Blended program management, Prince and Agile methods Part 1
I have been involved in project and program management since 1989 across various sectors and more recently have been focused in banking and finance. I have experience in Prince and Agile methodologies and will expand on the blending of these two methods through the use of user stories (a user experience method) and the positive relationship between waterfall and iteration components in the following parts of this post.
Simply put (before getting into the detail) Prince and Agile = Delivery and in Banking and Finance they can give startling results.
This will not be a shock to many people but I'm not going to be describing the what, but the how. I have managed some highly complex projects that would have failed if they had been run in Prince or Agile alone. The clear advantage of blended processes is that the project become team centric and affords an environment where success in common and that value is attributed to the correct people.
Save 35% ££ on banking change, requirements gathering should take no more than six months
Best practice, puting the missing part in a puzzle
Requirements gathering in Banking change programs are over detailed, over long and for the most part undeliverable.
There is and has been a huge requirement for change in British banking for several years as senior bankers have sought to lever the capabilities of technology and distributed workforces. This has in turn a great opportunity for IT consultancies to enforce their business models on the banks and make huge amounts of money without delivering anything. This has of course not gone unnoticed and forced many banks to increase their internal IT teams, but the problem remains, as the overall strategy is wrong.
The current strategy for business change requirements gathering is to fully understand the current problem with the assistance of subject matter experts (SME’s) and then defined the end state with the internal client. There are several major problems with this approach;
- Fully understanding the problem is almost endless in Banking
- Using SME assumes they really are experts which for the most part they are not
- That the internal client can see the future of their business
- That the same consultants will carry the project all the way through
The solution to this problem is a new strategy, in fact an Agile based one;
- Defining 6 to 10 features of the new system at a high level
- Involving the enterprise architects to see what has to be new, legacy or adapted
- Launch the development team during the definition phase
- Detail the features and get time costs from the designers and developers (not the PM or delivery manager)
Doing the above will change the relationship between requirements and delivery making requirements a service to the delivery of the project rather than an impossible set of promises made by people who will never have to keep them.
The 35% savings is probably low it’s just the 14 months and 35% of a budget wasted on an investment banking project that were eventually discarded. I’m considering a new concept in banking requirements gathering, value for money, is anyone interested?
You can contact me on karl@karl-smith.com
Information Architecture (IA) the classification of information
Information Architecture (IA) entities like cells
A simple website may only include 8 top level pages, 50 secondary and perhaps only 300 tertiary labelled (taxonomy) navigation elements, that’s only 358 entities. However IA tends to be associated with the structure and classification of websites, intranets and software that accesses in excess of 100,000+ separate entities to be classified. I have worked on several huge taxonomies for Government, Publishers, Colleges, Universities, Insurance Companies and Banks involved in trading that involve between 1,000,000 and 25,000,000+ entities.
An IA when embarking on a new project will investigate if there is a standardised taxonomy for the project domain and conduct a content audit. For example if the project is a United Kingdom, Government project then there is a standard taxonomy and a classification of entities within that taxonomy.
If a standard exists the task is relatively simple but highly time consuming as it then involves matching the in use taxonomy with the standardise one. However if no standard exists a standard needs to be created. Creating a standard taxonomy is done through domain research. How do other’s of the same domain describe things, at this point it is worth considering ownership of language in the form of brands, trade marks, patients and de facto standards.
Once the entities have been defined with their attributes and all the potential interrelationships then this is combined with or overwrites the content audit to define the new system taxonomy.
However there may be multiple audiences looking at the same content from different perspectives. For example in educational publishing the audiences could be;
- Distributors
- Sellers
- Institutions
- Teachers
- Pupils
- Parents
Each one of these groups will have a very specific context of use, when looking for content, the descriptions they use and understand to find it and their underlying purpose in doing so. In this case they will each require a separate structure around an entity and may require their own version of the taxonomy.
Banking Change Management through User Centred Design (UCD)
There has been massive change management taking place across all sectors of British banking over the last three years. Much of this is driven by buy outs and mergers, some by efficiencies and a little more recently through questioning the nature and controls around risk management.
However simply changing the owner has caused major problems in these banks as their competitive advantage and therefore their value has been an amalgam of very different skilled people, internal processes and market penetration from the bank or group buying them. These internal processes have often evolved in a highly organic method through acquisition and proven delivery often driven by individual people. However once this people based relationship is broken and these processes are exposed to a wider audience they pose serious questions in relation to risk management, value and the continuance of revenue flow.
The standard process applied has been to pass these processes over at division level to change program managers, at department level to business analysts to define the scope of the current structure. After definition many of these process based activities are passed over to information technology to resolve. I remember being taught at University (Napier, Edinburgh) that technology should never be used as a substitute to sound business process; however this technology determinant does not seem to have been passed on to banking business people. While not the best starting point, people who work in technology do tend to ask the right questions, to define epic requirements, even when it’s unpopular with the business.
Information technology analysts take these epic requirements and define an A to Z system 'what it does'. However to get the B to Y user requirements (or stories), a user centred design analyst, ux research and designer spends time with the users to define 'how it works'. This may seem obvious to digital practitioners outside banking, but it’s a revelation to those inside banking and banking technology, that users who normally find ways around poor software are able to define the requirements that turn a useful application into a killer application.
This is not really the end, more a beginning, if other sectors can learn from banking, that users (not stakeholders, usually no longer active users) can determine the overall success of software. And that user centred design (UCD) can assure and amplify competitive advantage if underwritten by skilled practitioners, then the possibility of success is significantly raised in all software and change programs.
Less UX fluff and more Proof of the pudding
In recent years the flaws in user experience design (UX) based in wireframe exercises have become more evident to professional IT people as the business has become flooded with unqualified people.
User experience is the interior designer of the computing world
I recently heard from a Bank that they wanted people with less fluffy thinking, there is a certain perception that user experience design is the interior designer of the computing world. Designers don't need analytics (engineering principals), computer languages (material science), usability testing experience (ergonomics), user research experience (anthropometrics, human behavioural science), business management, project management all they need is colour theory and basic graphics.
Clients should expect measurable proof (KPI's) before development
Because user experience appears to afford a rapid project method, the point is being missed on many expensive projects "diagrams are not proof of delivery", solid KPI's showing the process to form them, what they deliver, how and when they can be measured and what the success criteria is should be required for investment. Businesses rightly need to show that they are not wasting money to shareholders and the public (in the case of publicly owned or supported) but for the most part UX is not based on research but uses design patterns. The problem with design patterns is that there are huge risks associated with using them without doing any primary research. Such research would also provide UX KPI's for businesses.
Who is qualified in UX?
This is a difficult question to answer as no professional body currently represents user experience at a professional level, so in effect anyone can call themselves a user experience designer, architect or consultant. I know a lot of employment agencies get burned by people who can't do the job and digital agencies go through a string of low paid, no experience people. In one case I reviewed an in house UX person's work after the digital agency called me in to smooth out a relationship with a major brand client who said they "would not pay for this crap". The UX person's work was rubbish, wireframe notation non-existent and no functional specification how they expected to pass it to a developer I have no idea. Verbal communication is a key aspect of the job and this person was very shy. From my side I have an MSc in Computer Science and a BA in Design, plus professional qualifications.
Characteristics of UX people
When I interview UX people I look for great communicators who can not only talk about the subject but also about themselves with confidence, who have a wide experience in usability, research and computing (I always use control questions as well, where I know the best practice answer). I look for opinionated people who can back up their views, passionate people (but not falling into the advocacy fight user vs. business) who are balanced and know what to fight for at the right point in a project. I look for logical thinkers and while this might sound easy it’s one of the hardest skills to find. I will usually ask the person to describe an interactive system they have designed as it shows the logic model used and dependencies they have recognised. I also look for professional people, UX people are not rock stars they are service providers. I expect them to be respectful of people and their time, attend planned / booked meetings and advise or change meetings if they are running late. I also expect them to have professional indemnity insurance, why would they not, if they are professionals?
Formal scientific methods, rather than the pseudo science used in marketing
Beyond the above UX people need formal scientific methods, rather than the pseudo science used in marketing that is leaking into UX at the moment. Business people need proof they can show the board of directors sometime just to release the funding more often to show them they are competent. I was heartened recently when a VP from a major consultancy mentioned the use of Ethnographics, I think he was shocked to find out I created the method in 2002 for usability studies as a digital enactment method based upon ethnography. Someone has always created methods (I have created six and defined four key concepts in research) so be careful when you talk about them as you may be talking to their creators.
The proof of the pudding or just a guess and can the business afford the risk?
Scientific methods create repeatable (rigorous; extremely thorough, exhaustive and accurate) results that can be used as the bases of complex interactive systems design without these types of methods is just a guess. In previous years it has been the domain of Managing Directors and Heads of Department to go with their gut feeling about how their customers and clients want to interact with them, now it's UX people. Can businesses really afford to risk so much on the guess of a UX person or would they rather mitigate the risk with some research and KPI's first?
Translate
Switch site
Twitter Updates
- After seeing the http://t.co/3e6fV6UA boom and bust, I know business model is important revenue is critical. http://t.co/df6Kprl2 3 days ago
- I still keep seeing graphic designed UI without any UX thinking so 'Less UX fluff and more Proof of the pudding' http://t.co/NUBfyZfx 6 days ago
- When I did my exec training in the 1990's this sort of thing was described as a key indicator of a disconnect between vision and capability… 1 week ago
- The sad thing with British Airways, I was in T5 trying and failing to book a ticket. I want to buy, they want to sell http://t.co/sg4V6mdR 1 week ago
- British Airways security update stops ticket sales « Karl Smith User Experience Architect (UEA) http://t.co/htJxLsuA via @Digg 1 week ago
- Does the 'have a go' attitude of many companies detract from real digital strategy?: http://t.co/e3KbdQjF 1 week ago
- http://t.co/HYOeiOy3 You don't allow changes during a sprint, you suspend or review tasks and put them back into the backlog, but you... 1 week ago
- Writing strategies for digitalization corporations since 2002 that have business process change, market movement, governance and technology. 1 week ago
- http://t.co/Nfmsw2lO I have been writing stratagies for digitalization for major corporations since 2002. Digital changes every day but... 1 week ago
- http://t.co/5bP9W37b UX research and design can evolve in Agile however the framework should be established 1 or 2 iteration before... 2 weeks ago