Designing Woman

Disclaimer: I found this unpublished blog post in my draft folder from my product manager days, which feels like a lifetime - and a few hairstyles - ago. Even though I no longer work as a product manager, it's still a pretty accurate description of how I work.

The software company I work for has a short release cycle, with only have eight weeks of development to put out a new version. Since my product is fairly in demand - or perhaps it would be more honest to say that enhancements are demanded - this means I'm pretty much always creating designs in addition to the other product management work I do.

Like project work, design work is subject to phases, which are magnified by the compressed release cycle. People who work on projects or design work may identify with some of the following phases:

Phase I: 'Out with the old, in with the new.' I just finished the designs for the current update and it's time to start thinking about the next update but I'm not quite ready yet. I hover between two updates and poke at a few things but it's hard to let go of the topics that have claimed my attention for the last eight weeks and get started. I tend to feel unconnected and out of sorts during this phase, maybe even a little bit burned out. Fortunately, this phase tends to be short because there's a deadline to meet.

Phase II: 'Ramping up.' I've started the designs for the next update but there are some questions from development and other groups around the current update so my attention is divided. I force myself to make steady progress but haven't really hit my stride yet. I don't yet have a stake in the current design beyond the obvious (and important) one that someone pays me to work on it. This is a restless, unfocused phase but reasonably productive.

Phase III: 'Can't. Talk. Must. Finish. Design.' Something clicks and suddenly the design owns me. Maybe it's something someone said, or maybe the design has just reached a critical mass, but the different design threads pull at me all the time, insisting that I resolve them into a cohesive pattern. There may be a number of false starts before I find the right balance of prioritizatation of requirements, easy configuration and use, and architectural fit. And I don't know how many people realize this about software design but expertise will only take you so far - a good designer also also needs empathy in order to anticipate mistakes people are likely to make and help them not make them. Empathy makes me grumpy and hungry so if you see me glaring at my computer with a cookie in my hand, you might want to save that question for later.

Phase IV: 'Bring it on home.' I'm 95-98% done. I've crossed some sort of design threshhold where the pattern has integrity and holds together but that last 2-5% still needs to be done. It's usually pretty boring but someone needs to do it. I look around for my minion but I don't have a minion so that leaves me. Around this time the current release is ready for testing and that's less exciting than the wide open field of design work, but not less important. Now it's time to start horse trading features with my colleagues in development, who invariably feel that I've given them too much work. And they're right about that, because I have surrounded the most important requirements with non-essential pawns that I'd like to see but may be sacrificed if necessary to protect the core design.

The cycle repeats. I start thinking on a high level about the next update and gradually easing back into Phase I for the next round... better hurry up and ask me that question.

Who Moved My Manager?

Josh Bersin recently wrote a compelling post about how the nature of jobs are changing.  Instead of functions, people assume roles, perform tasks and participate in projects.  They may ‘report to’ a number of people besides their own manager, from project managers to stake holders.  They may lead teams and manage projects without a manager title.

This is all fascinating from an organizational development perspective and Josh did his usual great job describing how high performing companies develop expertise and reward business results. 

But for those of us in the software industry, the technology implications are equally fascinating.

If we were going to design a new kind of business application to help companies manage a global, virtual, fluid, contingent, self-managing, project-oriented workforce in a constantly changing business climate, where would we start?

First of all, let's assume people work from anywhere, or at least anywhere with an Internet connection, so we’ll start with a Cloud-based application.  Collaboration and decision support tools also assume a looming importance in this environment, because the people who work together probably aren’t sitting right next to each other.

We also need our new application to be highly flexible in order to keep up with changing business needs.  It’s hard to be agile if your business systems slow you down.

In this borderless work environment the traditional 'management' role of the manager becomes less important.  People still need direction and leadership but classic top-down management gets in the way of collaboration.  Instead, people need visibility into the business information that shapes their decisions and autonomy to get the job done.

The traditional career development role of the manager also looks different in this environment as people plug into social networks, reach out to mentors, and broadcast their skills and experience in public forums such as LinkedIn.  Companies that want to retain top talent will provide tools that help people define their own career paths so they don’t feel they must go elsewhere for the next development opportunity. 

The formal annual manager performance evaluation is likely to evolve into less formal, more frequent peer reviews and feedback, supplemented by improved insight into work and business results.

Our new application should also help companies identify potential and develop talent in order to avoid critical skills gaps as the organization evolves and better align skills with critical work - across the entire organization, not just within the purview of individual managers.

It seems pretty clear that in this new world, the need for ‘managers’ will decline, even if organizations still cling to them out of habit for several decades.  At the same time, people will uncover new opportunities to become leaders in their respective areas of expertise, as Wally Bock noted in his recent post What if leadership wasn’t a promotion?

Which means that modern business applications must be designed to support leaders, not just managers.

Not Just Good to Know

Dave Ryan and I were talking about possible next Project Social topics and I ambitiously suggested, ‘HR’s role in defining a high-performing organization.’

Dave’s response: ‘Hmmmmmn… yeah, that’s one topic.’

(We’ll just call that one Plan B.)

So we pared it down to one aspect of high performing organizations, something that all HPOs have: good workforce intelligence, not to be confused with an intelligent workforce.

It sometimes amazes me how little workforce information you can get out of most HR systems.  No one expects an HR system to provide the answer to life, the universe and everything, but an accurate global headcount report seems like something you could reasonably expect to get.

Imagine your CEO calls your right now and asks for input to decide between two potential locations for a new service center.  You’d probably want to compare workforce information in each location, including labor costs, hiring sources, time to fill job requisitions, quality of new hires, etc.  Can you?

What about other information that might be useful to running a business, such as:

•    What are the most critical jobs in our organization?
•    What are the most critical skills by job in our organization?
•    Where do we have skills gaps or pending skills gaps?
•    Before we bring in a consultant, is there an internal person who can do this?
•    Before we lay someone off, do they have skills we need elsewhere?
•    Is it more cost effective to hire, contract or train someone for this role?
•    How does the work quality of contingent v. employees compare?
•    Do part-time employees really produce less than full-time employees?
•    In which locations are we finding it hard to find people with the skills we need?
•    Who’s working on what and what does it cost?
•    Which managers have unusually high turnover?
•    Where do we have flight risks?

I could go on - there’s all kinds of useful information hidden away coyly in your HR systems today, as well as all kinds of useful information should be there but isn’t.  And Dave and Lyn have their own take on this over at HR Official and The HR Bacon Hut, respectively.  But you get the idea.

Here's the worrying thing:  HR leaders are starting to be replaced by marketing executives because marketers know how to show the impact of strategy execution on business results.

In marketing, business results drive whether you succeed or fail.  Period.  Which is why the first thing a marketing person in an HR role would do is get that information, right after hanging the ‘Marketing: HR: Two Drink Minimum’ sign outside their door.

HR hasn't been held accountable for business performance compared to areas of the organization but that's starting to change as companies realize it's all about people.  Everything else is just... stuff.  Which means that current, accurate workforce information is pretty important for HR leaders to have.

As an added bonus, good workforce data will help you look attractive, confident and well-dressed like that woman in the picture... no, it's not me, although the resemblance is uncanny.

It's more than just good to know.

The Man Who Changed the World

Project Social: I Storyvite You Again!

I wrote a post back in July I Storyvite You about my initial experience using Storyvite, an online personal branding tool.  The basic selling point of Storyvite is that it lets you present your 'profersonal' story in a more inviting way than a traditional CV or LinkedIn profile.  It also helps you manage your online identity by pulling information about you from multiple sources (LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.)

The thing that sets Storyvite apart from other online personal branding tools is the social way in which the founder, Satish Sallakonda, has reached out to the business community to design a tool that meets their needs.  For example, when he saw the link to my post he contacted me with an offer to help me create a stronger story for myself.  (He was too polite to say my original story kinda sucked.)

He reached out to other people as well, including my Project Social buddies Dave Ryan and Lyn Hoyt and you can read about their Storyvite experiences over at HR Official and The HR Bacon Hut.  You can also check out my updated Storyvite profile below - the black background was my idea so if you hate it don't blame Satish.

Play Story
 
To give fair warning, the Storyvite product is still under construction.  Although the plan is to automatically pull in more information from LinkedIn and other sites, as well as provide easy to use templates for different layouts, the user experience remains largely manual.

On the plus side, looking at some of the prototypes for what's coming, I can easily imagine using this tool or one like it to generate a very slick resume or bio:

How cool is that?  Unfortunately, this capability isn't there yet but you can use what's there today to give your own 'profersonal' story a face lift using the invitation code 'social' to get started.  And if you run into any snags, just reach out to Satish directly, he'd love to hear from you!

I Storyvite You

When I saw this article on TLNT about creating a visual resume from your LinkedIn profile I was intrigued and decided to give it a whirl. 

I signed in using the free registration code offered in the TLNT article (spoiler: it's 'tlnt').  Not surprisingly, the first step is to pull over your LinkedIn information.

After this things got a little bumpy.  I was advised to update my profile, which I ignored because my LinkedIn profile – while not my best work – is fairly complete.  Instead, I opted to cut to the chase and go right into the visual profile.

At this point the user experience was reminiscent of working in Powerpoint only without all the options you expect.  The tag cloud depicting my strengths and experiences is self-generating and I could never get it to look quite the way I wanted.  The slide templates leave you on your own with sizing and alignment and the examples offered for each type of slide weren’t always relevant.  The preview looked like a slide show that swirls around in a cluster instead of advancing sequentially.

My first impression was that I could have done a better job in Powerpoint.

So I took a break and came back to it, determined to give it a fair shot.  Again I was asked to update my profile and this time I did it, not wanting to be one of those users who ignore polite procedural reuqests and then complain when things don’t work.  Suddenly the user experience improved.  For example, this time when I elected to ‘play’ the visual profile I got a groovy carousel:

‘OK, this is pretty cool,’ I thought.  Powerpoint can’t do that.  (Er… can it?)

I think this product needs some work on the user experience side and I’m not sure who wants to watch the Laura Schroeder story but the basic idea of simplifying information is a good one.  The result is less complete than my LinkedIn profile but it’s also more inviting.

One more thing: When you update your information you get to this page, which I think would be a good alternative public profile option to offer for people who aren’t into swirling clusters of slides or carousels. Sad, lonely people.

Why not give it a try? It’s free, it's kinda fun and for another few weeks it’ll help you stand out from the crowd.  As an added bonus, having your work experience fly around like that will help distract the reader from any missing skills you might have. 

I Just Don't Know What to Do With My iPad...

My husband I now have an iPad, which is fair because I'm his creative muse (which I'm sure he would agree with, at least if he wants dinner). was recently awarded two iPads at work in recognition for separate projects, making us a two iPad household. That means

My oldest daughter wanted the iPad but I was like, 'You're 7 years old. Go play with a ball or a stick like I did when I was 7.'

The problem is, I'm not sure what to do with the iPad. Yes, I'm a seasoned software professional. Yes, I spend most of my day on a computer. And yes, my company has amazingly cool iPad applications.

But I write. All the time. I'm writing right now. Even when I'm just browsing I need a proper keyboard in case I want to write something. Plus, I switch mediums constantly, so if I use the iPad for tweeting or Googling I have to switch back to my computer to pull up a document or type a longer email...

And I don't really want to play the bird game.

The problem here is clearly me because 11 million consumers can't be wrong, right? My husband thinks I'm weird. Well, more accurately, he still thinks I'm weird after all these years.

Maybe he's right. I mean, even the Pope uses an iPad, which means we can now receive the Papal epiphany of the day from any location. The Pope is more current than I am.

(I may be a late adopter but when they finally offer space travel with holodecks and replicators I'll be first in line.)

If I don't start using the iPad my husband will take it back and give it to someone more deserving. Like the Pope. So here are a couple of ideas I've come up with to incorporate the iPad into my daily family life:

GATHERING AROUND THE FIREPLACE SCREEN SAVER

BABY LINKEDIN

My 3 Posts: Letourneau, Doody and Big Daddy Paul

In the spirit of project social, Dave, Lyn and I wanted to share some of our favorite posts with you.  Since we all hate lists with more than 10 items (OK, I hate lists with more than 10 items) we’re each picking 3.

For a total of 9.

It wasn't easy.  There are many great posts out there and I’m probably forgetting several that really moved me at the time.  But I tried to come up with three that I think are particularly good and a little off the beaten path.

• Play Your Hand: Your 4 of Clubs Might Really be a Joker by Josh Letourneau – I’m afraid it’s not very original to admire this post but I love it because it's such a creative illustration of how your most important people probably aren’t the ones you think they are.

• Why We Need Storytellers at the Heart of Product Development by Sarah Doody– This is a recent post so I don’t know if it will stand the test of time on my favorites list but the message that great product development starts with a story really resonated with me.

• And finally, my favorite post of all time: Ugly Malcolm Photos by Big Daddy Paul.  Since I tend to post pictures that make my life appear perfect and effortless, I admire Paul’s honesty and hilarity as a parent.  I recommend you check out this post and his very funny blog.

So, that's my three.  To complete the list and get your full money's worth, click over to Dave's picks at HR Official and Lyn's at The Bacon Hut!

2011: The Year of Visibility

I think it’s fair to say that 2010 was a year of change and reflection for many of us. Jobs were lost, assumptions were adjusted, expectations were lowered and in some lucky cases opportunities were seized.

It all started innocently enough. First came the crash, which occurred when someone unwisely decided to investigate various financial instruments and discovered a mountain of poorly backed debts that had been sold multiple times for vastly more than they were worth. If financial analysts were taught basic physics they would have known that nebulous moving objects don’t bear close investigation.

Then came the inevitable lay-offs and retrenching. Business courtesy flew out the window as recruiters were swamped with resumes and simple compassion for others was consumed by personal worry. Those were the darkest times for many.

Finally, people started rallying and a new spirit of optimism and connection was born. And yet, the world had changed:

Business leaders had discovered that products continue to ship with fewer people.

Well, they were bound to discover it at some point. But unfortunately, this epiphany for business leaders glosses over a number of issues, such as product quality, workforce engagement, customer service and long-term macroeconomic viability.

These are the themes that must concern us in 2011 if we are to recover from the greed, short-sightedness and personal tragedy of the previous two years.

So I am going to make a prediction and call 2011 ‘The Year of Visibility,’ because companies that rely on reactionary hiring, contracting and downsizing in lieu of informed business planning probably won’t be around in five years.

The kind of visibility I’m talking about is the kind that allows companies to maximize business performance and ride out economic cycles with minimum disruption by answering questions like these:

• Do you understand the skills and capacity of your workforce?
• Does the work people are doing align to business objectives?
• Are you able to determine cost and quality of work across organizations, teams and initiatives?
• Can you compare workers to determine optimal fit for job, skills, interests, location, or budget?
• Can you find ‘ready talent’ anywhere in your organization?
• Can you group workers into actionable talent pools to support strategic talent initiatives?
• Are you able to anticipate and avoid critical skills and leadership gaps?
• Can you reduce contingent labor costs by better utilizing existing resources?

With the increasing reliance on contingent workers to increase flexibility and reduce salary costs, workforce visibility has never been more important - to minimize costs, ensure quality and avoid co-employment lawsuits.

That's why I predict that in 2011 HR professionals will be challenged to provide timely, accurate, operationally relevant information about the extended workforce.

Are you ready?

Project Social - Let's Clique

I'm the classic late adopter. I'm the girl who waited for an iPhone before upgrading my ten year old Siemens cellphone that forced me to buy a larger purse if I wanted to leave the house with it.

It's not that I lack technical prowess - I used to be a pretty good software developer before I moved into more functional roles and lost my geek cred. But I do lack patience with early versions that seem to be designed by - and for - unmarried engineers in their twenties.

In fact I insist that an application be developed by at least one harassed new dad in his early thirtees and tested by a team of busy moms before I will even look at it.

That's why I'm relatively new to social media, compared to many people out there. I started this blog about talent management about two years ago, joined the Compensation Cafe team about a year ago and finally caved to Twitter just a few months ago.

When I found Project Social over at Ben Eubank's Upstart HR, I signed right up. After more than a year figuring out stuff on my own it felt like the right time to reach out for some more experienced guidance.

Almost immediately I got a Gmail via LinkedIn from Victorio Milian saying I'd been paired up with Dave Ryan, otherwise known as the HR Czar - a name I recognized from my Twitter contacts. And sure enough, within a few hours of receiving Victorio's email I received a Twitter message from Dave asking how soon we could meet.

Dave is in the process of launching a new blog "The HR Official" and has already written a great post about our first international, Skype-based meeting. Since Dave already described our project goals and game plan in his post, I thought I'd cover why I recommend Project Social to any HR folks who want to get more involved with social media:

1. Social media techology has reached a tipping point where social has overtaken technology - in other words, you can be a technology dunce and still get your voice out there.
2. It's a terrific way to 'take the pulse' on topics you care about, find out what people are saying, and even chat with them about it.
3. Project Social will give you access to someone who knows the ropes and can help you take the first steps.

Dave asked me a great question while we were chatting: Do I think people in social media are cliquey?

I can only speak from my own experience. For the most part people are friendly and welcoming but many of them are business people and their time is valuable. You can't just sign up for Twitter and expect that everyone you follow will follow you back.

For example, I tend to follow people with similar interests, i.e., HR technology, talent management, compensation, etc. Selective following gives me more time to focus on topics and connect with people.

When it comes to building a social network I've encountered three kinds of people:

1. People who mostly ignore you, either because they are so well-established they don't need to cultivate new followers or so busy they don't have time.
2. People who respond to comments on their blog and thank you for re-tweets but never comment on your blog or re-tweet anything of yours. Some of them are good bloggers and you can learn a lot from them but don't expect to establish much of a relationship.
3. People who reciprocate, taking the time to comment on your blog or tweet your links to their own followers. These are the people who form your 'real' virtual network.

This list will be different for each person because different people 'attract' each other. Generally speaking, I passively follow the first group, spend a bit more time on the second group and make an effort to actively interact with and support the third group.

Just like in real life, I spend more time with the people I 'clique' with.

Getting My SaaSy On: Upgrades

In a previous post I wrote about designing a new compensation product for a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) software solution but I didn't explain what SaaS is or why it has business relevance.

SaaS is basically a delivery model of business software that lets people use software over the Internet without installing it. A fair whack of the business value of SaaS can be illustrated by talking about software upgrades and what it means not to need them any more.

I spent several years as a global project manager leading on-premise HCM implementations.

On-premise means the vendor sends you the software on a set of disks and it's your problem to get it installed, get your data into it, manage your technical architecture, etc.

Customers could change the product to meet their business requirements and a large part of the implementation involved designing their 'ideal' business processes, building new transactions, workflow and business logic, and creating myriad reports and interfaces to external systems.

The average implementation took about a year and a half and right about then the vendor would release a new version of the product and the fun would start over because now you had two versions.

The process of merging the two software versions is called an 'upgrade'. Here's how it works:

Let' say the vendor delivers a new process that you like better than your current process. If you decide to adopt the vendor process, you may need to back out the changes you made to the old version during the initial implemetation. Or selectively back out some changes but keep others.

Or you may decide to keep your process. Fine, but now you have to make sure you don't apply the new process from the vendor and overwrite your own.

In other words, you have to compare the two systems field by field, line of code by line of code, page by page... ... and that's just the analysis part. You also have to implement your intended changes, which requires great documentation, an alert technical team and a back up environment, in case you run the wrong script.

Then you have to TEST the application. Of course, the vendor tested the new version but you're no longer on that version because you changed it. You have to make sure the changes you made still support your business requirements before the extremely tense moment when you cut over to production.

(Not to be a killjoy but depending on how long that all took, the vendor may be releasing a new version right about now.)

With a SaaS solution you don't need to do any of this for two reasons:

1. You don't customize SaaS solutions, you configure them, which means you change processes by adding data rather than changing the structure of the application. Since all customers are on the same version, the same update process works for everyone.
2. SaaS solutions are hosted, which means the vendor manages the software and technical infrastructure for the customer. SaaS vendors apply the changes needed for the new version centrally without disrupting customer business.

Aside from the obvious cost savings associated with supporting a single version of software and sharing technical resourses, SaaS customers save big time by avoiding the upgrade treadmill.

Pretty SaaSy, huh?

'No more upgrades' is just one of the many benefits of SaaS solutions. If you want more information about how SaaS solutions create business value feel free to check out this white paper on 'Real SaaS' I co-authored with a colleague.

Compensation in the Membrane

I love compensation. Although I don't think compensation is the only or best way to motivate people, I adore complex, global, multi-faceted compensation programs.

I... just do.

I used to be a software developer for a large, global software vendor. My job was to manage the design and development of the Japanese HR requirements in the global product.

My work involved adding "local" features to the existing global application, which essentially meant slogging through other people's code trying not to break anything with the new stuff.

Did you know that code has personality? For example, French code tends to be brilliant and erratic with cryptic (if any) comments. German code is orderly and concise, with over-capitalized comments that imply the reader is stupid. American code is sometimes brilliant, sometimes sloppy and rarely commented.

It was mostly fun although I sometimes fantasized about blowing up the old code and building something from scratch.

Fast forward, glossing over several jobs, life events, and international moves.

A few years ago I was recruited to design the compensation solution for a new product line at another company. The company was in the process of developing an HRMS solution based on a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) delivery model.

At first the 'compensation team' was just me and one developer. That seemed small to me after transitioning from a large global team, but on the upside, fewer schedules to coordinate.

We ran around like Benny Hill that first year, only mostly without the slapstick.

I wrote product designs, marketing collateral, white papers and user documentation. I tested each new feature. I trained the sales people and consultants. I presented our product vision to analysts, prospects and customers.

My development partner was just as busy on the technical side, developing the product, testing the limits of new tools that hadn’t even been QA’d yet and working weekends to squeeze in just one more enhancement.

We followed a few simple design principles:

1. Compensation is core, not something you do in a separate system.

2. The solution must be flexible enough to work in any country.

3. Information to make a decision should be available where it's needed.

4. All processes should have a consistent look, feel, set up and behavior.

5. Don't build features no one will use.

One of the great things about SaaS is you can deliver a lot of product in a short amount of time. Our rapid progress helped us attract customers, who shared their passion about compensation and helped us refine our business requirements.

The product grew. The team grew. The company grew.

Today the product is used by more than 100 companies worldwide and growing.

Want to see it? :-)

Click HERE to watch a short product preview.

Boundary Conditions

"The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair." - Douglas Adams

Recently Deutsche Bahn had a flurry of self-inflicted misfortune as a result of a combination of cost cutting and poorly defined boundary conditions.

Boundary conditions are the constraints and assumptions that shape a design, strategy or plan.

For example, when designing software one of the questions the designer has to ask is, What could go wrong? This is a pretty crucial question because the user may not understand how to navigate a particular process, or deliberately try to get around a constraint in the system.

The software designer's job is to gently herd the user into the right direction, where 'right' is defined as 'transaction completed correctly, no risk to security, no bad data and no one throwing their computer across the room.'

Think of the answer to the question, 'What could go wrong?' as the leading question you ask in order to define your boundary conditions. Your design must reflect these because too often what could go wrong does go wrong.

Just to clarify, this does not mean you design for everything that could go wrong because that would be insane. What it means is that you design to avoid the most likely and/or critical failure scenarios and have a backup plan (such as a correction function or an undo button) for everything else.

I'm oversimplifying but it's hard to unpack years of lessons learned from software design in one sentence.

So, getting back to Deutsche Bahn, they diligently defined boundary conditions under which their air conditioning unit would function properly. Unfortunately, they designed their system for a temperature that is frequently exceeded during the summer.

There were financial reasons for doing this, of course, but the bottom line was that the air conditioning would stop working as soon as it actually got hot.

Then they skipped some maintenance checks to save costs.

Finally, they made a mistake that as a system designer makes me cringe - there was no backup plan built into the system.

Personnel weren't trained in what to do in the case of extreme heat. Windows couldn't be opened. Passengers (including infants, elderly, and all those poor people in business suites) sat trapped in moving cars at temperatures of 50 C and upwards.

I wonder what that fiasco is going to cost.

When designing software or defining business strategy, it's imortant to define appropriate boundary conditions that consider costs as part of the equation.

But don't stop there:

Try to identify what can go wrong when you cut costs. . .

and what it might cost if something does go wrong in terms of money, reputation, human life, etc. . .

and whether the cost cutting really makes good business sense when you get right down to it.

An Old Classic