With all the buzz around the iPhone, I've started thinking about what is getting people so excited. Jobs and Apple are masters at creating the buzz, but what is it about their products that people connect with?
The answer lies in their approach to consumer products. Technology companies (from VCRs to cellphones) have conditioned us to think of technology as something that can give us something we want, but for a price. I can record television shows, but it's impossible to set the clock; I can make a cell phone call, but I have to search through a thousand menus to store a phone number. The classic example is Microsoft's impossible error messages.
Along comes Apple and says, "Here: it does what you want/need it to AND it's fun." Mac users have known this for years, but what I think is interesting is that business is waking up to the idea that fun is not only OK, but maybe even preferred at work.
I've been leading an Agile (see previous post) team of software developers lately and one of the most intriguing things about their methods is how fun is consciously part of the plan. We invited our CTO to our weekly post-mortem meeting (what an unfun name) and he couldn't get over how much fun it was (see his post here).
And it's not fun that exists as a diversion to allow us to continue doing our (unfun) jobs for longer hours, it's an integral part of the way in which we work. It's an acknowledgment that we've chosen a field because we enjoyed something about it; let's not strip all of that enjoyment out, now that we're getting paid to do it.
It's also a recognition of the fact that happy people who are enjoying themselves are more productive. And from Apple's perspective, making people happy is good business.
Showing posts with label Agile. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Agile. Show all posts
Monday, July 9, 2007
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Back to Agile
One of the reasons that I started this blog was that I found myself doing a lot of reading and talking about Agile development. Agile is a term for a group of software development methodologies (see here for more info) that we've been trying out here at Kaplan.
and then of course, I started reading fiction again and that was the end of that.
One of the things I like about Agile is that it is (like a blogger) enormously reflective. One of the principles is that the process is totally transparent and open for discussion and improvement. To facilitate that, we have a weekly process improvement meeting called a Kaizen, a Japanese concept taken from the Toyota engineering process.
At our last Kaizen, our CTO attended and was incredibly energized by it. He blogged about it on his blog and has been talking about adopting some of the practices in his weekly meetings.
To keep this short, here are my favorite parts:
1) Energy - people put their picks for best and worst aspects of the past week on the wall with sticky notes. So everyone has to get out of their chairs and walk to the wall, avoid everyone else and stick their notes to the wall. We then vote on the notes and everyone dances around everyone else to get to the notes they want to vote on.
2) Democracy - The worst meetings are the ones where someone is deciding what will be discussed and the people attending are not interested. At the Kaizen, we talk about issues raised by the people attending in the order that they voted. The people set the agenda.
3) Openness - We start the meeting with the prime directive which states that the purpose of the meeting is to improve everyone's process and not to blame anyone for things that went badly. This frees people up to talk about the good and the bad.
4) Timeliness - It's weekly, so we're identifying and addressing issues right when they come up and not letting them fester or get forgotten.
Stay tuned for more agility in coming posts
and then of course, I started reading fiction again and that was the end of that.
One of the things I like about Agile is that it is (like a blogger) enormously reflective. One of the principles is that the process is totally transparent and open for discussion and improvement. To facilitate that, we have a weekly process improvement meeting called a Kaizen, a Japanese concept taken from the Toyota engineering process.
At our last Kaizen, our CTO attended and was incredibly energized by it. He blogged about it on his blog and has been talking about adopting some of the practices in his weekly meetings.
To keep this short, here are my favorite parts:
1) Energy - people put their picks for best and worst aspects of the past week on the wall with sticky notes. So everyone has to get out of their chairs and walk to the wall, avoid everyone else and stick their notes to the wall. We then vote on the notes and everyone dances around everyone else to get to the notes they want to vote on.
2) Democracy - The worst meetings are the ones where someone is deciding what will be discussed and the people attending are not interested. At the Kaizen, we talk about issues raised by the people attending in the order that they voted. The people set the agenda.
3) Openness - We start the meeting with the prime directive which states that the purpose of the meeting is to improve everyone's process and not to blame anyone for things that went badly. This frees people up to talk about the good and the bad.
4) Timeliness - It's weekly, so we're identifying and addressing issues right when they come up and not letting them fester or get forgotten.
Stay tuned for more agility in coming posts
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