The self-made man and his rags-to-riches struggle is often glorified in our society, especially in Australia.  The most endearing is the story of Donald Bradman: his relentless practise with a cricket stump and golf ball leads to one of the most illustrious careers in sporting history.

The Don is a perfect example of an outlier.  His batting average is a freakish 4.4 standard deviations above the mean, a statistical anomaly that hoists his success well above any other sporting hero. Michael Jordan has nothing on Donald Bradman.

The story of The Don is also typical of an outlier.  He emerged from Australian bush leagues to make a lasting mark on international cricket.  His habit of hitting a golf ball against a water tank has become part of Australian lore.  We attribute The Don’s success to the hard work he put in as a youth - he is self-made. In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell contends that there is much more to success than a bit of hard yakka.

Outliers is a masterfully crafted collection of stories about people that stand out from the crowd: rockstars, geniuses and sporting heroes. Malcolm Gladwell examines the reasons behind extraordinary success and failure. By the end of the book you will be convinced that life is the product of history, community, opportunity and legacy. Lady luck has far more to do with success than most of us would like to admit.

There is no denying that Donald Bradman’s time spent practising with a stump and golf ball contributed to his cricketing success. Practise makes perfect, and Bradman got his practise in while he was young. But surely there have been other young boys who have spent their free time with a ball and bat, mimicking their heroes.  I can clearly remember the years I spent in the backyard with my hockey stick, imitating Wayne Gretzky and scoring goals on my younger brother. Yet I am no hockey superstar (if only I had been born in January - see the book for details).

A quick glance over Donald Bradman’s biography gives insight into some of the advantages The Don might have had over other cricketers. Donald Bradman was born in 1908 and raised in New South Wales, Australia: the best possible place for cricket. Australia began its domination over England in 1897 and New South Wales was the team to beat from 1895-1966. Bradman had the benefit of honing his skills against the best in the world from day 1. You would only need to travel to the next town to find Bill O’Reilly, one of the greatest bowlers of all time.

At age 12 Bradman was keeping score for his town club when they showed up a man short. Bradman was asked to fill in - by his uncle, the captain of the team. When Bradman turned 18, Australia’s ageing cricket team lost the ashes and many players retired. The recruitment effort that followed and Bradman’s knack for replacing injured players would eventually lead him to sporting glory. The Don was always in the right place at the right time.

A quick glance a Wikipedia reveals so much, but the story we tell is of a boy playing in his back yard. Maybe we want to believe that if we work hard anything is possible. Or perhaps: it’s too late for us now so why bother. Outliers encourages us to go beyond our simplistic view of life and to realise that there is no secret to success.  Putting in time is a requirement, but it is nowhere near the complete picture. If we are going to be successful, we need to look far beyond the convenient and acknowledge that “self-made” is a delusion.

The small business cycle

Just when you thought you had it all, life punches you square in the jaw. The Cycle. Boom and bust. Growth and decay. Women know all about it. But ask a guy and he will tell you “The Dow’s going to 20,000 by 2009!”¹

Small business goes through the boom and bust. Every small business. Shirlaws uses the model above to describe the small business cycle. In the beginning there is excitement - the prospect of a brave new world.  A world without a boss or meetings that seem to drag on for days. So much freedom, it’s almost too good to be true.

“Oh criminy shucks, what have I got myself into?” It’s frantic. This is where the first wall pops up. Starting a business is not all that it was cracked up to be. There is still a desk for you in the corner of a plush prison corporate office. You still have a choice. Take the red pill and the wall disappears. There’s no going back now. Confidence.

It’s all parties on your yacht in Monaco from here. Unless you’re one of the 80% of businesses that fail. global-roam started making a profit.  We got a new office, new chairs, new staff.  We got upgraded from the closet to the business suite. Sweeeeeeeeeeet! But after every party comes the hangover.

So here we are, swearing we will never ever go into business again! (at least not until next week). We’re raving to our friends about how good last night was but the memory is a bit blurred.  Hmm. Maybe we need some help.

In order to breach the second wall you need skills. The skills to turn your rusty lump of business into an all-signing all-dancing turnkey franchisable business. So Shirlaws is helping Paul transform from MD to CEO. To the credit of both Shirlaws and Paul, he has come a long way in a short amount of time. Woohoo! Party on!

Interesting tidbit: Shirlaws has a client who spent 15 years at the hangover stage without seeking help. Ouch.

From the creators of global-roam
The true story of a disgruntled programmer
And his quest for data

Coming this summer to a url near you…

Over the past few months we have been cooking up global-roam’s first “spin-off” venture. It will be an entirely new company aimed at making the lives of our friends in the energy space much easier.

I am heading the venture and look forward to sharing the fruits of my sleepless nights. I am living on a cocktail of equal parts fear and excitement – there is nothing quite like starting a new business. Keep an eye on the blog as we lift the veil on the venture and have some fun in 2010.

UI Fundamentals for Programmers by Ryan Singer from ChicagoRuby on Vimeo.

Ah good ol’ parents. Constantly reminding me that my input is not welcome. They are doing the best they can and if that’s not good enough for me I can find some other parents.

That works for parents because other parents as good as my parents (hi mom I’m on the internet!) are hard to come by. But when other companies are more than happy to take your business this may not be the best policy when dealing with complaints. More importantly: how will you ever improve if you don’t know what you are doing wrong?

A Complaint is a Gift delves a bit into the psychology of giving and receiving complaints. People generally don’t like receiving complaints because they handle the complaint poorly - they view it as a personal attack. People generally don’t complain because they have been discouraged from complaining. Mishandling and discouraging complainers will eventually lead to no complaints. Hooray, everyone is happy! Note quite. More like: everyone is gone.

It takes a lot more effort to complain than to do nothing. When someone complains they are going out of their way to let you know how you can make your customers happier. What a gift! No doubt you have spent countless hours trying to get inside the head of your customers and now one of them is telling you what they think! Resist the urge put them in a queue for a few hours, pass the buck, explain how it’s beyond your control, make empty promises and then tell them to get stuffed.

“Shane!”, I hear the cries from across the world wide web, “what the hell do I do?”. Start with the eight-step gift formula:

1. Say “thanks”
2. Explain why you appreciate feedback
3. Apologise for the mistake (be specific!)
4. Promise to do something about the problem
5. Ask for necessary information
6. Correct the mistake
7. Check customer satisfaction
8. Prevent future mistakes

Note the (be specific!) above. Nothing pisses me off more than getting a letter like this:

Dear Customer,

We apologise for the inconvenience.

Kind regards,
Customer Service Rep 1

Try to care about your customer and understand where they are coming from. You have been given the opportunity to impress them with your complaint handling skills and turn them into a more loyal customer, so surprise them with your overflowing waterfall of gratitude and compassion (wtf?). I came across this great example in my inbox:

Dear Shane,

Thanks for your feedback. Your comments help us provide better service for everyone and that is important. Please accept my apologies for misleading you in our e-mail marketing campaign. Our expected growth rate of 4″ is perhaps a bit ambitious and I understand your disappointment when you fell short of the mark. I have dispatched an extra 4″ treatment to your delivery address free of charge and have modified our ad copy so that no one else is mislead. Are you happy with this course of action?

I will be in contact in a week to ensure your satisfaction but in the meantime is there anything else I can help you with?

Bigger is better,
Itch Eduardo

It might take a bit of getting used to but learning to accept complaints as gifts is a great habit to get into. You will benefit from a greater understanding of your customers and you will make your customers happier in the process. If you have any complaints about this post please feel free to leave a comment or use the giant feedback button on the right of the screen.

Some posts you might like:
Book review: Getting Real
How to kill the golden goose

Getting Real is a guide to creating a great software company with an emphasis on web development. It covers a huge range of topics including (but not limited to) hiring, marketing, design, development and productivity. It gives practical and philosophical advice so you come to understand the foundation of 37signals and then discover how to take action. It is one of the easiest reads ever (2-4 hours) so I would recommend you stop reading this dribble and get the book.

I believe the philosophy of 37signals is equally important for your person as it is for your company. You will not be able to apply a philosophy to your company that you are not living day to day. In the words of Ghandi, “Be the change you seek.” With that in mind, here is what 37signals stands for:

• keep it simple
• embrace change
• live within your means

Still reading? Get the damn book.

Keep it simple

“Do what is simple and leave the nasty problems to everyone else.”

The temptation is to pack as many features into a product as possible because more features = more value, right? Wrong. I count over 220 buttons in the latest version of Microsoft Word of which about 30 I actually use. How much time are you wasting on meetings, paperwork, code, testing, tweaking and marketing by creating features for the sake of features?

Embrace change

“Evolve on a day-to-day basis.”

How can 5 brains beat 90,000 brains? Surely 5 brains can not resist the nanoprobes of the hivemind. The answer? I couldn’t put it better:

Nimble, agile, less-mass businesses can quickly change their entire business model, product, feature set and marketing message. They can make mistakes and fix them quickly. They can change their priorities, product mix and focus. And, most importantly, they can change their minds. (pg 32)

The only thing that allows small business to compete with big business is it’s capacity for change. While big business is waiting for orders to filter through the ranks, small business has already attacked.

Live within your means

“Constraints lead to creativity and force your ideas into the wild.”

Living within your means goes hand in hand with keeping it simple. The more you have, the more you need. Got a car? Need a mechanic, petrol, parking, licence. Got a new product? Need more staff, more infrastructure, more funding. Instead of yearning for more, think about what you can do with what you have. Focusing on what you have instead of what you don’t have forces you to be creative.

There are a million (ok, about a hundred) really good hints and techniques in the book for accomplishing the above. A selection for your enjoyment:

• build software for yourself: solve your own problem
• begin with the interface and work backwards from there
• it’s better to make half a product than a half-assed product
• hire quick learning generalists over specialists
• beta is a cop out and passes the buck to your customers

Thanks for reading. Check out 37signals for an exciting company and don’t forget you can read the book at http://gettingreal.37signals.com/.

Some posts you might like:
Rolling with punches: Building a business for future growth
Book review: Lean software development

I recently attended an IIB event entitled Building the Resilient Company. The purpose of the event (straight from the program) was to provide insights into the current economic cycle, the challenges to survive and the strategies to prepare for an economic recovery. To sum: we are in the shit, how do we get out?

The answer was fantastic. Craig James (CommSec Chief Economist) took a look at the current economic climate. He explained that we were recovering from the GFC but more importantly the human factor would always be in play. Emotions rule in the human realm so we can expect the ups and down to continue until Skynet. The question then changes from “how do we survive an economic meltdown?” to “how do we survive in an ever-changing environment?”.

Be irrational. Trust your instincts. Unleash your passion on the world. Bask in the glory of small business. Don’t settle for a mediocre business teetering on the brink of survival. Instead of turtling in the corner, put your gloves on and punch your way into the halls of glory. You have the speed and flexibility to outmaneuver the lumbering hulk of big business. Plan how to cope if he catches you with an uppercut but keep exploring the possibilities and you just might finish with a gogoplata. Col Chandler (CEO Proton Consulting) is a legend.

Now your budding ideas have been nurtured into a thriving business. You have broken through the first wall only to fall face-first into the second. Evan Fortune (Vision6) explained the slump he recently got out of. Vision6 was spinning their wheels, enjoying their success but not really going anywhere. People were confused because the business could no longer operate like it had in it’s infancy. It was time to ask some tough questions and focus on the essence of the business. Who are we? Who are our customers and what do they want? The process resulted in a simpler product and gave staff a clear and simple focus.

You have become your own worst enemy: the lumbering hulk of big business. Glenn Wightwick (IBM Director amongst a nerd-envy inducing list of accolades) demonstrated how one of the world’s biggest companies takes advantages of the ever-changing technological landscape. Open source could be perceived as a threat to IBM’s proprietary systems. Instead of going on the defensive, IBM have embraced the open source movement and use it to provide great value to their business. (If you ever meet Glenn, ask him about his very cool house.)

For all businesses great and small, the message seems clear: change. The world is always doing it so you must play along to survive. Change your ideas, your rationale, your approach. Change your processes and culture. Don’t be afraid of change, instead leverage it to your advantage. If you are not rolling with the punches it’s going to be a long, hard fight.

Lean Software Development is based on 7 principles, with a chapter for each principle. They are:

1. Eliminate waste
2. Amplify learning
3. Decide as late as possible
4. Deliver as fast as possible
5. Empower the team
6. Build integrity in
7. See the whole

Included with each principle are a couple of “tools” to help you action the principle in your own environment. And, of course, there are plenty of stories from Toyota and 3M to help make things a bit easier to understand and keep the book interesting.

To me, the ideas in the book really make sense. The book promotes a no-nonsense approach to product development and zeros in on what really matters: generating business value. Away with hand-me-down guesswork documentation, planning when a plan will be planned, huge fault-riddled development cycles, dissatisfied customers and bloated, unmaintainable software.

With the book still fresh in my mind and ideas still to be digested I will attempt to present my ideal product development methodology as a result of reading the book. First things first, get rid of the bullshit. The only thing that matters is knocking the socks off the customer and making a few bucks in the process. What’s required? Customer, computer, me.

Customer and me get together. I ask Customer what would really make them happy. I write Customer’s ideas down as tests and prioritise the tests according to what Customer thinks is important. I divide the tests into small workloads and get started.

I begin on the first batch of tests. Each day I pick a few tests and complete the code required to run the tests from start to finish. Each night the tests run automatically to check that what I have done satisfies the tests and has not broken something else. Each morning I check the results: daily feedback.

When I have completed the first batch of tests I present a variety of product options to Customer. Customer lets me know when I have hit the nail on the head and when I have hit my thumb. It’s OK when I miss, or Customer has changed her mind. I didn’t really expect to get it right the first time: I can’t predict the future and I’m not a mind reader. I haven’t done all that much work and I have left my options open while doing the work. Change is welcome. Risk is low. There will be no 6-month rewrite of long-forgotten features or, at worst, a totally useless product.

Write new tests. Prioritise. Divide. Complete a set of tests every day. Run the tests every night. Present to Customer. Repeat.

That is the method. Check this space for the results. And be sure to check out the book, Lean Software Development by Tom and Mary Poppendieck.

I started at global-roam straight out of university, bright-eyed and ambitious cold and naked.  Paul took me in, sat me in front of a computer and said “code”!  A few months later and out pops NEM-Review 5.  Then deSide.  Then ez2view Australia.  At this stage of the company’s life we were scrambling: 3 developers on 5 products, working to get the next sale so we could keep our heads above water.  Stuffed in a closet borrowed from our good mates at roam consulting, I often told myself not to let the glamour of software development get to me.  “You’re a rock star now”, I thought, “but try to keep it real.”  Then one day I decided it was time for my world tour.

Overseas you learn things.  In some countries, 10 minutes without rain is a drought.  In some countries, a toilet bowl is a suggestion that anywhere in the vicinity is a good spot to lay cable.  In some countries, you are poor if you only have one Ferrari.  I learned a lot when I left the warm, nurturing closet that was global-roam and made my way into the big bad world.  But as I explored the far reaches of the galaxy I began to change.  I began to realise that life without a computer does things to you.  Your wrists don’t crack when you wave goodbye.  Your back straightens and you start to stand tall and proud.  You start talking to perfect strangers and stop saying things like “owned”, “woot” and “fanboy”.  I began to realise that I was becoming….normal!  So I e-mailed Paul and got started on NEM-Watch.

NEM-Watch is getting old.  So old that it was built in Visual Basic 6.  It has had a handful of people work on it at different stages in it’s life, tacking on bits and pieces.  It was a collage of code, more like the collage you made in grade 2 than Mario.  My challenge was to glue more pieces on to the collage while carefully removing some of the ugly pieces and having it all in tact and ready to roll before I took off for Spain in June.  If you’re playing along at home, that’s a 5 month schedule for a project that took 15 months.  A 300% schedule slip.  So, Shane… uh…. what the hell happened?

Picture this if you will.

It was the middle of summer, I was in the UK, and it was raining (hard to believe, I know).   I thought to myself: “Self, this rain sucks.  You need to go somewhere sunny.”  I had about a month off so I went to a travel agent and they made me an itinerary that saw me experiencing all that Spain, France and Italy had to offer.  I jumped on a plane to Malaga in the south of Spain.  Sun, here I come!  Image the shock when I discovered that Malaga was full of poms.  I had just escaped from the cider-sculling, rugby-smitten albinos to find that they were occupying Spain!  “Bugger this place”, I muttered as I scratched my next Spanish destinations off of the itinerary.  Vive la France!

Bordeaux was great except I had arrived a week ahead of schedule, having skipped the rest of Spain, and didn’t have any accommodation.  I ended up in a shady hostel: noisy, dirty, expensive, cheese for pillows.  It wasn’t long before I got sick of the stench of Camembert.  I wanted to check out the French Riviera but wondered if it also reeked of cheese.  I was really excited about the idea of seeing Italy and I could always come back to France, right?  I hopped on the next train to Pisa.

Italy was everything I had imagined and more.  The Sistine Chapel, David, Pantheon, Pompeii, Coliseum, Marco Polo… Pizza everywhere!  After two weeks of exploring I felt that there was still more to see but I only had a week of vacation left and my credit card had taken a beating - shopping in Milan was costly.  I couldn’t afford to go back to France but my goal was to experience much more than just Italy.  What to do…

Birdsong and the refreshing scent of pines pulled me out of bed as I camped on the Slovenian country side.  Ah, the great outdoors.  This was just what I needed: a final relaxing week well within my budget and a new country to add to the list.  Everyone would be amazed at my globe-trotting feats.  I would show them the photos and they would gasp in awe and wonderment.  “He has seen so much in so little time”, they would exclaim, “he must have rocket-boots!”.

I returned to the land of faggots and mash, my head held high, memories of my awesome adventure playing back in my mind.  I couldn’t wait to brag.  “Come hither wenches!”, I shouted at the top of my lungs.   They emerged from the shadows, weathered travellers with bespectacled eyes and corporate credit cards.  I began my tale of travel and showed them where I had been.  Only moments into my story I was interrupted.

“Wait, what the hell happened to Spain?  You were supposed to go to Spain.  I’m expecting Madrid, Barcelona.  Hang on a sec, I’ve got a call…”
Uncomfortable silence.
“So uh, where was I?  Oh yeah, and France?  Who goes to Bordeaux?  What about Paris, Nice?  I love Paris and you’ve got nothing about Paris here…  What’s going on?  I can’t live without Paris!”

“But… Slovenia!”, I gasped.

“You can blow Slovenia right out your…”

I slammed the door behind me as I rushed out into the rain, tears pouring down my cheeks.  I thought I had the best vacation in the world.  How could they be so cruel?   I think I even heard someone snicker about the “Windows Vista of traveling”.

No, that’s not how I travel.  But that was how I developed NEM-Watch 8.1.  When travelling, I ask people who have travelled before where I should go.  I make an itinerary based on their recommendations that will give me the best return on time and cost.  I follow the plan, adjusting my budget and timeline as I go so that I will have the best chance possible to see everything.  Maybe if I took some travel metaphors and applied them to developing NEM-Watch 8.2… 5 months later… oh, it works!  Here are some actionable learning experiences from NEM-Watch:

Batching is dead
I used to jump from job to job, doing pieces of related jobs at the same time.  If Job A and Job B require changes to Class 1 and Class 2, my plan of attack would have been Job A -> Class 1, Job B -> Class 1, Job A -> Class 2, Job B -> Class 2.  Task switching is expensive and prone to errors.  When the phone rings, interrupting your work, how long does it take you to remember what you were doing and resume working?

Takeaway: Do the whole job and then go on to the next one.

Iteration is king
By finishing the whole job you can start to iterate.  In NEM-Watch 8.1, I faked iteration by dividing and conquering but only delivering half-finished features at the end of each iteration.  Usually there were not-quite-done features from previous iterations, the current iteration and even future iterations!  The key is to break the project into manageable pieces (2 weeks per iteration works for me) and then do each job in each iteration from start to finish. No skipping jobs, no jumping into future iterations or moving jobs you don’t like into far-distant iterations.  At the end of each iteration you should have a product that you are comfortable releasing to market.

Takeaway: Divide the project into iterations.  Make each iteration deployable.

Seek feedback
After 10 months we released NEM-Watch 8.1 and the feedback poured in.  When the feedback pours in, it usually mean you have done something very right or done something very wrong.  I did the latter and felt like I had just spent 10 months destroying NEM-Watch’s good reputation.  If I had feedback earlier on, we would have saved months in wasted development time spent putting back features that people wanted and redoing the features that people didn’t like.  In order to get feedback, you must have something to show people… like a complete iteration.

Takeaway: Seek feedback. Get it early and get lots of it.
So, there you have it. The story of NEM-Watch’s journey from v7 to v8.  We are still waiting on feedback from NEM-Watch 8.2 so watch this space for updates.  I have learned alot since the first piece of NEM-Watch 8 code written on a laptop in a kitchen somewhere in the Chew Valley.  Maybe you can learn from my experience or let me know how we can avoid these kinds of software disasters in the future.

ps. global-roam doesn’t operate from a closet anymore.