The tribalism hurting your agile practice

My Agile Practice has changed over the years.

It has been a strange year.  Last year, I was talking about comfort food and sleeplessness.  Three hundred and sixty-five days later, I want to share a little wisdom I have gained along the way.  This week how disappointment can make you a better scrum master. 

I have deliberately not discussed politics on this blog.  The internet is filled with plenty of places on the political right and political left to discuss current events.  I have plenty of strong opinions myself but do not share them here because they are not germane to the discussion of Agile, Lean, and Scrum.  The world of business transformation is hard enough; injecting partisan political views seems counterproductive to me.

I come from the world of college debate and forensics.  It is a community centered in the “reality-based,” zones of academia, science, media, and government.  It is a skeptical community which relies on empiricism and rhetoric to persuade others. These same institutions are referred to by political conservatives as pillars of deceit.  A year ago, my smug self-assurance in my expertise took a severe beating. 

Over the last year, I have gotten much wiser.  I have rededicated myself to my profession.  I shut down my internet startup.  I even made an effort to listen to Nickelback to see if there was any merit to their music.  Suffice to say; it was the audio equivalent of eating chocolate frosting out of a tub with a spoon; including the stomach ache. 

The most significant notion revealing itself to me was the concept of epistemic-tribalism.  I felt that if you are “reality-based,” and gave people the facts of the situation, they would eventually come around to your point of view.  If this formulation was good enough for Socrates, then it was good enough for my agile practice.  I now realize this was naive.  People have deep emotional and political biases.  Stating the facts is not good enough.  When confronted with facts that contradict their worldview or place in the world, some people will reject those facts.  It is similar to the ideas of Wittgenstein who explained language was a construct and subject to games.  Furthermore, two people can look at the same object and see two different things.  The neat and tidy world based on objective reality and evidence fell away replaced by an effete world of conjecture resembling a postmodern literary theory class.  It was disorienting. 

If epistemic tribalism can happen in the realm of national politics, it is not too far of a stretch to see it manifest itself the cubical of an office.  Personal relationships are more important than sales.  Countless Quid Pro Quo agreements bind the office together and harm customer service.  Tenure with the organization is more important than accomplishment.  Finally, being likable is more important than getting work done.  It became clear to me that these things were happening.  I counted on the better angles of others instead of understanding the tangled webs of motivations.  To be a successful scrum master or agile coach, I had to accept office professionals could be nasty and brutish. 

So this last year for me, the political became professional.  Reason and empiricism are less useful tools for change compared with understanding the motivations and prejudices of my colleagues.  Epistemic-tribalism is a real thing, and you need to understand it in your organization.  Finally, it takes disappointment for you to set aside your prejudices and view your surrounding differently.

Until next time.

It is time Agile crushes magical thinking in business.

Working in Technology is like taming a dragon.

In the contemporary business world, one of the things which surprised me the most is how divorced people are from the technology which their careers depend upon.  Arthur C. Clark, the author of “2001: A Space Odyssey,” said, “…and sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”  Today, in a world moving at the speed of the internet, tens of millions of people are wandering the world behaving like magicians.  I want to talk about what this means for you the scrum master or agile coach. 

At the click of a smartphone, a human being can summon a ride, book restaurant reservations, order clothing, and find potential romantic partners.  News and gossip travel around the globe.  We can even live in virtual spaces reshaping our bodies ignoring concepts or gender and aging.  Thanks to the world of technology and algorithms we can live in a curated rich world where there are no opposing opinions and everything is quick and convenient.  It is a seductive world. 

The world I describe is the product of millions of hours of labor and the application of fifty years of merciless engineering to make systems better, faster and cheaper.  It is the application of silicon wafer technology, advanced mathematics, and smart people doing smart things.  It is the unwritten story of our time.

Now imagine people who live in the magical age who want to implement a new payroll system or create a better way to get products to customers.  Since they are accustomed to systems which are quick and compliant, they think it is possible to spin up systems which behave the same way with the speed of downloading a phone application.  These magicians take it for granted that the data will always be correct and they do not need to proofread the work. 

This is not the reality of technology.  Developers need to get involved, and they need to be managed, so the code is clean and scalable.  Data needs to be placed on Oracle or Microsoft SQL servers.  Network accounts need to be created, and all of this costs time and money.  It is not magic.  It is hard work.

As a former web developer, it always troubled me when people told me how they expected a website to look and behave without understanding a lick of HTML code.  It is my experience these individuals rise in organizations and get budget authority.  So you have the ignorant paying the bills while someone more ignorant is giving orders to the development team.  It falls to a technology lead or scrum master to transform ignorance and magical thinking into code.   It is just as disheartening as it sounds. 

It is also why so many technology projects fail because the people involved do not conceptually understand the labor it takes to get the job done.  A construction project is easy to understand compared to a software project because the people paying the bills realize what is happening.  A typical business person does not understand the difference between Java-script and JAVA; so how are they going to know what it takes to successfully construct a web application.

As a scrum master, it is your responsibility to crush magical thinking.  Tell the truth about how long it is going to take to get something done.  Show people work in progress and ship code periodically so if adjustments need to be made they can happen in a timelier manner.  You will have to say no, and you will have to create trust between the development team and business.  This means enforcing one of the central tenants of Agile; their business sets the project priorities, and the development team says how long it is going to take.  If this social compact is not upheld, then any agile implementation will collapse into dust. 

So in this magical world, it is up to the scrum master to create a much-needed dose of reality.  Otherwise, you are confronted with an evil magic act which does nothing but disappoint. 

Until next time.

Rethinking how I look at story points.

Story points are not like coffee cups

I have been an agilest since 2009 and that means that my knowledge of scrum and agile have grown over time.  Occasionally, I have to reconsider some ideas I took for granted.    This week would like to review the notion of story points.

My change of heart came about when one of my developers Larry Gasik came to me and confronted me about how we treat story points.  Many scrum masters and people in the agile community treat story points as measurements of volume like cups at a coffee shop.  If a developer works six hours a day on code then three story points’ holds up to 18 hours of work or (3*6).  By the same logic a five point story can hold (5*6) or thirty hours of work.

I have been doing it wrong.  A story point is more like a measure of distance rather than volume.  This blog from Mountain Goat Software does a better job explaining this better than I can.  To calculate the “distance” of a story point it is the sum of difficulty and ambiguity rounded up to the nearest number on a Fibonacci sequence.  If I were to write a formula for this it would look like this.

Story Point = Difficulty + Ambiguity
F_n = [Story Point]

Where F_n is a number in a Fibonacci sequence.

Here is where the math gets important.  An Olympic runner can run a mile in under four minutes.  A middle aged man like me can walk that distance in about thirty.  The size of the mile does not change just the ability of the person to cover the distance.  So two people will take a different amount of time to complete a three point story.  So two people will take a different amount of time to complete a three point story.  Now we can use ranges of time.  In the case of three story points, on the low side (3*1) for one hour to complete a story point to eighteen hours or (3*6) on the high side.

This accomplishes three goals.  First, story estimates deal with ambiguity better because the ranges of time get larger as the story point increases in size.  Second the story point allows for better forecasting because developers who concentrate on story points and velocity can plan how much work they can handle in a sustainable fashion.  Finally, saying a story point is a range of time prevents managers and other business folks packing more work into a story point because it is not a fixed volume of hours.

By treating story points like units of distance instead of volume you eliminate numerous distractions in your agile practice.  Managers will not treat sprint estimates like quotations because of ambiguous nature of the amount of time it will take to do the work.  This also prevents a manager from placing more work into a sprint saying, “It was five story points and it only took you 20 hours so I am going to add about ten more hours of work to keep you busy.”

This helped me come up with something I call Kedar’s computation after my technical lead.  Story points also help reduce risk in a project. For instance, say your developers spend six hours a day coding.  The range of hours inside a story point is between one and six.  Following this reasoning three story points could take as little as three hours of work or 18 hours of work.  Now, you have a sprint with 39 story point’s worth of work.  The product backlog items in the sprint could be divided in two ways.  The first way is 13 three point stories.  The other way is three 13 point stories.  Doing a little arithmetic on the back of a napkin this is what you discover.

Given:
13 three point stories.
(3*1)*13 = 39 || (3*6)*13 = 234

Given:
Three 13 point stories
(13*1)*3 = 39 || (13*6)*3 = 234

The amount of hours are the same!  It is pretty cool but here is where you as a scrum master and project manager can say that you have more confidence in getting the work done.  Thirteen point stores are more risky to complete than and three point story and here is why.   Say the developers get stuck on a thirteen point story and fail to deliver it during the sprint.  The math looks like this below.

26/39 which simplifies to 2/3

Now do the same thing for the sprint with 13 three point stories.  The team gets stuck on a three point story.

36/39 which simplifies to 12/13

The team is going to be more satisfied with the work when they deliver 12/13 of the work than 2/3.  Management and the people paying the bills are going to be more forgiving of the team when only 1/13 of the work is incomplete rather than 1/3.

This is Kedar’s computation, which shows that while the work is the same, the risk is much greater for fewer stories with larger story point totals.  To go back to our runner analogy, the runner is completing smaller chunks of the race at a time and is more likely to complete the entire race.  We have a better means of tracking how far along the runner is during the contest.  It may take them a longer or shorter period of time to finish the race but the distance traveled is the same.  The only difference is that it has been divided into smaller laps.

This is why I have changed my mind about story points.  They are more a measure of distance with ranges of time rather than fixed volumes of time.  Making this intellectual shift will make estimating with story points more helpful.

Until next time.

Fighting the F.U.D. as a Scrum Master

Fight the F.U.D.

The world of technology is awash in acronyms.  These acronyms rise and fall with much of fashion in the technology world.  A few of them have lingered over the years and represent a common knowledge among technology people.  This week I want to talk about F.U.D. and how you can fight it.

According to the urban dictionary, the term F.U.D. is an acronym for fear, uncertainty and doubt. The term was born during the start of the open source movement as companies like Microsoft and Cisco used disinformation to try and undermine the credibility of open source advocates.  The idea was that if they could create fear of the new movement, uncertainty of their goals and doubt about if they could actually solve business problems then they could maintain dominant market share.

Since these early open source days, Microsoft has dropped the F.U.D. campaign and has eagerly embraced open source and cloud computing with its Microsoft Azure tools.  It is positive development and has been a money making strategy for the company.

As a scrum master you are going to deal with F.U.D. every day.  Organizations, are riddled with fear of changing how they do business.  Any uncertainty is intolerable to executives and business leaders.  Finally, doubt is going to be used at every turn to try an undermine efforts for change.  To address fear, start small with an individual or team and show how the process works.  A person scared of heights will jump on a zip line if you can prove that they will not fall off the line or injure themselves.  Uncertainty is easily dispelled with hard data and evidence that the new ideas are working and improving performance.  Doubt, is eliminated by your personal conviction as a scrum master and by more real world evidence.

I am not saying there is a magic bullet to deal with F.U.D. but as a scrum master you need to be aware of it.  Otherwise, any effort you make to try and improve the organization is going to be fruitless.

Until next time.

Product Owner Anti-Patterns

If your product owner behaves like this
way they are doing it wrong: very wrong!

Every scrum master needs to be on the lookout for some anti-patterns in how product owners do their jobs.  In a perfect world, the product owner and the scrum master are like siblings working toward the same goal.  The reality is that mismatched business priorities and lack of cooperation by business partners can happen in any organization.  So this article will help you recognize the smells which you should look out for as a scrum master.  I hope a few of you will be kind enough to provide some suggestions of how to deal with these anti-patterns.  Many of these examples come from Roman Pichler’s excellent book on product ownership.

The Under Powered Product Owner

We have all seen this product owner.  They have the look of an abused animal.  They are not empowered to say “no” and they when they say that they speak for the business you know what they are really saying is they speak for their boss who will overrule them when it is convenient.  The under-powered product owner is a figurehead who is their because the scrum process says so.  The people with the real say will not abdicate their authority to let this product owner do the job.  The authoring of user stories consists of being called into the boss’s office to take dictation from the boss.  Priorities are set by the boss and if something goes wrong it is the fault of the development team rather than the boss.  Everything is a priority so nothing is a priority until something goes wrong which triggers a spasm of unsustainable development. 

The Over Worked Product Owner

According to Certified Scrum Master training, each software project should have a product owner and a scrum master along with a group of developers ranging in size from five to seven people.  Executives look at this as a waste of resources and often assign multiple scrum masters over many development teams and do the same with product owners.  The by-product is the over worked product owner.  Currently, at my firm I work with a Product owner with his work divided among four software development teams.  What this does is that it forces the Product owner to only spend the minimum amount of time necessary to get stories written and to make sure that priorities are getting fit into the sprint. The stories are rewritten by the scrum master or another developer so they are clear enough to be understood by the other developers.  Stand up meetings, retrospectives, and demonstrations are missed because they are not considered critical by the product owner.  The only time they turn up is when something goes wrong or when upper management is paying attention.  Quality suffers, and the notion of sustainable development is nothing more than a sick joke.

The Absent Product Owner

Sometimes projects are kicked off and the executives who demand the work can’t find or won’t hire a product owner.  The software is still expected to get written but no one can be bothered to write the user stories.  Software developers and scrum masters should just be smart enough to find out what creates user value.  This creates situations where what is constructed is often not what the business wants. Fortunately, the failure process is faster so the executive can ask questions like “what is wrong with you people?” and “this is a simple business process why am I paying you so much money to screw this up?” 

The Product Owner by Committee

Some projects have a great deal of visibility and multiple project teams; this creates the product owner by committee.  These are individuals who are all empowered to write stories in the backlog and they are also equally empowered to set priorities.  This pulls the development like taffy and forces the scrum master and the development team to juggle priorities with dexterity of chain saws.  One mistake creates, the loss of a limb and the destruction of a career.  In addition, the horrific aftermath generates meetings which are outside the scrum process and cut into the productivity of the team.  This is why many of us in the agile community are discussing how to scale large projects because multiple development teams and product owners leads to this situation.

The Rogue Product Owner

This is a product owner who has his own personal interests in mind rather than the needs of the business when creating work for the development team.  You know when you work for a rouge product owner when your boss comes to you and asks what your team is working on.  This is because the team is making life easy for the product owner but new customers are not being generated because the features to attract those new customers are not prioritized as highly by the product owner.  This undermines the agile process because the only value being created is for the product owner instead of the business. 

So there you have it; five different anti-patterns for product owners.  Be on the watch for all of them otherwise your life as a scrum master is going to become very painful.

Until next time.

Expectations in a Age of Magic

Sometimes it is rocket science.

One of the funniest social criticism ever made came from comedian Louis CK.  In his discussion with late night host Conan O’Brien, he talks about how fantastic technology has become and no one is happy with it.  I am reminded of Arthur C. Clarke’s three laws of predicting the future the most famous being, “Any sufficiently advance technology is indistinguishable from magic.”  This week on the blog I wanted to discuss expectation setting and getting your business partners to have realistic expectations about technology.

I was thinking about this topic this week as I was watching the coverage of the Rosetta space probe and it placing a lander on the comet.  The technical achievement was astounding.  Over ten years and one and a half billion euros we not only got to see the surface of a comet but we actually landed an object the size of a consumer dishwasher on the surface.  What made this more satisfying was how the science press and the main stream media covered the event. Both seem to admit that success or failure, the European Space Agency’s did the best it could do and that whatever happened it was a big achievement.

Wryly, I joked on LinkedIn that I was looking forward to some of my business partners saying, “If we can land something on a comet why can’t we do X with the web site.”   My mild cynicism hit a nerve because people began to comment and tweet me saying they were expecting similar answers.  This is when it hit me.  Numerous people who work with technology really do not understand how that technology works.  They just take it for granted.  It really is “indistinguishable from magic.”  They can get the weather forecast in Toronto, schedule a truck to deliver products to the city and electronically communicate with Canadian customs to avoid the truck being stopped at the border.  They do it with technologies like the internet, EDI, and Java but they really do not understand how these technologies work.  They just take it for granted that they do.

This is when more knowledgeable people need to step in with expectations.  We understand the amount of work which needs to be done and the difficulty of the tasks.  We also understand that most technology problems in a contemporary business are not technology problems.  They are people problems which could be better solved by individuals working better together.  So when someone says, I would love to have “X” on the web site; ask the hard questions and find out if these improvements are necessary.  Ask about technical debt and why the organization tolerates it.

It is the responsibility of technical professionals to act like the engineers we were trained to be rather than magicians carefully guarding our secrets.  Business partners need to understand the trade-offs which are made every day to keep the organization running.  A new feature for the billing system or web site doesn't pop into existence from the mind of the business owner.  It requires work from developers and quality specialists.  It needs to be accepted by the business.  Finally, it has to be accepted by consumers.

This is not an easy road but it is certainly easier than landing a probe on a comet.

Until next time.

The Vision Thing

We have a vision.

Technology is a shambling monster of innovation and conflicting visions.  One week, we view the future being made in virtual reality with companies like Occulus.  The next week we view self-driving cars.  It is enough to make someone’s head spin.  I myself wonder about all the new innovations and changes taking place.  As an entrepreneur, do I ride the latest trends or do I follow my own trail.  This week I want to talk about where my head and heart take me.

The two biggest trends in technology are the increase in mobile computing with smart phones and the rise of cloud computing.  I have been watching both grow for years and I have been talking about it for a long time.   I think that Microsoft has been leader in the area of cloud computing with its Azure services while they have stumbled in the area mobile devices.  I think with the launch of the Surface Pro 3 that they will have a device which will knock some competitors on their behinds.

When I founded this company four years ago I saw these trends in motion and wanted to help small and medium sized businesses take advantage of these technologies.  It is not glamorous or sexy but it felt like a niche which I could fill.  This way a small business owner has the same powers and features as a Fortune 500 firm.  They can use mobile applications and the cloud to help grow their business.  I imagine a sales person for a small firm doing a sale punching a few keys on their cell phone and the transaction going through with minimal human intervention.

This is the dream of my firm and I look forward to making it a reality.  Please contact us today and we will show you how.

Until next time.

Liberal Arts and Return on Investment

It was not a failure to launch
it was a rotten economy.
(Picture from Time.com)

Being an entrepreneur during times like this is very difficult.  Each day, I see myself confronted with frustration and failure.  It gets old and it sucks the enthusiasm out of you.  That is when I have had to rely on family and friends to pick me up and make sense of my crazy fate.  You see I have always traveled the more unfamiliar path my entire life and in spite of my choices I have managed to earn a living and develop the skills necessary to found my own business.  I reflected on that when this week when Payscale.com published its annual list of return on investment colleges and college majors.  Naturally, degrees from colleges near Silicon Valley and with big focus on science and technology had the highest rankings.  This kicked off another round of articles about how a humanities education was a handicap in today’s global economy.  As someone who comes from a humanities background, I can say that those articles are gross exaggerations.  This week on the blog, I will argue that a humanities background is an advantage in this mixed up global economy.

When I graduated from college in 1990, George Bush Sr. was president and we were in the middle of a recession which guaranteed that none of us graduating were going to find a job.  It was very discouraging for someone who wanted to work in radio.  I found an internship which paid minimum wage and worked nights as a disk jockey at a night club.  It was awful.  I was forced to live like a teen-ager with my parents and I had enough money for gas.  I could not afford to rent my own place or provide for myself.  Adding insult to injury was the cover of Time Magazine telling everyone that my failure to launch was due to laziness. As someone who said no to drugs, worked his nerdy butt off in high school and college, and sacrificed so much to become an academic and professional success; it was a bitter pill to swallow.

It was during this time that I felt the first rumbles of the internet.  I discovered the Prodigy data service and also learned about this funny thing called Microsoft windows and how it made life easier.  It did not know it yet but a path in my life was revealing itself to me.  It would be almost eight years from college graduation to my first technology job but I think my liberal arts background made it possible.  I had to learn strange languages.  A course in symbolic logic I took as part of my philosophy minor made it easier to understand decision trees and algorithms.  The years working in print media and radio helped me bridge the gap between old-media and the new-fangled media of the web.  Without a communications degree, I would not have the skills necessary to collaborate with customers and users.  Liberal Arts and humanities have served me well.

As I earned my MBA the study skills I learned as an undergraduate came in handy.  I was more prepared than my fellow students, understood the turn of a phrase and could take complicated things and make them easy to understand.  I doubt I would have learned those skills in a computer science course.  Now that I have an MBA and I have founded my own business, I see that I have been able to merge my experience with technology with my liberal arts background.

I also know that I want to hire a mix of liberal arts and technical professionals as my business grows.  I have terrible spelling so I have to rely on others to proof read my work.  That means that English majors are going to receive preferential hiring treatment from HR department.  For every developer who understands monads and SOLID programming, I am going to make sure I hire a few people to understand how to conjugate a verb and understand what Gottfried Leibniz meant by monads.  I feel this way because a diverse group of people can better solve the problems of customers.

So looking at the news that a liberal arts background may not provide the most return on investment for a professional, I politely ignore it.  I have been surviving and thriving as a professional because of my liberal arts background instead of in spite of it.  I have learned to ride the wave of the internet as it picked up steam and I have founded my own business hoping to help others take advantage of those trends.

If you would like to know more about my business and how we can help you improve your profits and bottom line please give us a call.

Being an entrepreneur is frustrating but I would rather follow this path rather than the well-traveled one.  I hope you get the chance to wander with me.

Until next time.

What is so great about 2014?

Looking forward to 2014 are you?

There are plenty of reasons to get excited about 2014.  A new year is a clean slate and it firers up an organization with the inspiration to come out fighting; like a punch drunk boxer.  This week on the blog I want to talk about some things we are looking forward to as an organization.

First, customer outreach; E₃ systems has been making efforts to reach out tour local community.  We were concentrating our products to a very narrow market.  This year, we will apply our products to any business that can use fleet management or inventory control software. Contact us today and ask how our systems can help your business today.

Next, we are graduating from Microsoft BizSpark. Three years ago someon I knew in the Chicagoland Application Lifecycle Management group told me about the BizSpark program. This company could not have started without the generous help and support.  I am looking forward to the time when I will be able to boast about our success to the tech media.  There is a place in the start-up world for Microsoft Technologies and we are proof.

Third, the continuing maturity of BootStrap and MVC means that the web is catching up to our vision.  When, I founded this organization I wanted to build web applications which worked on a variety of devices. Thanks to the Twitter BootStrap library, it is not possible for more people to make that a reality.  This is a good thing because it will be easier for my little start-up to find developer who understand what we are trying to accomplish.  We are also excited about the release of MVC5.  The embrace of BootStrap by Microsoft along with the security improvements and Web API means that the web is only going to get more interesting and we cannot wait to see that happen.

Next, Google has better unity between YouTube and Google+.  When Google+ first came out it was hard to get pages and YouTube channels to play nice with each other.  This made marketing and branding efforts a huge headache.  Fortunately, Google listen to its consumers and now pages and YouTube channels work together seamlessly.  Thanks Google and stay tuned as we make improvements to our YouTube channel.

Finally, the general economy is improving and with it the chance to grow our customer base.  The last three years have shown tremendous growth in web technology.  We at E₃ systems have stayed focused on those improvements to provide the best product for our customers.  With customers willing to spend on technology solutions we will see an uptick in customer and business.

So that is what we have to look forward to in 2014, we hope you will join us.

Until next time.

To Big to Succeed

People have a right to get upset about
Healthcare.gov

Like many people in the technology business, I am following the news of the roll out of the Healthcare.gov website with a mixture of horror and disbelief.  It is clear to me that the current occupant of the White House deserves some criticism for this roll out; however, I also think a huge dose of criticism should be leveled at CGI International who is doing the principle development.  In this blog, I want to discuss why consulting companies like CGI International are too big to succeed.

In the book “The Geek Gap,” Bill Pfleging and Minda Zetlin say that technical leaders and business leaders view the world on very different terms; the business leader is interested in control and influence while the technical leader wants to build things which work.  It is clear to me that CGI is more interested in influence and control than building working software.

During congressional hearings with representatives from CGI about the Healthcare.gov roll out, no project managers were discussing the problems encountered.  More aggravatingly the congressmen did not know which questions to ask.  So you had people who negotiate contracts attempting to justify why they should get paid to people who did not understand what they were paying for.  It was depressing.

What makes this even more frustrating is that there are great examples of technology and government working together.  Each year Intuit makes millions of dollars helping people do taxes.  They are able to wade through the income tax regulations and each year release software which helps people do their taxes.  Even if the law changes, they are able to update the software over the internet.  If Intuit can do this each year why can’t CGI?  This answer is that CGI, from the outside looking in, is the antithesis of an agile organization.

They value process and tools over individuals and interactions.  They are more concerned with obeying the letter of a contract that providing collaboration.  Finally, they don’t have working software but they have plenty of documentation of why they should be paid.  Of course, this does not matter because, CGI is highly successful and so deeply embedded into the project that firing them for a poor job would be foolish.  In essence, they are too big to fail.

I had a hunch something was wrong when I reached out to my local congressional representative by e-mail and phone offering to pitch in and author some web services.  The congressional office had a staffer contact me and assure me that everything was under control.  When I asked if there was a way to volunteer for the project, I was instructed to follow the federal procurement process.   As a two person technology start up, I decided that it was not worth the hassle to get further involved.  I am sure that other start-ups felt the same and that is why firms like CGI make money.  They provide lousy service but they understand government procurement so they do not need to excel at fulfilling contracts only closing them and getting paid.

Healthcare.gov could have been a smashing success out of the gate, but thanks to a bad procurement process and a firm like CGI, it began with a thud and is slowly being made functional.  I hope that the November 30th release is a huge success.  I did not go into business to become CGI; I went into business to build things which work and solve problems.  I hope this is an object lesson to our elected leaders being able to win a contract does not mean that they can actually do the work.

Until next time.

Some Perspective about the Twitter IPO

Some thoughts about all the love Twitter is feeling.

The big news this week is the initial public offering of Twitter on the New York Stock exchange.  Every entrepreneur dreams of the moment when their hard work and effort pays off and they are swimming in stock options and cash.  It crosses my mind from time to time.  This week, I want to provide a little perspective to those wild fantasies that IPO’s create.

An IPO or huge success is as American as apple pie.  A person creates a product everyone wants and then receives a huge payday.  What most people do not see are the countless hours perfecting that product.  People do not see the sales calls ending in frustration.  Finally, it is difficult convey the loneliness and solitude it takes to build a good product.  It is always easier to show the big pay day rather than the long slog it took to get to that payday.  I am not looking for a big payday.  I would like to be able to have my own business but living like Tony Stark with my own computer assistant seems a little far-fetched for me.  

It should also be evident that all the frenzy regarding Twitter is more heat than light.  According to the filing with the SEC, Twitter is still struggling to generate advertising revenue. It is one of those products which people use but cannot seem to make money; sounds like a fishy investment to me.  This does not mean that Twitter will not figure it out but currently people look like they are investing in the promise of profits rather than actual profits.

This situation reminds me of the good-old days of the Dot.com bubble where any company with .com in its name created a gold rush on the stock market.  Companies with spurious business models and the ability to burn through cash lit up the stock market.  What these companies were, according to Rolling Stone writer Matt Taibbi, were falling watermelons where everyone made money until they hit the pavement.  Those forced to clean up the mess were individual investors.  It was a giddy and stupid time.  I am glad I lived through it because it flavored my approach to business for the better.  I still keep a Pets.com sock puppet to remind me of that era’s excess.

I got into business not for the wealth and fame but because I want to work for myself.  I want to help other business people make money and put people to work.  We think that our new Tony fleet management software is a great tool to provide risk management and regulatory compliance to small business.  We also think Sully 2.0 is the right tool to help your business manage inventory and bills of lading.  Contact us today and we will show you.

I am very happy for the owners and investors in Twitter’s IPO but I won’t be toasting them any time soon.  I will save that for my own big milestone when I can go professional.

Until next time.

Why You Need Tony

Tony is looking after your fleet.

After the work we put into our new Tony Fleet Maintenance program you would expect us to drop the mike and do a little celebrating.  Far from it; this week on the blog I want to talk about why you need to use this application.

If you are safety coordinator at a business or owner, insurance companies and regulatory agencies are demanding that you provide information about the maintenance of your equipment.  This is going to be particularly important if one of your vehicles gets into an accident.  Before Tony, you kept track of this information on paper or with an excel spreadsheet.  Now you can access this information with a few clicks on a PC, tablet computer or smart phone.

So when you are called to the scene of an accident by the state police you can bring along your smart phone and show the officers that all of the maintenance on the vehicle is up to date saving you potential liability.  Our system also makes it possible to settle disputes between the shop and the company.  You can find out how long work is under warranty and if something breaks prove it to the shop that they need to fix it.  So now your organization is saving money.

Finally, Tony makes it possible to save time.  Since it is cloud based system, it works on any device with a connection to the web you can enter information anywhere or any time.  You do not have to be in the office and can enter data at home or on the road.  This kind of system is perfect for people who would rather be meeting with customers instead of being tethered in the office doing paperwork.

We are pretty proud of this application and are looking forward to going out and selling it in the agriculture and logistics community.  Contact us here for more information.

Until next time.

Introducing Tony - Our Latest Product

Your Fleet Maintenance never looked
so good. 

More than cash, the common currency of an entrepreneur is trust.  If customers and client can not trust you your business is doomed to failure.  Today we at E₃ systems are proud to announce that we are releasing our Tony fleet management system.  This week’s blog post features our new product and how we kept our promise to our customers.

Tony was conceived in February of 2013; as we looked at the marketplace and realized there was no good tool for tracking maintenance on a fleet of vehicles.  Trucking companies, school bus services, rental car companies and farmers did not have a good tool to keep track of when and what kind of maintenance they did on their vehicles.  We decided to write one.

The system like all E₃ products works on a smart phone, tablet or regular PC. It is based on the cloud so there is not software to install or upgrade.  Finally, we made our system easy to use and economical for consumers.

With Tony you can QR code your vehicles so that anyone with a smart phone can view the maintenance history on a vehicle.  Paperwork is a thing of the past as a few key strokes can pull up a vehicle and the history of maintenance for it.  In addition, when you are confronted with law-enforcement or insurance requests for vehicle maintenance you can provide them with that information from any device with a web connection.

We went through an exhausting testing program to make sure we had a great product to offer you.  Now we are pleased to say it is here.  Contact us today and we will tell you more.  This is just one more way we are trying to earn your trust.

Until Next time.

The Quality Goes in Before the Software Ships Out.

I think we need to explain.

This has been an amazing week of transition for E₃ systems.  We have formally been in business for three years.  We are also on the cusp of a new software release. Today I want to talk about our new product Tony and why you will have to wait a little longer before it goes live.

Early in 2013, a potential client called us out of the blue and wanted to know if we could put together a simple contact management system for them.  We rushed a prototype out and demonstrated it to the client.  They seemed enthusiastic until we gave them a contract and said that they would have to pay for us to finish the project since it was done on spec.  We never heard from that client again.  I suppose this was a good development because if they were not going to return our calls or honor a contract I am sure that getting paid would have also been a serious problem.

The months of March and April were gloomy as we continued to sell our main product Sully 2.0 and assess the failure of our prototype project.  Some good did come out of the work because; we developed experience in MVC 4 and Entity Framework code first for rapid project turn around.  By May, we had come up with a new project and idea which we nick-named Tony after a famous Fiat mechanic.

Tony would be an easy to use system to track maintenance for vehicles in any sized fleet. Trucking companies, rental firms, and even car dealerships could use the system to keep track of when and where work was done.  It would become a living record and best of all it would obey the philosophy of all products at E₃ systems.  It would work on a smart phone, tablet, and personal computer.  We also leveraged the power of Microsoft Tag so someone in the field would scan a code on their phone and get instant information.

We had scheduled that Tony would launch in July of 2013.  It was a hectic schedule made even more dramatic by the server migration we did to upgrade our software and databases.  Something had to give and it was clear that the migration took precedence and that we would have to push back the release of Tony.  We also felt that we needed to do more work on the product before it was ready for release and sale.  I am deeply disappointed about this but as the president of the company I would rather ship quality software that release something and then expect my customers to find bugs and act as our quality assurance team.

So we are planning to release our Tony software in mid-September.  I felt that you our customers deserved and explanation.  We had been dropping hints about Tony for the last two months and felt you needed an honest explanation of why it is not here.  As a young start-up we are not in the business of vaporware so please forgive us for the delay.  If you have any questions or concerns please drop us a line and we will have an account executive contact you directly.

Until next time.

We upgrade so you do not have to

Pay attention! We are upgrading.

This week we are preparing for the launch of our new software product nicknamed “Tony.”  We are also upgrading our servers from Windows 2008 to Windows 2012.  This made me think about why you the small business person should care about all these behind the scenes moves.  Today’s blog post will cover the reason we upgrade at E₃ systems.

One of the important powers of the web and cloud computing is that as a consumer of cloud services you do not have to worry about software, server space, or even operating systems.  All you have to do is open your web browser use the software.  It is up to the loud service provider to make sure that its systems are up and running rather than placing that burden on the consumer.  This is why we are upgrading.  We upgrade so you the consumer do not have to go through the experience.

It is up to us E₃ systems to make sure everything works in a safe and secure fashion.  It is up to us E₃ systems to bring you the latest technology including responsive websites which look good on tablets, mobile phones and regular PC’s.  It is up to E₃ systems to fine tune those systems for maximum performance.  For our customers, they can worry about their business and leave the upgrades to us.

This is not the most glamorous thing about being a cloud based company but I think it is the most important. We do upgrades so you don’t have to.  Manage your business we will worry about the upgrades.

Until next time.

Software is Never Free

Just like the Merchant of Venice
we all need our pound of flesh.

Being a software entrepreneur is a difficult business to be involved with.  I spend much of my time writing software and then the remainder selling it to others.  It is difficult and I could not think of anything else I would rather be doing.  Still I do have one big challenge and it is the same challenge all types of creative people are facing.  It appears that in this internet world of abundance they do not have to pay for books, music, or software.  This week I would like to explain why software is not free.  Someone has to pay. 

I believe that this notion that software should be free was spawned from the Linux movement during the Dot.Com boom days.  Countless pixels have been spent expressing the view that software should be free and that copy writes for things like books, movies, and software were quaint notions from the pre-internet days.  I think it was professionally and culturally poisonous for the software industry.  Please let me explain.  

Software, music and books are the one of the few things we have not figured out how to automate.  The creative process necessary to build them are labor intensive and imprecise.  These processes are also prone to spectacular failure.  This is why when you check the CHAOS report it is clear why many of the software projects are challenged or failing.  It is hard to match the expectations of the people paying for the software to the abilities of the people writing that software. 

Along came the Linux movement with the religious fanaticism of the Opus Dei.  Linux was a version of the Unix software program which was developed by AT&T during its monopoly period of the 1950's and 1960's.  What made it unique is that it was freely distributed over the internet via download.   This meant that instead of paying a license for an operating system for a computer it was free.  Companies sprang up to support this ecosystem of Unix and provide a means to cash in on all the companies who didn't want to pay for software but didn't know how to use it.  So the tradeoff for a company was no cost for software but huge fees for labor to maintain and customize the software.   This spawned a system of software which is used today in the corporate world; Oracle Databases, Java Development, and PHP for web development.

I suspect that the Linux movement had to happen because companies like IBM and Microsoft made a very good living off charging people to use their product.  To software developers who tend to be an iconoclastic lot having free and open software was a nirvana of sorts.  Upgrades were based on the needs of the community and weren't subject to a corporate project manager.  Finally, the open source Linux movement emphasized the technical ability of the developer to make changes to core systems and improve the product.  Thus, free software seemed to be the best of all worlds; developers judged on merit, free products which respond to real needs, and something that was technologically elegant. 

Of course, something was missing.  Since these free products we constructed by engineers for engineers, for non-technical people they were impossible to use.  MS-DOS from Microsoft abandoned command line prompts for the windows interface for a reason.   They wanted more people to use their systems.  The Linux movement still used the command line.  In addition, major manufacturers did not create Linux personal computers so they had to be created by hobbyists and Linux fans who have been affectionately labeled a "priesthood" because of the difficult process of developing technical competence and the religious devotion they have to the Linux world view.  Finally, no one had time to write Linux software.  This is because many of the people who worked with Linux were busy updating the system and working in the corporate sector keeping systems working; in other words, with no killer application that would force people to use Linux people in the consumer realm did not use it. 

Flash forward to today, now an entire generation has grown up with free software.  Piracy is rampant in music and on-line books and when I hand a contract to a client they look at me like I am crazy.  "You expect me to pay that much," they say and I grit my teeth and say yes.  Just like my customers, I have bills to pay and mouths to feed.  They charge for their services so why should they be shocked and surprised when I charge for mine.  I think this has been my biggest frustration as an entrepreneur.   I am charging for my services and many people think I should be giving it away for free. 

I think I have a pretty good service to offer.  I have an inventory management system which works over the cloud and can be accessed via a browser, tablet, or mobile phone.  I am in the process of completing a contact management system for the insurance industry which will make it easier for people to trace sales and leads on-line.  It also works with the cloud via a browser, tablet, or mobile phone.  I am even leveraging QR codes for advertising and contact management for small businesses. 

It is an exciting way to make a living but it requires people to realize that software is not free.   It requires blood, sweat and tears to create.  I have invested most of my life into software.  You should invest a little money into to product I sell you.

Until next time.

Being a Business Survivor

You have to be a survivor in business
just like Requle Welch

Being a business person makes you manic-depressive.  Some days you are riding high on success and then during others you are filled with darkness because of a failure.  Entrepreneurs I have spoken to say that this is natural until you get an established client base.  This week we released a new web site to the public to make it friendlier toward sales.  We also made improvements to Sully 2.0 to make it possible to search address information.

We do things like this because one of the founding principles of our organization is Agility.  Market conditions are moving so fast that it is hard to catch up.  This is why your systems and services need to change with the dynamic environment.  Twenty years ago Fuji and Kodak were locked in a fierce battle for consumer attention.  Today both of them are struggling thanks to digital cameras.  Today, General Motors is concentrating on its manufacturing businesses because its GMAC Financial Services was killed during the start of the great recession in 2008.  If you want to survive then you must adapt to changing market conditions. 

This has been a difficult lesson for me as I have been drumming up sales and working on means to drive business to our firms.  I have had to drop old notions of how we do business and create new ones.  I have also had to embrace the messiness of being an entrepreneur.  Some days I am taking calls from Mississippi and others I am speaking with a woman from Columbia who wants to use our system.  It is very liberating but it is also like washing windows without a net. 

All of us at E3 systems would like to show you how we can help you do business over the web.  You should give us a call and we will be more than happy to help you out. 

Until then I will continue my manic-depressive quest to help your business and build mine.

Until Next time.

A Moment of Clarity

This is not how we do business. 

Business people are idealized and vilified in equal measure.  For every Geroge Bailey there is a Gordon Gekko, I live in the world of business people.  I have been fortunate to know good business people and I have been cursed to work for a lot of the bad ones.  After a particularly bad day at the office, I sat in my cubical in utter misery.  It was what alcoholics call a moment of clarity.   I decided that I was going to become a business person and I was going to make sure that no one who ever worked for me felt as rotten as I did that moment.

This was why I founded E₃ systems.  I wanted to make business easier for other entrepreneurs by streamlining their shipping and receiving work.  I wanted them to have the power of a Fortune 500 company at a fraction of the price.  I also wanted the system to work over the web so that they could transact business away from the office and spend time with their family and friends.

It was a noble goal and we are going to continue to pursue it.  This week we are releasing another batch of improvements to Sully 2.0.  One of them features the ability to filter addresses so they are easier to find.  We are also coming out with a series of new videos which will show you use our systems. 

It is an exciting time and I can't wait to share it with all of you.

Until next time.

This is What We Do

We make business intelligence look pretty.

I have spent over a year promoting and blogging about my company E₃ logistics systems.  What amazes me is as people get to know about my company they always ask me the same questions about what we do.  This week, I want to explain what E₃ systems does.

We help you stay on top of paperwork.  If you have any inventory we help you track the number of items coming and going from your stock with no need to keep track of paperwork.  Our Sully 2.0 system helps you keep track of all your items in our web based system.  You will never have to go searching around the office for a piece of paperwork again because you can pull up the Sully 2.0 system type in a search and find all the information you are looking for.  Not only does this apply to inventory, but to bills of lading, packing slips, invoices and purchase orders.  So in one place you have all the information you need to run your business.

Next, we make it easy to gather business intelligence about the progress of your business.  Fortune 500 companies have entire teams of people who sift through pies of data to gather information about what products are hot and which ones are not.  They can track shipping costs to the penny and find out if they are making a profit with each sale.  At E₃ systems we give you that ability to make you competitive with big boys.  We have a full set of reporting tools so you can track inventory, sales, and other pieces of regulatory compliance documentation.  We included this because many software packages make easy to gather data but difficult to make decisions based on that data.  Now, at a glance you know what you have in stock and if you are making money selling it.

Additionally, we make it possible to track your information via any type of computing device connected to the web.  This means if you have a tablet computer, smart phone or laptop as long as you have a connection to the web you can use our systems in a secure fashion.  No more dialing into company virtual private networks or portals.  No more messing with synching your data with company systems.  All you need is an account and mobile device and you can see your inventory, purchase orders, and invoices 24 hours a day seven days a week.  This gives you more time to interact with your customers and less time tracking down paperwork. 

Next, we bridge the gap between the world of paper and web with Microsoft Tag technology.  Thanks to Microsoft Tag technology, you can scan documents and products.  This gives you the ability to instantly communicate with the Sully 2.0 system.  Now expensive bar code scanning equipment is obsolete.  If you have a smart phone you have what is necessary to track your inventory and systems just like a major corporation.  We offer this service free of charge and make it possible to print up these Microsoft Tags with Avery 22805 labels.  No more mystery about what is on the shelf now you print out a tag stick it on a product and you have an electronic record. 

Finally, we offer this system at about the cost of digital cable television.  If you can afford $120 a month subscription fee we can make it possible to manage your inventory, purchase orders, paperwork, business intelligence and make it available 24 hours a day seven days a week on any device with a web connection.  There is no software to install.  All you need is a web browser or smart phone to access our systems.  The data is secure in our server farm located in the Pacific Northwest and you can reach us via e-mail or phone 24 hours a day. 

If you are interested in how we can help you manage your business and give you a competitive advantage over your rivals then contact us today.  You will not be disappointed.

Until next time.

Fighting Code Bloat

Software Bloat is not pretty so why do we have it?

I have been working as a software developer for over fourteen years.  What surprises me the most is how complicated we make software for the public.  I blame two major constituencies for this trend.  First, software developers need to stop being too clever for their own good.  We need to concentrate on doing the same features better and faster rather than cramming more features into a software program.  This desire to have software do more is affectionately known as feature bloat.  More features are crammed into the same piece of software until it gets more confusing to use. 

The other guilty party is the business people who commission these bloated software projects.  Talk to any developer and you will hear stories of reports written for only one user of a system.  You will also hear stories of features added to systems to deal with one client or situation.  Additionally, features will be added to satisfy the political needs of an organization while not making software any easier to use.  Needless to say, these situations tend to drive software developers and customers batty because these additional features represent nothing but wasted time and money from the developer.  It also represents frustration for the customer as they attempt to use the software which has grown more complicated.

This is why when we founded E₃ systems we have made a point of trying to make the software as easy to use as possible.  Life is too short to spend time in training manuals and struggling to figure out how something works.  Many businesses do not have time to train their people so it is important that software is intuitive and easy to operate.  Most people just want to write out a packing slip or print an invoice.  You shouldn’t need a degree in computer science to make that happen. 

Our Sully 2.0 system makes it easy to do Bills of Lading, Packing Slips, Invoices and purchase orders.  Drop us a line and we will be happy to show you.

Until then I suppose you are going to have to suffer with bloated software.

Until next time.