Technology should make things easier. I make technology easier.
Published Articles
Most of the posts are just notes, but some are more like articles, or actually were articles that were moved here once my rights reverted back per contract. In other cases they are cross-posted on a vendor blog site.
As a writer, architect, and manager, I am always looking to improve my communication because I sometimes experience that what I say and how people respond are out of synch and I firmly believe in the presupposition that “The meaning of any communication is the response it elicits, regardless of the intent of the communicator.” (Robert B. Dilts, et al.), which is why I was watching How to Be More Articulate (Structure Your Thoughts With 1 Framework), where Vicky Zhao mentioned “…Jeff Bezos’ famous Reversibility Decision Making Framework, is asking if I choose to do this. Is the result reversible? If yes, we should do it. If no, then let’s think about it deeply.”
This was the first time I heard of the “Reversibility Decision Making Framework”, though it perfectly describes the approach that I started following on my own at around the same time Bezos was running Amazon from his home. It is how I learned to manage computers, then networks, then scripting, then programming, then team leadership, and (eventually) architecture. I had no formal education in these areas, and at the time of learning them I had insufficient funds for books, let alone trainings.
I did have a computer (that took two years to pay off), an internet connection (at 14400 baud), and curiosity. After a couple of painful (and unplanned) lessons on how to re-install Windows and restoring a network from back up tapes, I began looking for ways to back out mistakes before I made them. After adding that small step to my process learning moved forward much more rapidly.
We all know that it is much faster to learn by doing. What many people I know fear (all of whom have extensive formal education in IT and related topics) is learning by what is often referred to as a “trial and error”, or what I prefer to call “trial and success”. If you have a safe sandbox to work in, doing something is much more efficient and effective than doing nothing until you are certain of the outcome.
The other habit that helps with trail and success is small increments. Sure, in the bad old days of punch cards or paper tapes it was necessary to write the entire program before running it. But modern IDEs make it trivial to run small pieces of code, and some simple discipline in planning your work can make it easy to test your code a line or a method at a time. Essentially, when not certain how a particular approach will work, rather than spending hours looking for “proven” solutions (that still might not work in the specific context), take your best guess and see how it works.
If the “proven” approach fails, it is likely one of many and finding which failed where can be a daunting task, where figuring out a better solution to the one you wrote 2 minutes ago is generally much easier and less stressful. Sure, there are few feelings better than writing dozens of lines of code in one session and having it run perfectly, but it feels so good because it happens so rarely. Writing two lines of code and getting a result is motivating, because even if it fails you have an idea of where to go next, and when it succeeds there is still a good feeling. Those little successes will easily total up to a higher overall sense of satisfaction than the one big one.
Pro tip: VirtualBox is a free virtual machine platform with lots of pre-built machines available at no cost. It is easy to learn the basics of how to use one and once you can, you have endless environments that you can completely destroy and start over again in the manner many games let you re-spawn where you left off instead of having to start over.
Humble PS: As illustrated by the feature image for this post, I am still trying to get the hang of prompting for image generation 😛
Featured image by Gratisography: https://www.pexels.com/photo/man-person-street-shoes-2882/
Before SAFe®, most organizations would do “our brand of agile”. IMO, SAFe® takes the most common elements of a plethora of hybrid agile approaches and codifies them in to a “standard” (imagine air quotes). My comments today are not about SAFe® but hybrid agile in general.
The common denominator I see across hybrid agile approaches is that they include the notion of some specific deliverables by a specific date. For the agile purist this isn’t agile because that notion is very not agile. Hats off to the purists that get to work that way, and they have already stopped reading by now unless they share the same mental state of people that slow down to look at a bad accident on the freeway (which I feel is not agile, but I’m no purist, so I couldn’t say for sure).
So, having target dates for a collection of stories isn’t entirely a bad thing, in that there are many organizations that have a legal obligation to appear as if they can reliably predict the future. These target days are where the problems start. And I will admin here that the title of this post is a lie, it is multiple problems, but I wanted to rope in those who really think that there is one thing wrong because I think they may get the most out of this particular rant.
So, first problem (position being arbitrary, I don’t have any stats about which problem occurs most) is that if the target is missed then there will be some people that point at the agile side of the hybrid approach as the blame. It could be, but it is much more likely that it is the behaviors that result for hybrid approaches, such as skipping documentation entirely, which results in longer ramp up time and lack of the DRY design pattern, because if you don’t know what’s been done how would you know if you were doing it again?
The next problem (purposely avoiding making it the second problem to avoid people thinking this is a non-arbitrary sequence…beyond a order that helps to communicate the concepts) is that when the targets are missed the people that are supposed to know what the future looks like look bad, so they get mad at the people who are trying to hit the target. Most people feel bad when people are mad at them (except people with either experience in such things, certain psychological disorders, or a hybrid of the two). No one likes to feel bad (except people with different psychological disorders) so they try to figure out how to prevent that in the future. And we have tons of action-comedies to suggest a way to do this: Lower your expectations…lower…lower…that’s it. So people stop missing their targets and Wall Street analysts think the bosses of these people are great prognosticators where what they have actually done is taught their teams to be great procrastinators.
And the last problem I will point at before running for my life from hip hybrid folks who will want blood and purists that stuck around and are still looking for blood is that the people who try to make it happen still miss the mark because they focus on the wrong targets. The long-term goals have this nice, big, shiny definition, where agile aims to complete one small, solid solution. The magic comes from being able to look at the big shiny and build a small solid that is good-enough-for-now, and still in the direction of the big shiny. One definition of magic is “some can and some don’t know how”, and in the case of this balancing different paths to perfection, some will focus everything on the small solid piece and forget to thing about whether it will fit into the big shiny vision. Or, they will be so enamored with the big shiny vision that everything they do in the span of a sprint is inadequate for the pieces that are solid, making the next sprint slower because they are still waiting on that piece that would let them move faster. Of course, magic is hard, and expecting everyone to produce it is destined for disappointment, which is why the teams that just lower their expectations are more “successful” (Dr Evil-level air quotes there).
So, at the end of the day, or at least the end of this post, the perception of success is easiest to meet if you succeed at level far below your potential. You can stress out everyone and sometimes hit the target. Or you can start forgiving your teams for their imperfections, cheer them for their successes, and teach them to learn from each other to be more successful every quarter. The problem with that last is that I will have to write another post to find more problems with hybrid until they are all resolved.
I’ve always tried to have some basic guidelines around communications to keep myself from straying from the purpose of the conversation. I’ve had a long-standing guideline for how long to wait for someone that is late to a meeting: 3 minutes for non-critical participants; 5 minutes for colleagues who should know better; 10 minutes for people in senior roles that have too many meetings; 15 minutes for executives and customers. After 15 minutes I write it off as a break in an otherwise hectic day and move on to other tasks.
Recently there was a long-running thread of comments in a Jira story between two colleagues that occurred while I was on PTO. Catching up on things, I ran across it and, as someone outside the conversation, identified that the length of the discussion was because there were different core understandings of the story that neither was aware the other had. Because it had gone on so long, it took longer to come to consensus in the meetings that followed that comment thread.
This is not the first time I have run across such diverging threads, and I am sure you have seen as many or more. I once worked with a very good Project Manager who had a rule that if the thread went more the two responses it was time for a phone call or meeting. As a developer-turned-architect, most of my work is with people that would rather go to the dentist than a meeting. As senior director, I know that both are annoying when unnecessary and you always feel better afterwards when useful (though not always immediately).
I’m will probably revise these in the future, but for now, here is the guideline am adopting and recommending around written threads (IMs, DMs, texts, or comment sections):
One message is a question
Two messages is a conversation
Three messages is an asynchronous meeting
Four messages probably needs a meeting to complete
For the sake of this discussion, let’s consider a meeting of any type of verbal exchange over written, i.e., treating phone, video, and in-person equally (because otherwise we are off on a different topic, and I do that easily enough without help).
Like any guideline, these are not absolutes. For a silly-yet-accurate example, consider “can we talk?” as the first message. In general, that should go straight to meeting. But sometimes the recipient is busy (maybe even in another conversation) and some discussion is required to conclude a time an channel. Another example is when assisting someone with a task where the understand the basics and need help with some advanced or nuanced aspects. Such a thread could go on for dozens of exchanges and be the right way to communicate asynchronously as both parties work on other things in between. In the same context but a different circumstance the thread may be inefficient, and meeting should be called after the first question. So, no absolutes, just some guidelines to think about when you find yourself in an extended written exchange online.
What’s your approach? Yes, I’m now encouraging a thread that is longer than four messages and no meeting 🙂
Public speaking is often referred to as the most common fear. Google gave me this random proof this morning, an 8-year-old Washing Post Article. In school it was a major fear of mine, which was sort of hypocritical since it was only being in front of the class or a group where I was nervous. From the back of the class, I often didn’t shut up until I was sent out of the class. I think this isn’t too different than my preference of written over verbal communication, but you are probably hear to learn about a technique to not sound like you are reading when you use speaking notes rather than hearing about my personality peccadilloes.
First, getting over the trepidation to speak in the first place is an accomplishment. The techniques to get over that vary from person to person, though it is fair to say that a key ingredient is being confident in your knowledge on the topic and then focusing on sharing that knowledge more than what people may think of you. It may be worth noting that confidence is often accepted as a replacement for competence, which is more important to the audience than the speaker. For the speaker, it is up to their own personal values and ability to know the difference (I’m digressing, which, my reader is used to by now, but I still need to apologize).
For myself, my fear was less about not knowing the topic than the audience not being interested or not believing I knew the topic. And I am amused to see I wrote that in the past tense…
Once you get over the fear or anxiety or panic (in worst cases) sufficiently to be in situation where you need to speak in public or present virtually some might think that is all it takes. Ha! What happens when, real or imagined, the fear comes to fruition? That they aren’t listening (or you don’t think they are because you can’t read their expressions or even see their faces), or don’t believe/agree with you (same input issues, different conclusion)? You might just plow on, feeling better or worse as you do, or you might give up (hopefully not because, trust me, it won’t get worse). Assuming you survived (kidding…everyone survives, except some noted historical exceptions that are not relevant to this article and that are too dark for me to ever write about), the next step is to find ways to get better.
Most of my early speaking activities were in a teaching context. I either had a very deep understanding of the material or had learned it recently and intensely enough for it to be very fresh in mind. For these seminar and classes I would have a one page outline that I could leave somewhere within my vision and that was sufficient.
Nest loop outline from a 1990 sales training
Age does not help eyesight, nor does improve focus if one has moved through many different fields and topics through the years, and I got to a point where the outlines were hard to read unless I used a very large font, and that they were insufficient as a speaking prompt either because the presentation was a condensation of a much larger body of material or a combination of being fairly recently planned and either new knowledge or knowledge gathered and distilled over a long time. Plus, my topics had moved from more academic areas into business and technology. I frequently had much less time to prepare and the outline format had me sounding like I was reading (which I was) and would sometime lose my place (which audiences take as low confidence). I needed a new approach.
The next level from an outline is bullet notes. Short sentences or snippets that act as prompts and keep the talk on track. Generally easier to read, and easily memorized so that a mere glance is sufficient to key the brain into what comes next and where it is at on the track.
Guided selling
Approval flows
Automated escalations
Not all CPQs have billing
Reporting and types of reporting
eSignature
Renewals (this could be CLM, CPQ, or both)
Bullet notes did the trick for a long time because of their simplicity, both in format and in management. Things evolve. It might be personal evolution, societal evolution, or (most likely) a mixture of both. In this case, evolution moves from speaking, teaching, or presenting and into interacting with knowledge. There is still a subject, and the nature of the discussion has a general structure, frequently as an agenda, but at any point in the agenda the focus can branch into both planned and unplanned areas. In some cases the discussion needs to return to the originally planned path, in others the sequence changes while the content remains the same, and sometimes the whole plan is out the door.
For that last one there is no substitute for knowledge and experience, even if it is the understanding that “let me get back to you on that” is generally better than faking it. For this shifting flow, I have adopted and adapted the notion of Bionic Reading® to a different style of preparation notes. I found Bionic Reading Notes as a speed reading technique. I initially tried using the same format for speaking notes but it sounded like I was reading (because I was).
My reader may recognize the reference to Bionic Reading® from some of my recent certification prep articles where I convert my study notes to Bionic Reading® Notes.
Then I started bolding keywords. This has several advantages. Unlike my earlier use of outlines or bullets, I write out the entire content of what I intend to say. I then go through that content and bold key words and phrases. The process of doing so has multiple benefits. First, it helps me recognize patterns that may work well in writing but sound awkward in speaking. Also, it drives me to simplify the content when I notice that the keywords and phrases become overly dense. I shorten paragraphs so that these points stand out better as notes, and will sometimes put blank lines in the middle of a sentence to make it more readable as a note. One key thing is to avoid having the bold words too clumped, or else it is just reading bold text rather than triggering associations in the brain.
When time permits, I go through the content a second time and edit the content down, which makes for a better presentation and the keywords allow me to track where I am at in the presentation without having to read.
Admittedly, this type of note is easiest to use when speaking online, though I have used a tablet or laptop with face to face audiences, telling them up front that I will be occasionally referring to my notes.
I will leave you with an example of my notes from a recent proposal presentation and hope that you got something from this article:
Slide 7:
It may seem like we have a lot of slides here. And some of the content may be repeated from different angles.
I will go through mine fairly quickly, so please interrupt me if there is something you want to spend more time on.
You probably already looked at the CPQ market and seen that there are a lot of options out there.
This busy slide lists 20 market leaders our of several hundred vendors with CPQ offerings.
CPQ is all about the process of getting from qualified prospect to repeat customer and it can be just as proprietary as the products and services that are being sold.
The differences between CPQvendors can be:
industry focus,
role focus – whether it is oriented towards accounting, sales, or delivery,
ease of setup versus flexibility,
and if the flexibility is mainly in the product configuration, pricing structure, the approval flow, or all three.
The level and types of automation is another key differentiator and often heavily weighted in the evaluation.
Slide 8
For a business that uses Salesforce as their CRM, one CPQ differentiator is how it integrates with Salesforce. While there are a lot of nuances about application integration, there are three broad styles that are easier to manage on a score card.
Without going to deep into it, they are Native Apps, meaning the CPQ app is built entirely in Salesforce; Composite apps, where the CPQ application runs on a separate platform with varying levels of functionality available in the Salesforce UI, and Connectors, which can have varyingcomplexities in their use.
The names of these categories can vary between marketing materials and documentation, as well as how they are defined. For example, there are many vendors that call their apps a Native App when it is really a Composite App, and Composite Apps that are little more than a Connector with very basic UI.
Slide 9
This is a sample of an executive overview, and part of the reason I risked boring you with the previous slide as the integration style can impact the other scoring factors. The factors used in the evaluation will be based on the workshops we have with your stakeholders and there are generally 3 or 4times as many of them as will be in the overview slide that will list those with highest weight and variation between the top 5 options.
Slide 10
This is another sample of what will be in the executive summary where we will present the best 2 or 3 vendors and our recommendation.
The executive presentation will be backed by set of very through documentation that will be reviewed with your selected stakeholders.
Some variations in processes…
One difference between offerings is the process boundary.
Some start from lead qualification and others only when creating the order.
Some end with the final quote and others go through to renewals.
Different industries and different businesses have varying stages within the Configure, Price and Quote phases.
pre notes:
CPQ is about process. Automate the standard and escalate the exceptions.
The CPQ vendor market is huge because the process can vary between enterprises and business domains.
What is important is finding the balance between flexibility to suit individual needs and complexity to set up and manage. This is why the space is so large, with lots of niche players.
We will help to build the score card that best defines your needs with properly weighted categories to narrow the initial list of potential vendors and then apply that score card to our understanding of the business capabilities and technical perspective to narrow it down to the best 2 to 5options and our recommendation of the single the best choice from our understanding at that time.
