The power of “The”

I have never come across any information about how usage of definite article can affect market. At that, such an influence can sometimes become very, very efficient.

Before “The Social Network” movie became an Oscar-winner, there were a lot of social networks across the Internet. Now there exists “The Social Network” – Facebook.com, and when you hear ”social network”, your brain most likely helpfully provides you with a Facebook image. Great win for Facebook and great loss for other social networks, be they competitors of Facebook or not.

Another well-known example of how the definite article can be used, is the brilliant VW logo: “Das Auto”. After such a logo was registered by Volkswagen, all the other car manufacturers should have curtailed their businesses to start manufacturing something else, not cars.

Certainly, just registering your product as “The” product is not enough, first of all you definitely need to have a really good product. However, there are a lot of really good products, and not a few of them happen to become “The” products.

I’m trying to ponder on how to make a product worthy of “The” article.

As we have already noticed, just being good or even perfect does not guarantee to a product “The”-worthiness. Why? Can’t we think up a set of measurable (at least – partly measurable) must have parameters of “The” product? For example, length and height; or speed and fuel consumption; or number of dialog screens and buttons. Looks rather silly, doesn’t it? Unfortunately we cannot measure attraction. VW makes good cars, but they are not the best ones in the world. Nobody deceives himself about that; however “Das Auto” logo applied to VW production looks absolutely fine to us. We accept an image of VW car or of the Facebook social network as “The”-worthy. So, we operate with images rather than with real measurable products.

This way we enter the field of image-thinking (relative information can be found in the Web or in books, for instance: "Overcoming modernity: synchronicity and image-thinking" ). High quality advertising stuff impacts your subliminal consciousness rather than your brain, and it is exactly about effecting humans’ image-thinking.

So, what should we do to implant “The” image of our product into minds of our possible clients? Bad news is: Nobody knows. However, there exists good news also: At least we consider it an issue and we think about it.

To my shame, I have only one idea on the matter. The idea is simple and almost obvious: To make my clients accept “The”-image of my product, I first of all have to think out the concept of the product, to design the product, to develop, to market and to sell it with this “The”-image of the product in my head. Without my own dead certainty that my new product is “The”-worthy, there is no chance to convince somebody of the same.

Any other ideas?

(2be OR 2outsource) OR NOT (2be OR 2outsource). That is the question

Fortunately, most often the dilemma does not look like “To outsource or not to be”. However, it easily might sound like “To outsource or not to grow”, and that is a real issue.

Why are we so afraid to outsource software development? Okay, maybe not afraid, let’s say we are cautious and uneasy about outsourcing. Anyway, it does not really matter how we name our feelings that result in avoiding outsourcing. The avoidance matters. Is this avoidance justified or not? Is it right or wrong? Do we lose or win?

To be more specific, let us take a case. Let me be a company owner, and let’s assume my company needs a piece of software to be developed. I do not have available personnel to undertake the development of this software. Maybe I have developers in my staff but all of them are now busy working on other tasks, or maybe I do not have any developers at all, it’s not the point. The point is: I need software to be developed, and I do not have anybody in my staff to do it. What are the options? Obviously, there are two of them: to hire new developer(s) or to outsource this development. To choose a right option I could begin drawing a pros/cons table, but I would rather skip this step because all the pros and cons are evident. All in all my choice depends on how I plan to use the new piece of software:

1. Either I plan this new software to be in the focus of my business (like I am Microsoft, and the piece of software is a new word processor);
2. Or this software is not in the focus of my business, and I plan to concentrate on other things: on other software, or on absolutely different things like e-trade, or real estate, or building airplanes.

If I am in the situation #1, I would never outsource this development. If #2 is my situation, than I do not see any fundamental reasons not to outsource.

So, if given just in facts, without any emotions, the decision looks simple and obvious. Why is it not so obvious, when we add emotions, and what are these emotions? I would say the main emotion is fear. You may call it uneasiness, caution or even prudence, but basically it is just fear, just a fear of something new and untested. Not a lot, a usual human fear one experiences times and times during his/her life: while entering school, or joining the university, or attending for new job, or visiting countries different in language and culture, etc. We always are able to overcome this fear of new and untested, so let us do it in this case also.

May I suggest considering an analogous situation. Imagine a gentleman who has never ordered custom tailor made shirts. Always before his mother used to sew his shirts when he was a boy, and then he began buying his shirts in a store as he became older. And now this gentlemen needs to have perfect custom made shirt. I do not know why, maybe for his wedding ceremony, or he is a pianist and he is preparing for his upcoming first concert at Carnegie Hall. It does not matter why, but he understands that he needs a perfect shirt, and he has three options:

• His mother is still alive, and he can ask her to sew a shirt for him;
• He can go to a store and buy a best fitting shirt there;
• He can order a custom made shirt.

First two options are well known and proven, however the gentleman is not sure that choosing one of them he will get the needed result: his mother is rather old, and she does not know much about modern fashion, about styles, trends and so on; as for a store, even in a good one you are not guaranteed to find a shirt that perfectly fits you, that is of a desired color, made of a desired fabric with desired buttons, etc. Thus our gentleman turns to custom made shirts. What about fear? Yes, he is a little bit scared: he has never ordered his shirts at a tailor workshop, and he is not sure whether they would do it perfectly, or maybe they will just waste his money; whether they will be on time for his wedding (concert); whether they will need some excessive boring control from his side. Yes there are concerns, so what? Do these concerns totally stop our gentleman from ordering his shirt? No, why should they! It is quite a standard situation, and he knows what to do: he uses references, word of mouth and generally available information to choose a “right” workshop, a workshop he can trust.

Yes, we’ve found it! Here it is this key word: TRUST. It is trust that makes it possible to overcome fear in such situations of uncertainty and lack of information.

Real confidence can be gained only through real experience, we all know this. So, the more shirts you order at a given workshop, the more experience you have, and this experience defines the level of trust. Moreover, each your next shirt is potentially better because you yourself become more and more experienced in the issues of what to pay attention at, how to manage the interim procedures of measurement and of trying your shirts on, etc.

What about software development outsourcing? Absolutely the same, no difference at all: we are frightened to start due to lack of confidence. So, we need some minimal initial level of trust enough to make a first step, and we can get this initial level by requesting and examining credentials, references, and proven success stories from potential vendors. For instance, as to my taste, I am very fond of a success story of long-term business relationships between my own company and our US customer Better World Books company. For more than 7 years already we are moving forward tohether on developing the Indaba project, and here are some footprints: http://inrecolan.com/ourexperience/successstories/124-1,

http://inrecolan.com/howwework/testimonialsnawards/108-1,

http://inrecolan.com/howwework/testimonialsnawards/107-1, http://inrecolan.com/newsnarticles/companynews/269-1 .

Certainly, ordering a piece of software is not absolutely the same as ordering a shirt, so in addition to obtain a definite level of confidence, we also need to pay attention to the specifics of software development. Before starting an outsourced software development, we have to carefully think out all the development processes and to prepare accordingly. It’s not a rocket science, it’s a usual organizational activity that must be done. We need to understand that dealing with outsourced development (either onshore or offshore, no difference) is not the same as dealing with on-site development. In short: we have to have a manager assigned from our side as well as a perfectly organized development and communication processes. To be more specific:

• depending on the project, there can be used either RUP-like (MSF-like) fully documented methodology or Agile techniques;
• no doubts that all the developed source code, as well as project data, sketches, drawings, manuals, documents, records, databases, programs, etc., is always owned by customer;
• repository can be located either at the customer’s or at the vendor’s premises. As for development environment, in addition to development tools there should be utilized version control system and project management tools (for example, SVN and Redmine or maybe other ones: VSS, Mercurial, Git, Microsoft TFS, etc.);
• reputable vendor should provide full cycle of analysis/development/testing procedures.

This way, after eliminating initial fears, you come to usual professional business relationships, and you are able to utilize software development outsourcing to grow your business.

Facing Crisis. Facing About in Business Behavior

What’s good in crisis, it helps us to get rid of unnecessary things, habits and rules. Let’s take an example of common life. For instance, I am used to visit a Starbucks once a day to sit there sipping a coffee and thinking about how to set the world to rights. Now imagine I’ve got a problem that requires all my attention. What about my everyday visits to Starbucks? No doubts, I would totally forget about them, being fully absorbed into solving current issues. Any losses? No, just acquisitions: more time for real life, less blood sugar, and besides readings of the scale become more pleasing. Very similar things happen with business behavior in crisis times: good chance to give up weird unnecessary habits in favor of more real productive work.

One of the questionable things in crisis times becomes competition in its traditional understanding. I have already mentioned strange advertising techniques we use in our battle against competitors. However, although they look really weird, these methods still are among the most harmless and neutral means of struggle. We all are used to consider business as a real battle, with its winners and losers, with acquisitions and toll, with gains and trophies. Thus, “competitor” becomes almost equal to “enemy”, and “win the competition” equates to “beat competitors” or “crush competitors”. The point is: our success is supposed to be success against somebody. Yes, it might be challenging, yes, it might be exciting, however I believe this violent against is a bit excessive even in “normal times”, to say nothing of “crisis times”. Aikido philosophy of harmony is much more natural to my mind: if somebody or something threatens your existence, be able to manage this threat without doing harm to a threatening party.

Human being is a really strange creature: for the most part, in normal calm times we are selfish, aggressive and focused on approbation, but in tough times we strangely become more sensitive, more helpful and more human. Some kind of compensation? Maybe it is; or just result of getting rid of unnecessary things alien to one's nature. Anyhow, my point is that this social shift been projected to business might be of great benefit in this time of crisis and uncertainty.

Businesses are able to help each other. It is undoubtedly true for non-competing businesses, however it remains true for companies working in the same field, i.e. for competitors. We all are aware about lack of clients and lack of projects. If you got to know about some bid for job not fitting your own needs, why not share this information? Possible concerns about strengthening your competitor are out of time, now it is just help. What is good about helping people: it is strongly symmetric relation. If you are helping somebody, others will be helping you. Not exactly as it is understood in math: those helping you might differ from those whom you help yourself, but in general it works.

Got other ideas about applying the humane shift to business? Let’s talk about it and put into practice what we find.

Laozi says in the famous Verse 38 of his Tao Te Ching:

WHEN WE LOSE THE WAY, WE TURN TO VIRTUE.

WHEN WE LOSE VIRTUE, WE TURN TO KINDNESS.

WHEN WE LOSE KINDNESS, WE TURN TO MORALITY.

WHEN WE LOSE MORALITY, WE TURN TO RITUAL.

RITUAL IS THE MERE HUSK OF GOOD FAITH AND LOYALTY

AND THE BEGINNING OF DISORDER.

Usually our relationships in business balance at the lowest level between DISORDER and RITUAL. Now we have a chance to upgrade them to MORALITY or, with a bit of luck, even to KINDNESS.

Facing Crisis 2. Rules of Promotion

In the context of this narrative it makes sense to divide lifecycle of any company into two types: normal periods of time and crisis time periods, these time spaces changing one another more and more frequently during recent decades.

Promoting its business within normal time periods, a company behaves as usual, and “as usual” means – according to some standard rules. From the very start let us disregard deviations (liars, cheaters, charlatans, etc.) and speak only about companies practicing conscientious approach to business. Thus, I am not discussing business ethics, let’s take it for granted.

We are so accustomed to the rules of promotion in regular business, that strangeness of these rules is not noticed. For instance, the rules make me saying here and there (the more frequent the better) that my company is the best one, that it beats all the competitors in all the main items, that we provide customers with unique services using our unique experience and expertise best available at the market. Quite recognizable, isn’t it? I bet it is. Do I tell the truth? No, certainly not. So, am I lying? I would answer equivocally: all the businesses do so, and I play according to the rules. We all have got accustomed to those rules, though a great number of them are really ridiculous. It is well known, for instance, that different companies while promoting competing products of the same niche use almost the same advertising texts. Moreover, these similar texts are rather stupid very often. The heroes of commercials urge us to speak, for example, to our hair or to dirt on a carpet (“Say NO to dandruff!”, “Say NO to stains!”), and nobody seems to be surprised. Why? – Because nobody really cares: such are the rules, and you are welcome to say any rubbish since nobody really listens to you, and texts in your commercials are just signs that your company exists and is ready to serve its clients.

Thus, a client automatically translates heaps of exaggerations and oddities of your promotional stuff into just a few simple and clear signs, and nothing is lost in this translation. In fact, the resulting signs just define the layer you belong to as a vendor. Every kind of business is naturally subdivided into a few layers each of them containing companies of almost equal qualities and capabilities. Layers differ from each other in “scale”: volume and level of provided services, popularity of brand, annual turnover, etc. So, signs coded in your promos show which layer you belong to. Client reads this information and then decides whether you seem a perfect representative of the layer or not. If yes – good for you, you are chosen! If no – you hardly has a chance to change the client’s mind.

Very simple. Then why do we use so much efforts and money to code our clear signs into bizarre commercials? Such are the rules, the rules for normal periods of time in business lifecycle. What about crisis time periods, should we comply to the same rules? I doubt we really have to. For more details see my next post.

Facing Crisis

One of the most popular subjects in the Web is still the world financial crisis. Quite understandable why: directly or indirectly it affects lives of billions of people. And, no doubt, we are among those billions. Saying “we” I now mean those involved in business, more precisely – into software development business and software development outsourcing.

We observe that the world around us really changes, and the question is, what is the real impact of these massive shifts onto software business?

According to Wikipedia, Seeger, Sellnow and Ulmer give four defining characteristics of crisis. Such an event:

1. Is unexpected,
2. Creates uncertainty,
3. Is seen as a threat to important goals,
4. Causes need for changes.

Okay, in our everyday life we meet quite a lot of unexpected difficulties that create uncertainty rather often, and we do not call such situations crises, just issues or problems. So, it seems to me that discussing crisis we should focus only on the items #3 and #4: threat to important goals and need for changes.

As for important goals that are threatened, the software business as any other business has the same goal – sustainability, and crisis jeopardizes continuous attainment of this goal. Threat to this goal motivates us to struggle, and here we approach to #4: need for changes.

So, what can we change and how should we do it to fit new reality? Is there anything specific for our business?

Basically, in this context I do not see any dramatic difference between software business and any other business of the – say – rear echelon, not affected by the crisis directly like mortgage companies. All of us suffer because our clients forget about us: they now have a lot of more valuable things to think about, and thus all the additional non first-aid services or products are not asked for.

It looks like clients just vanish. Our services are still of good quality, they are even cheaper than they were yesterday, but nobody shows a bit of desire to buy them. When McDonald’s found itself unable to sell beef-based Big Mac in India, they were in better situation, since Hindu people worshipping cow and thus hating Big Mac, still had money and were eager to buy something from the world-known brand. So, McDonald’s just changed beef for lamb (or for chicken), “Big Mac” for “Maharaja Mac”, and – that’s it: clients purchase these new Macs and pay money for them. Somewhat different is now with our clients: they just do not take any notice of us.

What is regular market at non-crisis times? Crowd of clients and crowd of vendors. Clients are interested in being aware of the services and products they might get from the vendors, and in general, clients are ready to purchase some services and products. Vendors also behave in their usual manner jumping up and down on the spot, pushing competitors apart, raising their hands and screaming “Choose me, I obtain perfect skills and expertise!”, or “Choose me, I will do it cheaper!”, or “Choose me, I am guru in PM!”, or “Choose me, I am better educated!”, or whatever else. Now it’s all the same except that almost all clients are absorbed in their own thoughts and do not look at the crowd of vendors at all.

It turns out that habitual jumping, screaming and handing competitors off is not a good idea now. It does not work for this new crisis-affected market. Time to rethink models of behavior? My suggestions for it to follow later, in the next post.

Presumption of intellect

I’d like to talk about yet another obvious public trend, opposite to the main vogue in choosing SLCM for a software development project.

Have you noticed that different institutions, be they business or governmental units, while communicating with people presume people’s foolishness from the very start? Just try to place your inquiry or claim to, for instance, a bank, or to a phone company, or to a local or federal government, and you instantly would feel yourself complete idiot. Having no real choice, you will be routed through unnecessary silly options, you will be forced to answer silly questions having nothing to do to your exact inquiry, etc.

As is customary, all this is covered up by striving for universality mixed with concerns about enough level of political correctness. Those guys who make decisions just say “We need to communicate with everybody regardless of race, age, sex, health, etc!” So far so good. However, the next decision “Whoever we talk to, let us do it in absolutely the same way!” is quite disputable. You cannot talk to all people in absolutely the same way. It’s obvious, because people differ greatly in their educational level, in their abilities to quickly absorb new information, in their current emotional state, etc., etc., etc. So, to make communication effective and comfortable to the both parties, reasonable gradation of possible audience should be presumed. Unfortunately, those who should do it, never trouble themselves. They rather prefer to consider all the people being at the lowest possible level of intelligence, and thus all the standard options and questions in surveys and in standard dialogues are intended for people on the brink of mental illness.

The result is disastrous, since in fact the brink of mental illness is suggested as the norm for the human society. Just have a look at the vast majority of sitcoms, of commercials, of movies, of fiction books, etc. All this cultural junk food is intended for “normal” members of human society, i.e. (see above) - for the people on the brink of mental illness.

Little by little the society accepts these understated norms, and little by little society becomes sillier and sillier in average. On the contrary: If norms were just a bit overstated, the society would have moved forward to be cleverer and cleverer in average. It’s easy: Try to talk to a person as if he is fool, and you will talk to a fool; try to talk to a person in a clever manner, and you will talk to a clever enough and reasonable individual.

So, what am I talking about? Strange though it may seem, I am getting at software. Absolutely the same excellent result of choosing presumption of intellect rather than presumption of stupidity can be seen in managing software development projects. Try to behave with your customer as with an idiot and you get a non-reasonable, stupid and very difficult customer. Behave with a customer as you would prefer others behave with you (i.e. in a clever way), and you get reasonable, interesting and efficient partner in working on the project. I think, it is one of the main reasons why the software community slowly shifts to use the Agile model, whatever is meant by “Agile” in each particular case and whichever related practices are used.

Rules for Agile wanted

Agile, Lean, Kanban and kindred software practices present different variations on the same theme: How to do software development more effective, i.e. how to provide customers’ happiness with more confidence.

At that, to large extent, lean/agile approach for software development still remains just an idea. It can be called culture, but anyway now it is more about general understanding, about attitude, about something in one’s mind, so let’s call it idea. Interesting, good and prospective, however just an idea. It works perfectly for development teams consisting of almost equal members, each of them of high knowledge, high creativity and high productivity. No doubts that for such an ideal team working for a reasonable customer lean/agile approach seems to be a perfect choice. Unfortunately, 99% of teams are not ideal. For instance, a non-ideal team can be of a following structure:

• creative, knowledgeable and skilled team lead,
• ¼ of the team is creative and skilled,
• ¼ of the team is more creative than skilled,
• ¼ of the team is more skilled than creative,
• ¼ of the team lacks creativeness and skills, however these guys are sufficiently responsible and diligent.

Range of “non-ideality” of a development team can vary substantially, that is why we need definite clear rules of thumb to organize lean/agile processes for an average team.

Similar rules for widely used SLCMs are well known. Certainly, these rules are not carved in stone, and mostly they even do not exist as written lists of regulations. These rules are defined indirectly, being backed by something very well thought out like sets of standard documents/records that should be kept throughout the project and/or sets of special software to support all the stages of the SLC. It is true for the waterfall model as well as for the iterative one implemented by RUP/IBM or by Microsoft.

Existent rules not only make it possible for an average team to deal with a project, but they also eliminate misunderstandings and disputes between developers and customers: The both sides have the same landmarks from the very beginning. Absence of such reference points in the current agile projects is supposed to be compensated by flexibility both of the developer and of the customer as well as by common sense of the parties. Sounds more feasible than it really is for an average development team and an average customer.

So, what we need now to make lean/agile approach really applicable widely in software development projects is backing of this idea by clear rules. This situation can be compared to the early automotive era: Newly invented cars are able to move faster than pedestrians and coaches, that is why we are now trying to use these new vehicles, but it is difficult to drive a car along the roads because there are no traffic laws considering cars, and thus, we easily stir resentment of passengers, pedestrians, coachmen and policemen.