image by Tony M...., flickr artist

i was just at the grocery store picking up supplies for the week.

when i got home, i took out the bottle of vitamin water i had purchased as part of those supplies and cracked the top.  the flavor was called “spark” and was one that i hadn’t tried before, so — being new to me — i held up the bottle to read the label.

to my amusement, the text was upside-down.  i turned the bottle to read it and, the label — the text i was reading — talked about the action which i had just performed (turning the bottle upside-down).  it closed with a clever joke, and it was at that point that i realized what just happened.

i was having fun!

fun from a plastic vitamin water bottle?  yes.  (well, more specifically it was the label itself.)  so i started to ask myself a very simple question: why, when we create products, do we always leave out the fun factor?  when did we all become mr. soggy pants?

it’s not like we forgot how to have fun, but it’s just not part of our development process when we’re creating new products.  really, what do you think of?  what questions are you trying to answer?

• how many clicks is it going to take for the user to get to [insert feature or function]?
• how do we increase performance to make this run faster?
• how can we combine similar tasks into one process?
• how do we hydrate athletes better?
• what fabrics are going to be lightest and provide the least wind resistance?
• how can we structure our footwear to provide the most high ankle support?
• how are we going to package everything together so that our clients/users/consumers are going to have fun?

yeah, that last one doesn’t come up during brainstorming sessions often, does it?  why not?

we want all those things, yes.  i want a web system that’s going to be easy to use, fast to work in, and provide me with results that i expect.  i want a sports drink that’s going to hydrate me during hot summer days in southern virginia.  but i also want to have fun.  i want to know there were actual people behind the science and development, not some end product that does what it says it will that was produced by a robotic, corporate, dull, senseless process.

the next time you’re going to chemistry up the new generation of sports drinks, or are looking for new features to add to your web service, don’t forget to add the fun.  if people can get the same or comparable end results from two products, but the one is corporate and dull whilst the other is fresh and fun — people will almost always opt for fun.

i mean it.  i’m really fed up.

i can make bank transfers, and pay bills, and shop online from my cell phone.  why then can’t i access a file stored on a sharepoint installation from that same device?  why can’t i access the latest updates from members of my team on our project from an enterprise 2.0 solution?  why can’t i do it all pain free — just as i do my online banking (or my shopping at express)?  don’t tell me there are security concerns about accessing proprietary information outside of the corporate firewall.  i don’t want to hear it; it’s just an excuse.

i need knowledge when i need it — not where or when you want to allow me access to it.  i’m interfacing with clients all the time — hardly ever at my office — and i need to have the right information available to me so that i can help them make informed decisions.  i can’t be bothered to jump through hoops just to get that information.

i walk around with an iphone in my pocket all day, and i can hardly use it for more than pulling up a lightsaber, finding waldo, and making fart noises.  it’s unacceptable.

if you work in enterprise security, i’m holding you personally accountable.  for far too long you have lagged behind the curve when it comes to the rest of the technology world.

it’s time that you finally catch up.

not bad, right?  wrong.

the new house has popcorn ceilings with … sparkles? in it.  and both the downstairs as well as the back room upstairs have floor to ceiling mirrors which one can only assume is to ‘make the room look larger’.  to me, it all makes the room look ‘horrible’.  but such was the style back in the day (…i suppose).

there’s a slight problem, however: namely the fact that it’s now the future and such designs are way outdated, look bad, and worse yet are hard to change.  painting the ceilings was not fun.  first, the popcorn soaks up all the paint so you end up using far more than you would have used on a normal, flat surface.  second, it falls apart on you.  i know this too well.  my brother and myself both had paint covered pieces of the ceiling fall off and into our mouths.  (yes, it would have made sense to have a mask on, but we didn’t exactly have an OSHA approved setup.)  the mirrors?  they’re still up there.  it would have cost too much money to have them removed, and then you have to worry about what’s behind those mirrors once you do take them down.  beyond the cost to remove them, you may incur even more costs in fixing whatever is behind the mirrors.  it’s not an agile design for the interior of a house.

much like designing a house, you may want to be careful when you are making design choices for your organization.  you will be tempted to put a lot of processes in place and begin to adopt “industry best practices” from competitors in your marketplace.  i say to exercise caution because the more processes you have, by definition, the less agile your organization is.  processes reduce your ability to make changes, and therefore your ability to innovate.

don’t get me wrong – some processes are important.  you do still need a ceiling, and you certainly need walls.  before you go making choices, however, think about the future.  are you making the same choices based on what everyone else sees as the newest fad, or trend?  are you making decisions that are restricting your organization’s ability to adapt to changes?  are you going to be stuck with popcorn on the ceiling that’s hard to change and mirrors on the walls that are expensive to get rid of?

don’t let “this old house” turn into “this old organization.”  always plan for the future.

image by elvez40, flickr artist

… they say you have to know where you’ve been.

i say, to get where you’re going — you have to know where you’re going.

stupid, right?  or is it?

whenever you start some sort of new venture, you have to know what the end state is. you have to set some sort of goal. otherwise, when do you know that you’ve gotten to where you want to be? when do you call it quits and move on to the next challenge?

i think one of the worst feelings in the world is when you’re churning away at something, tirelessly working, staying up night after night obsessing about how to perfect your work, and then one day asking yourself the question, where am i going with this?

some colleagues and i were talking about version control recently. in development terms, a product is usually given a dot-notation, integer-based version number.  v1.0 is generally identified as the first time you ‘go live’. this of course is not 100% solid; take, for instance, public betas and other test releases (you’ll also find RC — release candidate — versions in the wild). but what’s the difference between going from v1.0 to v1.1 — or — from v1.0 to v2.0? again speaking in generalities, a major change in functionality is usually denoted as a new version (i.e. v2.0) whereas enhancements to existing functionality or bug fixes are some form of dot-notation (i.e. v1.1 or v1.0.1).

but where does it end?

what’s the end state of your software, or your document, or your ms excel data model? do you stop at 3.0? at 4.0? at 4.0.23? beyond that? this is my point. when you talk about versions of something, it’s nice to say, “well we rolled out version 2.6 and we’ve started development on 2.7.”  it’s good for team morale. it certainly keeps the client happy (at least for a while) — but that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t have an exit strategy. you ought to be building towards something; towards some kind of goal.

this is especially dangerous in agile or “spiral” development where requirements are made up on the go. “we’re done when we get everything into the system” is a horrible way to approach things. no one wants to be told that they could potentially be paying for something until the cows come home. there should be something that your system, document, etc. resembles in its finished state.  take that vision, make it your goal, and turn it into your mission.

what about your career?  what does sarah 2.0 look like?  for that matter, what does sarah 3.0 look like? when do you reach a new plateau and change direction to work on the next mountain?

to get where you’re going, you have to know where you’re going — otherwise, you’re just spinning your wheels.

now to go along with that, a current trend that i honestly feel you’ll see much more of is a move towards more and more open-source projects and systems in the workplace. i love the open source community — i really do! they’ve given me my instant messenger clients for the last 6 years, my WordPress that i use to create this blog, my web-based collaborative software that i use to track my work and milestones when on the job, and a lot more!

the point is no single developer is as great as a community of developers.

when the first microwave was built — it was intended to replace the oven. that’s why they were called “microwave ovens”. early ads, user manuals, and even cookbooks talked about the ability to cook anything and the speed with which you could cook it. however, when microwaves became a part of daily life, things were much different. people didn’t use them to replace their ovens, but rather to reheat cold, refrigerated, or frozen leftovers. they began to “nuke” things. and up until very recently, these microwave ovens were bulky ‘over the stove’ models. it was a major kitchen appliance. today’s modern microwaves are small kitchen “accessories” that have hardly enough room to put in a bag of popcorn, let alone an entire turkey or rump roast! this evolution only happened after it was given to the community.

creating basic systems or applications and opening that software up to the general public is one of the best things an organization can do for itself. it does a few different things.

the first thing it does is create a much greater idea pool. widgets, and plugins, and mods all add value to your system because it tailors your applications to the individual’s needs — and in a way that is easily adjustable, and entirely optional. and then perhaps someone thinks of an option or feature that no one in your organization would have ever dreamed about, but now it’s a featured portion of your application. only an open community can do that for you.

the second thing it does is help you develop or discover talent outside of the company for free. you can track updates made to the software, and who contributes the most and the best work towards your product. he or she willfully works on bettering your system for free. over time, you might consider these people to be valuable towards your success and offer them a full-time position within your organization to work on external projects or your core system development projects. you could sponsor a project with a local university and groom students in your organization’s goals and strategies. they benefit from learning, and you gain from both the development of the application and from development of talent that comes from what’s essentially an unpaid internship.

another benefit is that open-source applications keep your enterprise agile. apple releases this little device called the iphone and it takes the market by storm. it instantly becomes the leader in mobile web surfing. perhaps you have a web-based issues and risk log that you want your managers to be able to update wherever they’re at, but now all of a sudden your managers have iphones. problem is your system wasn’t designed with the iphone in mind. an open-source community, certainly enthralled with the new iphone as well, finds this to be an issue and creates an update or a plug-in that makes your system work in harmony with the newest trends. now that’s agility.

see, the truth is that you never really know what the general public is going to use your inventions for. and if you’re anything like me, that excites you. and that’s what the power of the community can do for you and your business. you can build a microwave and create a ‘nuclear’ device.