Prospection: The act of looking forward in time or considering the future.

"To see is to experience the world as it is, to remember is to experience the world as it was, but to imagine -- ah, to imagine is to experience the world as it isn't and has never been, but as it might be. (p. 5)"

Today is my last day at BMC.

I could have never imagined all of the great people, projects, personal and professional challenges and adventures that I would experience, when in 1996 I stumbled upon 'the best little software house in Texas'. When I look back at the past decade I have spent as an employee here, I often think of Chico Escuela's famed line from Saturday Night Live about baseball. BMC has been 'berry, berry good to me.' It's been a fantastic decade of tremendous technology change and profound personal growth and I leave thankful for all of the great experiences I have gained.

May your imaginary tomorrows be all that you hope for! Thank you.

A few weeks back, I attended the ITSMF conference in Charlotte. On the plane ride over I was re-reading parts of an article in the New York times technology supplement.  The article discusses the media buzz (even movies) about the threat of hackers and indicates that, in reality, the biggest cause of downtime and outages is IT COMPLEXITY. This didn't surprise me, but I found it interesting because now IT's problems are being aired to the general public. 

The topic of complexity came up again when I was asking my colleague about what he thought about ITIL v3 as well. We were speaking about it because I told him we are discussing and researching doing some packaging changes to align our solutions with ITIL v3. He has already done his updgrade certification and cautioned me to be careful because he thought the move from ITIL v2 to V3 seemed pretty COMPLEX. Needless to say, ITIL v3 was a key theme at the show. 

Do you think ITIL v3 seems complex?

I started re-reading 'Crossing the Chasm' on the plane while returning from the ITSMF USA show in Charlotte, NC. I picked it up because I was thinking about a new project I have been working on with the BMC Atrium CMDB.  The CMDB is currently at the top of the Gartner Hype cycle.  That's exciting, but you don't have to be Geoffrey Moore to know that hype will only take you so far.  Ultimately, software vendors have to help customers solve real problems to survive and thrive.  If the CMDB is going to be the success it could be, it has to meet the needs of the mainstream market, specifically the group Moore calls pragmatists.

On page 42 Moore writes:
The Fortune 2000 MIS community, as a group, is led by people who are largely pragmatist in orientation. Business demands for increased productivity push them (IT) toward the form of the adoption life cycle, but natural prudence and budget restrictions keep them cautious.

This is the first time I've participated in an ITSMF event of any sort.  I can tell you that it was unlike many other tradeshows as there were far few T-shirt seekers on their weekly boondoggle.  I wasn't able to attend any of the sessions with my staff badge (although I tried), but many of the people I talked to exhibited the air of caution Moore alludes to.  They have things that work now and they don't want to break them. Most everyone wants to get there, but few know the best way.  Some innovators from companies you would expect to be leading are in production or are deep into their CMDB implementation now. The CMDB is moving into the mainstream now. The reason why the CMDB is so interesting is the promise that it holds to address the challenges IT is facing now to deliver Service to the business.  They need to reduce the cost of service, improve the quality of service and improve service responsiveness. Like ITIL v3; its all about service.

What did I learn during this experience?  Most importantly, I quickly realized that building a timber frame home without power tools is a lot of work.  There are 120 joints in the structure my class mates and I erected.  Most of these were cut manually using very high-quality (i.e. expensive) chisels and slicks.  It takes practice and talent to use these tools well and patience and time to complete all of the cuts accurately (i.e. faithfully to the design) and precisely (i.e. how well the cuts are executed). Accuracy and precision were evaluated against a documented design plan for the building (the ‘cut sheet’).  The plans served as a road map for the team executing the design. Pat also showed us how modern power tools can be used to speed up the process. He alerted us of the significant potential risk of using ‘automated technology’ poorly (i.e. a circular saw can make a bad cut much faster than a hand saw).  The Hennin Post and Beam crew is skilled at both hand and power tools to ensure not just accuracy and precision, but also time to market and profitability.  (The school is part of a multi-faceted business that includes a store where they sell the tools of the trade, and a timber frame construction business that designs and builds timber frame kits for construction projects).

There are clearly many parallels between the worlds of home building and enterprise systems management.  First, is the power of having clearly documented and agreed upon processes.  The cut sheet tells the team what to do when and where, but may not specify ‘how’. That said, the ‘how’ is critical as well. Having skilled technicians who understand and can execute manual methods is a great advantage, but enabling skilled personnel with automated technologies is essential to maximize productivity and compete. The tools are a means to an end and when utilized properly they can ensure that ‘the house is built’ more quickly and meets the requirements of the end user (When asked during the class how Pat would deal with a particular construction problem, he responded ‘Well, it depends on who the end user is.” The implication as I understood it was that the quality of service he provides depends on who was being served)

Overall, I was very, very impressed and really moved by the spirit and commitment of the Shelter Institute team. In my brief time with Pat H I found him to be an inspiring individual with strong beliefs in the power of the individual. Yet, only by working together, effectively and collectively as a team could we have raised the frame on that Friday.  (I revisited their web site after writing this and saw that they do team building training as well.) 

Many thanks to the Hennin clan and the rest of the staff (especially Arturo for his personal assistance and guidance in the shop), for their honest commitment to teaching, building and living well! 

We all make snap judgments. We instantaneously suck in data about our surroundings or a situation and make quick assessments/conclusions.  Think about how this applies to end-users or customers interacting with business applications or services? Certainly that is why availability, usability, and performance are paramount. Blink, your customer just left your web site. Blink. What does this thing do? Blink.  Why is this taking so long?

A couple of other quick recommends:

I’ve been reading Mark Cuban’s blog from time to time lately.  Today’s post on Internet vs. Intranet is interesting, especially if you are interested in software as a service or application performance.

Secondly, this weekend I want to check out the 2007 International Design Excellence Awards (IDEA) as featured in BusinessWeek this week. (Oddly, the article is dated July 30, 2007 even though today is the 27^th.  They must date their online content to coincide with their print issues.)

Have a good weekend.

Have you seen Mark Hurt’s Good Experience blog?  Start by reading the intro and then check out the short post about a Cleveland Clinic that just hired a Chief Experience Officer. 

I've been thinking more about the concept of a successful design-driven business strategy, innovation and user experience. How are other thought leaders defining this topic or ‘field’?  Well, the User Experience Network offers one interesting example:

UX is an important and rapidly emerging field concerned with the design of anything people experience: a web site, a toy, or a museum.

UX is inherently interdisciplinary, synthesizing methods, techniques, and wisdom from many fields, ranging from brand design to ethnography to library science to architecture and more.

I was thinking about this more when I scanned an article about William A. Wulf in this week's Science Times. Wulf just left his position as president of the National Academy of Engineering, the engineering arm of the National Academy of Sciences.  I paused when I read about how his passion for creative innovation began.

His innovation won praise from colleagues and a bonus in his check. But the real reward, he said, “was that moment of creation, that moment of seeing the problem and seeing a solution.” He said, “once you have had the creative thrill of designing something that solves a real human problem and that people use, it’s addictive.”

One of the reasons that being user-experienced focused is so hard is because user experience spans disciplines and organizations– design, engineering, marketing, support, services, and sales. It goes beyond simply solving a real human problem, to doing so in a way that is gratifying, fun, easy, etc.

This week I was clicking through a presentation on ITIL v3 from the ITIL V3 Global Road Show and paused on a section discussing the importance of design.  If you've been reading my blog at all since I started writing well over a year ago, you will know I am a big fan of design and simplicity. There are some great quotes on one slide (64):

“Design is so critical it should be on the agenda of every meeting in every single department.” -- Tom Peters
“Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.” -- Steve Jobs

“Good design is the most important way to differentiate ourselves from our competitors.” -- Samsung CEO Yun Jong Yong

“Your products run for election every day and good design is critical to winning the campaign.” -- Procter & Gamble CEO A.G. Lafley

“Design's fundamental role is problem solver” -- Fast Company

Design may not be the first thing that engineers think about, but iit is a characteristic that many if not most innovative companies share. I read this article in Business Week about Steve Job's central and very personal role in Apple's successful design-driven business strategy.  Click the link on BusinessWeek/Boston Consulting Group's list of The World's 50 Most Innovative Companies, and you will see many names that I have referenced in this blog: Apple, Toyota, Microsoft, Starbucks, Southwest Airlines, IKEA … The article quotes designer  Thomas Meyerhoffer (who evidently designed the Apple Attachmate PDA??) who makes clear that Apple’s success is “about the whole experience, the whole interface.” The article rightly reasserts that "good design is not just skin deep". The 'interface' is not just a screen, it is really spans all points of interaction with customers.

PS - Check out Meyerhoffer’s surfboards.   

Following the launch I just led for BMC, I’ve been watching other launches in the market place.  Curiously, I noticed that both the Iphone and Michael Moore’s new movie SICKO both premier on June 29, 2007.  Just a coincidence I’m sure.  Anyway, I haven’t had early access to either, but have read a bit about both.

What about the Iphone?  It looks absolutely fabulous in the advertisements.  Apple understands the magic of design and advertising, but I was skimming an article on the Iphone and the author was discussing the controversial fact that it lacks a physical keyboard. Evidently it is quite a controversy online. (Did you see John Dvorak’s “Time to Short Apple?”) I know I would be fine with a graphical/touchscreen keyboard, if it does what it is supposed to do as easy and well as a real keyboard.  I generally keep my text messages short anyway.  Steve Jobs has been making a lot of good calls since his return to Apple, so I bet it won’t be a flop. That said this same article talked about Jobs’s insistence that a computer mouse should only have one button.  I am all about KISS and ‘less is more’, but one mouse button is one too few for me.  I even like my scroll wheel. 

The ‘right’ amount of functionality is a classic challenge for technologists and technology marketers.  Simplicity is essential and too much is almost always bad, but too little won’t pay the bills (I’ve managed and marketed both fat and ‘thin’ products.)  The market will start voting on the Iphone in less than 2 weeks. 

If you’re an early adopter you can even use your new Iphone buy tickets to Moore’s new documentary on the health care and insurance industry.  Evidently, this launch is not without controversy either as Moore is being investigated by the U.S. Treasury Department for a visit to Cuba during the filming of his latest movie.  What do I think about this?  No comment.  I’m hungry.

BMC announced BSM enhancements for IT Operations (remember the special project I have been working on?).  The announcement focuses on new products and significant new integrations that offer IT Operations a pragmatic connection to BSM Value. The reason this is important is because these enhancements promise to help our customers address a major culprit in customer dissatisfaction and defection – inefficient and inadequate problem detection, isolation and resolution.

Customers and/or business users simply don’t care how impressive your statistics are for performance and availability of individual IT infrastructure components. And they shouldn’t.

Two things they do care about are: Immediate access to business services when they need them, and fast completion of tasks and transactions while using these services.  I’ve written about this before and BMC as a company is continuing to invest to assist customers with this challenge.

To meet business users’ needs, you have to broaden your perspective. In addition to looking from inside the IT infrastructure out, you must also look from the outside in — from the perspective of your internal and external customers. That’s the only way to experience service levels the way users experience them, and manage service delivery accordingly.

There’s more to this announcement – a lot more.  If you are interested, please visit: www.bmc.com/bsm4itops

http://biz.yahoo.com/ibd/070517/tech01.html?.v=1 

The article is simple, calls out BMC as a major name in the emerging end-user management segment, and highlights the increasing business pain of poorly performing software and the need to look at problems from the user standpoint.

The costs of poorly performing business applications are high.  Do you have visibility into these business-limiting issues?

BMC has solutions that help IT operations teams proactively gauge end-user availability and performance, providing quantifiable measurements on the health and status of business services from the end user perspective.

By the way, I had a meeting with JP Garbani from Forrester while I was in Nashville last week. 

Enjoy your Memorial Day weekend.

The conference was centered around the concept of moving IT to BT. 

BT =  Business Technology. 

Forrester analsyts urged IT leaders to focus on business results and innovation -- not just on IT maturity. 

According to Forrester: IT Excellence = Maturity + Alignment + Innovation. Business Technology = Pervasive technology use that drives busines results.

IT's role is to smooth the evolution to Business Technology (BT) and to invest in business innovation to accelerate that move.  IT has to leverage its role as a change enabler, but can't do that until they get their own house in order.  Good enough, will no longer be good enough in competitive global markets.  Pervasive technology has to drive positive business results.  I emphasize positive. For example, Friday I tried to change my flight calling American Airlines 800 number.  The voice recognition/interactive service made me laugh.  At times, I was amazed how advanced voice recognition technology has become and then when 'it' didn't understand me a few times I noted my dissatisfaction with this highly automated and impersonal service.  Too much technology can be dehumanizing and bad for business. Finding the right balance will be a key challenge as IT becomes BT.

The Big Apple. The dream of every lad that ever threw a leg over a thoroughbred and the goal of all horsemen. There's only one Big Apple. That's New York.

Two dusky stable hands were leading a pair of thoroughbred around the "cooling rings" of adjoining stables at the Fair Grounds in New Orleans and engaging in desultory conversation.

"Where y'all goin' from here?" queried one.
"From here we're headin' for The Big Apple", proudly replied the other.
"Well, you'd better fatten up them skinners or all you'll get from the apple will be the core", was the quick rejoinder.

Which brings me to the Derby.

I went to a Kentucky Derby party last Saturday at the Four Seasons in Austin.  My wife's friend, a real estate agent, hosted a race party in the lounge for all of her 'clients'. Street Sense won. The mint julips were tastey and my daughter was fascinated by the horses. Talk about a great end user experience.

What does this have to do with IT you ask?

Well, I'll tell you. The next version of the BMC publication Viewpoint, will focus on End User Experience and Application Performance.  I am the technical editor for this issue because of its focus.  One of the customers that will be featured and that I interviewed is Stations Casino. I am not a big gambler, but it was interesting to hear about the challenges of delivering wagering applications and the business impacts of poor end-user performance in this industry. When the new publication is available, I will let you know. I've read lots of data on the cost of lost business due to poorly performing applications. 

Anyway, I'll be on JetBlue today heading to the Big Apple to get a sense of the street life there.

Before I part, I will ask the IT leaders out there "Where y'all goin' from here?"  Hopefully, you are taking steps to monitor and manage the quality of experience being delivered and looking at end-user transactions (lost wagers = loss revenue).

(See the page and you will see that there is a definition for '1970s' in Wikipedia.  The characterization of a decade is an interesting topic/thought?  What defines a decade? Music. Fashion. Politics. Check the outline and you will see how the key elements in the Wiki definition.)

This week I traveled to Atlanta to deliver training to the BMC Americas’ sales force.  The focus of my session was our distributed systems management solutions for IT Operations (Infrastructure, Application, Capacity, Transaction and Service Level Management).  One of the trends I shared with the attendees at the session was the push among IT operations organizations to shift spending from fixed costs (i.e. expenses to ‘keep the lights on’) to more strategic projects that add value and drive the business. 

In December while at the Gartner Data Center Conference  in Las Vegas, I heard the keynote speaker Tom Bittman say that the majority of IT Organizations spend 70% of their budget just ‘keeping the lights on’.  As part of the big project I have been leading, I contracted Ziff Davis to execute a survey of senior IT operations leaders.  When asked about the split of their spending the survey responders said they spend 69% of their budget “Keeping IT Running” and 31% on “Innovation/Strategic Processes”.  Within the next 12-24 months, these same individuals hope to shift 12% of spending from fixed to variable (i.e. innovation/strategic processes). How does this map to your organization’s spending plans? 

One of the topics discussed in my training class this week was ‘How will IT Operations make this shift?’

Three main drivers emerged from my research:
Virtualization
IT Process Maturity (e.g. ITIL, CMDB)
Vendor consolidation and standardization

What are you doing to drive fixed spending down and improve responsiveness to the business?

While flying to Atlanta, I read an article by Thomas L. Friedman from last Sunday’s Times magazine.  The article “The Power of Green” explores the question ‘What does America need to regain its global stature?’  Friedman’s proposal is “Environmental leadership”.  The article refers to a plan proposed by two professors who run the Carbon Mitigation Initiative at Princeton to keep the world’s climate from going “haywire”.  I won’t go into detail on all of the elements of the plan, but one of the easier ones is ‘cut electricity use in homes, offices and stores by 25 % (Can you see Green IT?).

If you have visited Yahoo’s home page this week, you have been greeted by a special banner honoring Earth Day. It features a wind turbine that sends an electric current to a compact fluorescent light bulb (CFL).  The CFL has become a potent symbol for environmentalists, who rightly remind us, that we, as users of electricity can make choices that positively impact our planet.  Using CFLs in one’s home is a simple step everyone can take to reduce energy consumption. It only takes 18 seconds to change a light bulb, but if every American home replaces one light bulb with a CFL, we would save enough energy to light 2.5 million homes for a year and prevent greenhouse gases equivalent to the emissions of 800,000 cars. 

I just changed one of my bulbs in less than 18 seconds.

What are you doing to reduce energy use in your home, office, or data center? 

"Let me take care of that for you"

(Now included as standard with every new Schwab account.)

The new service, New Client Concierge, promises to make opening an account a hassle-free experience.  Someone else will deal with the paperwork, answer questions, and make sure you understand the different investment options.

Why?

"Because to us, a good relationship is one that starts off on the right foot."

IT leaders should consider this basic question. How well are you taking care of your new users whether it be a new employee, a new partner connecting to a new web service, or an external customer interacting with a revenue generating service like www.schwab.com?

I'll get to cars in a future posting.

(The author currently drives a 2006 Subaru Legacy 2.5i Special Edition Wagon and loves it.)

Problem drivers include business pressure (budgets, people, overload), organizational silos, and application and infrastructure complexity.

But part of it is the nature of the tools most organizations use.

IT organizations are struggling to maintain a plethora of disconnected point products required for delivering quality service to their end users, wasting time and money managing the systems management infrastructure rather than the services provided by the systems. As a result, customers have difficulty guaranteeing service performance or availability to the business and are unable to support strategic business projects the business demands. The result from an operational standpoint is that the workflow from early detection to root cause analysis & resolution is way too expensive and takes way too long. In order to ensure services meet the (current and future) performance and availability needs required by the business, customers need technologies to monitor and provide the data required to establish, manage and improve meaningful service level agreements. Many customers lack business relevant service performance and availability metrics.

The right solution will enable IT to reduce the management and support cost of service provisioning, while ensuring services meet the current and future performance and availability needs required by the business, and freeing budget for IT innovation and development.

My wife Clayton, my daughter Carlisle and I went to Austin Children's Museum because our friends' son had been recognized for his "Best of Fair" invention in a competition held in local schools. The museum was celebrating children's ingenuity a by hosting the 'Best of Austin Young Inventors showcase.' The inventions were on display and the young inventors themselves were present to talk about their work. Eli was there with his 'Cockroach Removal System'.  I'm not sure that's actually what he called it, but it was a cup attached to a stick accompanied by firm piece of cardboard on another dowel. The idea was to cover the cockroach intruding in one's home w/ the cup and then slide  the cardboard ‘floor’ (an ~ 6" square) under the cup, so the 'bug' could be safely removed and released outside. No pesticides.  No wanton destruction of helpless cockroaches. His friend's invention was a cane with a flashlight as a handle.  Very clever really, so when I am old and using a cane at night, I can use the flashlight handle to illuminate my way.

The reason I haven't blogged yet in 2007, was not because I have 'blogger’s block', but rather because I have been slammed with work as we close our fiscal year and prepare for our next.

I've been doing a lot of work looking at the current problems/challenges of IT Operations.  Complexity.  Keeping up with Change. Reducing Costs. Virtualization. The CMDB.  Costs.  Quality of Service.  Skills and organizational challenges. 

There is a lot of pressure on IT organizations now.  Who is going to relieve the pressure?

I'm glad we have young inventors out there designing new solutions to address the problems that IT will face.

I have had some relaxing days with my family these last 10 days in ’06, a nice break before the New Year begins and we all head back to tackle new projects and priorities.

I returned from Vegas really excited by both the tone of the conference and BMC’s very positive position in the market place.  (It was by far the most positive show I had attended since the big bubble busted around the turn of the millennium.)

When I listed to Tom Bittman’s Key Note presentation that kicked off the conference, I was inspired by his statement that essentially ‘There is no place where there is as much potential for innovation as Infrastructure and Operations.’ (Remember the plumbing?)

Unfortunately, most enterprises are spending 70% of their IT budget just to tread water. There is a shift needed and the leaders are moving this number down to 50% --> 40% --> 30% to enable strategic projects. 

Bittman calls out a few key focus areas:

• Enabling users and the business
• • Agility
• Service Management and Automation
• • Process automation
  • Change Management
    
• Architecting the New Infrastructure
• • Virtualization
  • Control
  • Communications and Software

Notice the first bullet?

Infrastructure & Operations provide the foundation that makes the business agile – or NOT.

There is still work to be done in 2007, but the good news is that technology is not the inhibitor (Culture remains the biggest hurdle for most organizations).

Be well and prosper and HAPPY NEW YEAR.

Each time I’ve done this, a question has come to mind.

Is it dangerous to have canisters of gas waiting in steel lockers? 

I don’t know the answer, but I sure hope the Homeland Security team doesn’t deem it so, because then I’d be back waiting in line again. If I am not mistaken, the propane kiosk solution is award winning.

When does self-service work for you?

I wish all those who celebrate Thanksgiving a healthy and peaceful one. 

I recently had the opportunity to review and provide feedback on a paper on Monitoring End User Transactions.  The paper made mention of the Heisenberg Principle a term I had never heard of.  I took the time to look it up on Wikipedia. Wikipedia lists it as the 'Heisenberg uncertainty principle' or the 'Heisenberg indeterminacy principle'.

Oddly, a few days later I encountered the term/theory again in a class I was taking on Sunday mornings on Sprituality and Children. Evidently this was a term with which I was now going to have at least a rudimentary understanding. (My daughter Carlisle is 13 months old and I have a lot to learn about both Spirituality and Children.)

The short hand 'definition' of the Heisenberg principle, as described in my class is 'The very act of observing disturbs the system.' If one reads the description in Wikipedia, one will see that it is actually more subtle and complex than that. Yet, I believe it was this simplified interpretation that the paper on End User Monitoring was suggesting should be considered when looking at software to monitor end user transactions. The suggestion is that technology that monitors the response time of an application will place a load on the system and thus impact the results of the measurement.  Or, put another way, the software might, depending upon frequency of transaction generation, add additional overhead to the target server.

Without a doubt this is true for certain architectures. But, how important is this architectural attribute really?  In general, I guess the answer is 'it depends.'  It depends on the size of the load with respect to the processing power of the system.  In most large enterprises, processing power is not a large concern; it is inexpensive and abundant. Other factors I believe are more important are 1) the breadth of application environments that a solution can monitor (i.e. web, windows, packaged app, mainframe etc) 2) ease of installation and deployment 3) cost 4) how well it plays with other solutions (like SLM for example) and 5) ease of upgrades and maintenance.  Your list of requirements and order of priority will certainly be specific to your environment and should drive the selection of the best tool to meet your needs. Regardless, you can't improve what you can't measure.

Bonus Coverage (or PS)

A special call out to some fellow bloggers.  I read Scott Isensee's piece on Total User Experience. Assuming good design and proper functionality to meet user needs, end user monitoring is essential if you want to have a total quality user experience.

I saw Peter Armstrong in Houston at a recent sales new hire training.  After he watched my presentation, he told me 'you should have told them about your blog.' I told him I didn't think account managers read my blog.  Let me know if i'm wrong. 

Finally, I spoke to Ynema (aka Y) Mangum about her guerilla blog tactics.  She told me to try being a bit more controversial, polemic even.  I'll have to consider that suggestion further.

I'm thinking of Anne Gentle who is on maternity leave...not sure of her due date but I hope she, baby and family are all well.

Be well and prosper.

My paper usually arrives about 7am each day. I was up a bit before 7 and it hadn’t arrived.  At 8:15, I called the automated ‘service desk’. The support representative (a computer) said I would receive my paper shortly. At 9:15, I saw the carrier and asked him why the paper was so late.  He told me he had been out partying the night before. I told him I expected the paper at 7, at least by 8 am.  He said ‘Not on weekends.’ I think he has his own definition of good service. I told I had been a paper boy for 6 years.  He asked me ‘how many papers did you have?’.  ‘220,’ I responded.  ‘I have 519’ he said.  ‘I gave you your paper” he shouted as he sped off. 

I returned a few hours later, and the paper was not there.  I called again and hit zero to speak to a customer service representative.  The rep said I would have a paper within 30 minutes.  Hours later I update my wife.  She calls and voices her discontent.  The agent my wife spoke to said we would get it the next day.  No paper Monday either. (My wife is a writer and depends on the paper for her work.) More disappointment because of false promises.

• Do your users know the quality of service (i.e. your commitment) detailed in your service level agreements?
• If you do have SLAs, are you able to monitor, review and report on them?
• Do you formally manage customer relationships to accurately assess and ensure service quality?

For some reason, I thought and still think the New York Times has an SLA for delivery before 8am.  I tried to find this information on their web site, but couldn’t. Maybe I am mistaken, but that was and still remains my expectation.

This is a great example of poor quality of service and worse ‘quality of experience’. My service expectations were not met, and when I raised an incident to the service desk, my problem was not resolved with professionalism in a timely manner.

My disability has enabled me to focus my tennis energies on watching the US Open. I've seen some superb tennis beginning with Agassi's final matches and culminating, to date, with Mikhail Youzny's defeat of Rafael Nadal.

All of the matches have been improved by the introduction of The Hawk-Eye Tennis Officiating System. 'Hawkeye', developed by English artificial-intelligence expert and entrepreneur Paul Hawkins, gives players the ability to challenge calls and summon a highly accurate instant replay for a quick and reliable final judgment. Players have up to three challenges per set, but lose a challenge if they incorrectly question a call.

The Hawk-Eye is particularly interesting, because in order to be successful and fully accepted, it has to appeal to multiple stakeholders (sound familiar??). In this case, the new technology has been almost universally applauded by the players, judges, and fans.

James Blake gives one players view in Jackson Lynch's Popular Science article 'Love all for instant replay at U.S. Open':
 
"With instant replay, we can take advantage of the technology and eliminate human error," Blake said. "And having just a few challenges will make it both fun and dramatic for the fans at the same time."

It turns out, according to Erin Joyce of internetnews.com, instant replay is just one of many U.S Open tech stories. Hawk-Eye, however, is the one getting the most press and the one most affecting the fans' 'experience.' Fans are yelling 'Challenge' when they see a ball that they believe has been miscalled. The electronic line-calling technology can measure ball position to within three millimeters using eight court cameras. A big screen display above the court (and on broadcasts) shows the results shortly after the challenge creating a moment of gripping suspense for fans, who generally appear delighted with the change.

While sometimes I have my Luddite leanings; in this case, technology has come out a winner.

John, I’ll see you on the court in 6 months.

I had one funny experience during our trip that is a great example of technology at work for the end user.  Some how during our trip I lost the changing pad from our new diaper bag.  My wife had just purchased the Do-It-All Diaper Bag from Lands’ End a few weeks prior to our trip.  The bag is stylish, yet inexpensive, and features the longest changing pad available on the market. What to do? A diaper bag without a changing pad is not really a diaper bag.

I got online to see if I could buy a replacement pad. Unfortunately they did not list pads as separately purchasable items. So, I clicked on Lands End LIVE to try chatting with someone who could help.  Lois, from Lands End, saved the day.  I told her my story online (my father only had dial up and it still worked) and she told me she would bail me out for free this time.  The pad was at our house when we got home. Thanks Lois. Well done Lands End.  That's exceptional service and a great example of how Live Chat can be really help out a user in need.

I guess part of the reason I was concerned was I had been thinking about Lee Gomes' 'Talking Tech' interview with Jakob Nielsen. In the June 20, 2006 Wall Street Journal article, Nielsen makes some interesting comments:

RSS - The general public does not know what this is. Nielsen suggests we stop calling it RSS and use the term news feeds instead because it explains 'what it does'. Sounds like good usability advice that could be applied in many user interactions.

Traditional Newsletters Emailed to Customers - Some quotes from JN: 'The best ones are like a service you are waiting for and expecting.' 'The best newsletters really drive customer relationships.' 'they have to be very good, very targeted to a specific user's actual needs' (Remember Design begins with a Need??) He actually mentions a email newsletter that my wife subscribes to called 'Your Baby This Week' which comes from babycenter.com. The key is providing useful content to a defined audience on a regular predictable time schedule. That is why BMC's ezines are so popular with their readers. Are you a subscriber?

Blogs - JN: 'Certainly you can have blogs that function as newsletters, updated on a regular basis. But they don't tend to do that. They don't tend to have that same sort of publishing discipline: having a publication schedule and surveying this week's or this day's events. They could of course, but they don't tend to.'

Ahh, discipline. Perhaps that is my concern with my blog. It is a challenge to regularly publish relevant content, especially when I don't know who my audience is or whether they are finding my postings useful. Are there any end-user experience fanatics out there? (JN: 'Bloggers tend to be all one extreme edge. It's really dangerous to design for a technical elite. We have to design for a broad majority of users.')

Well, how useful is that? It sounds like academia to me…an elite conversation that rarely reaches the masses.

I did just see some data from MarketingSherpa’s Business Technology Benchmark Guide 2006 that was encouraging. For the first time blogs have joined top-rated tactics to entice high-quality prospects to inquire about an offering. Only Free Trial Demos and Webinars were ranked higher than Blogs as marketing vehicles to create interest in Software solutions.

I'll work on discipline and hope to receive some feedback from some of my readers out there.

I'm beyond the backlog now and experiencing bloggers’ guilt. (I haven't done any reading on this topic, but I'm sure social scientists are researching this phenomenon.)

As I mentioned, on my trip to Miami I read several articles I think are worth commenting on and considering. Let's start with Joe Sharkey's article in the Itineraries section of the Tuesday June 20, 2006 New York Times.

Joe begins his article " The New, Sleek Airline Website" with the following lead sentence:

'Domestic airlines are discovering that by redesigning their Web sites, they can cut costs, shore up the loyalty of business travelers and even lure customers away from other travel sites.'

The airline industry is a great example of how organizations are using technology, above all the internet, to take costs out of their business model and differentiate themselves.  Print a boarding pass at home?  I still haven't done this yet, but now know I can do this on Continental.com. I don't know how many airlines allow you to do this, but I know that customers now expect this service on all web sites. As Sharkey says, 'Many travelers are also drawn to online check-in, which permits passengers to print out their boarding passes and is now a standard feature at airline Web sites.' Since each standard feature has a cost to design, develop, test and deliver, airlines must be adding functionality because they believe it will affect (i.e. protect or improve) their competitive position.

The last part of the article presents a small case study discussing the challenging merger of US Air's website with America West's. Travis Christ, the vice president of marketing for US Air, is quoted saying 'Customers have told us, over and over, they want a simple, seamless process to do a lot of complicated things and it is very hard to get there.' I don’t think Travis, despite his family name, is being completely honest. In general, I don’t believe people, end users like you and me, understand or care how complicated things are. We do want things to be simple and seamless and we do want to be able to do a lot of things. What Mr. Christ does understand (Hallelujah ) is that revenue is at stake if the web experience he offers the market doesn't match up with that of his competitors and, above all, meet end-user needs.
 
Clearly, this phenomenon is not exclusively a domestic affair. Upstart airlines like Ryanair and EasyJet are utilizing technology, above all the Internet, to revolutionize the air travel industry putting enormous pressure on old school airlines.

While living in Spain, I had the pleasure of meeting Carlos Muñoz who is now the CEO of Vueling which I believe to be Spain's newest airline.

Take a look at Vueling's website.  I just did.

Vueling.com. It's as easy as 1, 2, 3.  That's the first thing you see.  Simple. Or your eyes might be attracted to the ad they are running.  500,000 seats for 10 Euros.

I was amazed when Carlos told me he was starting an airline.

Here is the Vueling 'philosopy':

‘Our aim was to create an airline with which flying became a genuine pleasure, with which paying less was not equivalent to lowering standards in terms of service or comfort and which was open, sincere and user-friendly. So if we tell you there are extremely cheap flights up for grabs then we wish to do so because it is the truth. We wanted an airline with kindly staff who placed no barriers between themselves and the customer, we wanted to operate with new aircraft, to fly to major airports and to neither delay flights nor overbook them. It's as simple as that.’

Low cost without low standards. Service. Comfort. User-friendly. A kind staff that takes care of customers. They operate differently and are grabbing market share because they have a clear philosophy oriented toward their end-user needs and "employ the most advanced technology."  Not sure if it is seamless, but because Vueling was literally ‘designed, built and deployed’ within the last few years, there are far fewer seams and a lot more focus.

Safe travels.

Somehow or another, my last entry got lost in the pre-blogosphere. Anyway I won't waste your time with details on this technical hiccup in my publishing schedule.  I am back and will revisit the topic of my 'lost' posting which addressed 'language and culture and the end user experience' because I am quite sure both language and culture impact both end user expectations (i.e. requirements?!) and product designs (including software solutions).

Today, I want to simply get back in the game by asking for feedback on Interactive Insights.  As the solutions marketing lead for BMC Transaction Management, I was involved in (among other things) choosing speakers and their respective speaking topics and structuring the content for this new media production.  I would like to hear some feedback on either the topics or the format?  I watched it today and was impressed, but am obviously biased.

So, where have I been you ask? 

First, I took my family (wife and daughter) to Spain for two weeks and then last week I was in Miami for three days learning about the technology BMC just acquired from Identify Software, AppSight. Miami is always fun, but a vacation in Spain has a lot to offer as far as end user experience goes.  I lived and worked for BMC in Madrid for four and a half years (If you had read my 'lost' blog, you would know that already).  For me, travel is really one of life's great pleasures (along with red wine and chocolate) which also provides an incomparable way to learn - learn about different languages, cultures, foods, fashions, driving habits and ways of living.

One quote I like comes from Samuel Johnson (I remember reading his biography or autobiography in prep school and at the time I found it painfully tedious).  Dr. Johnson said "The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality." This couldn't be truer.  They say seeing is believing, but seeing, tasting, shopping, smelling, driving and speaking is 'knowing.'  Furthermore, for me, travel is a good way sharpen the saw and come up with new ideas.  On my recent trip to Miami I gathered a couple of articles on topics related to end user experience that I will address in my next postings. 

My colleague and fellow blogger John Albee uses a plumbing analogy when speaking about transaction management.  As a home owner, when I turn on my faucet I want hot and cold water with ample pressure and I want the water that comes out to drain properly. I live in an house built in 1922 and have most of my plumbing problems with water not draining.  I have a few tools that I use to solve plumbing issues: a plunger, a plumbers snake, and, my favorite, a good bottle of Drano or similar drain opener. If these things don't work, I call my friend Paulino who used to be a plumber.  I almost never do any proactive or preventative maintenance on my plumbing, except clean any food or hair away that may be blocking the top of the drain.  It is nearly always reactive.

Now let's think about the plumbing that enables modern business transactions.  If you are a user, you most likely don't care, and aren't educated enough about systems to care, about the components that "bring water" to your desktop or browser.  But I.T. professionals are coming from a different perspective. Many IT professionals care passionately about the components that serve as the plumbing for internet-enabled business.  I.T. professionals have lots of tools too. In most cases they are actively monitoring the pipes, water heaters, pumps, s-joints, faucets, drains, etc. There is a complex array of elements involved in delivering a business service to an end-user.

Now, the sad part and the challenge that we must address... Businesses compete based on the quality of services delivered, not the quality of each piece of technology. Competitive enterprises must provide I.T. services in a reliable way. Unfortunately, according to the latest data from Forrester's annual user conference held last month, 74% of performance problems and service outages are still being reported by end users. I.T. is under pressure to deliver quality service without growing their budget.  Many organizations realize that if they don't get it together, someone else will be managing their plumbing and then they may have to become real plumbers (which may not be such a bad deal in the long run). As we have been developing and introducing BMC's Transaction Management solution to the market, I and my colleagues have spoken to lots of customers (in I.T.), who want to improve the way they manage their water service. IT increasingly want and require an end-to-end view of the transactions running on the plumbing and a measurable understanding of the quality of service being delivered. Furthermore, they need tools that shorten the time to resolution when plumbing problems affect end users.

I love San Francisco and think it may be the most beautiful city in the US.  Before flying back I took a walk down Market Street to the Embarcadero.  I won't go into poetic detail about this outing, but during my walk I passed an E*Trade retail outlet. When I saw it, I thought of my daughter and the education savings account I had just set up for her at E*Trade bank.  I was wondering why I hadn't received my welcome package yet. 

Well, it finally arrived yesterday.  I opened the packet and found something I had never noticed before - an envelope-sized flyer describing E*Trade Financials Business Continuity Planning Executive Summary.  Interesting.

Businesses today face an uncomfortable reality. Nearly all business transactions rely on an increasingly complex IT infrastructure for their execution. Furthermore, managing the underlying infrastructure from the browser or handheld device through the firewall, over the network, into and out of various servers, databases, applications—has added an additional layer of complexity, cost and risk to business and IT management. End users are not concerned with the details of the IT infrastructure, nor do they think much about continuity plans. They simply want to be able to complete specific transactions and have access to the services that they require when they require them. Usually, this is continously (i.e. 'all the time'). 

I understand why banks need business continuity plans, but I had never thought that a high-level description of the plan would be included in a new account welcome package. Anyway, thanks to E*Trade for keeping me informed, now I just need to face a bigger problem: saving the money required to fund my 7-month old daughter's education (secondary, college and grad school I imagine).

The next day....

Funny, I wrote all of the above yesterday, and then we had a major thunder storm last night that left me and my family without electricity in our home in central Austin (TX, USA).  My continuity plan was pretty poor.  I had one mini mag light with batteries and some small candles.  We survived.  I bought some ice in the morning to keep our refridgerator cold.  I called the electricity company to report the outage and they said 'call back in 2 hours if your service has not been restored.'  Well, more than 6 hours later and I still don't know if I have power. 

Feb 14, 2006 BMC Software introduced an end-to-end transaction management solution to give IT comprehensive insight into end-user experience.  I had the great pleasure of being the point man on this launch.

Why transaction management?

• Businesses today are totally reliant on IT.
• Due to the direct link between IT and the bottom line, there is relentless pressure on IT organizations to improve availability and performance of key business applications.
• IT organizations want to be an enabler for the business, but often are an inhibitor

Why is this important?
Complexity

• While IT has delivered huge gains in efficiency and effectiveness and overall availability trends are up, now the risks are huge (high cost of downtime, loss of productivity, poor customer service, etc.).  IT is facing an increasingly complex infrastructure and is often viewed as risk that must be managed.
• Infrastructure and application complexity is making it difficult to guarantee consistent end to end application (= service) performance.
• When problems occur (outage or poor performance), determining the root cause is difficult.

Problem, what problem?

Despite large investments in management software, the majority of problems (74% according to Forrester’s research), are reported by end users or the business.
Because of the complexity of application infrastructures, individual components/”silos” (network, database, OS, etc) may appear OK, yet the end user may be experiencing problems or poor performance.

Why is this is an important change in systems management?

Well, I think Tom Bishop, BMC's CTO, put's it very well when (according to my recollection) he says that we are moving from managing the systems that do or deliver work, to managing the work itself.  

What does the business user, external consumer or internal customer care about?

Users are not concerned with the details of the infrastructure, they just want to be able to complete specific transactions, whether it's an ATM withdrawal, placing an order, providing customer service or delivering a product.  Users often don’t know they are interacting with an “application”; they just want to get their job done. Behind the “interface” of the application, lies a complex infrastructure.  Once again, the end user has little to no knowledge of the underlying complexity.  S/he just wants it to work and be fast.

As IT organizations seek to improve operationally and become more service oriented, they have to start thinking about their customers/end users.  As a result, there is growing interest in service level management and defining and managing services in customer terms.  When problems do occur, it is often difficult to understand the root cause of the problem. It is a myth in system management that if all infrastructure components are working correctly, the performance of a system as perceived by the end user must be at an acceptable level. As a result, customers often have to have a team of subject matter experts researching issues. Because business services, run across silos (technology stack), there is a strong interest in end-to-end application and service performance.  

After attending I read Ken Turbitt's latest posting about ITIL in a Box. There a lot of consultants riding the ITIL wave and evidently some are proposing DIY kits for quick implementations of ITIL.  ITIL are best practices to align people, processes and technology to efficiently and effectively deliver high quality IT services that meet business needs.(Ken also wrote a great piece on Quality of Experience.)