Clarke Ching's Rocks and Snowballs

Another Lesson … Ebert as product

Roger Ebert was my favourite movie editor.  I didn't always share his taste but I almost always knew, after reading his reviews, whether I should go to a movie or not.

He died a few days ago which makes me sad.  Not sad from the selfish point of view that I won't have his reviews any more, but sad because I won't be able to read his writing any more.

Here's a nice write up from the NYT about how he turned himself from a reviewing into a rather successful product:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/08/business/media/roger-eberts-legacy-as-a-relentless-empire-builder.html

It doesn't matter what goes into it, as long as it smells so nice

A lesson from the late, great Roger Ebert, about the time he guest hosted "AM Chicago" and his guest was Sophia Loren:

She was promoting her new perfume. I'm not sure, but I think it was named "Sophia." I don't know much about perfume, but it was an opportunity to learn.

"What do you make the perfume from?" I asked Miss Loren.

"Make it?" she said. "What from?"

"Like flowers or stuff?"

"I don't make it myself, you know," she said. "I don't stir it up."

"No, but I just thought --"

"It doesn't matter what goes into it, as long as it smells so nice," she said.

I have found this a valuable rule over the years.

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051116/COMMENTARY/511160301

Tax, Cash-Flow and War ...

Imagine you're fighting a war.  An expensive war.

You need more money to pay for the war.  So what do you do?  You change the tax laws so that more people pay income tax and those who already pay, pay more.  Few complain because there's a war on and foreigners are bombing your cities.

Good news!  That brings in more income.  Bad news!  The money doesn't come in straight away.

Taxes are currently paid twice-yearly, in arrears.  The new cash is not only delayed until after the end of your tax year, but the increased number of tax payers creates a big batch nightmare for the tax collectors, further delaying the cash.

You need the CASH!  Quickly.  So, what do you do?

You introduce a PAY as you EARN (Uk*, Ireland, New Zealand) or PAY as you GO (Australia, USA**) where, every month, the nations employers pay tax directly to the government on behalf of the employees.

And … Small-batch thinking helps win your war. 

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* http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/history/taxhis6.htm 

** http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pay-as-you-go_tax 

Scotland and UX ...

The UX Scotland conference happens in Edinburgh this June.

http://uxscotland.net

Proposals for sessions close this Friday, the 5th.

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I am proposing a session: "Agile & UX secrets from The New York Herald, the Zara clothing company, and Toyota".   

UX and Agile and the Apple TV

I've spent a lot of time in my new job working with our 3 UX folk figuring out how to incorporate UX (user experience)  thinking and practices into our new Agile processes.  

UX is an umbrella term for a whole lot of old techniques, some newer techniques, and a newer mindset.  The wikipedia page is pretty good if you're in a hurry.

Technically, I suppose, I used to do UX when I worked as a developer and as an analyst, but I was neither naturally nor unnaturally good at it. It's one of those skills that needed to be named to be (a) valued and then (b) learned properlly.  

I'm finding this book useful, although I suspect it's aimed more at UX people who are learning agile, rather than the other way around.

Like most things which were previously done UP FRONT, the trick when switching to Agile is to figure out what you really need to do up front … and what you can afford to delay until later.  

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Right now, I'm watching a bunch of curated videos about UX (user experience) on my TV using my apple TV.

[And since you asked … it is a good experience.  The apple TV works (almost) seamlessly with my iPad mini.  I find a video on my ipad, I play it, it plays on my TV.  Better still, I can use the iPad to do other things while I'm watching the video.  The most annoying part of the process is having to use my TV remote to switch HDMI channels.]

The videos are good too.  

Four books

This is awesome news!

Confession time: I've secretly been furiously multi-tasking during the last year working on 4 books (at the same time!) and now, finally, today, April 1, 2013, they're published.  

The first, a poorly written biztech novel, is called "The DaVinci Coder".

The second, a how-to book, titled "The Hitchhikers Guide to the Samsung Galaxy S IV", is also available as an audiobook.

The third, a technical book (for a change), "Fifty Shades of Grails" is an in depth discussion of the subtleties and ambiguities of the framework formerly known as Groovy on Rails.

The fourth, "The Dummies guide to Ventriloquism", is exactly what you'd expect given the title.

See the link for purchase details. 

Software Development and the 3/4 full mug.

I just googled and found this quote from Oliver Wendell Holmes: “I wouldn’t give a fig for the simplicity on this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity.”

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In software development we tend to try to fill the mug up as high as we possibly can.   What do we fill it with?  Features.

That's wrong.

Over the last few years I've concluded that we'd do better to spend more time up front figuring out why (a) we we're building our product and (b) how we can make it as simple as possible.  To mix up two of my metaphors, we should try to spend time up front getting our product/project's lede right and, as part of that exercise, we should endeavour to make GOOD COFFEE rather than LOTS of COFFEE.

Now, you might think I'm arguing for a switch to waterfall.  I'm not.  Waterfall's mistake was trying to set the requirements & solution in stone, early in the project, long before they should have been.  I don't want that.  Instead, I want us to spend a little more time thinking about things like sellability (not a word, but a measure of "how easy is this product to sell?" - I saw a talk recently at a Scotland IS event where the speaker (sadly, since deceased) showed that smaller, simpler products were far easier to sell in B2B) and testabiity (not a word, but "how easy is this product to test" - I can't prove this but my gut says smaller products are simpler to test).  Sellability is important because, well, that's the reason we build the product.  Testing capacity is very often a dev teams internal constraint and if a product is easier to test then the team is normally more productive and faster to finish and able to ship more products/releases.

But, here's the problem: how do we create simple products?  

Way back in 2004 I wrote about (what I call) the Paradox of Simplicity - where we undervalue simple solutions because they look easy but overvalue complex solutions because they look hard and clever and BIGGER.  Intuitively we tend to think that if a solution is easy then the people who created it could get a better solution by putting in more time and more effort. And that's true, if the solution is indeed easy, but what about when the solution is not easy, but simple?

Thing is: Simple, comes after complicated.  The sequence goes something like this: EASY, COMPLICATED, SIMPLE.

So, I have some questions for you: is SIMPLICITY just a matter of spending more time and pushing past the complicated?  Or, do you need a genius like Steve Jobs to get you there?  Is it just a matter of realising that your goal is simplicity, rather than complication?  Is it something else?

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To take this whole post and simplify it: can you tell me how to do just enough up front thinking so that I come up with a simple saleable, testable solution?

Mug half-empty or half-full is the wrong question.

You know the mug half-full vs. half-empty debate.

It's a mindset thing: 

• If you think the mug is half-full then you're an optimist (in theory).
• If you think the mug is half-empty then you're a pessimist.

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I think it's the wrong question.  It's a quantity question.  I'd rather a quality question.

How about:

Do you like what's in the mug?

Does the coffee taste good?

Would adding more water to it make it taste better, or weaker?

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A rather clever (or cheap) colleague of mine surprised me recently.

He ordered a tall Americano but only 3/4s full.  I ordered a tall Americano then paid 50p more for an extra shot.

I imagine our coffees tasted very similar.

But, I bet he got as much value from his 3/4 cup as I did from the first 3/4s of mine.  

That last quarter cup had greatly diminished returns.

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So, here's a thought, a mindset even: rather than trying to fill the cup up, which waters down the product, why not try half-filling it with good stuff?

Superteams: The Secrets of Stellar Performance From Seven Legendary Teams [Kindle Edition]

Greg also sent me a link to the book Superteams which dissects 7 high-function teams, including The Rolling Stones.  It sounds like it's probably the source of the story in my last post.

http://www.amazon.com/Superteams-Secrets-Performance-Legendary-ebook/dp/B0098P18VI/ref=tmm_kin_title_0.

I've just downloaded it to my Kindle.

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I gotta say, Greg's a good friend but I sometimes think he's on commission from Amazon … 

Happy reading, everyone :)

Barclays adopts start-up culture

My friend Greg just sent along this nice, short video about how Barclays Bank adopted a start-up culture for their new pingit culture.

It's 7 minutes long and a great investment of your time if you're interested in building a fast-paced team.

http://www.finextra.com/Video/Video.aspx?videoid=356