Confusability

The Agility Diagram

 

Please watch Agile Is Dead (Dave Thomas) and Jabe Bloom (Whole Work: Sociotechnicity & DevOps) to investigate these subjects in more detail.

Kanbandoned

kanbandoned

/'kanband(e)nd/

adjective

unresolved work which has been created as part of a Kanban system used in agile work practices which was created over one year ago but has not been updated in over six months

examples of usage:

"that work was kanbandoned when Dave left"
"we decided to move to the cloud and kanbandoned that work"
"I have got too much new work to do and cannot deal with my kanbandoned work"

When people start adopting Kanban it can take a long time to understand the need to limit "work in process". In stand up after stand up people explain why they weren't able to make progress on their work and will try to catch up later on. After a few months you will see physicals boards that have been abandoned because the promise of an efficient flow of work failed to materialise. People will either drift back to their old way of working or they will start a new board somewhere else and try again.

If you use a software Kanban solution such as Jira then it can be difficult to see the "kanbandoned" work because the boards are not constrained by physical size. But it is very easy to assemble a dashboard that visualises the  "kanbandoned" work by using a query like "resolved is EMPTY AND createdDate < -52w AND updatedDate < -26w".

When I ran this query I found that just under 9% of unresolved work fell into the "kanbandoned" category (created over a year ago and not updated for six months).

I then published a dashboard that listed every assignee and project that contained these items and also added a "kanbandoned" filter to the kanban board that had been set up for individuals to manage their work.

This started discussions about why work was being kanbandoned and the common themes were:

• too much work being assigned
• pointless work being created
• lack of discipline around managing work
• no "work in process" limits at a personal or organisational level
• assigning work to the wrong people - this included unresolved work being assigned to people who had left the organisation

We will continue to monitor and highlight our "kanbandoned" work, not in an attempt to put pressure on people to do more, but in order to give people permission to let go of the long tail of "kanbandoned" work and also to say no to new work that is outside of a WIP limit.

 

Left facing tweeters cannot be trusted

When you look at your twitter feed you usually see the authors profile picture to the left of their tweet (see image below). When their profile picture is facing away from their tweet it gives the impression that they want to be disassociated from their tweet and don't actually believe what they have written as they cannot bear to actually look at it.

 

If you look at the screenshot below I think you will agree that Jack Schofield and Livia Labate appear trustworthy, but Louis Rosenfeld and Christina Wodtke look very shifty to me.

Of the 142 accounts I follow 46% are companies or organisations that use logos, whilst the remaining 94 are people who use images of themselves (or a body double for Chris Locke).

Of these 94 people, 48 of them use photos that do not face left and 5 of them use cartoon avatars.

The 24 people who are using left leaning profile pictures need to change their profile pictures today as they come across as being untrustworthy and dishonest (according to my research).

 

No 29, Elvis said it best: "We can't go on together with suspicious minds."

 

In 1999 I read a book that excited me. I re-read it recently and think that it's more relevant today than ever. If you replace internet/intranet with digital and mobile you have got something that is a manifesto for a digital era.

So, dust off your old paper copy or read it online for free.

 

The 95 Theses

1. Markets are conversations.
2. Markets consist of human beings, not demographic sectors.
3. Conversations among human beings sound human. They are conducted in a human voice.
4. Whether delivering information, opinions, perspectives, dissenting arguments or humorous asides, the human voice is typically open, natural, uncontrived.
5. People recognize each other as such from the sound of this voice.
6. The Internet is enabling conversations among human beings that were simply not possible in the era of mass media.
7. Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy.
8. In both internetworked markets and among intranetworked employees, people are speaking to each other in a powerful new way.
9. These networked conversations are enabling powerful new forms of social organization and knowledge exchange to emerge.
10. As a result, markets are getting smarter, more informed, more organized. Participation in a networked market changes people fundamentally

etc. etc.

Mac at 30 - What about Jef Raskin?

Stephen Fry has been celebrating 30 years of the Mac and names many of the people who contributed directly and indirectly to the Mac.

But I would like to call attention to the contribution made by Jef Raskin who has made an enormous contribution to software and hardware design.

Here is a memo written by Jef Raskin in 1981 which is very interesting. Jef jas been criticised for sometime over-stating his involvement in the Mac project, but anyone who takes a look at his body of work can see the enormous contribution he has made to the industry.

 

 

Jef's signature can be seen on the bottom left.

 

A prototype for an internet fridge from 2004.

Interact - The Physical Device

The Interact multi-media kiosk came in two different configurations.

The 'stand-up' configuration came with a 19 inch touchscreen monitor with a built in video camera, printer and telephone.

This configuration could be used in branch locations or in public areas such as shopping centres and railway stations.

 

The 'desk' model allowed users to sit side by side with Nationwide Branch Employees and use system together. 

 

Users could have a 'video-phone' conversation with one of our specially trained call centre staff. That was a big deal in 1995!

Thanks to one of the original 'Interactors' Will McMeechan for providing the photos.

 

Interact - A kiosk for all seasons

The Interact home screen would be visible on the Nationwide Building Society kiosks for much of the time, and rather than leave a single image on-screen the graphic designers modelled different images for different times of day and different seasons.

 

We even introduced a human character to the home screen during Autumn.

 

 

Interact - A touch screen application from 1995

Before the iPad. Before Internet Banking.

In 1995, Nationwide Building Society introduced Interact, a multi-media touch screen kiosk designed to allow members of the public to understand financial services.

Awards:

British Computer Society 1995, Gold Award

British Interactive Multimedia Association, Gold prize in retail multimedia

European Financial Self Service Conference 1995, Best Application in Retail Banking

Smithsonian Gold Medal

Computerworld Honor Award

Reading across time and space

I have got my original number one copy of Dr Who weekly from 1979 and here is a picture of Gabriel reading it with some old doctors.