“In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.”
Dwight D. Eisenhower
I don’t know about you, but I constantly feel as if I am running out of time, or maybe that time is running away from me. Either way, 2008 went by really fast, and we are already half way through the first month of 2009…
The whole world seems to be on speed. There seems to be an exponential loss of time, resulting in the constant need to go faster, to reduce costs and all the while delivering great products and services. With all the pressures, one might be tempted to cut corners to gain advantage. However, here are the 5 areas where you should take your time in order to streamline and increase your speed.
Solve the right problem
We all have our favorite products and products we love to hate. Each product carries its own signature, identified first by the problems its solving, and second by the design approach taken. Focusing on the wrong problems is very costly, such as in the case of the “butterfly ballot” in Florida during the 2000 election. Sometimes a near death experience is required to discover the right problem, such as in the case of the Iridium Satellite system.
The process of identifying the right problems to solve forces us to go deeper, to understand and analyze root causes, to discover key constraints and drivers. And, potentially to design and develop breakthrough solutions. You can read more about the importance of Choosing the right problems to solve in Product Vision Blog by D. Philip Haine.
Test, verify and validate
SC Magazine recently reported on the cost of fixing software defects: The cost of fixing software defects runs into millions.
The survey of 139 US corporate development organisations on the pressures and costs of software defects was carried out in conjunction with Coverity in Q2 of 2008. IDC estimates the cost of fixing software defects at $5.2 million to $22 million annually, depending on organisation size.
The reality is the longer you wait to fix a problem after its insertion into the product, the costlier it will be. There are numerous studies from the software industry to support this, but the concept applies to other parts of life. And cost can be direct – schedule, resources, budget – as well as indirect – loss of trust, negative publicity, impact to customer loyalty, low team morale, …
Studies have also shown that early testing and validation improves defect detection rates, such as in the case of using inspections to find design errors, and with the argument for using pair programing during software development. Concept testing, usability testing and other market research tools enable companies to test, verify and validate early on, enabling them to focus on the right problem definitions.
Communication and alignment
Perhaps it’s every leader’s dream and nightmare: keeping her team rowing the same direction with maximum effort. Yet, as Patrick Lencioni states in The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable
Clearly communicating vision, incorporating specific objectives and establishing well defined outcomes will enable your team to row in the same direction. As you proceed, keep in mind the following key elements for effective communication:
- keep it simple – the more complex the message is, the more time it will take to communicate it clearly and directly (and the greater the risk of misunderstanding);
- keep it familiar – analogies, metaphors and stories will make it memorable and familiar. Also, drive it home by repeating your message, ideally through diverse communication forums (visual, meetings, emails, 1:1, posters, ..);
- lead by example – in addition, ensure transparency in communication and actions;
Also, note that getting everyone to row on the same direction is not enough. You need to monitor the effort that each and every one is putting in, including providing the necessary support and tools to ensure optimal effort by all. So, monitor the progress of your teams as well as your communication.
Finally, vision is important, but more so is getting the basics right as soon as possible for success. Focusing on early benefits and implementing quick wins will reinforce your vision and strategy.
Measure, monitor and make it repeatable
“If you don’t know where you are, a map won’t help…” Whatever your needs and goals are, without proper measurement and tracking, you can’t tell if you are on the right track and making making progress towards your objectives. More bluntly, you can’t improve what you don’t measure.
You can get a good sense of where you are by comparing your planned, actual and baseline progress. In selecting your metrics, keep in mind the following guidelines:
- keep metrics simple – make them easy to understand, easy to generate and collect;
- choose relevant metrics – each metric should be in the support of the objective and somehow connected to the value that the organization is looking to create. In addition, choose metrics that enables people to act, such as monitoring actual project costs rather than measuring performance by stock value;
- focus on leading indicators – choose metrics that allows you to be proactive, such as in the case of measuring the employee turnover to gauge overall productivity and health of the organization rather than relaying on employee surveys;
- fuel meaningful conversation – the ultimate goal of metrics is to stimulate learning, generate action and accelerate improvement. So, select metrics that will help support conversations and insights for the organization;
Where applicable, create a simple 1-page dashboards to measure the progress against your objectives. As an example, for your projects, your 1-page dashboard could include:
- Top 3-5 project goals and elevator pitch;
- Key project milestones and current state;
- Top 3-7 project issues, especially any red flags that stop progress;
- A few key project metrics – code complexity, team velocity, defect find vs. fix rate, product performance metrics (startup time, throughput, cycle time, …)
Finally, where possible, ensure repeatability of your processes, whether it is metric collection and analysis, development activities (source control system, defect management, nightly build & test cycle, backups, …) or other activities. Through repeatability, you will reduce surprises, avoid preventable problems, reduce not-invented-here frictions and ultimately establish a sustainable pace and repeatable successes regardless of personnel changes, new projects, or other disruptions.
Reflect and adjust
I talked about postmortems and the importance of organizational memory as part of the learning process before. Reflection is a critical component of learning; it enables us to evaluate our experiences, learn from mistakes, identify best practices, revise and adjust accordingly. Make time to reflect on key areas that impact your organization, such as:
- How to remove/reduce complexity – complexity is cost. There are many sources of complexity from your customers, suppliers, geographical spread, products and services, management organization and people. Identifying and removing/reducing complexity will save time, improve productivity and reduce cost;
- Where and how to add/create value – reflect on how satisfied your customers are, how you compare to your competition, what are the current trends, …;
- How to assess the health of your organization, process or product – including questions such as how effective are existing processes, what are the best practices, where are the bottlenecks vs. where is the energy/time better spent;
- What are your/your organization’s existing presuppositions – whether you are conscious of them or not, presuppositions keep ideas out of reach. Finding them and challenging them will allow new ideas to develop;
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