better Software magazine and discovered that I've been quoted, unexpectedly, for the 2nd month in a row.  Last month I was quoted, very briefly, with a sentence that began something like "One must ...", which isn't how I would normally talk or write, but it is how I sound post-copy-editing.  I felt like a bit of a tool.

This month I discovered an "eNEWSLETTER EXTRA" which was a reprint of this interview I didwith Joseph McAllister late last year.  The bit that got me was this:

JM: Perhaps there's something to a person with a bank of useful
  knowledge being a tool of sorts?

CC: That's an interesting way of looking at it. I suppose that
  as a consultant people "rent" me because I have specialized
  knowledge and skills just like I rented a van when I was moving
  house. Never thought of it like that before.

Which, on second reading goes like this:

JM: Are you a tool?

CC: Yes I am.

Hmmmm ...

What next after "The Wire series 5"?

The Wire series 5 comes out on DVD in the US on August the 12th.  From the reviews I've read it is going to be as good as the first 4 series.  My birthday is August 11 (I'm turning 39 if you must know).

Now ... that's the good news.  The bad news is that in some miserable and ridiculous way I have rolled my mind forward to late-August/early-September when I've watched the final episode and I feel incomplete, at a loss, even, wondering what's next.

So help me: I would bathe in "the wire" if it were liquid but I wouldn't wipe my bum with CSI if it were paper; I loved Deadwood (except for the last episode), the first 3/4ths of Studio 60, series 1-6 of The West Wing ... what's next?

Please help.

TOC in healthcare

Late last year I interviewed Alex Knight about his work with TOC in healthcare.  You can hear the interview here.  It's a good one.  Alex is one of the TOC-world's big hitters and an excellent speaker. 

I have my own TOC in healthcare success story and I want to talk about about it but ... it's really my wife's story (she's a consultant psychiatrist)  and I'm having great difficulty getting her in front of a microphone.  Her story is very different to Alex's.  He is dealing with the flow of work from the ER through an entire hospital. my wife's story deals with the flow of work through one consultant - her.  She managed to cut her waiting list from around 22 weeks to around 10-12 weeks over a year by applying simple TOC thinking. 

I shall have to figure out how to tell her story because her approach makes huge sense to thousands of doctors and millions of patients (that includes you and I) around the world.  Now that I've written that sentence ... I'm feeling guilty for not persuing this faster.