Fight stress before it destroys you and your team: Part 1

I am a strong believer in going to work every day and staying focused on getting the job done.   I want my teams to feel excited about what we’re doing and I work hard to clear obstacles so they can work uninterrupted.  However, stress is always there, taking it’s toll on everyone.

This series of posts are not going to be touchy feely, explaining my favorite yoga poses, I’ll keep it focused on what matters to me, and I’m sure other managers.  Identifying the stress and eliminating it as best you can.

While I am not the type of leader that forces deadlines on his team, I am a person that works with the team to identify reasonable targets, and then drives to those targets.  Once people make committments I make committments.  These committments are to my boss (the CEO), our customers, our partners, and anyone else who I can tell.  As I’ve noted elsewhere, I like to communicate aggressively. 

Stress Factor:  You, the boss

As the head of your team you will often be the major contributor to the stress of the people you work with.  You cannot afford to be an easy going, indecisive, individual.  If you want to go that route find another career.   I am not proposing that you become an overbearing Atilla the Hun type either.  However, once you make committments you and your team are on the hook and you must ensure your team knows this.

• Communicate clearly and frequently.  Nothing is more stressful than ambiguity or complete lack of communication.  Check in frequently with your team (not micromanaging) and make sure you are all on the same page.  Check out my post on daily standups for ideas.
• Acknowledge failures (including your own) immediately and address them.  Don’t leave people wondering when you’ll bring the failure up. 
• Be honest.  This is in-line with the last point.  Let people know where they stand, where they exceed and where they need to grow. 
• Listen to your team as individuals.  What are their career goals?  Help them navigate the path to where they want to go, always in a manner that benefits the company.  I believe you can, and should, be able to accomplish a win-win in most cases.

What have I missed?  What does your boss do that causes stress?  Let me know.

John

Why I love the daily standup

I am not an agile evangelist.  I am not a waterfall evangelist either.  My favorite engineering processes are entirely driven by the need to successfully overcome product development painpoints and ensure that we build the best products possible with the least amount of friction for everyone.

I also do not believe in status reports for individual contributors.  Line managers need to be very involved with their teams and know the details of what their teams are working on. They need to know the risks and help mitigate those risks. They need to be a buffer for the team to ensure that the team is able to deliver on their committments without interruptions from outside forces. This is why I love the daily standup.

Every day the engineering teams meet for 5 – 10 minutes and review the following information:

• What are they currently working on?
• What are the current challenges that they are working to overcome.

That’s it.  I want to know if you’re on or off schedule and ensure that everyone is on the same page about what their teammates are working on.

I also use the standup to remind people of our goals.  Everyone is busy, working on multiple projects, and it’s easy to forget the key priorities.  I like to ensure that everyone is reminded of the priorities daily.  Avoid surprises with constant communication.

What practices do you use to help kep your teams on the same page?

John

Don’t blame me, the business intelligence made me do it

Business intelligence (BI) is something that every company knows that they need to leverage. You are looking for an edge to not only ensure your survival, but also an edge to help you position yourself for success. Every company that I have had the pleasure of working with wants BI but surprisingly few companies know what it really is much less how to make use of it.

Let me start off by telling you what business intelligence is not.

• It is not just a report or series of reports.  Many people fall into the trap of believing that if they are running reports they are using BI.   Not true.
• It is not a crystal ball that simply provides you the answers.  You must know your business and must know the questions to ask.  If you know the questions BI can guide you to the answer. 
• It is not a replacement for common sense.   Your BI is only as good as your understanding of your business, your understanding of your market and it’s current state, your ability to know what questions to ask, and the quality and quantity of the data you have at your fingertips.  BI will provide you information, use common sense before blindly following the information your BI is providing.
• It’s not something that you define once and walk away from.  Your market is constantly changing and evolving, you must always reflect upon those changes and adjust your BI suite to fit the new information, to know the new sets of questions you need answered.  Everything is in motion, those that stand still will not exists for long.

If you want to get serious about leveraging business intellgence you must step back and plan.  Here are my thoughts for how you can successfully leverage BI in your business:

• Can you define the state of your business now?  If you ask most executive teams to answer the following questions you will likely get different answers from different team members.  Get on the same page by asking some simple questions:
  • What is the fundamental mission of your business?
  • What markets are you focused within?
  • What are your core business strengths?
  • What are your core business weaknesses?
  • What does the company need to accomplish this year to achieve it’s core objectives?
• After some discussion you should have a better understanding of where you are.  Where is the company going?  Define concrete examples of what the business should look like in 2 or 3 years.  If you cannot project that far into the future consider what the business looks like in 18 months. Make sure you have a concrete definition of what the business will look like, not something vague like “becoming the thought leader for wireless power emissions in the known universe”. (wanted to see if you were paying attention).
• You know where you are and where you’re going.  Good.  Now the hard part begins.  What are  your key business metrics that will lead to actionable next steps?  When you sit down with the team what #s do you need to look at to ensure your company is headed in the right direction?  These metrics might include the number of users signing up for your service, the number of new activities people are adding to your CRM system, the number of calls per week, etc..  Think carefully about your business and define these metrics.
• Begin collecting all the data you need.
• Build automated reports that show the metrics you care about.  However, don’t simply write reports that show the raw numbers, build reports that attempt to look across multiple datapoints and point out positives or negatives with the businsess.
• Review the data, discuss what it’s telling you, iterate.  You won’t get it right the first time or the second time either.  This is a process which enables you to better understand your business and help you navigate your individual path to success.

Let me know what you feel I’ve left out and keep challenging yourselves.

John

Support team metrics

I work closely with our support team at Swimfish.  This group does a great job handling questions on SharePoint, on CRM systems, on mobile devices, and every once in a while I’m sure they work on finding cures for major diseases.  They’re that good.

As the head of engineering I’m always interested in learning more about how our customers feel about our products, what problems are they encountering, where are they finding success.  In the past I’ve asked for varying degreees of reports from support teams, joined them for their meetings, etc…

This time around I want to see if there is a better solution for finding answers to the questions I want answered and I would love to gather as much feedback as possible.  Here are the metrics I’m going to be gathering, what else would you add to the list?

• # of support calls per licensed user per product per week.  My intent is to gauge where the most issues are coming from.  We might have two products each with 10 support issues per week.  However, if one of those products is deployed to 100,000 users and the other is deployed to 1000 users, I want to be able to take a closer look at the “buggier” product.
• What are top five support calls per product per week?  These are the items that have to be on the hit list to get resolved sooner than later.
• What customers never call in?  Is it because they’re using the product and it is solving all of their problems or are they so frustrated with the product that they’ve given up?

What am I missing?  What would you change?

John

A great team delivers again: anywhere for InterAction 3.01

This post is purely a congratulations to my team and a small bit of boasting about our great mobile CRM solution.  If you’re not interested in either feel free to skip the post.

I wanted to thank the entire Swimfish team for doing a great job delivering anywhere for InterAction 3.01. A lot of hard work went into the release and for those of you are interested in reading a short PDF, you can find it here.

Great job everyone.

John

Is your CRM vendor listening to you? Probably less than you think…

I love my father in-law. He’s a sweet guy that always goes the extra mile for the family. However, there are times when we’re all setting around the table having a discussion about some family issues, exchanging ideas, and I see my father in-law nodding along. Then, the conversation ends and he dives into the problem, but heading in a completely different direction. Turns out he turned off his hearing aid until things quieted down so he didn’t have to waste his time hearing all of the nonsense. A lot of the vendors I work with, including those that I compete with, are just like my father in-law.

I had the pleasure to be on a call with a potential CRM customer this week. They had more than 10 people in the office and on the phone in various offices throughout the world. This is a critical problem that they need help solving and they are committed to finding the right partner. We were presenting last and I had assumed that we would be able to easily flow through our proposal about how we could help their business. Surely the other vendors must have covered the obvious problems that needed addressing. I was wrong. As we walked through the problems we had uncovered they were thoroughly surprised that no one else had even noticed these basic issues. The other vendors were more interested in coming in and pushing their software products. They were not listening.

If you want to be successful you need to make your customers successful first. Here’s my advice for helping customers buy the right CRM solution:

• Take time to understand their business, where they are today and where they want to be in a couple of years.  Are your tools right for them?  If not, can you customize your solution to be right for them?
• Why do they think they want a CRM system?  What pain points are they trying to overcome?
• What’s working well and is not working well?
• How do they measure success today?  Do they measure success today?  This will help you define their data collection, workflow, and reporting needs.
• Do they have an existing system?  If yes, how clean is their data?
• Listen first.  Strategize Second.  Present Third.  Iterate until you have an approach that works for you and for the customer.

If you’re a customer are you being heard?  If you’re a vendor, are you listening?

John

Top posts of March, so far

Before the month comes to an end I wanted to share with you the posts that have received the most traffic in March.  If you havent yet checked these out please do so and let me know what you think:

• SharePoint in Action: Project Management (http://johnfmoore.wordpress.com/2009/03/06/sharepoint-in-action-project-management/)
• Read it here first, the functional spec is dead, or should be (http://johnfmoore.wordpress.com/2009/03/14/read-it-here-first-the-functional-spec-is-dead-or-should-be/)
• SharePoint in Action: CRM Integration (http://johnfmoore.wordpress.com/2009/03/03/sharepoint-in-action-crm-integration/)
• SharePoint in Action: An Overview (http://johnfmoore.wordpress.com/2009/03/01/sharepoint-in-action-overview/)
• Building mobile applications for CRM systems (http://johnfmoore.wordpress.com/2009/03/10/building-mobile-applications-and-crm-systems/)
• Things you should do if youve lost your job (http://johnfmoore.wordpress.com/2009/03/22/things-you-should-be-doing-if-youve-lost-your-it-job/).

John

Unit testing, for better and for worse

For the sake of this post, unit testing is defined as testing the individual functions and code routines that make up your application.  You might be doing this manually or via automated tools.  The code you are writing might be part of the command console for a NASA mission, a stored procedure, or test automation.  Now that I have gotten those points out of the way…

You have to unit test everything you write.  It’s that simple.  Nothing, not even a simple one character change should be checked in or deployed without taking time to unit test the changes.  I’ve seen one line changes result in infinite loops taking down a web server in the middle of the day; it’s not pretty. 

How do I manually unit test my code?

It’s fairly straight-forward:

• Walk through every line of code in the debugger.
• Make sure your code is being called.  Early on in my career I once spent hours trying to figure out why a piece of code was not working, only to discover it was never being called.  That was a rookie mistake, don’t make it yourself.
• Examine the variables that are being set to ensure they are set as expected.
• Use watches to track variables that are not directly in the flow of your code.  Depending on the type of application you are working on they may be changing underneath your feet.
• If you have conditional aspects of your code, manipulate variables to ensure you hit all of your code paths.
• Make sure that callers of your function are able to work with your new routine or with the way you’ve modified an existing routine.  It’s easy to inadvertently introduce side-effects down stream and you need to be looking for unplanned changes.

How do I programmatically unit test my code?

 It’s time consuming to run through your code changes and it is easy to miss things if you are making changes to code that has been around for awhile.  Just as QA teams build automated test to ensure that the important, but tedious, test cases are covered on a regular basis, it is in the best interest of the development team to automate their own unit testing.   If you are going to automate unit test, here are some recommendations to ensure you are successful:

• Have a plan.  Define the requirements for what you will automate first.
• Set goals and define a schedule.  In one company I tried to keep the goal flexible, something along the lines of write a couple of unit test a week.  We rarely, if ever, met that goal.  Assign the task and measure it like any other project.  If you do not treat it as a priority it will not get done.
• Focus on calling those functions that scare you the most.  We all have those routines that exist in the depths of our code that no one dares to touch because if we so much as look at that code it will not ever compile again.  Automate those early.
• Don’t try to automate all of your unit testing.  Make sure your developers understand that they are responsible for the quality of the code they check in and that they need to test it manually before it’s checked in.
  • Some people do advocate test driven development (TDD) or automating the test after the coding is done and prior to check-in.   This is even better.
• Tie the unit tests into your builds.  Everytime you produce a new build of your code have the unit tests run. 
• If anything breaks put the team on alert and ensure the person that broke the unit tests is on the hook for fixing them.    Enforce this.  Keep your tests and build running cleanly and you will all be happier for it.

Have I missed anything that’s important inside your organization?

 John

If you’re on Twitter, you should consider using Topify

As some of you know, I’ve been on Twitter for a little while and, after some early skepticism, I’ve become a convert.  As I continue to use Twitter, I have come across some cool Twitter applications that better the overall experience; tools like TweetDeck, Twitter Grader, twtPoll, and Topify.   Here are the reasons I like Topify, check it out if you have a chance.

What is Topify?

You can learn more about Topify by navigating to their home page, click here. If you clicked the link you can tell pretty quickly that I just lied to you. Topify has clearly spent more time on the application than on their web site.  Here are some of the highlights:

• Topify informs you when someone begins following you.  Yes, Twitter does this as well but Topify does it better.  When someone follows me on Twitter I receive an e-mail with the following information:
  • The person’s BIO.
  • The date they joined Twitter.
  • A picture.
  • Their most recent Tweets.
  • How many followers the user has.
  • How many people this user is following.
• With the information above I am able to determine if I want to follow this person.
• If I decide to follow the user all I have to do is reply to the e-mail from Topify.  Simple.
• Did I mention that it’s free?

My Topify Wishlist?

With Topify you get a solid product but one that is limited by a lack of customization.  I am hoping that Topify will eventually give me the ability to:

• Configure the number of tweets displayed in the e-mail.  I would like to see everything Tweeted over the course of the last 2 weeks, for example.
• Provide me a list with of the users that this user most frequently communicate with on Twitter.  This information would help me understand the user’s sphere of influence.
• I would like to be able to auto-follow users that have certain keywords in their BIO.  For example, users that are into SharePoint, CRM systems, Mobile, Social media, etc.. would get an auto-follow.
• When I reply to follow a person I would like to include a quick message to the person I’ve decided to follow.  The body of my e-mail message (up to 140 characters of course) would be perfect for this.
• I would be okay with ads in the e-mails sent by Topify.  Well…  As long as I could receive a small % of the revenue for these ads.  Provide me with the ability to specify the types of ads I would be okay with going out to users I follow and we’re good to go. 

Check it out and let me know what you think.

John

Are you getting full value from your web site?

I was chatting with someone last week about web sites and how they should be utilized to maximize their value from a marketing perspective.   I’ve had the pleasure of working with some very talented marketing folks over the years and I wanted to share what I’ve learned from them. 

I know this list isn’t complete, but here are the things that leap to mind when I think about building a new web site and in the order that I consider them.

• What’s your message?  Define who you are, the problems you solve, and why people would want to do business with you.
  • Web sites that are built for companies generally have marketing as one of their primary purposes.  As people start coming to your site make sure it is very clear, very quickly, why they want to stick around and explorer further.
• What are the user interface design guidelines?  What are your design standards for fonts, colors, and overall layout? 
  • People should have a consistent experience as they navigate from page to page on your site.  Don’t use the “font of the day” unless that’s part of the personality you are trying to communicate.
• What is your voice, your tone?  You want the voice of your message to be consistent and in-line with how you want the company presented.
  • If you have multiple copywriters it is important that they all follow a common set of guidelines.
  • Many times I see companies focus a lot of energy on the design guidelines but very little on the writing guidelines.  Both are important and it is critical that you get both right.
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO).  While I personally have mixed feelings regarding the effort vs. reward for SEO, it is one method used to drive traffic to your site.   It is important that people know you are out there, but do not not spend a lot of money and time in this area.  I have seen too many people invest valuable time and money into constantly updating their keywords with only minimal gains in traffic.
  • Keep in mind that as you update your keywords you may even see reductions in traffic.  This is as much an art as a science so it is often best to consult with a qualified expert.
• Search Engine Marketing (SEM).  Paying for placement in search results.  Again, I am not a fan but would be interested in hearing input from people.
• Social Marketing.  It’s a trendy idea but one that has real potential if you’re willing to invest time into understanding each of the tools and come up with a plan for how to best leverage them.  I favor investing time in:
  • Twitter.  It is a great platform and allows you to create an environment where you can connect with the people you want to connect with.  You must invest in the community and provide content, build relationships, and constantly add value.  It is not a “quick win” but is a valuable way to supplement your other marketing efforts.
  • Facebook.  I’m not a huge fan of Facebook but I have seen good results for some companies.
  • MySpace.  I would skip it, not worth the investment.
• Integrating Leads into your CRM system.  People invest a lot of money bringing people to their web site and the first thing they do is present potential customers with a web-based form that sends an e-mail to someone.  This is the least efficient method possible.  Invest time in integrating these forms with your CRM system and maximize the power of your marketing and sales organizations.
• What technologies will you use to build this site?  At the end of the day I firmly believe it does not matter.  Choose a technology that your internal or external team is comfortable with. 
• Analytics.  Measure, measure, measure.  As you deliver new campaigns, tweak SEO on the site, or find new ways of communicating your message through Twitter, Facebook, or other aplications of the future you must be able to measure the impact of these campaigns.  There are too many things you could invest money and time on.  Make sure you are investing in the items that provide you with a measurable ROI.

 What have I missed?

John