allan kelly
Twitter: @allankellynet
http://www.allankelly.net
Do it Right
Then
Do the Right thing
May 2014

Allan Kelly…
Chapters in…
• Business Analysis and Leadership, Pullan & Archer
2013
• 97 Things Every Programmer Should Know, Henney,
2010
• Context Encapsulation in Pattern Languages of
Program Design, vol#5, 2006
 Consulting on software
development & strategy
 Training for Agile
Author
– Changing Software Development: Learning to be
Agile (2008, Wiley)
– Business Patterns for Software Developers (2012,
Wiley - ISBN: 978-1119999249)
– Xanpan: Reflections on agile (work in progress)
https://leanpub.com/xanpan

Management commandment
Do the Right Thing
Then
Do it Right
I am here
to
challenge

I am not saying
Knowingly do the Wrong Thing
I am saying
You only know the Right Thing by
doing

Exhibit A - The Alignment Trap
Less
Effective
More
Effective
Highly aligned
Less aligned
‘Alignment trap’
11% companies
+13% IT spending
-14% 3 year sales
growth
‘Maintenance zone’
74% companies
Avg IT spending
-2% 3 year sales
growth
‘IT Enabled growth’
7% companies
-6% IT spending
+35% 3 year sales
growth
‘Well-oiled IT’
8% companies
-15% IT spending
+11% 3 year sales
growth
Source:Shpilberg,Berez,Puryear,Shah:
MITSloanReview,Fall2007
1
2
Doingtherightthings
Doing things right

Doing the right thing…
• Costs
– Money: £consultants, $analysts, €managers
– Time: Analysis, research, meetings, discussions
• Assumptions
– There is a right answer
– And it is knowable
– No value in wrong answer
– That wrong & right are definable

Exhibit B – Lean Start-Up
• Knowing is difficult
• Get into the market to
find out
• See what people will
$pay for
– Not just what that €say
• Doing need not be
expensive

Exhibit C – Changing course
Setting the “right” course makes it harder to
change course
"Faced with the choice between
changing one's mind and
proving that there is no need to
do so, almost everyone gets
busy on the proof.”John Kenneth
Galbraith

Exhibit D – Changing (Me!)
• Its about Learning
• To Learn we must do
• How can you increase
the pace of learning?
Learning
Change

Exhibit E – He who learns fasters
“We understand that the
only competitive advantage
the company of the future
will have is its managers’
ability to learn faster than
then their competitors.”
Arie de Geus, The Living Company 1988

How do you learn fast?
• Do
• How do you do?
• Iterate
– Iterate faster
– Iterate more
• Learn
• Learn to iterate faster, improve your aim

Ready, Fire, Fire, Fire, Aim, Fire, …

Choose your weapon
M16 from Dragunova via WikiCommons, Creative Commons License
L115A3 from Defence on WikiCommon Open Government License

Or is your choice more like….
M16 from Dragunova via WikiCommons, Creative Commons License
Berdan Sharps rifle via WikiCommons, Public Domain image

Which are you?
Your delivery (supply) side?
Your business (demand) side?

Choose your weapon
Snipers Rifle
• Known target
• Clear shot
• Time to prepare
• Limited variables
Machine Gun
• Many targets
• Confused environment
• Time short – Action
required
• Many variables
• Frequently miss

Choose your approach
Sniper development
• Market is slow moving
• Market it known
• Competitors are slow
• Capital is scarce
• Development is expensive
• Risk of collateral damage,
e.g. brand, individuals
Machine development
• Market is fast
• Market is changing
• Competitors are fast
• Capital is cheap
• Development is cheap (and
fast)
• Multiple failures, try again

Do tools dictate approach?
“It takes a long time to reload and aim”
Therefore
“take time to make sure every shot counts”

Or your competitors?

Asymmetric warfare
You Your competitor Result
Stalemate
Toast!
Toast! (Slow)
?
?

Iteration
• Get good at iterating
• Get good at iterating fast
• Get good at learning from results
– Test results with customer
– Test output in the market
– And Evaluate
Close the loop – evaluate
what you do & feedback

Evaluation
Too often missing

Let a thousand flowers bloom…
Get good at selecting those to keep - Cull the rest

How?
A little advice….

Iterate!
• Try something
– See what happens
– Learn, adjust, change
– Go around again
• If you can’t iterate
– You can’t learn
Doing Iteration Right is a pre-requisite for
Doing the Right Thing

Brakes are good
• Get good at….
– Knowing when to stop
– Stopping
• Technical has TDD, ATDD, BDD to stop
• Corporate brakes
– Portfolio management
– Venture Capital funding model
– Use a Dragon’s Den

You can’t see the future…
• You can’t know what will work
• Stop wasting time and money guessing
• Get good at probing – experimenting
– Conduct a lot of experiments
– Learn from experiments
– Stop those which “don’t work”
– Promote those which do

Iterate at all levels
Regularly Evaluate -> Set/change direction
Frequently Collect next -> Decide next
Most frequently Developer -> Release
• Build capability to iterate – and USE IT
• Use data gained from iteration
• Iterate your way to to The Right Thing

Allan’s
commandments
#1 Do it Right, Do it Fast; Learn & Iterate
#2 Fail fast, Fail Cheap;
Evaluate, Learn
#3 Invest in brakes;
Stop & Turn

Take-away
1. Fast iterations allow for
learning
– Learn to iterate fast
– Then iterate in the market
– Learn to evaluate & feedback
2. Fail fast, fail cheap, learn
3. Invest in brakes
allan kelly - Software Strategy Ltd.
www.allankelly.net - allan@allankelly.net - @allankellynet
http://leanpub.com/xanpa
n/c/DevConFu14