Visual tools for the sp ia sp intersections - nov 2014

Editor's Notes

• #4: One of the key fundamental goals behind everything we are going to see today is to get to shared understanding. That is: get everyone involved to understand what the goals are and what path we’re going to take to get there. These visual and tactile methods have been found to really help you get there Let me start with an illustration of why shared understanding is so important and how it applies to the type of problems we work with
• #5: Our project is to build a bridge… so here’s a bridge
• #6: But so is this,
• #7: Or this…
• #8: Even this is a bridge
• #9: Our stakeholders are excited about this project! We’ve agreed that we need a bridge! But, if one person pictures a giant steel roadway bridge, others a covered bridge and one simple stepping stones… then…
• #10: Our odds of success are low – in-fact, I’d say zero
• #11: And that means that our project goes down the … um… drain
• #12: So, we need to get everyone onto the same page Why is this so important?
• #13: Because SharePoint falls into the category of “Wicked Problems” [I first learned this term from Paul Culmsee of Seven Sigma, Australia’s leading expert in problem wickedness and its solutions]
• #14: A moon-shot is a hard problem, but it can be stated clearly and simply: Take a man to the moon, bring him back alive Cure poverty: That’s a wicked problem. We can’t even agree on who’s poor, what poverty means, and how to know if we’ve been successful. And, when we’re working on TRYING to solve this, solutions are not right or wrong, they are just better or worse.
• #15: SharePoint is wicked with a capital “W”. This is because of the social complexity that SharePoint brings - You want to fundamentally change the way people do their jobs… and that leads to wickedness
• #16: Our stakeholders are excited about this project! We’ve agreed that we need a bridge! But, if one person pictures a suspension bride, others a covered bridge and one simple stepping stones… and…
• #17: Some of whom, won’t talk to each other. OUR CHANCES OF SATISFACTION ARE ZERO This is social complexity impacting the success of a technology project
• #18: Why is this so hard and dangerous Everyone hates the current portal Can’t find anything Not sure if content is valid BUT - They do know where some stuff is, and this was hard-won knowledge and change to something that won’t be better – just different – is not what they’re looking forward to.
• #19: NEEDS WORK Now, the team working on the new portal has a different state of mind: They are envisioning a fantastic future state and foresee a climb, but the slope isn’t too severe – this is the ‘path of hope’. What they don’t realize is that their immediate rise in Optimistic Excitement is followed by a steep fall into the valley of despair. There are dangerous creatures there – ready to devour your proeject. But, once the reality of the project sets in The valley of despair is a dangerous place, with creatures that have their own agendas ready to ‘eat’ your project
• #20: set up multiple phases toward the eventual future goal, rather than trying to reach that peak in one step, because it is only once you start the journey that you will discover the issues and roadblocks that are going to make the project much harder than it seemed at the start. Even though it is useful to break the project into phases, it is very important that you do your initial planning with the ultimate goal in mind so that you don’t paint yourself into a corner by designing a solution that gets you to the end of phase 1 or 2, but that needs a lot of rework or workarounds to reach the true, final goal.
• #21: It’s hard enough to get to success, to get adoption, to build the right thing. Do you know the best way to avoid making a design error in what you build? DON BUILD IT IN THE FIRST PLACE! Start simple – get some success and then grow from there.
• #22: To have any chance of success, you MUST have everyone pulling in the same direction This is a platitude – everyone knows this. The question is “How do we do this!”
• #23: One of the key fundamental goals behind everything we are going to see today is to get to shared understanding. That is: get everyone involved to understand what the goals are and what path we’re going to take to get there. These visual and tactile methods have been found to really help you get there Let me start with an illustration of why shared understanding is so important and how it applies to the type of problems we work with
• #24: A lot of doing this job well comes down to soft skills: - Listening - Honesty - Humour
• #25: You need to be perceived as the leader of your project, and the team, the stakeholders and the customers must have confidence in you. This does not mean that you have to pretend to know all the answers when you don’t. You can say ‘i’ll get back to you’. But you can’t be uncertain about every question. If you THINK you may be right, answer confidently. When you do a follow-up check – if it turns out that you’re wrong – you can follow up and explain why you changed your answer. You have to come to terms with the fact that, despite all the books and blogs out there, each circumstance is different, and you’ll need to be able choose your own path without a clear map of correct and incorrect. One of my favorite bloggers is Bob Sutton of the Stanford Design School. In one of his posts he writes about Paul Saffo of the Palo Alto Institute for the Future who taught that leaders must have strong opinions. Weak opinions are uninspiring and don’t motivate people to test them or argue passionately for them. But, it is also important not to be too strongly wedded to your ideas, because it prevents you from seeing or hearing evidence that contradicts your opinions. So to be a strong and wise leader you need to have strong opinions, but you need to be ready to move off those opinions when the evidence requires it. This is summed up in the phrase that you should take to heart: Strong opinions, weakly held.
• #26: You need to be perceived as the leader of your project, and the team, the stakeholders and the customers must have confidence in you. This does not mean that you have to pretend to know all the answers when you don’t. You can say ‘i’ll get back to you’. But you can’t be uncertain about every question. If you THINK you may be right, answer confidently. When you do a follow-up check – if it turns out that you’re wrong – you can follow up and explain why you changed your answer. You have to come to terms with the fact that, despite all the books and blogs out there, each circumstance is different, and you’ll need to be able choose your own path without a clear map of correct and incorrect. One of my favorite bloggers is Bob Sutton of the Stanford Design School. In one of his posts he writes about Paul Saffo of the Palo Alto Institute for the Future who taught that leaders must have strong opinions. Weak opinions are uninspiring and don’t motivate people to test them or argue passionately for them. But, it is also important not to be too strongly wedded to your ideas, because it prevents you from seeing or hearing evidence that contradicts your opinions. So to be a strong and wise leader you need to have strong opinions, but you need to be ready to move off those opinions when the evidence requires it. This is summed up in the phrase that you should take to heart: Strong opinions, weakly held.
• #29: You need to listen to your customers or you will miss important information. If you are conducting a workshop, you are there to facilitate and gather information, not to impose your vision. You have to be mindful and in the moment. You need to eliminate all possible distractions. This means you turn off or silence your phone, close your Twitter client (yes, I’ve seen people check their tweets during a workshop!), and close or silence e-mail (it can really throw a meeting off track when an e-mail “toast” notification pops up on the screen while you’re working). There are a number of books and blogs on how to improve your listening skills. Search the Internet for “active listening” or “mindful listening.” Choose a book or a program and then practice these skills. It is very important to fully hear what is being said without focusing on what you are going to say in response, because once you start to think of your response, you’re not listening anymore and there may be valuable additional information you are missing.
• #30: You need to listen to your customers or you will miss important information. If you are conducting a workshop, you are there to facilitate and gather information, not to impose your vision. You have to be mindful and in the moment. You need to eliminate all possible distractions. This means you turn off or silence your phone, close your Twitter client (yes, I’ve seen people check their tweets during a workshop!), and close or silence e-mail (it can really throw a meeting off track when an e-mail “toast” notification pops up on the screen while you’re working). There are a number of books and blogs on how to improve your listening skills. Search the Internet for “active listening” or “mindful listening.” Choose a book or a program and then practice these skills. It is very important to fully hear what is being said without focusing on what you are going to say in response, because once you start to think of your response, you’re not listening anymore and there may be valuable additional information you are missing.
• #31: [Michelle’s story of the “bright idea” putting a post on a light] Workshops can be stressful for everyone involved. Your customers are taking time out of their busy days to attend this workshop. They don’t want you to waste their time and, at first, they may not really trust that you are going to use their time effectively. You are under the gun to deliver a successful workshop, and you need to keep the meeting focused, but you can also keep it a bit light by using humor. This does not involve telling jokes, but rather making light of certain situations—especially if you are the target. It takes a pretty good level of trust and familiarity before you can make a joke at the expense of one of your clients, and this is dangerous territory—I have seen it backfire (on me!). Here is an example of light humor in a workshop: We were talking about who would be the editorin- chief of the portal and I nominated someone in the room to be the “Queen of the Portal.” Everyone laughed (I know, you had to be there), but from then on, she referred to herself (as did the rest of the team) as the Queen of the Portal, and it served to lighten the mood of the room.
• #32: You need to be brutally honest about yourself. As I said above, if you don’t know something, say so. People can tell when you’re faking—either immediately or later when they find out you didn’t really know. People will rely on your integrity, and once they trust you, they will believe you when you argue that a particular choice or course is the right one Being brutally honest is no excuse for being rude
• #33: Segue: you’ve got the soft skills: Now you need to gather requirements…
• #34: Analyst: I’m here to help you to implement SharePoint. Customer: Great! What can SharePoint do? Analyst: Lots of things: What do you want it to do? Customer: Um, I’m not sure . . . maybe you can give me a demo. Analyst: Sure: Imagine that you are a bicycle manufacturer in the Pacific northwest. Customer: But we aren’t a . . . Analyst: Isn’t this feature cool? It has a bike as a background image.
• #35: So it’s all about the requirements, right? Except it’s not
• #36: Because I said so, and I’m the customer. If you don’t include my requirement, I’ll shoot One of my biggest jobs as a SharePoint BA is to manage this desire. My three rules of SharePoint:
• #37: Cheap: Do it!
• #38: Wait a sec – maybe we can think of some alternatives (Hey! Maybe it’s no longer a ‘requirement’)
• #39: So, what happens when the customer says “I need this” This is the “we need it all” solution – often arrived at before defining the problem The “Hammer” problem
• #41: So, what happens when the customer says “I need this” This is the “we need it all” solution – often arrived at before defining the problem The “Hammer” problem
• #42: Think about alternatives: Is it close by?
• #43: How fast do I need to get there – who needs to come with me
• #44: Is a less flexible but more cost-effective solution already out there
• #45: Is the destination specialized and particularly hard to get to?
• #46: Maybe we need to really think outside the box
• #47: Simple is not ALWAYS the best solution: There are times when a complex and expensive solution is the only way to get the required destination
• #50: We’ve looked how gamestorming can help, let’s dig in to another type of visual tool
• #51: Mind mapping is not new Been around a long time, and used for brainstorming
• #58: XMind is a shareware system that does a lot of what Mind Manager does.
• #67: This is a recap
• #69: Four symbols, very simple (tricky to master)
• #82: Other tools/techniques that use visual/tactile approach
• #83: A technique to get input or feedback from users You may have great ideas of how to organize you intranet, but you users may have different ideas
• #84: To continue to quote Donna: Card sorting is best understood not as a collaborative method for creating navigation, but rather as a tool that helps us understand the people we are designing for.
• #85: In an open sort, people are not given any categories, they just have to organize concepts into groups. In a closed sort, people are told the headings and then they have to sort concepts under the categories that they’ve been given
• #90: The analysis can be useful, but it is the process of watching people do the sorts that helps provide the real value
• #96: This tool called ‘Balsamiq’ makes it extremely simple and fast to make wireframes. They look cartoonish, but that makes it easy to focus on what’s important (not color, font, etc.)