Blyk - advertising driven MVNO or media hybrid?

There was an interesting post on MEX (www.mobileuserexperience.com) today. The author argues that Blyk is in fact more than an interesting mobile virtual network operator (MVNO). He sees it as a true media communications hybrid, because they have succeeded in making the (highly targeted) advertising that makes the service free to most customers a selling feature in itself and not simply a unpleasant side-effect of getting the free service.

I am not really convinced of the semantic difference, though I have to confess that I have not yet experienced Blyk myself (I look forward to them entering the German market next year!), but there is certainly much for other MVNOs and operators in general to be worrying about from the Blyk model ;-).

Visual problem solving on the "back of the napkin"

I am just back from a weekend in London. I left the office really early on Friday (around 12:30) because I had hoped to get to the opening of a friend's new office in Notting Hill in the evening.

Unfortunately, the airlines conspired against me once again (see also my earlier posting on reading a Peter Drucker classic whilst struggling to get to Scotland a couple of weekends ago). I ended up flying to London Heathrow, rather than City from Duesseldorf via Stuttgart.. not the most direct route one can imagine! I arrived at the restaurant around 21:00. I suspect this will also not be the last time that I start a posting this way.

But there is a bright side. As with my trip to Scotland, the delay was not a complete loss as it gave me the opportunity to read another book from my backlog; "The Back of the Napkin - Solving problems and selling ideas with pictures" by Dan Roam. Given all the hype surrounding the book, I had high expectations that were only partially fulfilled.

Don't get me wrong. The book is well constructed and provides lost of thought-provoking examples of using visualisation to identify, frame, explain and sell ideas (much as the subtitle promises) and - even better - it provides a conceptual framework for structuring the analysis and visualisation of problems. However, it did not blow me away with its insight as I had been hoping.

Either way, it is well worth reading. For those not inclined to invest the 2-3 hours, Mr Roam has kindly produced a cheat-sheet for the key ideas and provides it for free on his website. And being the master presenter that he is, there are also a couple of presentations of his ideas on youtube (here is the 5 minute primer and here is an hour long presentation for Authors@Google.

At the risk of getting boring already.. TED is fantastic

Before leaving work earlier, a colleague stopped by my office ("my" and "office" are both exagerations given that I currently work at a pulpit on wheels in whatever office space I can find) and we got chatting about the world and, as I have often done over the last 12 months, I got on to the topic of TED.

It doesn't matter who I show the site to, it is always a delight to see their faces light up when I pick out just one or two presentations - this evening it was the classic presentation on the wii by Johnny Lee and Jonathan Harris' presentation of the website "we feel fine".

This second presentation is my personal favourite, Jonathan Harris' ability to create elegant user interfaces to simplify complex and aggregated data gives us a glimpse of what the internet is going to become and the ways we are able to interact with more complex information networks visually.

If you have not visited wefeelfine.org yet, then do so immediately..

And if you haven't visited TED, go there even quicker.

Back "on topic" with analysis and design!

After yesterday's "off-topic" posting on the inspirational impact of "Where the hell is Matt?", I want to return today to something more related to the central topic of this blog - business analysis and software engineering; I listened to a podcast on the way home this evening. It was a cast from the pm411.org project management forum (http://pm411.org/2008/09/21/podcast-episode-036-mindmapping/) and the topic covered was mindmapping.

I will be honest - usually I don't like the pm411.org cast series; I find them slow moving and limited in content. This week's cast was no exception, but it was interesting in that it got me thinking about how I used to use mindmaps to structure different levels of interrelated information:

Used right, the multi-dimensional representation of information in a mindmap allows you to build an entire requirements document. You start with an informal capturing exercise, relating the information as it comes from the stakeholders. With the right tools you can label and map in the stakeholders too (it is just a question of labeling the lines or nodes with the appropriate tags).

I used to use visio, but that got a little too much like hard work so I moved to mindmanager (which is actually discussed in the podcast). The more you add to it the richer the network becomes. With more advanced tools I am guessing that the structure of the data can then be extracted and used in (for example) specification documentation.

A colleague introduced me to www.mindmeister.com recently. It is free to use and has some nice import/export functions as well as integration with various browsers and other applications (though I haven't played around with them yet). I have been using it for holiday planning, but it is more than sufficient to handle more complex maps!

It occurs to me now that I have probably missed an opportunity to use this simple technique - believe me, I know this sounds trivial, but I guess I am getting rusty and have forgotten some of the basics! - to identify dimensions and structures in interrelated information sets and then to build off of them throughout a project - it is easy to want to jump into more structured requirements hierarchies, flowcharts, sequence diagrams and domain modeling activities.

I am going to try it out again in the next project initiation phase I am involved in to see how much it really adds to the more formal deliverables.

Where the hell is Matt?

I just stumbled across the "Where the hell is Matt" website. It is a really simple idea - a guy travels the world and dances like a fool in front of famous landmarks. It appears, however, that this guy has turned into a phenomenon. He has sponsors and has extended his dance to include locals from all the places he visits.

The result is a really positive example of the internet connecting people (the phrase is a little trite, I know, but it really is appropriate here). Amazingly, if you enter "Matt" in google.com this is now the top result. Check it out!


Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

Some academic resources are really practical

Having graduated almost a decade ago (though, believe me, it doesn't feel that long!), I have developed a healthy scepticism for the applicability of what one learns at university. That said, I am amazed at how seldom academic resources are used in professional training and career development programmes - it seems to me to be a wasted opportunity.

Ever since MIT opened up its course-materials to the general public a few years back, the number of schools offering high quality learning resources for free online has exploded. Predictably enough, this started with the business schools, but it now covers pretty much all disciplines.

And it really isn't just about collections of course notes poorly transcribed into powerpoint (although there is plenty of that too!). There are podcasts, video lectures, reading lists and even some interactive elements.

Now of course this doesn't necessarily compete with the best of the subscription based learning sites (either distance learning universities, or private organisations like SkillSoft), but then again, it is free!

Below I have put together a selection of some of my favourite academic sites:

• MIT - one of the frontrunners, MIT offer mostly written material, but also some multimedia courses across all disciplines.
• LSE - this a specialist podcast feed from the Information Systems and Innovation Group in the Department of Management. As you would expect the LSE faculty always have some interesting things to say.
• Open University's openlearn - pretty much every discipline, mostly written course notes, but really well presented.
  
• Berkeley - all kinds of disciplines and lots of videocasts and podcasts - I am particularly enjoying the first year undergraduate podcasts on "European civilisation from the Renaissance to the present"; you can just imagine the classroom from any number of movie representations of US top colleges!
  
• INSEAD - the knowledgecasts are informal interviews with the professors and industry leaders and at 10-15 minutes a piece are easy to digest!
  

Hope this is interesting for somebody out there. In a later post, I plan on revisiting this topic from a more professional perspective - the keywords being software engineering and YouTube ;-).

Peter Drucker & Agile

I just spent a delightful weekend in Scotland. Having travelled via Heathrow, I was, of course, delayed by several hours. This gave me a chance to revisit one of my favourite books of all time - "The Effective Executive" by Peter Drucker.

I have to admit, I don't like the title - most people are put off, thinking that it is only a book for wannabe CEOs when in reality it is about how to work effectively at all levels (Drucker himself defines the executive as pretty much every knowledge worker). But that is the only criticism I have of this book.

What is his key advice?

• Focus on one (maximum two) things at a time.
• Prioritise the item you are working on based on the impact it will have on the company (i.e. business value).
• Know what you spend your time on and manage your time agressively.
• Focus on opportunities and on the impact that you can and others make to the organisation.

The book was first published in 1967 and reads in many ways like an agile approach; it is refreshing to reflect on the fact that all of this agile stuff really is just a continuation of management practices that have been recommended for years. It is simply the IT discipline that is finally maturing and catching up with other disciplines.

If you haven't read it already, then go out and buy it - it is a book you can read in a few hours. There probably won't be any real new ideas if you have read anything about effectiveness (or indeed agile and/or lean management), but Drucker puts it together really well (there is a reason why he is the grandfather of modern management!).

Hulu.com

I just read an interesting comparison of Hulu.com and mediaflo at telco.net:

http://www.telco2.net/blog/2008/09/hulu_and_mediaflo_visions_of_a.html

It refers to Hulu.com (advertising driven, media giant owned online distribution) as the kind of site Dad would have liked. I guess I always was a bit of an old-fashioned kind of guy - I think the site is fantastic.. at least if you have an IP-address in the US (nudge, nudge, wink, wink). It has all the latest shows from a couple of big players and some real chestnuts from yesteryear (geeky sci-fi fan that I am, I have been enjoying the reruns of Babylon 5!).

I hadn't come across Mediaflo until today, so I will be checking that out in the weeks to come and will post what comes of it.

Either way, it just goes to show that the optimist in me was right - high-quality free to the consumer content online is making a comeback.

Business analysis basics - library

Over the last few years I have collected a list of key books that I think provide a basic primer for the business analysis discipline - it is a mix of software engineering, user experience, business administration and psychology. It can be found at the following link on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Business-nbsp-Analysis-nbsp-Basics/lm/RLA7LQ1I97H2W/ref=cm_srch_res_rpli_alt_2

Enjoy!

Waterfall2006

In the last few days I have been frequently reminded of the challenges of implementing agile processes in large projects. The principles and basic structures feel right, but getting the details to work is a long-term process. I have fortunately found an alternative in the process model that was reinvigorated at a conference way back in 2006. Check it out at http://www.waterfall2006.com

;-)

The Andon line and agile

I read an interesting article this evening on the use of the lean practice of Andon systems and their applicability to agile projects - Andon is a manufacturing term refering to notification systems (at least that is what wiki says!). When a factory worker identifies an issue that will cause a problem meeting quality demands, or similar, down the line, he pulls a cord and a problem solver literally runs to him to resolve the issue. In many ways, the agile practice of impediments resolution through the daily scrum and the scrum-master role is quite similar.

Once again, the parallels between general lean-management thinking and the software development world are striking. Slowly people are beginning to understand that software development may be special in some ways (more to follow on that topic!), but that standards and practices developed for other environment really can be applied to improve results! It is about time!

The (short) article can be found at: http://pm411.org/2008/09/06/how-to-avoid-stopping-the-line-on-deliverables/

Documenting a business model

I am always interested in finding good ways of documenting/ explaining/modeling/translating business models (delete as appropriate, depending on your understanding of the role of the business analyst ;-)). A colleague pointed me in the direction of Alex Osterwalder. He has created a nice framework for thinking about business model, with a focus on identifying areas for innovation.

I have to be honest; I haven't really got to grips with the details of his approach, but from first examination it feels like it is a good baseline. Hopefully, I will get a chance in the coming months to try it out myself - more to follow on that here!

Here is a taster, but there is loads more available at Osterwalder's own blog, or on www.slideshare.net (a wonderful source of interesting presentations!):

2 Day Workshop on Business Model Design

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: business model)

Practical science

Having an educational background in the dreaded "mickey-mouse" world of business administration and working in an environment that is overwhelmingly populated with scientists and engineers, I am often reminded of how little I know about the world around me.

It is easy to develop a view of knowledge based on your work; I am (amongst other things) an analyst in the telecommunications industry and know a fair bit about how to design and build software applications. Despite this I know virtually nothing about how the world works.

This is, somewhat paradoxically, one of the reasons why I enjoy working in the consulting industry - there are so many interesting smart people from all walks of life who have a very practical understanding of why things happen in the real world to keep kicking me into thinking about stuff outside my work environment!

Why am I writing this? I was moved to reflect on what I know and don't know by a posting on www.ted.org by an educational consultant, previously from the BBC, showing how little we know and how much this has to do with our educations.

I suspect it is true for large portions of the population (myself very much included). It is a reminder to me how important it is to stay inquisitive about the mundane and to continually ask myself simple questions. And it is also a reminder to me of why I like working with so many smart and practical people from so many varied backgrounds. Thank you once again TED!

Here it is.

Just another blog for kicks

I have been toying with the idea of writing a blog for a while. I even got as far as creating the profile on blogger several times before, but somehow could never bring myself to actually publish anything - after all what do I really have to say and why would I put it online?

Frankly, I still don't have a good answer to either of those questions, but I feel like giving it a go regardless. That is why "Just another blog" seems to me the most appropriate title for this page.

I have a vague desire to publish some things

• about the industry I work in (IT in the telecommunications world),
• about the kind of work that I do (consultancy, analysis, design, project management and the like)
• and about what interests me online (I must confess to having become slightly obsessed with podcasts, vodcasts and feeds of all kinds and most recently with www.ted.org, perhaps the most fantastic source of *consistently* interesting ideas out there).

It is , however, equally possible that I might end up writing about the trials of living as an englishman in Germany, or on my next holiday.

It is odd, but despite this being a theoretically public forum, it feels more like an opportunity to write for myself (indeed that is probably what it will be!) - something I always enjoyed doing as a child, but somehow I got out of the practice.

Well, we will see where this takes me. Thanks for reading.

Welcome to just another blog.