The iRise Blog

Nicholas Carr wrote an interesting and fascinating thought piece on Google in the most recent issue of strategy+business.  Nicholas is a renowned author and speaker, and is probably best known for his essay and book Does IT Matter?.

There have been countless articles and discussions about Google’s success over the last few years and it is hard to imagine that Google has been around for less than 10 years.  Since incorporating in September 1998, Google’s growth has been dizzying - even when looking at just the last couple of years when revenues have grown from than $500mm in 2002 to over $10.5 billion in 2006.  And that is before mentioning its astronomic market value of more than $216 billion.  People continue to argue what industry or business category to place Google.  Is it a software company, advertising agency, search company, telephone company, publisher, processor, movie studio or an entirely new kind of business?  

Nicholas simplifies Google’s business model as follows: “Google brokers and publishes advertisements through digital media. More than 99 percent of its sales have come from the fees it charges advertisers for using its network to get their messages out on the Internet.”  Nearly everything Google does is aimed at “reducing the cost and expanding the scope of Internet use”.

But is it a business model or innovation program to follow?  Nicholas says that executives have to be cautious before jumping on Google’s bandwagon.  First, Google is still a young company and has not been tested by adversity or a complete business cycle.  An interesting viewpoint is that it is not clear if Google’s management and innovation approaches are a cause or result of its success.  Second, Google’s model may not apply to other companies because it is so different. 

Can we learn from Google’s approach to innovation?  Nicholas says “yes and no”.  Most of Google’s success and profits can be traced to three innovations: changing the way search engines rank and present results, perfecting the process of letting advertisers bid on key words and the design of its parallel-processing computer system which incorporates hundreds of thousands of computers.  These innovations predate the now famous Google innovation process and provides the company with advantages and freedoms not enjoyed by most other companies.  For example, Google can hire the best software engineers and provide them with perks and salaries to keep them happy.  Plus, Google has the ability to throw more resources at innovation than other companies.  Google also organizes product development into small teams with considerable freedom and allows engineers to devote 20% of their time to pet projects with little oversight.

Nicholas points out that Google, like all smart and consistently profitable companies, exhibit the same three qualities:

1. Hire talented people and give them room to excel
2. Measure progress and results rigorously
3. Be disciplined in work and in spending

In conclusion, Nicholas ends with this lesson - “Beware the inevitable hype about how the latest business trend or the newest overnight success “changes everything.” Yes, markets and technology change, sometimes with devastating speed, but through the turmoil, the underpinnings of business success remain fairly stable”

For the complete story, read the entire article here.

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I really enjoy seeing companies you work with almost every day
(in my case, alliance partners), take a leadership position to embrace
what you have been evangelizing to the market. Last month, Capgemini announced the launch of the Rapid Design & Visualization (RDV) Lab. Though the Lab is now available nationwide through all their Accelerated Solutions Environments (ASEs), the RDV Lab has been in place for several year and iRise has been actively working with and a primary solution in the practice with many joint customers. The announcement was made at SOA World, an appropriate place since visualization is critical to understanding what business stakeholders want that can be enabled in a SOA environment (but more on that in a later post…).

The RDV Lab continues to expand Capgemini’s work in the field of simulation by using a methodology that combines the latest simulation and communication tools with new research on how people create complex software. Capgemini estimates that 60 percent of such programs – including ERP (SAP, Oracle, etc.), Web 2.0 and SOA initiatives – encounter rework following misunderstandings between project managers who write the specifications, and the engineers who build the programs.  The announcement states, “The RDV is designed to help all parties get the software right the first time” - sound familiar? Absolutely, because Capgemini and iRise both believe that people, process and technology are required to really bring the full benefits of getting software right the first time.

Corey Glickman, the national leader for the Capgemini RDV Lab,
has been a champion for simulation and visualization for years
and an iRise user, speaking on different aspects at iRise User Conferences and interviews. Corey recently stated, “The RDV lets designers substitute images for nouns, animation for verbs, and a full–blown simulation for a phone book of instructions.” Is visualization really is the new language for designing software? I think Corey hit it right on the mark.

Capgemini has really taken the lead among global system integrators in piloting this effort years ago and now launching capabilities nationwide. For example, last year I presented Capgemini with the iRise Alliance Advantage Partner of the Year award for its substantial work (among other things) with one of our large manufacturing customers. Though the market for simulation is still young and in the evangelism stage, with the help of Capgemini, more companies will experience the benefits of visualization and share their success.

I look forward to sharing more examples of iRise alliance partners adopting the new language for designing software.

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Along with 30 IT executives, I attended the final iRise Executive Roundtable event of the year in Mexico City last weekend.  The event was held in conjunction with the Grand Prix of Mexico, the last race of the year for the Champ Car World Series.   The weather was perfect, the networking was world-class and the content was stellar.

It all started with a fabulous dinner at the W Hotel on Friday evening, at which PKV Racing driver Neel Jani talked to the group about how he gets mentally psyched for racing and what it’s like to approach turn one at the Mexico City track at 195 MPH!

On Saturday morning there was 4 hours of great content.  Leading off was Doug Hubbard, who runs his own consulting firm called Hubbard Decision Research and is the author of the book “How to Measure Anything; Finding the Value of Intangibles in Business.” 

Doug has spent many years working with IT leaders on ways to measure risk and assess chances of success.   He talked about the “risk paradox” prevalent in many organizations: the highest risk problems get the least attention.  Companies simply are not good at assessing risk and measuring things, because most people think the toughest problems are intangible (i.e. not measurable).  Doug very skillfully and quickly proved to the group that this point of view is not based in fact.   Anything can be measured by asking two simple questions: “What do you mean?” and “Why do you care?,” followed by controlled experiments and observation.   

After working with many companies over the last 12 years, Doug has some interesting views on project failure.  For instance, after doing some exhaustive research Doug concluded that the chances of a large IT project being canceled turns out to be 1.2% for every month the project continues; in other words, the longer (and larger) a project lasts, the greater the chance it will be canceled before completion.  Doug pointed out that high yield (junk) bonds default less than large IT projects!  Not a good situation.

The bottom line?  Doug ended with the following three points: Information reduces uncertainty, reduced uncertainty improves decisions and improved decisions have observable consequences with measurable value.  So measure the tough problems and use those measurements to make better business decisions.  Good advice for any IT organization.

We also heard from Bob Strang, CEO of Investigative Management Group.  Bob and his team are all law enforcement veterans and are experts on corporate security issues.  It’s no secret that the world of corporate risk and security has changed dramatically in the last 15 years.  According to Bob, the new flavor of corporate security officer must have both a law enforcement background, as well as the technology experience to face new kinds of security threats enabled by the Internet.  The whole topic of security, according to Bob, has moved “from the basement to the boardroom” as the focus shifts from physical to cyber threats.  There’s a good reason for this shift.  Bob cited recent statistics from OSHA that concludes the U.S. loses $1.6 trillion every year due to fraud, identity theft, data theft and property destruction.  Amazing stuff. 

One great recommendation from Bob was that security organizations from different companies need to collaborate, even if they are in the same, competitive business.  Sharing information is really the only way to keep ahead of the bad guys.   Another solid piece of advice was to make sure that your company has a written, published set of policies that document a high standard of care that protects corporate data and physical property. 

Following the formal content, the group had lunch at the track and received a rare, ‘backstage’ pass to the world’s fastest sports, with garage tours, pit lane walks and talks by the drivers.  The weekend ended with a satisfying third place finish for PKV Racing driver Oriol Servia and a trip to victory circle for the roundtable participants. 

We got lots of great feedback on the event, including this from a CIO: “The whole weekend was masterfully organized.  Both the roundtable and the Champ Car events were great, insightful and fun.”

The next executive roundtable event will be held January 25-27 in conjunction with the world famous Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona in Florida…can’t wait!

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More than 600 business analysts attended the World Congress for Business Analysts (WCBA) at Disneyland on November 15th and 16th. 

iRise was the Executive Sponsor of the conference and we posted the following blog entries on the conference proceedings:

• Thornton May on How to Thrive in the Age of BIG Information
• Patrick Lencioni Highlights The Five Dysfunctions of a Team
• Cynthia Froggatt Leaks “Secrets” of High Performance Distributed Teams
• Building BAs That Any Business Sponsor Would Fight To Have On Their Project
• Delivering Effective User Acceptance Testing
• How NASA Uses Storytelling to Promote Success
• Richard Sheirer on Lessons for Leaders from 9/11
• Building a BA Center of Excellence at Wachovia

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At the World Congress for Business Analysts (WCBA) in Disneyland today, Amy Nichols of Wachovia (an iRise customer) and Glenn Brûlé of ESI International talked about the best practices around building a BA Center of Excellence.

Amy laid out the business case for why Wachovia started their BA Center of Excellence 18 months ago.  They had unpredictable project cycles, no concise way to measure ROI, customer satisfaction after project closeout was poor and they had waste with their SDLC.  There was also confusion around what are requirements, why are they valuable and what makes a good requirement.

Glenn laid out a Capability to Maturity Model to follow when building a Center of Excellence.

He also mentioned that you have to work incrementally by starting out with a Community of Practice (COP), progressing to a BA Bureau and then to a Center of Excellence (COE).  One way to think of the progression is as a bulls-eye with the Community of Practice as the outer ring and the Center of Excellence as the bulls-eye.

Where do you start?  Glenn said the model is designed like a checklist - start with the first row for each column and work your way down the model to move from a Community of Practice to a Center of Excellence. 

Why build a Center of Excellence?  The benefits include:

• decreased risk on our projects
• increased value for our projects
• improved quality of our deliverables
• improved time to deliver our goods and services

Amy and Glenn closed with Five Factors for Success:

1. have a plan (from concept to enterprise analysis)
2. consider the framework
3. obtain executive sponsor
4. align corporate goals (what’s the value perception?)
5. define roles and responsibilities (who’s going to maintain it?)

Glenn thought step 1 - have a plan - was the most critical while Amy added that having a passionate executive sponsor was also very important.

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At the World Congress for Business Analysts (WCBA) today, Dr. Ed Hoffman from NASA shared how NASA uses storytelling to share knowledge and develop leaders.  Ed is Director of the NASA Academy Program which is part of APPEL or Academy of Program/Project & Engineering Leadership.

Ed started out by describing NASA’s new mission statement which can be summed up in one word - “Exploration.”

Ed showed a short video about NASA’s mission to return to the Moon by the year 2020 which highlighted some of NASA’s challenges, such as:

• what is the “story” of the project?
• how do you plan a 30-year project?
• how do you build something robust enough for technology that isn’t developed yet and you know is going to change?
• how do you pass knowledge along to the next generation?

The Academy was established to build leadership capability for individuals and project/program teams with the goal to:

• provide a common frame of reference for all NASA employees, provide and enhance critical job skills, support porgram and project teams
• supplement foral educational programs

Ed talked about what makes a good story.  A good story:

• starts with a problem/conflict/challenge
• describe a unique experience
• describe concrete actions by people
• makes a point
• arrives at some basic truth

To illustrate his point about stories, he showed another video about Gene Krantz who was program director for the Apollo program.  The video didn’t show their greatest success of putting a man on the Moon, instead it showed their greatest failure which was the Apollo 1 fire which killed astronauts Grissom, White and Chaffee.  In the video, Gene remembers what he told his team on the day after the disaster.  “No one said no - and this won’t happen again.  In the future we will be both tough and competent.   We will write that on our blackboards and we will never erase it.”

Ed’s team sponsors a number of knowledge sharing activities, such as conferences and forums, multimedia, and publications that emphasize the vital role of stories.  Ed said that it is important to discuss both successes and failures and he likes to see a 7 to 1 ratio of success stories to failure stories.  People need to think about what’s going right and what’s going wrong - and the community needs to learn that it’s ok to share and collaborate.

In the end, it comes down to trust and the social connection between people.  People must trust one another enough to share their successes and failures.   In addition, you must impact social norms that learning is ongoing, that there are resources out there to help you, and to get teams to understand how to go beyond the boundaries of their expertise.  Finally, it is critical to build a network and community where knowledge sharing and collaboration is the norm.

 [go to the APPEL website for more information and stories]

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At the World Congress for Business Analysts (WCBA) in Disneyland today, Richard Sheirer from Guilani Partners shared lessons learned from 9/11.  Richard was the director of New York City’s Office of Emergency Management (OEM) at the time of the crisis. 

His message was that there are similarities between the business community and public safety.  He stated that planning, preparing, practicing and execution are as important in public sector as in the business sector.  In addition, communication is the key to success during a crisis.

In terms of practicing, Richard noted that simulating events is critical and that NYC held drills and simulations for many different potential castastrophes - and that practice was critical to their response on 9/11.

Before concluding with a photo montage from Ground Zero, Richard highlighted 10 lessons from the events of 2001:

1. think the unthinkable
2. factor in for Murphy’s Law
3. appreciate that catastrophic events don’t recognize turf
4. accept policies over reason/science
5. be prepared for the knucklehead factor
6. value and encourage strong leadership 
7. rely on your frames of reference
8. appreciate the need for redundancy and think outside the box
9. recognize the importance of communication
10. commit to relentless preparation and practice

Richard wrapped up by saying that America and American companies are and will continue to be major terrorist targets - they will likely strike something unlikely and we can never let our guard down.  Natural disasters like Katrina and the Southern California wildfires will pose greater threats.  Finally, planning, preparation, and practice contributes to prevention.

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In the Modeling, Testing and Design track at the World Congress for Business Analysts (WCBA), Jonathan Kupersmith (Kupe) of B2T Training (and formerly of Turner Broadcasting) described how to deliver effective User Acceptance Testing (UAT).

UAT represents the final approval by the customer and is typically conducted by users with assistance from the project team with tests derived from day-to-day operations, use cases and process workflows.  UAT validates that the final solution meets the needs of the customer.

First, Kupe pointed out that UAT is not the same as usability testing.  And a project is doomed when it substitutes or replaces usability testing for user acceptance testing.

In the traditional approach, project team members, business analyst (BA) or quality assurance (QA) write test scripts, users get a quick demo of the new application and then walk through test scripts step-by-step.

Kupe described the shortcomings of the traditional approach including:

• project team members pressed for time
• users were not fully vested in UAT
• users did not fully understand how new functions should work
• tests are often generic
• high pass rate (because the BA wrote the scripts), but risk of major issues not being discovered until production

Kupe confessed that he came up with his more effective approach based on a bad experience he had with the traditional approach.  He described the more effective way to approach UAT as:

• involving key users early
• providing users with hands-on system training
• facilitating sessions that create the test plans

The end results from this revised approach were that:

• users took responsibility for project success
• users were comfortable with new functions
• test scripts involved real life scenarios
• issues formerly caught in production were caught in UAT
• no major issues made it to production
• users felt they were part of the team and helped champion the release

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At the World Congress for Business Analysts (WCBA), Cynthia Sniezak from Disney Parks described how Disney Park’s IT Academy “Builds BAs and PMs That Any Business Sponsor Would Fight To Have On Their Project.”

First, I want to point that I love how Disney refers to all of their employees as Cast Members.  It clearly demonstrates that everyone is part of the ’show.’

Disney views talent management as a business differentiator and the mission of the IT Academy is to “make our cast wildly successful.”  Disney uses an approach they refer to as HILL which is an acronym for:

• Hire the very best
• Invest strategically
• Lease rising skills
• Lease setting skills

Cynthia also shared their “Leadership Framework At a Glance” which is a generic way to view all jobs on a consistent basis.  The key elements of the framework are:

• Delivery and Action (delivery, initiative, organizational stewardship)
• Personal Dynamics (flexibility and adaptability, impact and influence, interpersonal understanding, relationship building)
• Managing Others (developing others, team leadership, teamwork)
• Thinking and Solving Problem (analytical thinking, conceptual thinking, technical expertise)

In terms of training, the IT Academy makes sure that their training is consistent for both the project managers (PMs) and business analysts (BAs).  Their training is vendor-delivered (ACC Learning), aligned with the PMBOK and BABOK, and aligned with Disney business objectives.  The core PM training is 11 days with 6 days of electives which is completed during an employee’s first 12 to 18 months with Disney.  The BA training is a subset of the PM training.

Cynthia also shared some of the tips that they use to reinforce training which includes laminated cheat sheets, note cards and resources such as their internal BA group called BALOO and the external Catalyze community.

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Cynthia Froggatt, author of “Work Naked: Eight Essential Principles for Peak Performance in the Virtual World,” was another keynote speaker on Day One at the World Congress for Business Analysts (WCBA) conference today at Disneyland. 

First, Cynthia wanted to make sure that everyone understood that the title of her book was to be taken methaphorically and not literally.

In a world where more and more people are working on or with virtual teams, Cynthia’s talk was very timely and pertinent.

When talking about distributed teams, Cynthia pointed out that it is important to focus on a sequence of WANTS:

• leaders want the best people on their team (without regard for where they are located)
• people want to be on the team (even though they won’t see their teammates every day)
• teams want to be successful (even though they will have to work in different ways)
• teams want to understand why and what’s expected of them (AND how to use geographic distribution to their advantage)

While at Cisco, Cynthia managed a distributed team in the U.S., Asia and Europe.  She shared some of the issues with a globally dispersed team, such as time zones, travel burnout, cultural differences, difficulty with verbal and nonverbal communications.

Some of the other hurdles that need to be overcome are:

• a predisposition to see teammates everyday
• a belief that co-located teams are more effective
• try to get as close to co-location as possible instead of exploiting geographic advantages
• that blame every problem on distance
• have a bad experience
• give low priority projects to distributed teams

How do you have to work differently with distributed teams?  You have to:

• want to work time zones to your advantage
• want to use latest technology in sophisticated ways, but also know how to use basic tools when technology fails
• want to gather for face-to-face interaction in collaborative places, but don’t want to own workplaces they don’t use very often

Cynthia also shared an excellent tip from her experience.  She made sure that everybody participating in group conference calls had to be on a headset, so no one is at a ‘locational’ disadvantage.  This approach leveled the playing field for all participants and forced everyone to focus more on the discussion.

So, why bother with distributed teams?  Cynthia’s answer is that distributed teams:

1. use people’s time and talents wisely
2. use financial resources effectively
3. use natural resources responsibly (and can reduce your company’s carbon footprint)

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