The IT Risk Manager

This morning I asked my partner what they were doing today.

“I’m taking my son to get new school shoes but it clashes with something else. It will be a pain”

“When does he start back to school?”

“Next Thursday. We have plans for the weekend and I’m working Monday and Tuesday. I could get the shoes on Wednesday but if I have a problem, it will not be possible.”

Next Wednesday is the last IRRESPONSIBLE moment to get the shoes. If anything goes wrong it won’t be possible to recover in time.

Today is the last RESPONSIBLE moment. If something goes wrong, we can sort it out at the weekend.

Unfortunately many people think the last IRRESPONSIBLE moment is the last RESPONSIBLE moment.

The last responsible moment has options.

The last irresponsible moment does not have options.

First an apology to George Dinwiddie for misunderstanding his recent post and for misspelling his name.

My latest post was a major fail. I had read George Dinwiddie’s post and assumed that George was calling out Yogi Berra for complaining about the Agile20xx conferences. I had assumed that because I did not know who Yogi Berra was that he was someone who had complained about the conference. I did not realise that Yogi Berra is a famous baseball player. A simple google search would have revealed the truth.

Changing Yogi from a normal person to a famous sports star totally changes the tone of George’s post.

So the risk this incident has reminded me of is that I don’t understand something even when I think I do. How often do we skip over some of the details in an article when those details may totally change the context and or tone. I should make sure I know what I read and check anything I do not know, otherwise there is the risk the bits I do not know will trip me up.

I am reminded of the quote by George Bernard Shaw* that the English and Americans are “Two peoples separated by a common language”

*GBS – English playwright who wrote Pygmalion and funded a phonetic alphabet. A major fan of accents and dialects who could tell which town or even street a person was from based on their accent.

The main thesis of the “Innovator’s Dilemma” by Clayten Christensen is that products lose market share because they focus on the needs of the majority and ignore features of a product that allow a lower performing product in the main criteria to dominate the market. Ignoring complaints is way to miss these new features.

A significant risk that organizations run is that they ignore some of their customers simply because they are complaining. Rather than try to understand the complaints, they dismiss the complaints as an annoyance. George Dinwiddie’s blog is a classic example of this. He had a great time at Agile2011 but was saddened that people complained about the conference, especially people who had not attended.

George paraphrased Yogi Berra’s tweets.

“Nobody goes to the Agile Conference anymore. It’s too crowded.”

From a learning organization’s perspective, Yogi’s tweet is gold dust. Yogi has expressed what many people have not. An organization that ignores complaints is missing a major opportunity to improve.

I was lucky enough to attend the first two Agile Development Conference’s in Salt Lake City. I was the only attendee from the ThoughtWork’s London office at the first but I had such a great time that almost twenty people from the office presented at the second. I skipped Denver but was dragged back to Minneapolis (Agile2006). I was shocked and dismayed. Something was wrong. It was large and impersonal. Large groups were attending from companies and not engaging with the “Community”.

My earliest memory discussing the size issue was a discussion with Rachel Davies at the eXtreme Tuesday Club. David Hussman had just resigned as Conference Chair for Agile2008 and the Agile Alliance Board were looking for ideas to address the size issue. I suggested co-locating smaller conferences,  splitting the conference based on experience. Rachel adapted the idea and created the idea of stages. For me, the value of Agile has been having all disciplines in the room which the stages discourages. The size of the conference was an issue then. Yogi’s tweets indicate that it is still a problem that needs to be addressed.

Another attempt to make the conference smaller was the Fresher’s Fayre at Agile2009 in Chicago. Unfortunately the organizers for Agile2009 placed the needs of the sponsors above the needs of the attendees. The ice breaker which was previously an opportunity for people to meet became a trade fayre with the emphasis once again on selling rather than learning or building community. There hasn’t been a fresher’s fayre at subsequent conferences. I think the organizers have given up on the scale issue.

Bob Martin recently said that he did not forsee the loss of technical emphasis when he sold the XP Universe conference to the Agile Alliance. Bob feels that the Agile20xx conference is now a management conference rather than a technical conference. As a manager I would disagree. The Agile20xx conference is for coaches and people selling Agile. There is no grand conspiracy, it just represents the interests of the people who keep turning up to organize it. Agile20xx can ignore Bob or they can work to encourage more technical material. I was conference chair for XPDay last year. A few people mentioned that there was not enough technical material. My initial reaction was that this is an open space and people can talk about what they want. I was wrong because it takes time to prepare and organise technical sessions. This year, we will have an open space and two tracks, one of which is a technical track. We listened to a few complaints and adapted.

The Agile Alliance can continue to bury its head in the sand and ignore complaints by Yogi Barra, Bob Martin and others. Alternatively they can listen to the complaints and try to do something about them. My hope is that they start to pay attention to the complaints before they lose all of their attendees to smaller regional conferences and break away communities like Lean and the Software Craftsmanship.

I recently quoted Andy Palmer‘s mantra “Strong Opinion’s, Weakly held” (Note – Andy does not claim to have invented it, he’s just the guy who told it to me). He introduced me to the idea following an evening at XTC. At XTC, people engage in passionate debates and quite often they will switch sides and continue arguing with an equal amount of passion when they learn new information about something. As Andy rightly said, some XTC members have strong opinions that are weakly held.

If you observe the general behaviour of people, they would rather be right rather than wrong. Think of the number of arguments that ensue when someone says something and someone else disagrees. Even when faced with incontravercial evidence they will stick to their guns rather than admit that they are wrong. They have to win an argument.

I have a different perspective. Everytime I lose an argument, I learn. Everytime I win an argument, I do NOT learn anything new. There are two reasons I might “win”. Either I know more than the other person OR I fail to understand them. Whenever I’m winning an argument I know that I’m missing the opportunity to learn. Even if I’m just missing the opportunity to understand why someone has an different opinion.

Feature Injection is based on the idea that we cannot prove a model right, we can only prove it wrong by finding examples that do not fit, examples that “Break the Model”. Feature Injection’s “Break the Model” not only applies to IT Business Analysis, it can be used for other stuff as a way to structure learning.

We all have our own model of reality. Our model acts as a filter of perception. Often in strange and wonderful ways. Our filter might make us avoid certain people because “They are not our sort of people”. We may avoid a place because we do not like the smell, the sound, the lighting or the “vibe” (Vibe is a kinesthetic word 😉 ). It simply our filter taking us from somewhere we do not like. Unfortunately our “filter of perception” which is based on our “model of reality” can be our greatest barrier to learning. The filters will either prevent us from seeing new things, or they can distort reality to fit with our “model of reality”. Firstly, we should be aware of those filters and learn to use them to guide us to places where we might learn. These places might be more risky than we are used to. Cognitive filters which affect groups/communities as well as individuals, a phenomena affecting the whole of London at the moment as we try to make sense of the riots.

If I express my opinion in a weak way that is unlikely to offend, I am unlikely to get a response. As a result I am unlikely to proven wrong, and I am unlikely to break my model of reality (learn).

If I expess my opinion strongly I am more likely to evoke a response. I am more likely to be challenged. I may  lose the argument… and learn as a result. And normally I have a new mentor who I follow in life.

A trick I engage in is to make my statement offensive in a grandiose manner. “Every one in the world thinks Kanban is better than Scrum”. That would certainly get the ranting going. The reality is that everyone in the world knows that Scrum and Kanban are complimentary tools…. It is like saying a hammer is better than a screw driver. We are not always that aware though.

A final thought.

You will learn most from those who disagree with you the most.

Several years ago, at an end of conference party, I heard someone say  “Bah, This BDD malarky is rubbish”*. What ensued was a passionate argument that lasted from 2 am to 5am. What I really learned is that I liked the person I had the argument with. They are now a good friend. I could have simply said “I do not like his opinion” and avoided having my “model of reality” challenged.

There are some people I do not like arguing with. Those are the types who have “Strong opinion, strongly held”. They refuse to give up on an idea if when the have information that “Breaks their Model”.

Next time you hear someone who says something you disagree with. Don’t ignore them. Go and have an argument and a coffee/beer with them. You never know, you might learn something.

* I have no idea what was really said. I was far too drunk.

Story 1

Many years ago I attended a conference. It was my first and I got really excited (as we all do our first time). I got to meet a number of the people who wrote the books I’d been reading for the last year or so. I talked a lot. I talked a hell of a lot in fact. Probably too much. Definitely too much. A few months after the conference I heard that one of the authors was meeting up with a friend of mine. I asked my friend if I could join them. He asked and I was politely rebuffed. “He’s the guy who does not listen” was the feedback I received.

At the next conference I made sure people knew I was listening. I adopted a number of techniques.

• I shut up.
• I looked at the speaker, focusing on them as if they were the only person in the room.
• I maintained eye contact.
• I nodded, and gasped and shook my head as appropriate.
• I left a pause after anyone spoke before I said anything.
• I asked clarifying questions about what they had said.

At the end of the conference the author said of me “This guy does full face listening.”

Was I listening more? Nope. I listened just as much as I had before. The difference was I let people know I was listening.

Much of my career has been spent on the trading floors of Investment Banks. These can be quiet or they can erupt into noise and activity. You get used to talking and listening at the same time. Even though you are talking, you are allways listening as well. As a result, I’m often listening to someone even it appears that I am not.

People assumed that I wasn’t listening when in fact I was. Their perception was just as important as whether I was listening or not. They needed the feedback that I was listening.

Listening is about focus. Some people need to know you are focused on what they are saying, otherwise they do not think you are listening.  I know someone who does not think you are listening unless they have eye contact with you.

Story 2

Many, many years ago when I was studying for my first degree I remember having a conversation with one of my lecturers. For some reason he recounted the tale of another student.

There had once been a student who turned up for every lecture and sat at the back just sitting there. Whilst all of the other students copied do the notes on the board, the student just sat there. Doing nothing. The lecturer had discussed the student with other professors who had the same experience with the student. They all concluded that the student was a failure. The lecturer decided to speak to the student about it.

The lecturer had a surprise.

The student explained that they could not listen and write at the same time. So they listened to the lectures and then went home and wrote their own notes based on the lecture. This was at odds with the way most students worked. Most students wrote down everything the lecturer wrote on the board and ignored what they were saying.

It turned out the student wasn’t a failure after all.

Communication is very important on any project. If we do not let people know we have heard their voice, they may assume that we have not been listening. Some times we may wish to engage in some behaviour that gives people feedback to indicate that we are listening.

We should be careful that we do not assume that people…

• know you are listening.
• are not listening.
• are listening.

It was the best of service and the worst of service.

This blog has a Dickensian feel to it. The reason is that the lessons discussed are nearly as old as Dickens and its a bit long winded. Many, many years ago I saw a Tom Peters video where he talk about customer service. He said that companies paid small fortunes to create the right image but it was the sweaty delivery man in a nylon uniform who really represented you what you were about. He said that every customer who had a good experience with your company would, on average, tell one other person. A person who had a bad experience would tell ten. That was before the internet and twitter. On Saturday I experienced bad service from Monarch Airlines and within minutes I had told over 500 people about it.

On Saturday afternoon, about thirty minutes before we boarded our flight to Majorca, we were told that we would be subject to a five hour delay. The reason given was that another plane had failed and our plane had been given to the other passengers as their destination airport closed at a certain time. These things happen. When airlines are operating on razor thin margins, none can afford the luxury to have aircraft hanging around just in case. As a traveller, you expect the odd delay. However, instead of arriving for last orders we were looking to arrive at 5am, just before we would wake up normally.

Having told us of the delay, the Monarch supervisor told us to go to the information desk in the main terminal to pick up our £5 voucher from the information deak in the main terminal.The information desk would be able to answer all our questions.

People did some quick math. So we wont get there until two in the morning? “What about my hotel?” “What about my car hire?” “What about my bus?” “What about my friends?” . At this point the supervisor let us know how important she was. “Look, this is one flight. I have many flights to look after. The information desk will answer all your questions.”

Now you might think this was delivered in a way we could all hear. An announcement perhaps? Nope. Each group had to send someone to listen to the increasingly exasperated supervisor send us away.

I used my mobile to call our car hire company and hotel. I like to use my mobile phone to call foreign countries. The car hire and hotel said they would wait for us.

We went to the information desk to find out what was happening. They did not know. He rang Monarch Rachel to find out. He was none the wiser as well. So Monarch had lied to us to get us to go to the information desk and were now hiding. As we stood in a half empty airport with a third the normal number of passengers I’ve normally seen we were told it was the busiest day of the year.

Our flight. the 228 to Palma was due to leave at 5.30 and had been rescheduled to 22.45. The 224 at 8.30 was also delayed to 9.30 for the same reason which did not make sense. We considered trying to get the last two places on the 224.

Given the long wait we decided to delay eating until later as a means of killing time. We visited all the restaurants and chose the one that looked the nicest. I noticed that the flight time on the monitor had changed to 19.10 and went to the information desk to find out more. Apart from the last sixteen to book in, we were all to board a smaller plane. The gentleman next to me was one of the sixteen. “I’ve travelled from up North and got stuck in a jam on the M25.”.  He was travelling in a family group of seven. We hurried to the plane and grabbed a sandwich on the way with our £5 voucher. We grumbled to the man next to us about not having the chance to eat. He was a diabetic and even less impressed. The flight crew loaded the plane starting at the back but forgot that some people would not have a seat due to the smaller plane. Confusion ensued with some people sitting where they were not meant to. We set off and the flight was thirty minutes faster than expected.

On Monday morning @Monarch followed me on twitter.

On Tuesday @Monarch asked me to contact DM them.

On Tuesday we recieved a letter of apology.

I am emailing to offer our apologies for the late departure of your recent flight with Monarch.

I can assure you that it is never our intention to cause a delay and we do our upmost to operate on time departures. Regrettably, situations can develop but we always take immediate action to try and recover as quickly as possible.

I am aware of how disruptive delays can be for passengers. I would like to assure you that we really do value your custom and I sincerely hope that you will choose to travel with us again in order that you can enjoy our normal standard of service.

Kind regards,

Monarch Customer Relations Team

NB: This is an automated e-mail. Please do not reply.

I love the last line myself. This is not a conversation. I also love “…in order that you can enjoy our normal standard of service.”

So Monarch, here is some free consultancy. If you want more advise, I suggest you ask Bob Marshall, Grant Rule or Karl Scotland for help.

1. This IS your normal service. The 21st century traveller understands that things go wrong. Its how you deal with it that matters. As a company you have been running for decades and I am guessing this is not the first time this has happened. Learn from it and improve… or die from a thousand twitter cuts.

2. Never let operational staff deliver bad news to customers. You should get marketing or customer relations staff to do that. One of your customers may have a following of 20,000 and you just wont know it.

3. Understand your customer’s value stream. My travelling value stream ends when I get to my hotel. Your part of it ends when I collect my bag at Palma airport. Understand that you have disrupted it and aim to help them as much as you can. This is easier than you realise and cheaper. Get the gate staff to tell people to ring your sales number on a priority help line to alay fears about car hire, hotels, tour operators, buses. They can then ring them back to let them know everything is OK.

4. COMMUNICATE! The gate staff used a tannoy that would have embarressed even British Rail in the 1980’s. Get a few white boards to write up important information. Simply changing the time on the board is not enough as it can cause delays. Rethink how you communicate with customers when there is a delay (Jamies hand out pagers to people waiting for a table).

5. Use Real Options to work out how to reschedule your flights to minimise costs AND within a constraint of no delays past a certain time. Practice and learn how to do it fast. Then communicate the changes to all your staff.

6. Go and sit in Atlanta or Chicago O’Hare airport and study how they get people to take a later flight. They offer free flights and cash incentives. People like it when they get the opportunity to get bumped. Charge it to marketing. You chose to condemn a family of seven ( two adults, three children, two seniors?) to an extra early hours arrival.

7. If you cannot handle the peak in service agent demand, go study how SWA/NWA handle it with “Home Staff”.

8. Train your staff in the fastest way to load an airplane. Oh and by the way, as a parent, I would rather minimise the time I spend on a plane with my children. As long as I have seats together I would rather let the adults who have more patience load first.

9. Having staff following people in Twitter is failure demand. Check out John Seddon’s “Freedom from Command & Control.”

10. Never let your staff speak anything but total truth. Never let them hide. If they do not know, tell them to say they do not know. What they think is inconvenient is nothing compared to the misery your customers will experience.

Finally, the flight was pleasant. Your staff were pleasant, even the self important gate supervisor. The only problem is that you fail to understand that when something goes wrong, it is your normal service! And it was the worst of service.

Last night we went to a lovely port on the coast. The restaurant we wanted to eat at was full.The maitre’d asked us where we were from. An hour’s drive away. We walked off down the promenade. Five minutes later the maitre’d caught up with us. He had run down the promenade to tell us he had squeezed an extra table in for us.

That is the best of service.

Two weeks ago Naked Juice (part of Pepsi) hired a Wave Machine to promote their new range of healthy drinks. All week, the fittest and finest of the banks surrounding Broadgate Circus queued up to have a go. The Finance department had booked a place and on Friday I was asked to replace someone at the last minute. How would a fat and unhealthy middle aged guy compare to all these uber fit runners and cyclists?

Each 45 minute session consisted of two groups of four. The session was split into three parts. Part one was a training session on a body board. Each person got a minute and a half with an instructor who shouted out instructions on how to do ever harder tricks. Part two was a training session on a wave board, akin to a skate board but without wheels. Simply standing up for five seconds was the goal. Part three was a competition where each person tried to do as many tricks as possible.

Richard, a colleague who is keen photographer, came to take photos. Lots of fit looking people and a middle aged guy whose wetsuit made sure everyone knew he was widest in the middle. Richard told me that I had provided the audience with lots of amusement during the wave board training. The fit guys strode confidently to the wave board and stood tall for a fraction of a second before falling off. The fat middle aged guy huffed and puffed and stood shaking on the board. He knees were buckling under the strain of simply standing up, never mind standing up on a wave board. He wobbled and flailed around but he stood up. According to my colleague, the crowd thought it hilarious. After about a minute, I gave up and fell off trying to do some trick.  I was exhausted.

During the competition, all the competitors gave it their all. The fat guy with the lower centre of gravity did a few more tricks than the others…. It nearly killed me, especially when I dove from the top into the wave rather than carefully enter like the others. My team scored 350 points, enough to beat the other team. When I got back to the office I checked the score board for the week. The current top score was 320. On Monday, Naked Juice announced the official results. My team won the week long competition.

The team with the fat middle aged guy beat all the others composed of super fit concept II addicts.

Why is this interesting?

We all make assumptions. Sometimes the assumptions are so subtle that we do not even realise we are making assumptions. They are the really dangerous as we end up following the wrong people. We look for the wrong stuff and do not even realise what the right stuff is.

In the case of a competition which consists of three minutes of wave boarding and body boarding, the key ability is balance and NOT fitness. However, most of the audience assumed that the key ability was fitness or stamina. Those funny movement made by the fat guy were balancing movements. He knew what balanced felt like and moved accordingly. The crowd had not seen someone balance before and thought it was funny. Think about that. The crowd thought the most competent person in the activity looked funny because they did not look like they assumed someone would look like doing the activity. Have you ever seen someone balancing on a stationary bicycle or unicycle? Are they still or do they wiggle about. Someone on a moving bicycle or unicycle is much more stable. And so it is on a wave board.

Even though I was not fit. Even though I carried more than a few extra pounds. I had the benefit of experience due to my other interests and hobbies, namely Windsurfing, Wake boarding, Snow boarding, Skiing, and Tai Chi. All sports that require balance, and improve your balance.

The same is true of managing projects and what people assume to be the right skills. People are hired to be managers because they are confident or commanding in style. However, a competant risk manager may need differents skills and abilities. If they are managing risk rather than their image, they may appear funny to those with an uninformed mindset. Their behaviour may different to what you expect. they may become friendly with their team rather than command total obedience. They might back down in the face of a superior argument. Look at the results, not the behaviour.

The next time someone achieves results but in a way that seems funny, ask yourself “Have I made the wrong assumption about how that needs to be done”.

Remember the winner is the one who stays standing on the wave board, not the one who looks cool just before they get on it.

Willy Loman* was a man with an option. He knew that whenever he needed a job, all he had to do was ask and he’d get one… except this salesman had it wrong. He did not have an option. Although he had been offered that job, it did not really exist. The option wasn’t real.

People are very generous when they do not have to deliver. They will promise great things when they do not need to deliver. Being generous makes us appear magnanamous or larger than we really are. Being generous makes us look good.

I have been in meetings where IT is generous with it’s services. However, they have failed to deliver as they promised.

The first advice to the business investor is simple. Test your options. Excercise some of them. See how they perform. The IT resources may exist in the budget but getting them deployed to your investment may result in unfortunate delay. You will discover how the process really works rather than how IT tell you it works.

The second advice to business investor is just as simple. Keep testing them on a regular basis. This change ALL the while. Some for the better, some for the worse. Something introduced to make one investor’s life better make make things worse for other investors.

Don’t fall into the same trap Willy Loman fell into. Don’t test your option for the first time when you really really need it.

Willy Loman is the salesman in “Death of a Salesman” by Arthur Miller.

“When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers.” (Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband)

When we think about rewards, most people think about pay rise or salary. Anyone who has encountered dog training* will know that the most important form of reward is praise and attention.

People are like dogs when it comes to rewards. Praise and attention are more important than pay rises and bonuses when it comes to changing behaviour. We all crave the praise and attention of those that are important to us. Our bosses are clearly important to our careers.

When a serious problem occurs on the system, our management will pay attention and we will be in the spotlight whilst we fix the problem. We get to show our best work whilst in a crisis. At the end we get praise. At the end of the year, management has lots of examples of good behaviour for the review process.

When we create a system that does not have serious problems, our management forget we exist. At the end of the year, management has hardly anything to say at the review process.

Can anyone see the problem?

* Inspired by Jerry Weinberg’s Keynote at the Agile Development Conference in Salt Lake City.

Heroes are great. They often form the backbone of the team. They wade into fixing problems at any time of the day or night. They often are the only people who know the nitty gritty details of how a system work.

They are also a significant risk to the project simply because the do so much and know so much.

When a hero leaves a system they often leave a big hole that is hard to fill.

So what is the main risk associated with a hero? The risk is that they leave and the system struggles to recover the lost knowledge and experience.

This can be for a number of reasons.

• The hero becomes ill.
• The hero decides to leave.
• The hero meets a partner who does not like the way work dominates their life.

The key thing about a hero is that they are not the problem. They are a symptom of the problem. The real problem is likely to be…

• A culture that rewards heroic behaviour rather than discourages it.
• As culture that rewards individual efforts rather than team efforts.
• A system that creates lots of opportunities for heroism.
• An understaffed department (The understaffed department may have lots of staff but only a few experts who know the system).

The Dragon Slayer only exists because there are Dragons. Without Dragons, the Dragon Slayer is simply a guy in a silly costume. They will soon stop wearing the armour and carrying the sword when there are no more Dragons.