Scrum @ BPM

This morning, while waiting for the Office 2007 update, I was reading an article on the future of BPM - BPM in Ten Years? My Best Shot.

The combination of Scrum being implemented at work and BPM as my future professional target resulted in the idea that BPM's next incarnation will be a mixture of Scrum principles and BPM methodology.

To put it in a few more words, using Scrum, the team members are given freedom to choose their own paths to the target presented by the product owner. They act as rational personas and the result is a much more motivated and capable team.

On the other hand, currently there is little flexibility in the implementation of the BPM modelled processes. Very often the improvements are done like little "waterfall" development stages. There is little flexibility and continuation of the improvements.

This is exactly where the Scrum principles can help. They can empower the team members to provide feedback, influence the workflow and continuously improve, improve, improve... But then comes the question of the most proper management style to allow this to happen.

Peace one day

You are either a visionary or a crazy man.

One man is searching for like-minded people. Believing that there could be a simultaneous cease fire. Peace one day. Globally.

Currently, the current normal is that everyone is aggressive.

He keeps on doing it for years.

What is the difference between normal and crazy? Normal is what the majority accepts.

This year I heard about it one day after 21 Septermber

Can we change the majority's perception? Can we find and reach the right majority?

Will I hear it on the date next year? Will I have done something to implement the idea?

I am a TED translator

Today I can proudly tell you that my first TED translation is available. It is the speach about the upcoming singularity by Ray Kurzweil.

I am very happy to have the chance and bring this knowledge to people who are experts in other languages.

Scrum @ home

A few months ago, the department I work in started implementing the Scrum methodology. Then came Lean. We still try to fight our way through the terminology and ideas. However, thanks to our great Scrum mentor, Monika Kovachka-Dimitrova, I am pretty sure that we have a great chance become winners.

In the meanwhile, I've decided to start applying some of the Scrum principles in my personal life. Probably it is due to the smaller scale, but the positive results started flowing right after the first weekend sprint. Even when I involved my family in the planning, the results made me jump for joy.

The morale of the story is the following:
Maybe, after reading Ken Schwaber scrum books, you are still not completely persuaded that scrum works in a strenuous environment. If that is the case, I recommend to give it a try and experiment with your own tasks. I am sure the results will surprise you ;- )))

Being in Madrid and reading Terry Pratchet

There is some strange magic in this combination. The bustling with live and emotions Madrid can give you its own visual interpretations of the Discworld. It can do so to the almost unbelievable degree when you can find the characters and situations from the book on the very streets you are enjoying while sightseeing.

This city bends the universe around its flamenco, corridas, sun and smiling citizens. Even the basic laws of the universe as we know them are distorted by the extremely powerful atmosphere of this city. The easiest example: do you know what does E=mc^2 transforms into?

E=mucho callor^2

With the Making Money as my bed time reading, my experiences from the day get mixed with the magical world. So, my recommendation if you are reading Making Money is to do so while spending money in the midst of the Spain's capital.

Docupedia

Well, the collaboration workspace, the docupedia project that I spoke about, is now live. If you want to see what the next generation of product documentation is, you can go to

and see for yourself.



As one of the main aims is to let you actively collaborate in editing the existing documentation by applying to it your professional experience, you will be asked to register.

After that, the only way is up ;- )))

Birthday Party and Presentation Preparation

Last week was my birthday. Together with this I watched several in house presentation. You might find entertaining the similarities between preparing for a birthday party and a presentation.

who has accepted you invitation / who will participate
what are their tastes / their background
what is the preferred music style / voice and body language
what do you expect as a present (have you prepared it by seeing information to them on what are your preferences) / did you warm up the atmosphere with information that leaked several days upfront

If you can find more such couples, please do share them with us:

Dying by principles in Bruges

If you want to live by some principles, then you have to be careful what principles you choose. You should also beware what are the exit conditions (to disregard these principles) you define. Or at least investigate thoroughly before applying a principle. Cause if you don't, you are a goner for no reason.

To understand what I mean, you have to watch In Bruges. However I do not recommend you do so if you are in a sensitive mood, or with a girlfriend, wife, kids... you get what I mean. This movie is a step higher than Two Smoking Barrels in blood spill, nostalgia and especially regret.

I still do not get it how the city of Bruges has allowed this movie. I shiver even at the thought of going there, not to mention that I do not want to check neither the city square, nor the cathedral, nor nothing...

On BPM Methodology by SAP

Moist von Lipwig (from the Discworld) knows that if you seek successful operations, you should make your products easy to consume.

SAP knows the same. To speed up BPM adoption, they provide their customers with BPM methodology advices available on an SCN Wiki page. There are also other materials that you might find useful.

On the restrictive side of tribal behavior

Today I participated in a very indicative meeting which demonstrated that tribal behavior can restrict communication and exchange of ideas.

One of the topics discussed was how we, in our department, use one of the company-wide systems. There were many proposals and interesting ideas. What stroke me was the assumption that we should find our own workarounds and then think about the implications they will have on the system and the other users.

I pictured ourselves as members of small tribes (departments) in the vast greatness of a dessert (the company system). Even though we all fight to survive (deliver on time), we devise our own solutions and never take advantage of the economies of scale.

This made me feel sad. We are pretty strong in our knowledge of the system, but apparently quite reluctant to share that knowledge with the outside world. Behaving in the opposite direction to what Seth Godin proposes severely diminishes the chances of spreading our ideas.

Sad but True.

Perls, Tribes and Business Processes

Is it possible to say that the following relations are true:

perfect teacher, perfect student, perfect textbook (as in The three golden pearls)

to

perfect common goal and tribe leader, perfect tribe members, perfect tool or communication media (as in Tribes by Seth Godin)

to

process optimization, process members organizational culture, supportive organization/tools/machinery (as in Business Process Driven SOA using BPMN and BPEL)

?

Terry Pratchet on Money. The Matrix. Silly Money.

I never stop amazing at the amount of everyday issues covered in the books of Terry Pratchet. As I was re-reading Going Postal, I enjoyed the examples he gives on money, greed and consequences. Probably you will enjoy it more to find them on your own. I will just hint you here the one that I like the most: "money ... is kind of a shared dream". The magic works until somebody wakes up. Just like in the Matrix. While you sleep - you are fine. When you wake up - you are scared. In the end it is up to you which life or pill you choose.

To keep the smile on your face, here is a link to the wonderful Bird and Fortune explanation of the current Financial Crisis.

Collaboration Workspace

There is a very fluid like connection in my mind from the Tribes, through the post Slack to the community moderators training I am taking part of. Actually, it feels like riding on the crest of a wave. When ready, I would be happy to share a link to this new community with you.

For the moment, a slight hint would be collaboration workspace.

Going Corporate

Junior Postmaster Groat has been in this junior position ever since he has moved one step up the ladder. Actually lower than him is only the apprentice.

This simple Going Postal story reminded me of Cul-de-Sac from The Dip. Even worse is the fact that this symbolic Junior Postmaster is the position probably many of us occupy in some large organization. Our last hope is that there is always hope, as long as we keep searching.

Achievements through sacrifices

Yesterday the temperature difference was especially harsh. I was appropriately dressed, so did not really felt the cold. This fact brought to my mind an interesting thought. I was achieving my short term goal of not catching a cold this day. However, I was tampering my long term objective of strengthening my body through measured dosages of stress. If by some reason I had to bear the cold without my gear, I would be less resilient and perish more easily.

Similarly, to survive an economic crisis, a company should protect itself against the currently harsh conditions (by laying off people, cutting R&D or marketing or HR budget and similar). The important point to keep in mind is the plan how to emerge as a stronger player after the crisis (in this case R&D effectiveness turns out to be a key factor).

This can be summarized as follows:

make a balance between
long term and short term
goals and achievements
and decide which one to sacrifice
(preferably surviving long enough to judge upon viability of our plan)

Guy Kawasaki

A link from Ekaterina's blog lead me to these rules How to Change the World

Apart from having a nice post about a very interesting car (Audi R8) it has some interesting observations on Macintosh history in the making and About information on effective learning. So, I think I will give it a try ;- )))

Language as The barrier to entry

Sometimes "small" things, such as the language you use might prevent your expansion to a new market. This is the case with, in my opinion, the best site for mobile phones tests:
The people who work there are incredible professionals. They always know where to look for details and can help you actually feel what it is to have this phone. As they are pretty strong on their market, they can afford not to adhere to the restrictions of the advertisers and so they provide unbiased opinions.

If by any chance you understand Russian, go and indulge yourself. If not, find somebody who does. The not so full English version of the site is also there. In the extreme case, use Google Translate. Whatever way you choose to go, it will be pity to miss this resource while preparing for the next buy of your phone companion.

The stress surrounding the change

It still amazes me how much stressful a small change can be, even to the extent of willingly returning to the previous and probably less optimal situation. (In addition, the physical attraction to an object that I am used to is something near the end of my understanding.)

Three days ago I have changed my phone with a new one from another manufacturer. My old one was so badly damaged by the years spent in my pocket that some of its more desired functions were not functional anymore. The new one is shiny and have so much new things to get to know. However, the effort it takes to get acquainted with it led me to reevaluation of my decision to start this change. The solution for the moment is to use both of them for the time being.

This is a simple example from my own experience. Nevertheless, it made me think about the feelings of the employees, that are asked by their managers to learn to work with a new version or even a product from a new vendor. I am confident that even if they were enthralled at first, they needed encouragement to keep going.

What could be used in such cases is some mentoring, some positive example and a hope that we can get over the troubles. Even if there is no such example for our specific problem I can bet that a new one would be more than happy to be created by me, you or your friends ;- )))

Prioritization

Last night I was torn between two programs on the television. The first one was on DW-TV about innovation in Germany and the Hasso Plattner Institute (interesting for me as I work for SAP). The other one was the Fight Quest on Discovery Channel (interesting for me as I was a keen practitioner when I was at school).

Both of them were too late at night. Both of them were running almost simultaneously. Both of them were attracting different parts of my attention. I ended up feeling just like in the good old school years with a lot of studying and fighting.

Eventually I made a choice to switch between the channels and to watch both of them. It was just like in real life - dynamically switching between tasks and balancing the priorities.

Dressed for Success - a practical example

People tend to change their attitude towards you based on their perception of your clothes.

To check this statement, I have made a simple experiment.

One day I went to buy fresh bread from the nearby shop, I wore a leather jacket (that actually makes me looks pretty nice). The next time, the morning was particularly cold, so I wore my skate boarding jacket. Interestingly people treated me with more respect when I was with the leather one, even though it is three times cheaper.

The reverse experiment is to go on the skiing slope. You get more respect based only on the correct choice of clothes.

So, no matter where you go, do your research and get dressed for success.

Deutsch lernen

Bill Gates asks on ted.com what makes a good teacher.

I think I know.

Two weeks ago I started studying German. I think that our teacher is an example for a good teacher. With her passion she encourages the whole group to think and learn in the early hours of the day before we start our work. So, if necessary, I can send Bill a video of her lectures ;- )))

good at Lobbying is not equal to good at Inventing

I watched a documentary on a Viasat channel about the Wright brothers. The story describes how they have managed to achieve what others backed by $ 50,000 of government funding could not.

This brought me to the obvious conclusion that:
"Good at Lobbying is not equal to good at inventing, nevertheless it seems that good at lobbying is equal to good at spending."

Check how the government money are used by the big companies during the crisis. It will not become obvious right away. We need to wait till someone involved starts to talk. But it will be just like the Wright brothers story - somebody small, based on enthusiasm will find and implement the solution, while big spenders will charm us with their heroically futile eloquence.

Check the 18 billion in Wall Street bonuses of the top bank managers, who needed urgently government backup... I suppose that they could have lived this year without these money.

Where are the people in BPM?

As I am reading through the second part of the BPM Roadmap, I cannot help but ask myself the question:

"Among so much information about processes and technologies, why there is no information about the people who will actually contribute to this revolutionary evolution?"

Is it just that I have not finished reading the book, or simply the people factor is not on the agenda?

On the first part of the BPM book

Some time ago I finished reading the first, theoretical part of the book BPM: the SAP Roadmap. It reminded me of the good old university years and the textbooks full of theories, history and new ideas. If you are not a believer in BPM, it probably will not manage to persuade you. For this, you will have to read the rest of the book. Probably a couple of independent source of information will prove usable as well.

However, this first part of the book will reveal you the enormous amount of effort behind BPM. You will feel the weight of the million hours of discussions and intellectual investement. The amount of experiments and improvements will finally dawn on you.

As a result you will feel the urge to continue reading it.
Just like I did.

Observations on People

To find out what is the population in a given area are, you should do what explorers are doing while researching different animal species. It is - visit the places where the subjects engage in the basic and most common activities. Simplistically, these activities are: eat (or buy food), drink (or have fun), mate (or have sex) and sleep. Note, that the values in the parenthesis describe the human equivalent to the animal activities.

From time to time I try to do such observations to get an idea about the society around me. Honestly speaking, the results are not promising.

Learning

I love learning.

Sometimes I just read or listen to new sources of information, just to check if they provide something new and interesting. I suppose this is the reason, why I was so happy when my wife pointed me to the UC Berkeley Webcasts

Watching the videos I can almost feel like I am actually there. At times I even feel like the Good Will Hunting.

Is it good, or is it sad?

I do not know. What I know is that I am grateful to the people at UC Berkeley for sharing their knowledge and culture of education with us. I hope to be able to pay them back some time (at least by spreading their cultural values ;- ))).

Confirm your information before acting upon it

One of the many advices in the Yes or No book is that you should research and confirm your information before acting upon it. This is an example of such a situation.

Yesterday I read in Powerful Reports and Proposals an advice about structuring your writing. Today I saw the very same structuring rule applied in the BPM book. This confirmed the theory that it is nice to warn your readers what to expect from the next part of your writing.

After that I prepared this post according to this rule.

TED

This is one of the places I go, whenever I need to convince myself that life is not "all about the money".

This week they are holding their talks in California. Although currently you can view only Bill Gates, one of the other speakers is Shai Agassi. I am anticipating his talk on TED, as he really is a man of vision. What I remember from his time at SAP is his inspiring presence.

If you have the time, my advice to you is - watch it! Even if you do not fully agree with him, you can learn from the passion with which he supports his "ideas worth spreading" and makes us dream with him.

"Let me see you make decisions...

...Without your televisions" - Depeche Mode

(Although I find it strange) I tend to watch television more, when I have to start working on a scary problem.

Based on this observation, lately I had to deal with a lot of such issues, since the last couple of evenings were wasted in front of the tube waiting for an answer...

So, the first phase, the realization of the problem, is successfully passed.

Do I have the courage to move to the next level - buy a book, talk to a friend and make up my mind?

over (DE)centralization

Centralizing the control and knowledge in one point is in effect creating a single-point-of-failure and multiple points willing to relocate to the center. As a result motivation to work is reduced, creativity is restricted by burdening and tangled communication channels,

Over decentralization is equally dangerous. Surprisingly for the very similar reasons.

To me, this rule is equally true for countries, governments and enterprises. I hope to find some guidance how to balance between these two extremities.

Sun smile

This morning, for no particular reason, and despite all the troubles that are pressing my head, the sun in the sky made me smile.

I suppose this is due to the fact, that from the evolutionary theory perspective, we are all children of the sun. A fact to support this is the ease of communication that a single smile can bring.

The sun is behind clouds now, but the memory of it is still alive. I plan to share it with whomever I meet today ;- )))

"Yes" or "No"

"German" or "Chinese"

Sometimes the best motivator is the situation we are dealing with.

For a couple of days I have been wondering which language or learn: German, Chinese or a combination of both. The big problem was that both courses had to start at the same time.

Before taking a decision, I did my preparation according to the guidance of Spencer Johnson's "Yes" or "No". My mind was telling me that I should pick up the useful German. My heart was dragging me towards the "cool" Chinese. As a result I was close to the idea of sparing more time for German and keeping the Chinese as a side dish.

Unfortunately for the Chinese, the organizers turned out to be impolite and I lost my confidence in them. So now I am in a position to study German only and search for a new Chinese language course offering.

Additionally, my next target in mastering the "Yes" or "No" tactics is to take decisions without relying on the circumstances.

"I have no particular talent. I am merely inquisitive." - Albert Einstein

Motivating the Change

I have finished the first, theoretical part of the SAP book about BPM. It contains a very good summary of the history and theory of the matter.

However, one of the strongest summaries of the whole improvement idea is the one from Exupery:



"If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless see"

I have tried to connect it with my experience: persuading separate people to yearn is difficult and requires a lot of tact. It is even more problematic in a large organization as it meets different kinds of resistance on different levels and in different locations.

Well, I am most than willing to assist in helping people yearn about the see. I just hope that more of the people I meet will be able to see the poor elephant in the snake's stomach.

The Dip

At school we were thought that one negative example is enough to invalidate the theory we are trying to prove.

The Dip by Seth Godin is exactly the same example. It shoots at you statements that make you doubt your own behavior. It helps you question the theories supporting your existential philosophy. It is like a real friend supporting you and giving you a hope and advice.

But do not be fooled by the "entertaining book" description on the back cover. A handful of courage to dwell in your deepest motivational factors will not be enough to really entertain yourself and smile at your mistakes. This book will send shivers up and down your spine. But it is for a good reason, as they will help you get through the dip. You can only hope that a fortunate circumstance will face you with it in time before you choose too many wrong battles.

Being Good vs. Being Respected

As a young kid I watched A Bronx Tale movie. One of the many topics is about the borderline between being good to people around you and being respected by them.

The gang boss Sonny had an interesting summary of the survival rules:
You should be tough on people, so that they fear you. At the same time you should be kind to people, so that they need and maybe love you and do not feel urged to kill you. The secret is in the balance between love and hate.

Nowadays, thinking about murder is not among the widespread fears. Nevertheless there are many different forms of deaths in our society. At work your idea might not win if you are not pushy enough. Or if people think you are too light-hearthed even though this is a sign of a life-philosophy (Happy Gilmore) and not a problem solving capability.

Sadly, even though we are mostly not living in a gangster environment, we are still guided by such rules.

The Original Zebra

It is Madagascar time again. The focus this time will be on the existentially confused Zebra. He is enjoying and dreaming of the colorful world. Yet, he is trapped by the impossibility to answer the quesiton:

"Am I a black Zebra with white stripes
or white zebra with black stripes?"

Can somebody help him answer it?

What do you mean? What did you say?

Have you ever wondered why people stare at you with those special empty look, silently conveying to you that they got lost somewhere in your words? What is even worse, as you can not get the precious "empty look" feedback, is to have some of your writings being misunderstood. I suppose this is the reason, why in most cases I prefer the face to face dialogues.

Some time ago, my wife found an interesting sounding book:
Powerful Reports and Proposals.
It deals with corporate communication. The interesting aspect is that most of the observations are true for the off-work interrelations as well. Probably it is due to the fact that after all we are all people.

Nevertheless, if you see some improvement in my writing, then you should know that this book is a good one.