Southern BITS of Technical Goodness

In order to create user centric applications / solutions, we must keep users in mind. One of the best ways to do that is by designing software using “personas” – fictitious yet concrete representational users.

Pragmatic Personas: Putting the User back in User Stories

Presented by Jeff Patton on Dec 23, 2009 [ INFOQ ] [ LINK TO VIDEO ]

Summary
Jeff briefly reviews the different ways that software is currently built and then describes how to create and use user personas to design and build software that has a better user experience. Jeff walks us through how to collaboratively build a user persona, what a user persona should include, and how to use these personas to write user scenarios that end up as user stories wit.

What are personas?

Wikipedia has a nice entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persona_%28marketing%29

Personas are fictional characters created to represent the different user types within a targeted demographic that might use a site or product. Personas are useful in considering

1. the goals,
2. desires,
3. and limitations

of the users in order to help to guide decisions about a product, such as features, interactions, and visual design.

According to this blog [darmano] personas:

Personas often combine narratives and sometimes scenarios that often go into great detail to paint a plausible profile which looks at a person’s motivations, goals, mindset, wants, needs, desires etc.  And often times, personas are often cross-channel—taking a holistic look at the entire consumer experience.

[boxesandarrows] : “Personas and scenarios tell honest stories that are sculpted from diverse and comprehensive sets of data.”

What characteristics are included in a persona?

: http://www.usability.gov/analyze/personas.html

A persona usually includes:

• a name and picture
• demographics (age, education, ethnicity, family status)
• job title and major responsibilities
• goals and tasks in relation to your site
• environment (physical, social, technological)
• a quote that sums up what matters most to the persona with relevance for your site

Why personas are important:

http://www.hceye.org/HCInsight-Nielsen.htm

• Personas put a face on the customer. Some persona programs give people names so you can refer to them and see them in a physical representation. The agency Organic creates persona rooms where their people live so the project team can become fully immersed.
• Personas remove the tendency to think of yourself as the customer. You have to step back and this gives you the structure to do so.
• Act as a guide throughout the process of developing marketing communications programs, cross mediums (print, digital, outdoor, TV, etc.).
• Keeps designers, copywriters, programmers on track and avoids waste by remaining focused on the customer.

A 10 Step Process to Personas by Lene Nielsen, Ph.D.

http://www.hceye.org/HCInsight-Nielsen.htm

Lene Nielsen wrote her Ph.D. thesis "Engaging Personas and Narrative Scenarios" in 2004. She is part-time assistant professor at Center of Applied ICT, at Copenhagen Business School
and part-time usability consultant at Snitker & Co.

Do personas work?

Use of Personas Boosts Conversion by 400% [link]

think big by starting small

Steve Franzman, founder of Detoxologie.com, a client who used personas to boost conversion by 400%, and get a 2 to 1 return on a floundering Pay-Per-Click campaign.

Personas Drive Universal Orlando Site Revamp [link]

Universal Orlando’s marketing executives had spent several years tweaking the theme park’s online presence for incremental gains in conversion…. After a period of testing and conversion analysis, Universal Orlando sketched … personas, each with a different set of motivators and travel needs. … So how’s it working? …

1. new site was living up to its expectations,
2. beating the old version on 30 out of 40 measures, including likeability….
3. Online ticket purchases, a key metric for the resort, are up almost 80% year to date.

Personas work because they tell stories.

http://www.wqusability.com/articles/personas_storytelling.html

Stories are part of every community. They communicate culture, organize and transmit information. Most importantly, they spark the imagination as you explore new ideas. They can ignite action.

alan.huffman Architecture, Business, Design & Features Design, Personas, User Centric Design

I have worked at AmMed Diabetic Care Supply company for four years (since 2005).

Nashville Business Journal awarded AmMed as the fastest growing company in Nashville over the period 2005 – 2008.

See the write-up: [article]

Comparative Growth Rates (putting things in perspective)

• AmMed grew in excess of 1,150% in that period.
• Vaco (recruiting) came in at #2 with around 350% growth.
• My department, Home Pharmacy, grew by 6,000% in that same period.

AmMed grew 300% faster than Vaco (#2). AmMed Pharmacy grew 1,700% faster than Vaco (#2), and AmMed Pharmacy grew 500+% faster than AmMed as a whole.

Growth is good, but growth comes with risks. Very fast growth should be considered equal parts opportunity and risk. The faster the growth, the higher the risk (or certainly growing pains).

[Graphs of relative growth]

Growing Pains

Growing pains come in 2 flavors Business & Technical. IT folk can *NOT* merely look at technical problems that arise from fast growing businesses. They *MUST* understand the business, look at business process (esp. as provided in requirements).

Questions IT should ask:

1. What is the REAL problem business is trying to solve? Often business asks for applications that don’t solve the problem.
2. Does business understand the scope of the problem? In my experience, business units/departments often exhibit target blindness where they lose sight over other issues by focusing on one aspect of the problem. They want to turn away from the iceberg without concern for the ice shelf.
3. Is there a better solution? With a different perspective & skill set, IT has the opportunity to suggest solutions that may be superior (perhaps vastly superior) to what is being offered.

What IT should do:

1. Be outspoken – IT has a voice in the business. We are not drones incapable & unwilling to learn and better the business model.
2. Sell your ideas – In fast paced environments, good ideas need to be loud & persistent. In start-ups, everyone must chip in, stretch beyond their roles and take responsibility for making the company better.
3. Think as an entrepreneur – Don’t just think about code, features, technology – consider the business problem, solve the issue (even if that is a process change).
4. Seek value (profitability, savings, productivity gains) – at the end of the day, companies are about making & saving money.
5. Do Not Fight the Employees – this is such a big point, it deserves it’s own section.

Do not fight the employees – align the employee performance goals with the business objective (usually profit)

When companies grow quickly and are understaffed, processes change (or need to change) so quickly that software can not keep up. For that matter documentation, training and formalized business processes can not keep up. You have to rely on the employee to do the right thing.

How do you get an employee to do the right thing? [ 2 ways ]

1) Prescriptive mechanisms coupled with policing measures to force them to do the right thing. Often this uses disaggregated performance metrics – something I strongly disagree with (explained below).

First an example: You open an omelet shop to make a great omelets. You have a 5 step recipe for the perfect omelet.

Disaggregated performance metric: Chefs will be measured by how many omelets they make using the 5 step process

1. Take 2 eggs, break & beat them
2. Put in skillet
3. Add cheese
4. Fold egg
5. Serve on plate

• Posit: This works so well, you open 5 more stores.
• Problem: New stores fail to add salt, something store 1 did w/out being told
• Solution: You decide to add a 6th step – SALT

6. Salt

• Posit: All goes well until…
• Problem: Also need pepper, something store 1 did w/out being told
• Solution: Add 7th step – Pepper

7. Pepper

• Posit: Now everything is working! Except chef#1 quits & you hire new chef #6
• Problem: Chef 6 realizes that he can get a very HIGH performance rank by following steps 1-6 w/out cooking the omelet at all.
• Solution: You police this by adding step 8

8. Cook Omelet

This begins the nasty cycle:

1. Employee does the WRONG thing
2. WRONG thing is discovered
3. New rule is created & added to disaggregated performance metric

So what’s the problem? Your chefs don’t care about making great omelets. They care only about the steps!

2) Empower the employee, make them responsible & align their goals with the company – by all means use AGGREGATED METRICS!

Let’s do that example again: Have 1 aggregated (high level) metric to judge employee performance.

Aggregated metric: profitability of the store.

Why choose profitability of the store? B/c that one metric is what we really care about, it encompasses making good omelets, not wasting ingredients, having good customer service… etc. So if the employee has good performance, the company as a whole is performing well.

But how do we know our employee will do the right thing? B/c if they don’t, the store’s profit will go down due to lower sales.

1. Trust your employees
2. Empower your employees
3. Make them responsible!

Give them directions but empower & trust them to find the best way to cook the omelet. That is their responsibility, not to mention keeping the customer happy, store clean – all the various little things that it takes to have a successful omelet store

To be continued in future blogs….

alan.huffman Business, Business Growth Business Growth, leadership, management

Our business has grown quickly, from $1M in annual revenue a few years ago to almost a hundred times that now. In that time, I’ve moved from web based Java development to .NET rich client development.

The company I work for has used client server applications that use Access front end with a SQL Server back end. Access is written in VBA using forms over data in a procedural programming model.

I’ve argued the value of OOP and best practices, but my success has been gated by one thing: SPEED TO DEVELOPMENT. Why?

IT (geeks) provide what value?

I used to believe we generated profit. I used to measure my value in added revenue, but soon I realized that upper management sees IT as a cost – waste. Their goal was to minimize cost and maximize profit (or in a LEAN way of thinking, reduce waste).

IT is WASTE – we are an expense not revenue.

Don’t believe me? See your paycheck for proof. I hate this idea, but that’s the way that upper management often sees us (geeks).

So consider the two perspectives that geeks and business have. We see this:

But business owners see this:

As Dennis Hopper said in True Romance If that’s true, am I lying?

So what are you (GEEK) going to do about it?

We’re right. We know we’re right. We can’t be wrong. Right?!

So why in the hell are they saying big gray blobs and BIG dollar signs when we want them to see…

How to do that:

1. Reference prominent companies (& geeks within) that use best practices. Business values experience and most importantly they value SUCCESS & FAILURE. If you can show that following good practices is what successful companies do, and that unsuccessful companies have failed for not following best practices.
2. Does business want it RIGHT or right now? Software projects fail. They have failed time and time again. Getting software implementations right takes time. Moving too quickly only results in failure and rework. You can only move as fast as possible but no faster (see Einstein: Make things as simple as possible but no simpler).
3. Ask questions: Is this a long term investment or short term? If business is seeking a POC (proof of concept) or the financial/business climate is such that they need to prove something out or “just get it done” then perhaps fast is best. But if the project is a long term investment, then they should do it right. Pay upfront for good architecture, project methodologies and infrastructural support.
4. Be Reasonable. Understand business. You want business to understand you, but you need to understand business. Why should they care about your best practices when you don’t give a damn about their profitability or time to market. Remember IT is an enabler – IT is waste, help them reduce waste.
5. Best practices lead to flexibility & more responsive, cost effective solutions: Face it, best practices are going to cost more to develop. Forms over data are fast. MVP / MVC / MVVM with repository patterns and asynchronous enterprise service buses mocked out and developed using TDD just take longer. So why would business want that? If you don’t have an answer, don’t expect business to buy in.
• Design patterns increase flexibility which allow IT to respond faster to business.
• Test Driven Development decrease mistakes and bugs and leads to automated regression testing (decreased testing costs)
• Electronic Service Buses formalize application boundaries which allows business to swap out new technologies, vendors and applications as they become available thus decreasing cost and increasing IT responsiveness.

Summary:

If you can’t sell what you believe in, then you need to work on the pitch. Being a geek doesn’t omit us from having to persuade people to accept our beliefs.

IT is a sort of religion. It’s mysterious, poorly understood (even by us), and we constantly are trying to understand a thing that is far greater than ourselves – something we’ll never fully comprehend.

In the end, all a geek can do is convey what we believe in using the language of business.

alan.huffman Architecture, Business, Business Growth, Development Infrastructure, Projects Best Practices, development, leadership, management