Modern Agile vs. traditional and rigid

Admin on 31/01/2018

Modern Agile vs. traditional and rigid

Make people awesome vs. make people fight to be successful

When people often have to fight the organisation in order to let it do the job it hired them to do, how do we create an atmosphere where people feel able to offer their skills and experience to other teams, are empowered to choose the highest impact work, and focus on work that adds real value for customers?

Make safety a prerequisite vs. a culture of risk-aversion

When in a traditional organisation, in a traditional industry, where reputational damage and avoiding any risk of losing customer trust is the greatest concern, how do we help people develop a sense of emotional and professional safety where it’s ok to challenge others, to make mistakes, and try things that help us learn?

Deliver value continuously vs. launch it & leave it

When there’s always something new to be moving onto, another new project or product to launch, how do we build things in a way that means we can develop and improve them to better meet customers changing needs and increase the value we provide?

Experiment and learn rapidly vs. write a business case and get approval

When the process for any new venture is to write a business case, gain support, and get approval from all the right people, how do we move to quickly setting-up experiments so we can learn what customers want and what might work before we put considerable time and effort into building something?

Weeknotes #77

Admin on 26/01/2018

What happened this week…

  • Improved links to Eatwell plates from the main BHF website.
  • Spoke to the Social Media team about creating event Facebook Shops.
  • Met with the Event Team to discuss their requirements for an order management system.
  • Set sales targets for next financial year.
  • Met with the PR team about a new opportunity.
  • Set up London to Brighton Clothing to take pre-orders.
  • Wrote requirements for Brand Refresh.
  • Set up our new camera.
  • Created new events merchandise promo boxes
  • Worked on the requirements for implementing the AX interfaces in Magento.
  • Set up the South Downs Way Bike Ride Travel Tickets.
  • Reviewed IDD’s for the AX / Magento interface.

Read this week…

Doing next week…

  • Discussing the rebranding of the Online Shop.
  • Reviewing Interface Design Documents for the interfaces between AX and the warehouse.
  • Playing with a demo of Magento 2.
  • Working on the requirements for implementing the AX interfaces in Magento.
  • Photographing Pin Badges and Wedding Favours.
  • Reviewing Functional Solution Documents to de-scope functionality.

Interesting stat of the week…

  • Desktop users use Search more than Mobile users (5.2% to 2.4%), but Mobile users search more effectively with Mobile Users spending 150% more time on the site after a search, and Mobile Users search depth 65% higher than Desktop User.

In the not too distant future….

  • New product photos

Signing-up for a discount code: the winners and losers

Admin on 25/01/2018

Let’s say you visit an ecommerce website, and up pops a little box that says something like, ‘Subscribe to our newsletter to get 10% discount’. You think to yourself, ‘That sounds like a good deal’, so you enter your email address. And, just as promised, an email arrives with a discount code.

Pop-up coupon

In that simple interaction there are some interesting negotiations and value exchanges going on. The website wants your email address so they can market to get you to buy from them. You might want to buy from them so getting a discount sounds like a good thing to you. Who wins and who loses?

Scenario 1

You ignore the offer and click the x to close the box. Nobody gains or losses anything, but there is failure to gain on both sides. The website didn’t get your email address and you didn’t get a discount code.

Scenario 2

You enter your email address and receive the discount code, but don’t use it as you decide not to purchase from this site. The website makes a little win as they have your email address to market to you in the future, but they didn’t get the bigger win of an order from you. You didn’t win as didn’t get what you were looking for (unless maybe you bought it elsewhere) and you had a little loss as you handed over your email address (but of course you could unsubscribe later).

Scenario 3

You enter your email address and receive the discount code, and place an order using the discount code. The website wins as they got an order (presumably with a margin they can accept) and got your email address to market to you later. You win as you purchased the item you wanted at a discount price.

This kind of cooperative/competitive game play is interesting. Are website owners setting out to create win-win situations with their customers? With a bit of research to understand how customers are approaching a website it isn’t too difficult to understand those value exchanges and create opportunities that help everyone achieve their goals.

Learning a framework for playing Go Fish

Admin on 24/01/2018

I played my first ever game of Go Fish, taught by a ten year old girl who didn’t just teach me how the game works but also showed me a method she had created for making it easier for her to keep track of the sets of cards she’s playing with.

Go fish

She lays the cards face down in a line, left to right, aces to kings, leaving gaps for the cards she doesn’t have, meaning that with a glance she can know which cards she is trying to collect. It helps her focus on the playing of the game as her system keeps track of her cards.

As Go Fish is a game that rewards honesty and cooperation, having the cards visible to other players isn’t a problem, and in fact means that her framework for playing offers a way for deaf and hard of hearing people to play. They don’t need to be able to hear the other players asking for cards and in fact the game can be played in complete silence. When it’s a players turn to ask if any of the other players have a card they can just lift up a card from their row to show to the others. And if they have any of the requested card they hand them over, and then the next player does the same.

It’s a programmers mindset; creating a framework that enables you to solve a problem in a logical and repeatable way. I was very impressed.

Weeknotes #76

Admin on 19/01/2018

What happened this week…

  • Photographed and set up Gifts From The Heart products.
  • Began writing requirements and defining logic for the RMSP interfaces between AX and Magento.
  • Completed a Data Privacy Impact Assessment for the Ecommerce business.
  • Planned marketing for the Gifts From The Heart range.
  • Held the Ecommerce Management Meeting for January.
  • Began writing our defibrillator project plan and marketing strategy.
  • Got Photoshop to improve our product photography.
  • Brainstormed what the new clothing range would look like.
  • Looked at cameras to improve our product imagery.

Read this week…

Doing next week…

  • Discussing chatbots with the Social Team.
  • Planning our new clothing range with the new branding.
  • Meeting to discuss the website rebrand project.
  • Writing more requirements for the interfaces between AX and Magento.
  • Refining the requirements for the rebuild of the Online Shop.
  • Meeting the PR team to talk about a possible new project.
  • Planning for Wear It. Beat It.
  • Improving category page meta tags.
  • Planning sales targets for next year.

Interesting stat of the week…

  • Comparing desktop traffic with mobile, customers using desktop purchased 52.6% of all the units sold in 2017, whilst mobile users purchased 28.5% of all units. And the average order value for desktop users is 34% higher than for mobile users.

In the not too distant future….

  • Analysing customer phone contacts.

Highlights from ’11 Laws of Product Development’ by Sean Johnson

Admin on 19/01/2018

Highlights from ’11 Laws of Product Development’

“Wasting months of your life and thousands of dollars of other people’s money to solve a problem you’re not sure exists is insanity.”

“De-risk your problem hypothesis as soon as you can. Be rigorous about it. And be 100% honest with yourself as you receive feedback. Iterate on the problem and solution hypotheses until you’ve found something people get legitimately interested in.”

“New solutions have to either be dramatically better than the status quo, or have to completely reimagine the experience to dislodge an incumbent and carve out space.”

“Identify the 1 or 2 things your product needs to do to be better than everyone else.”

“Spend most of your energy there. Iterate on it until that functionality is world class. Only add ancillary functionality if your customers are yelling at you.”

“Treat the onboarding process as an essential part of the core experience.”

“Ideally have it assist in the user creating content or completing whatever activity maximizes their chance of adoption.”

“The first version of your product is going to be wrong.”

“Users won’t understand the value proposition, or they will but will find it too hard to sign up, or they’ll sign up but not engage further, or they’ll engage further but not convert from free to paid. Expect it. Plan for iteration.”

“One benefit of focusing on the core experience is it can speed up your time through the Build-Measure-Learn loop.”

“All other things being equal, the company that can iterate on their product in response to customer feedback the fastest will usually win.”

“Have a plan for engaging with your early customers throughout their journey. Make sure you know exactly what they do, what they think, what they like and what they don’t.”

“Product teams should be aggressively iterating on their product until P-M fit is achieved.”

What if driving followed Modern Agile principles?

Admin on 17/01/2018

How might driving on UK roads look if everyone was applying Modern Agile principles to their driving?

Modern Agile

Make people awesome

Everyone wants to get where they’re going. If driving was Agile, and all drivers were trying to make each other awesome, there would be more cooperative driving where everyone has as their aim helping everyone get where they’re going, rather than focusing on where they want to go ahead of all the other drivers. Everyone would arrive where they wanted to go feeling less stressed and more awesome from helping others get where they wanted to go.

Make safety a prerequisite

Everyone wants to be stay alive. If everyone made safety a prerequisite of driving, everyone would always wear a seat belt, not use mobile phones, or drink and drive, and keep sufficient stopping distance between them and the car in front. Everyone, drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians, would be treated with more respect, feel more respect, and be much safer.

Experiment and learn rapidly

Everyone wants the best experience. If everyone experimented with what routes they take, what time they travel, what music they listen to, what they wear whilst driving, etc., etc. they could improve their experience of driving. Everyone would drive less on habit and learn different ways to improve their experience of driving.

Deliver value continuously

Everyone gets more out of driving than just getting somewhere. If everyone who valued fuel economy knew how to drive efficiently they would receive continuous value in reduced fuel costs, and there would be environmental value too. If everyone who valued nice scenery over shorter journeys took more scenic routes, they would receive their value in seeing different landscapes and add value to the drivers who want shorter journey times by avoiding more direct routes. Different values can be delivered continuously and concurrently.

This quick thought experiment taught me two things; Modern Agile principles could be applied to almost any set of circumstances where human beings are doing some kind of shared activity, and, in order to actually work, all those people need to be able to communicate and agree to use all the principles.