Behind the Scenes at Global-Roam » Stephen Hurn

JIRA rewrite

Stephen Hurn — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 00:01:38 +0000

As alluded to in Adam’s recent post on the next steps in our Agile journey we have taken the liberty of reorganising our JIRA workflow to better suit our new practices. We want to use JIRA as much more than a simple job tracking tool and begin using it much more as a part of both our organisational memory and as a key part of our work flow. I had also been getting irritated at the large number of useless or redundant jobs in the system. Thinking back on it now, I realise that the irritation was my brain sending me a signal that our processes were not alligned with our work flow.

When Adam and I sat down and were trying to work out the best way of using JIRA, we asked ourselves two questions:

How do we come up with our new features and products; and
If we did not already have JIRA, what would we like a tracking tool to do for us?

We ultimately came up with a rather simple workflow. We were quite happy with our use of JIRA for support tracking purposes and are not going to change that. So the changes were more for our product development cycle. Previously we had not been including user stories properly into JIRA and the way that JIRA was configured, our natural product development cycle was not taken into account.

The beginning of our process is what we call an “itch”. An itch is anything that may one day be turned into a product or part of our products. It may be as simple as a question “why does it take us a day to do this task?” or it may be a statement “our customer has said that they are confused by this button”. Itches are effectively our stimulus material. Paul added a job into our system a long time ago. The job was quite simple. It merely said “add bids”. As anyone in software development knows, sometimes the easiest things to describe are some of the most difficult to implement. In Agile terms, this job was an epic (actually it was beyond an epic, it was really what we call a legendary). Today this job would get logged as an itch. It is stimulus for us to create solutions from. Anyone can create an itch.

An itch has one of two states - itch and scratched. A “scratched” itch is an itch which has been satisfied in a product release. For an itch to be scratched, we need to create one or more solutions to scratch it.

A “solution” is our term for user story (one word being easier than two). The product owner is responsible for it, but it is owned by the whole development team. Estimates on solutions are what is used to determine velocity and which features are developed. More than one solution may be developed for an itch and one solution may scratch multiple itches.

The workflow for a solution involves several stages.

The first is when we work out whether or not we are going to develop our solution further. If we decide not to do the solution the developer or product owner or whoever has made the decision will choose the “We have not decided to do this” option. If we decide to go ahead with the solution then “We will think this through in more detail” is chosen.
At this point the solution will be fleshed out and an estimate made on how long it will take. “We have not decided to do this” is still a valid option at this stage. Once the job has been estimated and selected as a feature we wish to develop “We will do this” is chosen.
It is at this point that the developer(s) will take the solution and turn it into code. “This is ready for testing” and “We have decided not to do this” are the options available. I feel that it is important to clarify that the testing referred to by this job is to ensure that the coded solution matches the business requirements. Automated tests are to be written and performed on code during the development work.
Once the work has been tested, you are given the choice of “This has failed testing” to send it back to the developer(s) with a stern “tsk tsk” and a good finger wagging. Otherwise the user can progress in one of two ways - to a documentation step (if necessary) or to completion.
The documentation step, boring though it be may sometimes be necessary for some jobs (e.g. a new database was created on a dataserver somewhere may require some documentation as to where the dataserver is and any relevant usernames and passwords).

As a part of completing any solution, a number of jobs may be created. A job is simply a task that the developer sets for themselves to do as a part of the process of completing a solution. It is totally owned by the developer(s) who are responsible for it and is only created to serve the technical component of a solution. It has a testing step (if the developer wants - it can be skipped) and allows estimates. A solution may have many jobs or no jobs, dependent on the developer involved. Jobs belong to solutions.

Outside the main development stream of itch -> solution -> job we have derived three other job types. Bugs, errands and rewrites.

A bug is simply a technical description of a problem that a user has. It allows estimates and has a similar workflow to the “job” described above. However a bug is a standalone job that does not need to be linked to a solution or an itch. It may be linked to a support issue.

A rewrite is a job type which identifies an area of code that needs to be rewritten to reduce technical debt. This type of job is owned completely by the development team, though the product owner is involved in prioritising when it comes time for iteration planning. Rewrites are not linked to any other issue type.

Finally, errands are jobs which describe tasks that need to be done. An errand may be something as simple as “send an email to these clients” or “change the password on this dataserver”. It is a catch-all issue type for anything that is not properly covered by the other job types.

We would love to hear any thoughts that others (particularly outsiders) may have on these changes.

Thoughtworks breakfast - Emergent Design & Evolutionary Architecture

Stephen Hurn — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 02:39:17 +0000

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).”

Neal has previously written a series of articles on this topic for IBM, which can be found here: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/views/java/libraryview.jsp?search_by=evolutionary+architecture+emergent+design:

One thing that Neal said that really stood out to me so much that I wrote it down was this “Requirements gathering is a lossy compression algorithm”. This comes down to a philosophy of software engineering most famously articulated in the Fall 1992 “C++ Journal” by Jack Reeves, who said that every engineering discipline produced a document as a deliverable and with software engineering this document is the source code. What this means is that when I, as the product manager, go out on site and visit clients and gather requirements I do not produce the final design. The design is not final until the last line of source code has been written.

Neal warned of a number of mistakes that are made by many software development teams. There is this idea that software architecture needs to be thought through before coding begins. This unfortunately leads to a number of problems because of the tendency to abstract things too early in the process, which increases the “accidental complexity” of software. Accidental complexity is the complexity of a solution over and above the complexity necessary to solve the actual problem. This is often caused when a developer says or thinks “we should do this thing now because we might want it later”.

Instead of up front design, Neal talked about architecture based on extracting idiomatic patterns from source code. This is different from Design Patterns in that idiomatic patterns are solution-specific architectures, while Design Patterns are generalised problem solutions. One example that Neal gave on extracting idiomatic patterns from code involved analysing an open source Java project. He worked out which areas of the code were both highly used and highly complex by analysing cyclomatic complexity (highly complex) and afferent coupling (how much other code uses this code). Simply doing this analysis showed that the most complex and highly used parts of the code in this project did similar things, which made it obvious what had to be done to improve the code.

The final concept that I wish to discuss (this is by no means an exhaustive list of what was covered - for that, attend one of the Sydney or Melbourne meetings or read the linked articles) is that of the concept of “technical debt”. Technical debt is a metaphor used to describe the difference between perfectly clean code and the code that you have. In many ways it works like credit card debt. The faster that code is created the messier it tends to be. This messiness causes future work on the code to take longer. The extra time that it takes to develop new features in the code is the “interest payment” on the technical debt. Some level of messiness is usually ok and it is up to each individual company to decide how much technical debt they wish to incur. In some cases the only factor is speed to market, in which case it is probably best to ignore technical debt. In other cases (in the case of us) the code that we write has a very long lifespan which means that addressing technical debt is something that we wish to reduce as much as possible.

In all I was extremely impressed with the whole presentation and would recommend it to anyone who is involved in software development. This was one of the best presentations that I have ever been to on software development. If you’re in Sydney or Melbourne, make sure you get along to the next one!

Magician, Miracle Worker and Mind Reader

Stephen Hurn — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 01:27:14 +0000

Dear valued clients (that means all of you),

This week we have had new business cards printed and I have personally changed my email signature. My new job title is “Magician, Miracle Worker and Mind Reader”, which is so much more fun and interesting than my old title “Product Manager”.

Of course I am not actually a magician, do not read minds or work miracles. I do, however, seek to understand your needs better so that I can better serve you and grow myself as an individual.

When I say I seek to be a mind reader, what I mean is that I wish to understand and learn about your needs. When I say I seek to be a magician, I mean that I desire to be able to conjure the best solution to your problems. When I say I seek to work miracles, I mean that I wish to provide you with service so exceptional it will appear miraculous.

Obviously I have a long way to go and learning how to do these things is a large part of my professional growth. I would be particularly interested in any comments or suggestions that you have in how I can better accomplish my goal of being the best product manager around. Please let me know what you think, I’d love to hear from you.

Sincerely,

Stephen Hurn
Magician, Miracle Worker and Mind Reader

An amusing video

Stephen Hurn — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 05:31:07 +0000

A friend linked me this amusing video on the power industry, so I thought I would share it here.

AIM Open House - Gold Coast 16th September

Stephen Hurn — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 05:50:42 +0000

After a mere five hours sleep and with a nose that was running faster than Usain Bolt I really should not have gotten out of bed, let alone drive an hour and a half to the Gold Coast to attend an all day AIM seminar. Yet I am somewhat masochistic and managed to drag myself out of my warm, safe bed and drove the hour and a half to the Gold Coast. After getting lost in Robina for half an hour I finally found the AIM office and managed to make it just in time for the first of seven presentations.

At this stage you might want to make yourself a cup of tea - this is a long (but I think worthwhile) read.

Driving Business Performance
The first seminar was entitled Driving Business Performance. The speaker (who’s name I did not record) spoke on what she called the six Ps - Planning, Product, People, Plant, Process and Profits.

Planning is about getting the intangible parts of running a business right. This involves making sure that there is a simple, clear business plan that everybody in the organisation understands. It was stressed that if a business plan was to complex then nobody would understand it or remember it and ultimately it would be ignored. A big part of the planning process are the twin concepts of having an exit strategy and a succession plan. This means that information sharing should be a priority of every business and it is one area in which global-roam has consistently failed in the past (though we are making huge strides towards improving in this area).

Product is all about addressing your clients needs. It is what all successful products do, from Coca-cola to Microsoft Windows every product is addressing a customer need. For this reason the client should be at the center of your business.

People is what all business is about. Every business is made up by people to address the needs of other people and is staffed by people. This means that people are at the heart of every business. The speaker made a few very interesting points which were closely aligned with what we were trying to achieve with the recent company restructure. The segregation of duties is important to get the best performance out of all the staff. For us at global-roam this meant that instead of everyone trying to manage, code, debug, test, gather requirements and design for their own products, we had to reassign Adam, Kim and myself to the more administrative and client focused tasks of product management and requirements elicitation and allocated the other more technical aspects of software development to the other developers. Additionally to the segregation of tasks amongst staff, it is important to have accurate job descriptions and performance measures (but only if the measures are exactly in line with the business goals identified in the planning stage).

Plant is all about infrastructure. For a software engineering firm, infrastructure is not of as much importance as it is in say a steel mill. Still, even though our products are just a bunch of 1s and 0s, infrastructure cannot be ignored. An ongoing review of infrastructure is important to ensure a better allocation of resources and a planned, systematic replacement of aging infrastructure is a good way of ensuring that costs are spread evenly over a number of years.

Process is about the way in which a company operates. A number of interesting points were made on this topic. Any process is better than no process. All processes and systems should be documented. This can begin with something as simple as documenting the process for picking up the mail. Processes form the basis of job descriptions, which become increasingly important as a business expands beyond a few employees. As such the processes you use should be understandable and “owned” by the staff.

Profit is about the financial success of a company. This means that all of the key people in an organisation need to be able to read all of the different financial statements and understand their implications. Cashflow needs to be monitored regularly. Budgets need to be drawn up for each job and adhered to. This means that budgets must actually be realistic - the more unrealistic a budget the less people will actually try and follow them. Budgeting for new jobs is something that we certainly can do better at here at global-roam.

Business Development and Effective Networking for Professionals
The second talk was entitled Business Development and Effective Networking for Professionals but spent more time discussing human behaviour than anything else (though that is a good thing in my opinion). The speaker began by asking a very important question - “why do people buy stuff from you?” The answer to that is quite simple and it is at its core the fundamental basis of human behaviour. People buy from you to increase their pleasure or avoid pain. Therefore everything that we do should be tailored to accomplish one of three things - to fix, accomplish or avoid something for your client. This means building relationships with clients.

All relationships come down to trust (just read Shakespeare’s Othello for a lesson in how a lack of trust can undermine an otherwise healthy relationship). According to the speaker, trust comes down to three things - capabilities, reliability and character/integrity. The first two can be improved through training or better tools. The third aspect - integrity - cannot. If there is a reason to suspect the character of a potential employee then regardless of their qualifications you should not hire them. Similarly it will be much harder for a client to form a good relationship with you if they do not trust you (in fact they likely will not employ your services).

The speaker then went on to explain that in every company there were three kinds of people - the finders, the minders and the grinders. The finders are the people who are comfortable creating new relationships. These are the type of people you want in sales and marketing. The minders are the people in an organisation who are good at maintaining the current relationships. They might not be great at meeting new people, but they are good at pleasing those they already know. This is the type of person that I currently am. The final subset of people are the grinders. They are the ones that excel at doing the work of the company. Generally they will have little interest in meeting or maintaining relationships except out of necessity. Todd is one of these people, which is why he is a brilliant coder but was not a very good product manager (and he would be happy to tell you the same thing). It is important when networking to find the right people in an organisation to network with.

When dealing with clients, it is important to make three different types of contacts in an organisation. The first and most important contact that you should make is a coach. That is, someone who can educate you as to the organisation that you are dealing with and point you in the right direction when you need to talk to someone else. The second person you need to contact is the person who is the financial buyer of your products. They are the ones who will ultimately pay for whatever it is that you sell, so it’s important that you understand who they are and what their needs are. Thirdly, you need to identify who it is that actually uses your goods or services in a company. If you do not make sure that someone is enjoying your services they may not want to renew their relationship with you. All three types of people are important to your chances of building or maintaining good relations with a client. It is very important that you have contact with more than one person in an organisation in case that person leaves. Finally, remember that in every relationship someone has to take the first step. Why not let it be you?

Impression Management and Brand You

The third speaker entitled their talk “Impression Management and Brand You”, which sounds to me like marketing speak (yuck!) but was full of juicy content. The first core theme to come out in this presentation was that of authenticity. Personal authenticity is very important in everything that you do, for a number of reasons. Primarily if you are not authentic then people are not going to trust you. If people do not trust you they will not do business with you. Trying to “fake it until you make it” is not going to work in todays business environment. Secondly, if you are authentic then you will be happier and more capable. It is no use for me to try and pretend to be a bubbly person because I’m not. If I tried to be I would appear fraudulent, burn myself out and achieve less success than being myself. You really have to decide who you are and be comfortable with that. Some people are extroverted in nature and others (like myself) are introverted. Some are big, some are small. The key is to accept your own style and work with that. For example, Scott Ginsberg (see Hello, My Name Is Adam) has a style that works for him. If I were try try and emulate his style I would look like a fool because it is not who I am.

As a part of developing your own style, the speaker had us all do an exercise - come up with an “elevator pitch” to introduce yourself. This is supposed to reflect who you are, what you value and what you are like. It was a valuable exercise to do as it got me thinking about what it is that I really value, what my unique selling point is and why I do what I do. After we had worked that out, we were asked who wanted to share theirs with the whole group. Reluctantly I was the third person to do so. In a room full of mostly extraverted managers it was the young introverted tech guy who had the courage to stand up and deliver (poorly) his ad-libbed introduction. The speaker and audience then critiqued my address and came up with a few points, though the only one that I really remember was that someone said I was shy (well duh…) and to which the speaker responded to that by saying that some people find that really attractive. I think my face went a bright shade of red at that point. The point though is that being shy should not hold you back from building your personal brand.

Exceptional Customer Service
Next up was a presentation on customer service. Now customer service, in my opinion, is one of those areas that everyone talks about and not many people actually do right (probably including global-roam to some extent). Earlier in the day one of the speakers mentioned that “going the extra mile” was almost always beneficial in business. What was not mentioned is where the origin of the term came from. Now that it has entered the common vernacular the term has lost some of its meaning, but it was first recorded in the Christian Bible. At the time the Jewish people were under Roman rule. Roman citizens had more rights than non-citizens and one of those rights was that they were able to command any Jew to carry their equipment for exactly one mile (markers were placed on the roads to measure the distance). Understandably the Jews hated this. Legally they could not be told to carry the equipment further than the one mile. When Jesus told his followers to “go the extra mile” he was telling them not to begrudge the Romans but instead show them extra courtesy by doing far more than what was expected of them. Regardless whether you believe the religious aspect of this or not, it does make for a very good demonstration of what good customer service is. It is doing more than what is expected of you. Treating your client interactions as more than just financial transactions is the key.

There were four key areas of customer service that were looked at in this hour. “Consistency”, “Phrases”, “Normal” and “Connected”.

Consistency was the first concept and it is one that is one of the hardest to get right. This means that your customer service should not be about isolated moments of brilliance but about constant, continual effort. An integral part of this is ensuring smooth “baton changes” among staff. Within global-roam this means that we ensure whoever is on support for the month has enough support to do their job. It means when a new product manager starts that the previous product manager educates them not only about the product, but about the clients and their needs and desires.

The next word Phrases deals with the language that you use to communicate with clients. The point was made that the phraseology used within and organisation is vastly underestimated in most corporate environments. We looked at several phrases from the Scott Ginsberg e-book entitled “117 Phrases That Payses” (available from his website - no direct link as you need to provide an email address to get it) and looked at how using the right phrase would aid both how we respond to clients and how they saw our organisations.

Nobody notices Normal. People as a general rule would rather hear about you and not from you. Think about Google as an organisation. How many people have ever been contacted by them? I do not know anyone who has, yet everyone knows about them because they are the best at what they do. “The speed of change is changing and it is changing ever quicker,” is a quote that accurately describes the corporate arms race when it comes to being exceptional and standing out from every other business. In 1999 having a corporate website made you stand out. In 2009 if you do not have an awesome website you are being left behind. Great websites are now considered the new standard for “normal”. What is it that you can do to stand out from the rest of the pack? Quite simply “do what you are going to do when you say you are going to do it”. IT is an industry in which 20% budget and time overruns are considered best practice. Imagine a company that delivered what they said they were going to deliver when they said they would deliver it.

Everybody in today’s society is Connected. Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn, youtube and google all mean that people are connected to each other in ways that was never before possible. Just the other day I checked my facebook and email, watched the sports report and participated in a work meeting before I was even out of bed (admittedly I had this infernal cold, which is why I had the work meeting there). Three years ago this simply was not possible. Today it is the norm. For organisations this means that the term “secret” means that others will probably find out about it within a day, rather than an hour. It means that you do not know who anybody you interact with is connected to. The cleaning lady might be married to the person in charge of accounts at your biggest client (so treat everyone well - it certainly will not hurt you). The other part of this is that you should never gossip about others. Chat, yes, but never gossip. The old adage which says “do not say something about someone that you would not say to them in person” is even more important today.

Resilience for Managers
While it was an incredibly interesting session, Resilience for Managers was mistitled. It should have been named “Resilience for Everybody” as the lessons learned here are important for all people, not just managers. Resilience here is defined as “your ability to bounce back after disappointment or setback, to be adaptable and flexible and to create vitality and re-engineer yourself”. I do believe that the definitive book on resilience is Adversity Quotient, but this session was still very useful. Michelle, who ran the session, was responsible for a job that saw her sometimes need to work for twenty hours straight, deal with international clients and fly in and out of multiple timezones. A story she told involved flying to Dubai for a conference. She had to deliver a presentation to people there a mere couple of hours after she had landed. When she got there she found that her luggage had been run over and shampoo now covered all of her work clothes. Someone that she was traveling with had the same problem. One of them vented their frustration at the airport staff, lost control of the situation and ended up late to their presentation. The other went to their presentation and gave it in jeans and a teeshirt, after explaining to the audience why they were dressed so casually. Which do you think left a better impression with the audience? Instinctively we all know it to be the one who took control of the situation and worked with what they had (in this case it was Michelle).

When facing a crisis, there are five stages that an individual goes through. The first stage is the stress trigger. In the ancient past this was the bear that was threatening to eat us. These days it may be the boss approaching looking for a report you have not finished yet (truth be told I’m sure many of us would rather face the bear). Stress triggers are unavoidable. We can reduce the likelihood of them occurring due to good planning, but no matter how carefully we plan, something unexpected can always happen (bringing me back to the idea that no plan survives the battlefield but no battle was won without a plan). The second stage that we go through is the “red alert” stage. When faced with a crisis our body changes its physiology to prepare us for a fight or flight response. The third stage is action - the actual response to the emergency. In eons past this would be running from the grizzly that was about to rip your arms off or grabbing the nearest rock and whacking it over the head. These days it is more likely to involve you talking to the boss and explaining why that report that was due yesterday still has not been started or ducking off to the lunch room for a snack so the boss conveniently finds you missing. This is the stage at which people commonly get stuck. Constant stress without respite is what burns people out. The next stage - the relaxation or rebound stage - is what returns us to normal after a crisis. This is where in times past we would have collapsed and slept in a cave for a few hours after fleeing the bear. It is mostly ignored by people today, which is why we seem so stressed out as a society. The final stage is the return to normal.

Resiliency is about identifying when a red alert is about to occur and implementing strategies to return us to normal after the event. Michelle identified three fundamental keys to doing this - body talk, mind talk and feeling talk. Body talk involves changing our physical state to deal with the crisis. This might mean that we go for a run, go to a pilates class or more immediately stand up and stretch. Mind talk is about what you are telling yourself and the way in which you analyse a situation. Adversity Quotient deals best with addressing this. Finally, Feeling talk is about changing the way you feel about a problem. It is the hardest to deal with, particularly if the stress is emotional in nature (like a disagreement with your significant other). Dealing with your feeling talk may involve strategies from the other two types of talk, it may also involve crying, talking with someone or using some other form of emotional outlet. Ultimately resilience comes down to a couple of key points. Do not sweat the small stuff because it is ALL small stuff. Secondly, if you cannot fight or flee a problem, then just go with the flow.

Marketing on a Shoestring
Marketing to me is a term that is used to describe the way in which you communicate with your clients and potential clients. It is about educating people about your products and yourself and letting them know why they should invest in you, your products and your company. Marketing on a Shoestring was a session run by a Bond University professor named Stuart McAuliffe (who shares the same last name as a previous boss, but is no relation).

Stuart was a very practical person, who loved to talk and be listened to. He was quite an engaging speaker who knew how to tell a joke. He stressed that a firm should know its target market and know what its competitive advantages are. It sounds like a simple concept, but many organisations do not really know why people buy their products. Often real, tangible competitive advantages are ignored by a company because people in the company view it as “simple stuff”. Unfortunately most of the time the simple things are not as simple as they seem and by not reinforcing your advantages in your marketing you are missing out on an opportunity.

“Some people will really like your business for some reason. Target them. Market in a way that will appeal to them.” Stuart’s advice seems very simple, but many businesses do not do this. Most marketing experts that I have heard have stressed this concept - it is far easier for you to sell to an existing client than to gain a new client. A part of this is to not try and make your product appeal to everybody. Very few products ever will be used by everybody (water and air are the only ones I can think of) and in most cases it is better to build a product that nails a particular market segment’s needs than to try and appeal to the whole market.

A large part of Stuart’s presentation was on the effectiveness of brochures. Brochures can be a very effective way of reaching a target market - far more effective than email or other forms of advertising. Stuart waxed lyrical about the psychology of brochure advertising. Larger brochures are better than smaller brochures. Womens faces sell far better than mens faces. Sex does not sell and turns people off - but people love the concept of love. People look at a picture and then read what is under it, so do not waste time on text that sits above your pictures. Tell a story with your brochure - it is far more effective than presenting a series of facts. On and on he went about tips and techniques for constructing a brochure that sells well. Many of his insights into human psychology were very interesting and entertaining.

Project Management
The final session of the day was on Project Management. By this stage my brain had gone into spasm and I felt like I was ready to die. I had lived a good life anyway. I did not absorb much at all of this session - not due to the quality of it, but more to my concentration powers after a mere five hours sleep followed by a very long day, while sick. However, the one point that I did get was that there is a book - “A guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge,” which is the most important book on Project Management ever written. Oh and I do remember the interesting statistic that there are two types of project manager - the 27 year old who has been educated for it and the 54 year old who has been thrust into the job, largely because they were there and were less incompetent than those around them. At global-roam it seems that we got the age right but the reason wrong. Still, I am up for a challenge.

After a quick nap on the back seat of my car (I always nap on the back seat - I do not want my body to associate the front of the car with sleep) I headed off back home, but not before stopping off and watching the Invisible Children documentary with some friends. It might be off topic for this blog, but it covered a very important situation - child soldiers forced into service in Uganda and the Congo. Children are being abducted as young as nine and ten years old and forced to commit attrocities against their will. It made me both angry at the injustice and glad to live in Australia, where my greatest concern is whether the latest version of our products are checked into source control properly. By comparison to what these people face, my concerns seem meagre and that helps me keep my problems in perspective.

Overall I had a long, but awesome day at AIM Gold Coast. Each of the speakers was really good and while much of the information was not new, it was valuable.

Book Review: Adversity Quotient by Paul G Stoltz

Stephen Hurn — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 05:42:39 +0000

Book: Adversity Quotient

Author: Paul G. Stoltz Phd

Binary Review: 1

Full Disclosure – yes, that’s a tracked link to Amazon shown above.
We buy quite a large number of books on a wide range of topics, all relevant to our business in some way. If you did happen to purchase the book from Amazon, they’d throw a few shekels our way, which would help us to buy (and hence publish reviews of) even more books. Thus, benefits would return to you…

If I had $40 for every time I heard the words “I can’t do this, it’s too hard,” I would be a high school maths tutor. Which I was. For seven years. And my response to every single teenager who uttered those words at me was to tell them point blank that they were wrong. They could do it, and would one day find it easy. By the end of the first term of tutoring all bar two of my thirty or so students had shown a drastic improvement in their grades. Little did I realise but when I was instilling in these students the principles that are fundamental to having a high Adversity Quotient, which is the subject of Paul Stoltz’ book.

The principles that I instilled in my students were principles that did not just help in maths, but in all areas of their life. At the end of tutoring a student throughout year 9 maths, his parents told me that they no longer had need of me as a tutor as their child was doing so much better not just in maths, but in every other subject they had because of the one hour a week I was tutoring them (three years later they hired me again to help with his final year). Another student came to me after a term of year 12, having returned from a number of years overseas. He was failing maths. By the end of the year he graduated with a very high achievement. Nearly every student I tutored saw real, tangible results. I say this not to blow my own trumpet (ok well maybe I am just a little) but to highlight that the principles contained in Adversity Quotient actually work. Besides, the success my students saw really was as much theirs as it was mine. After all, they were the ones who sat in the exams and did the assignments. What does any of this have to do with the book Adversity Quotient? The core of what made my tutoring successful was the core of what Adversity Quotient is about.

What is your Adversity Quotient?

Your Adversity Quotient (AQ) is a measure of how resilient you are in the face of trials and tribulations, in a similar way to Intelligence Quotient (IQ) is a measure of your intellectual capabilities. However, unlike IQ (which Paul Stoltz does not believe is a good indicator at all of success) AQ can be improved and changed by following a simple process. AQ is measured by working out your CO2RE results.

Your CO2RE

CO2RE is an acronym that encompasses five different but important aspects of your AQ. You can work out exactly what your CO2RE score is, all you need to do is buy the book and fill out a simple questionnaire.

C stands for Control. The level of control that you feel you have over your circumstances makes up an integral part of your AQ. What is control? In this context, control is the ability to change something about your current circumstances. In the case of something even as devastating as a terminal illness, you still can control how you respond and your attitude to the situation. Generally though the adversity that we all face is not as serious or as tragic as a terminal illness and we do have much more control over the situation than we may realise. Extreme feelings of lack of control can lead to illnesses such as depression or anxiety.

O2 stands for Ownership and Origin. A combined measure, your O2 is representative of how much blame you place on yourself for adversity you are suffering (origin) and how much responsibility you take for correcting the adversity that you’re facing (ownership). An individual with a high O2 result will recognise the true reasons for their current adversity and even if it was not their own fault will take charge to address the situation anyway. Paul Stoltz makes mention that girls tend to have a lower O2 score than boys, which is largely due to the way in which they have been raised. In many cases girls are told that they cannot achieve something because “they are a girl”, while boys are told that they cannot achieve something because “they are lazy”. The difference in language between the two is significant. Being a girl is something than an individual has very little control over, while being lazy is something that can be addressed. And this is the key point to improving your O2 score - to recognise that you have power over adversity when you recognise that its origins are (in nearly all cases) things that you have control over and to take ownership of improving your circumstances. Terms like “I can’t do this”, while a part of my students’ lexicon were never a part of mine. Instead the belief that I tried to impart to my students was “you can do this and will do this, we just need to fix this one minor issue”.

R stands for Reach. This measure is related to how extensively you allow adversity to affect your life. Someone with a high reach score may be suffering from divorce, but will not allow their performance at work to be affected. Conversely, someone with a low reach score may start the morning by sleeping through their wake up alarm and allow that adversity to affect the rest of their day negatively. The key here is to what extent an individual allows adversity to affect other areas of their life. As a tutor I saw many cases of teenagers who believed that their poor marks in maths was going to ruin their life and allowed their happiness to be affected by their inability to grasp whatever area of maths they were learning at the time. To work through this I had my students place their current troubles in the context of the rest of their lives. Would their maths troubles stop them from driving a car? Getting married? Did Einstein’s maths problems stop him from being one of the most successful scientists who ever lived? Once a student realised how little influence this one adversity had over everything else they cared about they would not only find their burden lighter, but the problems themselves would be easier to solve.

E stands for Endurance. Endurance is based on your perception of how long an adversity will last and how long the cause of an adversity will last. People with a high E score will believe that adversity is only temporary and the negative circumstances will be gone before too long. Someone who has a low E score will not only believe that their adversity lasts longer, but that the causes for their adversity will be more prolonged. They will use permanent language to describe their current adversity (my personal pet hate is when someone says “I’m not good with computers”, as if being good with computers is an innate ability rather than a learned skill). Many maths students I tutored had low E scores. They would tell me “I am never going to get this”. To counter this I would remind them that they once found addition and subtraction hard. They had to believe that their problems were temporary.

LEADing yourself and others through adversity

Knowing your own CO2RE score and AQ is not going to be any more useful to you than knowing your IQ unless you commit yourself to improving. Unlike your IQ, there are techniques that you can follow to improve your AQ. This is where the second major acronym is described. LEAD, which stands for Listen, Explore, Analyse and Do.

The first step toward improving your or someone else’s adversity quotient is to Listen to your adversity response. This means that you must first recognise adversity when it is striking. Paul Stoltz talks about honing your ability to detect when adversity hits through a variety of techniques. The one that stuck with me the most was the analogy of the “new car purchase”. When you get a new car all of a sudden you notice all of the other cars on the road that are the same make and model as yours. Those cars were there in the past, but you never noticed them because you were not looking for them. The simple act of purchasing a new car has made you look out for them. Similarly we can attune our senses to detect when adversity is striking and focus on adjusting our response to those adversities. The key is to recognise, but not dwell on the problems we face. When you begin looking out for adversity you will begin noticing it everywhere and will be much better able to deal with it.

Once we have Listened to our adversity response, we need to move on to the second step - Exploring all origins of the adversity and your ownership of the result. At this point in the process you have to ask yourself three questions. What are the possible origins of this adversity? Given the origins, what part of this was my fault? What specifically could I have done better? These three questions will help you identify the causes of the current adversity and then help you address it by helping you take ownership of the crisis. It is important that you make sure you focus on the possible rather than likely origins. This will help you not apportion undue blame to yourself and will help you move forward towards dealing with the adversity.

Thirdly we need to Analyse the evidence. What evidence is there that this adversity will affect the rest of our life? What evidence is there that this adversity will last a long time? What evidence is there that we have no control over this adversity? This step is important because it gets us to realise how little evidence there actually is that this adversity will be far-reaching and long lasting. It is important that the responses to these questions are logical and unemotional. This will help prevent us from catastrophising the situation and limit the adversity to the area of our life that it actually affects. An example of someone answering these questions properly was Erik, who was blind due to a medical condition. Erik, faced with this adversity had two choices - he could accept common wisdom and allow his blindness to prevent him from doing everything that he wanted to do or he could accept that his blindness was not sufficient evidence that he had to give up on living his life. He chose the second option and was the first blind person to climb the tallest peaks on each of the seven continents. He answered the question “what evidence is there that blindness prevents me from mountain climbing?” with the simple response “none”. He later co-authored the follow up to Adversity Quotient - the Adversity Advantage.

Finally and probably most importantly, to raise our AQ we need to Do something. To do this we need to work out what it is that needs doing. Begin by asking yourselves these questions: What information do I need? What can I do to get some control over this situation? What can I do to limit the reach of this adversity? What can I do to limit the duration of this adversity? Then get out and act.

I would heartily recommend buying and reading this book - it has the power to change your life. The most successful people in the world are those who have high AQs. By learning what your AQ is and improving it, you will notice drastic improvements in all areas of your life. This book will help ensure that adversity doesn’t leave you feeling powerless and out of control.

AIM Event: Roasted Passion - the Phillip Di Bella story

Stephen Hurn — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 02:24:59 +0000

Di Bella Coffee

Phillip Di Bella, in 2002 started a coffee business with $5000. The empire that he spawned was listed in the BRW Fast 100 three years running, which would have been four years except his accountants forgot to file the paperwork on time (d’oh). He recently turned down a $28 Million offer for Di Bella Coffee. Suffice to say Phillip knows how to do business.

I did not really know what to expect when I went to the presentation as I had no idea about any of the information listed in the previous paragraph. All I knew was that this presentation was going to be made by someone who had a successful coffee business. Coffee being essentially a commodity market in Brisbane today (think of all the coffee chains and independents around the place - Coffee Club, Zaraffas, Gloria Jeans and even McCafe), I wanted to know what it was that he had done to make his business successful. In the end I took five pages of notes, which I think is about the same amount of notes as I took in my whole time at university. While I would love to expound upon every single point taken I will take mercy on you, the reader, and only highlight the points that really stuck out.

Marketing

The first lesson that Phillip tought was that marketing is about education. Advertising is trying to sell someone something, while marketing is about you trying to educate people about your products and company. The current government anti-smoking campaign is a very good example of marketing done well. Many companies advertise and advertising does work, but the truly remarkable companies, the ones that really stand out are the ones that market themselves well. The first company that comes to mind that does this is Google. Everyone knows their mission statement - do no evil, and many people know about their 20% time (that is, 20% of their engineers’ time is spent working on their own experiments). Nobody is a fan of google because they have the best search in the world (which they do) or because they have the best email client in the world (which they do). People are fans of google because they like the company itself - the way it operates, what it believes and the way it does business. If you had have told me in the late 1990s that in ten years time the biggest company on the internet would be an advertising company, with the moto “do no evil” and that people not only believed them but adored them I would have laughed at you and probably thought that you were more than a little crazy. At the time advertising companies were hated and reviled for all of their annoying tactics. Google totally changed what an advertising company could be and do. And not once have I ever seen google trying to sell me any of their products. But they have educated me as to why I am a dill if I still use hotmail for my web mail. Anyway this is supposed to be about the Di Bella story, not the Google story.

Values and Focus

One thing that I liked about Phil’s presentation was how he communicated the values of Di Bella Coffee. It is his belief that Di Bella Coffee is not a coffee company - it is a people company. Take a moment to ponder that for a moment. Just because your company sells coffee does not make it a coffee company. Just because Google sell advertising does not make them an advertising company. Internally at global-roam there has been some debate as to who we are as a company. It is my view that global-roam is not a software company but a market education company. We leverage software to educate and inform people involved with the electricity industry, but primarily what makes us remarkable is the way in which people gain an understanding of how the electricity market works through using our services. The key word in that sentence - people. A software company outsources their help desk to India. At global-roam we have no help desk - if you have an issue with our software and call us you will speak to the programmers who wrote the software. We care about our clients and our clients care about us. At least, we think they do - our retention rate is north of 90%. Phil made the point that product, service and price are not things that will land and keep a customer. If you do get a customer through the door because of one of those three things, it is likely that they will walk out the second that they have a better offer from someone else. It is the passion that you inspire that keep people returning. To reinforce this, Phil told of how a competitor offered free coffee for six months to anyone who was returning after having switched to Di Bella Coffee. Phil did not lose one customer to this tactic as his customers were not interested in the cheapest coffee - they were interested in the whole Di Bella experience. Di Bella customers are sold on Phil’s passion (and really good coffee).

Corporate Structure

On the theme of being a people company, not a product company, Phillip went on to explain his view of how Di Bella coffee was structured. Many companies have a “Christmas tree” structure, where the top of the tree was the most important people and each level down had less and less important people. Nearly everyone has worked in a company like this at some stage and I know that the last place at which I worked structured itself this way. Di Bella Coffee structures itself differently. It views its company as a target, a bullseye with the customer at the center. The closer to the customer you get, the more important you are. Di Bella Coffee treats those who directly interact with the customers as the most important people in their company. The further away from the customer you get, the more responsibility you have and pay is linked to responsibility, not importance. It is for this reason that Phil does not believe in investing in publicly listed companies (in a publicly listed company the people with the most to lose are not the people who have the most responsibility).

Pay
Which brings us to the topic of pay. On this topic Phillip was very strong - noone in the company was to talk about pay, everyone who was worthy of staying with the company for another year deserved a payrise and nobody was paid award wages as Phil expected more than “award work”. Pay is negotiated with each individual. After this has been done, it is written into the Di Bella policy that talking about salary is a sackable offense. This is very different from the viewpoint given in Maverick (see the earlier book review), in which the author promoted the viewpoint that everybody should know what everybody else in the company gets paid. Phil’s view is that pay like clothes is expected at work, you just do not talk about it. Talking about pay with peers will lead to a focus on money, which is not what Di Bella is about. I am inclined to agree with this viewpoint. Money is nice, and necessary to survive, but coming to work (actually this statement is somewhat ironic as I am telecommuting today) should be about the work, not about the pay packet .

The Di Bella Story

Finally, the story of how Di Bella got started is one that interests me greatly. In 2002 Phil started with $5 000 cash and had a vision for a company that sold coffee. Instead of trying to get a loan, then starting a store in a supermarket and going through the process that way, Phil reasoned that it was better to work within his means and so started by asking other people if he could use their coffee roasters while they were not using them. This meant that while everyone else was asleep, he was up at 3:00 am roasting coffee. He then sold his coffee at the farmers markets. This was his beachhead (which is a concept from “Crossing the Chasm” by Geoffrey A Moore - a must read for anyone in business). At the time nobody had sold coffee at markets and this was the way he began to gain momentum for what would later become one of the greatest success stories of the last seven years. In Phil’s words “do what others are not prepared to do”.

Having heard the man speak, I cannot wait to read his book. I got the feeling that Phil had so much knowledge and experience that simply being around him would be an awesome learning experience. Oh, and now I have to drive to Bowen Hills to try out his coffee.

EUAA Climate Change Briefing

Stephen Hurn — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 08:23:15 +0000

After the internal restructuring of global-roam, somehow I ended up with responsibility for managing the deSide product (and ez2view Ontario, ez2view Australia and ez2update Australia). This means that I am now responsible for understanding everything about energy users. How they think, what they do, what keeps them awake at night and what brand of toothbrush they use. This means attending the occasional conference that is put together for energy users.

The first of these conferences was the EUAA Climate Change Briefing. Now I have attended a number of climate change briefings before (mainly around the time that the government told Tarong to switch off because Queensland was running out of water), but this was the first one that I had been to that was tailored for energy users.

Morning Session - Nuclear, NGERS and Economics

The first guest was Ed Kee, who is the Vice President of NERA Consulting and his topic was on Nuclear Energy. The first thing that I noticed about his particular presentation was that it was a teleconference from Washington, using the same software that we use to support clients here at global-roam - webex (hey guys over there at webex, you just got some free advertising!). Ed was an interesting speaker, as he was speaking on one topic that I have great interest in - nuclear power.

Ed gave a good overview of nuclear energy adoption around the world. The most interesting information that he presented was about the key players in the nuclear industry worldwide - Russia and China. That suggests to me that these two countries are positioning themselves to control most of the intellectual property and skills involved in the construction of nuclear stations, which may be of high, long term strategic economic importance. By contrast the Australian government has taken the populist sound bite approach (”it has the word nuclear, therefore it must be bad”) to nuclear power. From my own personal point of view if climate change theory is true and accurate (and I am not qualified to make that judgment) then nuclear has to be a big part of the way forward. I realise that there are strong arguments against it (such as long term waste disposal and decommissioning costs), but if the choice is between figuring out how to store a few containers of nuclear waste for a few thousand years or Brisbane ending up under water, the Great Barrier Reef dying and having to sit through even more disaster movies I know which one I would choose. This point was later shared by Dr Moran. Australia may not even need to adopt nuclear ourselves to make a significant difference to world emissions. If we started pushing hard for more countries to adopt nuclear we may effectively curtail more emissions worldwide that we ever generate in Australia.

Unfortunately, Ed highlighted, most emissions reduction schemes worldwide either ignore or actively oppose nuclear power, which is causing reduced investment in this industry. This surely must be political (why are people so ideological about where their electrons come from?) in nature rather than based on a rational assessment of the facts. Nuclear is baseload, scalable, reliable and safe. No renewables can make this claim and most are also more expensive.

Next up on the agenda was David Rossiter, who was talking about the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Scheme. David’s presentation was not poorly delivered, but I remember little from it as the NGERS has little relevance to anything that global-roam is undertaking. One thing though that did stick out was the absolutely absurd religious stance that a number of various groups are taking with regards to climate change. David highlighted one council was spending ratepayer dollars on doing carbon accounting for mowing their lawns. I have been known for my strange sense of humour in the past, but in this case I am not exaggerating or joking. What is worse is that it was not reluctantly that councils were doing this, but gleefully, with a number doing the reporting even though they had nowhere near the carbon footprint to necessitate it. This confirmed a number of suspicions that I have earlier had - 1) climate change in some cases has moved beyond the science into a realm more closely identifiable as religion and 2) local councils in Australia are wasteful and not held up to very close scrutiny by ratepayers. It is better to be seen to be doing “your bit” for climate change than it is to address real problems.

Coming in as the last speaker before the morning tea break was Bruce Mountain from Carbon Market Economics, who spoke on a variety of issues. Bruce was a particularly interesting speaker as he had quite a good grasp on all of the areas of policy that would effect energy users. He also had a very strong understanding of the economic ramifications of the proposed emissions trading scheme. The think that stuck out in my mind, and the mind of others (as there were several follow up questions) was the economic modeling on the carbon cost required to make combined cycle gas turbines competitive with brown coal generation. At current gas prices the carbon cost would need to be somewhere around $20/tonne. At double the gas price, the carbon cost would need to be around $35/tonne. Nobody knows exactly how much gas prices will increase, only that as demand for gas increases it will place upward pressure on gas prices. Gas would not be competitive with black coal until a much higher carbon price. One thing that I found amusing was that despite the need for carbon prices to be $20/tonne to make gas competative, the government is going to sell unlimited permits for the first year of the emissions trading scheme at $10 per tonne. I imagine that the reason for doing this is to spread the inflationary effects of the ~~carbon tax~~ emissions trading scheme over a number of years instead of exposing consumers to the true cost straight away. The real emissions trading scheme (the one that actually involves trading) will begin in 2012 and a step change in price is expected then. One would imagine that this will occur close enough to the 2012/13 federal election so that the true costs to employment and inflation will not yet be evident and thus have no negative effect on the governments chances at re-election. Incidentally this also happens to be when the “evil climate change denying Liberals” were supposed to introduce their (essentially identical) emissions trading scheme if they had held power (yes, my political cynicism extends to both sides).

On the market effects of the ETS, Bruce presented a number of figures on the effects of the ETS on electricity prices. When brown coal is at the margin (i.e. is setting the price), the market should expect to see an increase of between $25-$35 per tonne. Black coal will see prices increase around $25/tonne and gas should see prices increase around $15/tonne. Finally, Bruce suggested that with electric cars coming online, the electricity use of households will increase by approximately 33%, though at current power prices this would lower the energy cost of running a car by around $2000 per annum.

Morning Tea to Lunch - Energy Users and discussion on MRET

Straight after morning tea, two presentations were made by energy users - Sydney Water and David Jones. Both presentations focused on how each organisation had addressed their energy costs. Sydney water is looking to go carbon neutral by 2018 by purchasing external carbon credits, at taxpayers expense. Another conference member asked why they were doing that and their response was “to take the lead on climate change”. Given that Sydney Water uses 1% of New South Wales electricity and New South Wales uses less than one third of Australia’s electricity and Australia emits less than 2% of the world’s carbon emissions, at best their leadership on climate change will result in approximately 0.0066% (at best) of the world’s carbon emissions. If this does not convince China to install new nuclear and gas plants instead of coal fired plants then I do not know what will.

Lunch was lovely and provided a lot of interesting discussion. Most of it was centering around the decision by the government to allow coal mine methane to be counted as renewable energy, but any credit for its use would be offset by an increase to the renewable energy target. Basically, from a practical point of view it achieves nothing, but from a political point of view it will boost the “renewable” energy usage. This will have the very important effect of allowing the government to tell everyone how great that they are.

After Lunch - Retailers, Risk, Risk Management and Pass Through Costs

After lunch there were several speakers. The first two were from Country Energy and Origin Energy - that is, electricity retailers. Origin spoke primarily to energy users on how they could reduce costs in both the short and long term. Country Energy spoke at greater length about the various market options for renewable energy credits and the expanded renewable energy target. The key point here is that under the new scheme, holders of renewable energy credits will become gatekeepers for the rest of the industry (why that is so was either not fully explained or I did not catch the explanation).

Dr Alan Moran from the Institute of Public Affairs spoke next. In his presentation he highlighted some scientific uncertainties that surround climate change theory. Following that he highlighted the levels of abatement that are needed to stabilise world CO2 emissions. Australia would need to reduce our carbon emissions from 16 tonnes per capita to 3 tonnes per capita. China, which has significant numbers of its population living in poverty currently releases 3.8 tonnes per capita. France, which has their power sourced almost entirely by nuclear sources has an emissions intensity of 6 tonnes per capita. The OECD average is 13 tonnes per capita.

Of even greater interest was the level of depth that Dr Moran went into about the costs that would be imposed on Australians if the emissions trading scheme is going to be successful in meeting its targets. Citing sources from Caltex, Onesteel, Alcoa and others Dr Moran highlighted the negative effect of the emissions trading scheme on a number of key Australian businesses. Brown coal generators in Victoria argue that they will be forced into closure by the scheme, which is far more biased against incumbent generators than the European or US schemes. Dr Moran then highlighted the Spanish experiment into green energy, which has cost the country 2.2 real jobs per green job created. Pages of statistics and studies were presented to highlight the danger in Australia adopting the proposed emissions trading scheme. The final point that Dr Moran made was that the treasury modeling that suggested Australia could reduce emissions extensively by 2050 was based on un-economical or undeveloped renewable technologies and carbon sequestration for both coal and gas power, both of which are not yet invented. All of these points lead to one conclusion - that Australia simply cannot achieve its goals without (at least) the adoption of nuclear power.

Second to last was the only speaker that seemed to be thrilled with the prospect of an emissions trading scheme - Jennifer Lauber Patterson who was the director of Innovative Carbon (and formerly ANZ bank). She talked primarily about what was needed for companies to hedge their risk under the emissions trading scheme (I still cannot bring myself to use the official title - carbon pollution reduction scheme - as carbon dioxide is not officially classed as a pollutant) and renewable energy target. She raised a number of interesting points, and started with a quote from Henri de Castries, Chairman of the Management Board and Chief Executive of AXA - “Climate change and the impact that it will have on key industries is as important as interest rate risk and exchange risk.” Risk management was the primary focus of her presentation and she made several suggestions for businesses with significant carbon risk. The appointment of a Chief Carbon Officer, spreading hedging across multiple approaches including permits, Kyoto compliant credits and borrowing/banking credits were all discussed.

Finally, Dr Ariel Liebman from the EUAA spoke on carbon intensity factors, carbon pass through and retail electricity contracts. Dr Liebman explained how the carbon price would eventually reach electricity users, how it would effect price and how it would change the bid stack. The average estimate of the pass through cost (i.e. the cost that is transmitted to the end user) is somewhere in the vicinity of 60-80% of the carbon price. The full figures are to be covered in a Draft Access Economics report for the EUAA, which will be released soon. His final point, which was made a number of times during the various presentations is that gas prices may vary significantly once the ETS is in place.

Final Thoughts

Overall the conference was very useful, though a little depressing from an economic point of view. Most of the speakers were not particularly impressed with the ETS legislation (one energy user reported having spent nearly half a million dollars on consulting in preparation to possibly get given compensation for the scheme - and they are not guaranteed a pay off). Yet due to the fact that a number of key aspects of the compensation arrangements are down to ministerial discretion, I imagine that we will be hearing a number of large energy users coming out in support of the proposed scheme. After all, it would not jeopardise their chances of getting compensation would it?

Book Review: Please Understand Me II by David Keirsey

Stephen Hurn — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 01:44:38 +0000

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Please Understand Me II is the most fascinating look at interpersonal relationships that I have ever read. It deals with a plethora of issues ranging from parent/child relationships to marriage, and does so in a way that is both understandable and enjoyable to read. From a business perspective, the book deals with two key areas that every company should be aware of – intelligence and leadership. The primary focus of Keirsey’s book is the four temperaments - the Artisan, Guardian, Idealist and Rational. In it he explores how these temperaments have been described through history (as far back as two thousand years or more) by various authors and expanding on what the temperaments are and how they interact with each other as partners, parents, children, leaders and subordinates. Most importantly, Keirsey discusses intelligence in great detail.

Book:	Please Understand Me II
Author:	David Keirsey
“Binary” Review:	One

Intelligence is something that is ill-defined by the majority of society. It deals with an abstract concept that has to do with the potential of the mind to achieve certain goals. What Please Understand Me II did for me was identify something that I had already known was true, but had never been articulated so well before – there are different types of intelligence. In fact there are four types of intelligence, and all four are displayed in differing quantities by the different temperaments. These differing intelligences also help define the leadership styles of each temperament.

The Artisan is the first of the temperaments that Keirsey looks at. They are so called because of their tendency to be very good at using their bodies, tools and their environment to create. Artisans have intelligence that is primarily tactical in nature. Tactical intelligence is very concrete and immediate in nature and as such is highly visible. This makes Artisan types very adept at solving short term problems or “putting out fires”. Keirsey goes on to explain that if an Artisan is bored they may even create problems to solve. All of this makes Artisans very flexible, good at negotiation and troubleshooting and extremely useful when things need to be done now. What Artisans are not adept at is long term strategy or high level conceptual design. In fact anything abstract in nature is not the natural playground of the Artisan. Famous Artisans include Winston Churchill, Ronald Reagan, Erwin Rommel and Robert E. Lee.

The complement of the Artisan is the Guardian. Guardians also have an intelligence grounded in reality, but which differs from the Artisan by being focussed on order – or as Keirsey puts it, their intellectual strength is in logistics. The title Keirsey gives to Guardians is so given because they are the defenders of society. Upholding that which is traditional, the Guardian type loves structures and rules. Ensuring that things are ordered and timely is the forte of the Guardian. The Guardian also enjoys working with rules and regulations and leads in such a manner. They are good stabilisers and consolidators and are generally no-nonsense people. Famous guardians include Richard Nixon, Elizabeth I and George Washington.

The abstract-thinking Idealist primarily uses diplomatic intelligence. Idealists believe in people and love to work with and bring out the best in people. Abstract and cooperative in nature, Idealists tend to enjoy supporting others. They tend to be committed to the people that they lead and have a charismatic style of leadership. Idealists may act as catalysts in an organisation, finding and exploiting the strengths of other individuals. Very few world leaders have been idealists as Idealists tend to work through other people. Some famous Idealist leaders are Joan of Arc, Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr. President Obama is the first Idealist US President.

The final type is the strategic thinking Rational. This type thinks in abstract terms like the Idealist, but is focused on tools and objects instead of people. They achieved their moniker by being the personality type most dedicated to logic and reason. Rationals are adept at high level strategic thought. Very good at seeing the big picture, the Rational may appear to have their heads in the clouds sometimes. Their skills are focused around high level technical abstractions, which makes them great at designing new systems or planning complex strategies. Pragmatic and skeptical Rationals are often found working as engineers. Famous Rationals include Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Dwight Eisenhower.

I gleaned so much important information from reading this book; Keirsey’s descriptions of parent-child and mating relationships were devastatingly accurate – and made for some hilarious reading to my family as we identified our own types. Yet even more interesting than this was the understanding of intelligence types and how they interact with each other. For example, previously I may have dismissed Artisan types as reckless, irresponsible and of no worth to a company. It is clear after reading Please Understand Me II that Artisans can be of tremendous value to a company that uses their strength – their tactical thinking. Likewise, a mix of personality types will likely bring the best results for a company.

Overall there is so much wisdom and understanding to be gained in this book that I believe it is a recommended read for practically anyone. The beauty of this book is that once you have determined your temperament you can use this book as more of a reference manual for relationships with others. I know it has helped me, and that is the highest praise I can give it.

Design Time

Stephen Hurn — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 06:38:41 +0000

The time was half past seven in the evening. It had been dark for an hour outside. My stomach was empty, but I pressed on. It was quiet in my study at home, the only activity - my feverish typing away at the keyboard. I was almost done, joy within sight.

You see I was finishing the design specification for the latest iteration of ez2view. This version was going to be the most ambitious version of our products yet and, after heavy internal debate, we had finally decided on where the product would go. I spent the last week researching the technologies that we needed and designing the core structure of how the program would work.

Who am I? My name is Stephen Hurn and I am the Product Manager of ez2view Australia and its companion product ez2update Australia. I have been with global-roam since 2006 and have seen the company grow threefold over the last three years. I will occasionally be pontificating on this blog about my times at global-roam.

Last night saw the completion of the most difficult task in developing a new product, or even a new version of a product - the design spec. This, to me, is the most interesting and creative part of product development . It is also the most important aspect of product development and the one that many companies repeatedly fail at. It connects the requirements (essentially a wishlist of features) and implementation (the code).

Companies fail at writing good design documents for several reasons. These are the three most common:

1) Programmers like programming. It is why programmers became programmers in the first place. There is a great temptation to launch headfirst into code when working on a new version of a product.

2) Time pressure. Many developers feel that they do not have enough time to get their work done. To take the time to write a good design document can feel like a huge waste.

3) Management that just doesn’t “get it”. All too often, poor management can make absurd demands of their developers. Those demands may include moving the requirements every two weeks, placing unrealistic pressure on developers to be continuously coding (any company that pays by the line of code or volume of output is guilty of this) or simply over promising to clients.

All of these reasons for not writing specs are bogus. Programmers who simply jump in and adopt the “cowboy” style of coding with no spec may feel like they are achieving, but in actual fact will produce code that is more poorly structured and undisciplined than coders who follow a spec. The sheer amount of bugs that will be prevented by a good design document will more than make up for the immediate gratification of having a semi-functional program sooner.

A good spec will save time. It might not feel like it when the developer is sitting there racking their brain trying to come up with a good structure for their code, but having a design document to focus development helps prevent dead ends and allows for an overall speedier process.

Management can be the biggest problem when it comes to developing software. There is so many ways in which management can hurt or help the long term interests of a product. Primarily though it is over promising to clients that is the usual sin of management. Nobody is immune to this, not even Microsoft manages to ship all of their products on time with all of the features that were originally promised. Unfortunately bad management is the hardest problem to solve. A great manager though is worth their weight in platinum.

Fortunately for me (and the other developers at global-roam), we have good management that has encouraged us from the beginning to write good design documents for our products. Of course, we are still human and the design documents we write are not perfect but having a plan of action allows us, as a company, to focus on the most important issues of design - making things work well.

Making things work for us means that we peer review product designs heavily. The real advantages to this are several, but primarily it allows us to have objective eyes view our designs at a stage where changing a checkbox to a radio button takes one sentence on a page, instead of some code, some phone calls and long negotiations with IT contractors who do not even work for the same company as the people who use the software. The cost of fixing problems at design time is exponentially less than fixing the same problem later down the track.

Over the next week, my design will be heavily reviewed. Debate will rage, tempers will flare, sarcastic remarks will be made and changes will be made. In the end though, we will have decided on the best design possible at this stage, with the knowledge and the tools available to us as a company. In the end, the company exists for the clients and the clients are the ones who benefit the most from strong design processes. I am just glad that it is so rewarding.