Behind the Scenes at Global-Roam

As you may be aware, we’re in the process of recruiting a General Manager for Discerning, Developing and Delivering the Software our Customers Want (Need).

Up until this weekend, we have been receiving proposals from a small number of candidates shortlisted from the large number of applications we received in the first 2 weeks after the position was opened on 24th January.

Given the importance of this position (for us, and for the candidates) this has entailed investing many hours of time in getting to know each other, and to ensure the candidates could gain a clear view of our company (where it is now, and where it is headed).  We want them to come in with their eyes fully opened – both to the opportunities and the challenges!

This week I will be reviewing these proposals to determine which one is the best fit for where our bus is headed.

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This is the 2nd post on the topic.

The first post was made almost 2 months ago, and remained incomplete whilst I focused on higher priority issues (such as the recruitment of our GM DDD WCW).  In the meantime, we have had several conversations internally with respect to the implicit responsibilities of the position.

This post is intended to be a starting point, from which further refinement can be made once our GM DDD WCW has started with the company.

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Have seen this posted about before, but never taken the time to look – it was an Anthill article “The best three-minute video about leadership you will ever see” that prompted me to hit play.

A bit weird and wacky, but relevant to us – even in an industry that could be thought of as boring:

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Not sure about “the best” tagline – but this video is very instructional, and entertaining at the same time.

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Fuelled by Stephen’s glowing recommendation of the Thoughtworks presentation “Emergent Design & Evolutionary Architecture”, I went along to Neal Ford’s repeat performance in Sydney this morning.

The talk presented some very sensible sounding ideas on software “design”, and few more on “architecture”. Stephen has covered some points that stood out for him in his post, and here are a couple more that I consider worthy of mention or additional comment.

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You don’t have to of read much of this blog to realise that over the last few months Global-Roam’s software development practises have been changing as we adopt a more structured, and more agile, approach.

As has been made clear by a recent visit by Steve Hayes from Cogent, and our other attempts to learn more about agile, there is a thousand ways we can improve. This makes it easy to be stunned, like an animal caught in headlights, and instead do nothing.

So last week, Stephen and I worked out what the next level of low hanging fruit was, and have put together this plan to reach it.

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I have previously written about how we need to be focused on delivering value to our customers in order to achieve our vision for the growth of our business.

A relentless drive to deliver real value to our customers is one of my Core Values.

I know that this is not the way every company approaches business, but it is where our bus is headed.

Hence it was with great interest that I had a chance to read through Roger Martin’s article “The Age of Customer Capitalism” in the HBR Magazine for January-February 2010 – as this provided another reason to do the same.

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This morning I was the most casually dressed person at a Thoughtworks run seminar called “Emergent Design and Evolutionary Architecture”. The seminar itself was extremely well planned and executed, despite the lack of effective air conditioning. The speaker was an American named Neal Ford, who Thoughtworks had flown out to Australia to speak at these events (there are two more, which you can catch for free in Sydney and Melbourne).”
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Some time ago, Paul Klaptocz wrote this (restricted) review of a book “Four Steps to Epiphany”, written by Steve Blank.

Out of interest, I watched through this hour-long lecture by the author, given at Stanford - in which he summarises a range of guest lectures over the year.

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I was speaking with someone today, who stated that they had inferred I would have a tattoo on my butt reading “Agile Rocks” (or something like that).

I do apologise for any misconception caused by posts such as this one.

I also apologise for the images inadvertently conjured up by the first sentence.

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On January 24th 2010, we commenced (in earnest) the recruitment of our new General Manager for Discerning, Developing and Delivering What the Customer Wants (Needs) – more traditionally known as our GM Products.  We posted this advert on our blog then.

This led to Derrick Hill starting with us in this role on Monday 22nd March 2010.

The process was was intensive (lasting 8 weeks, not including considerable preparation time) but has resulted in a good fit to our needs.

As part of this process, we shortlisted a number of candidates, and provided them with a detailed briefing note to explain more about our starting point, and where we wanted them to help take the business.  As part of this briefing note, we also included the following core areas of responsibility. read more »