Agile extension for BABOK is now available

Though I have been somewhat critical of the BABOK thus far (perhaps a little unfairly, given the fact that there has been clearly a huge amount of thinking gone into it and it is at this point the best reference we as a business analysis community have!), I was pleased to note that the agile extension has just been published for public review. In my view it is a bit lacking in its description of techniques for facilitating refinement (i.e. lots of different kinds of visualisations and the like), but on the whole it is a great start.

Twinstan's interesting links roundup on Diigo (weekly)

• HM Government best management practice

  The HM Government best management practice website has a bunch of interesting pod- and vodcasts on programme and project management for beginners.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Twinstan's interesting links roundup on Diigo (weekly)

• The Cult of Done Manifesto

  OK, the number of manifestos is getting a little silly, but there is one statement here I really like; "Accept everything is a draft").

• User experience treasure map

  I stumbled across Peter Morvilles' user experience treasure map in a disappointing presentation on cross-channel design. This is an excellent summary of the user experience lifecycle deliverables and his take on how they fit together (into a treasure map).

• 30+ iPad Apps For Designers, Developers And Creative Types | SpyreStudios

  I still love my iPad. This is a great selection of sketch and design apps.

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• Slowest Load Times of Microsoft Sharepoint | Visual.ly

  I love the sharepoint features, but hate the loading times...

• (Agile 2011) Lean UX: Getting Out of the Deliverables Business

  Lots of pretty pictures and a good basic message about the need for UX-guys to focus on the experience and not the beautiful deliverables in a lean project. Would have liked to see more about approaches.

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• Stupid, Stupid Client | UX Magazine

  I don't like the title, but the commentary on approaches to help your client understand the user experience design process are solid.

• The priming effect - British Airways Business Life. Business advice and inspiration, insider tips from the world’s top CEOs, analysts and entrepreneurs.

  Subtle priming of meetings and decisions seems to have a big effect - no surprises from my side here - context is everything! I fear I am becoming known as being a little obsessive about this stuff though...("thought-police" has come up a couple of times in recent feedback sessions ;-)).

• Agile & CMMI

  My thoughtful colleague (see previous postings) is once again busy reading up on interesting things (and in particular software engineering capability building. In this context he has revisited CMMI, thus causing me to revisit CMMI, having dismissed it as a truly helpful tool several years back (the last time I even surfed the SEI website was about 5 years ago). Shame on me! There has been a good deal of thoroughly interesting improvements and the SEI lot have build an impressive portfolio of useful materials. This link is an appraisal of how to combine agile and CMMI elements - a little dry, but quite thorough.

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• Bain & Company : Management Tools - Top 10 Management Tools

  Amusing overview of management tool development over the last 20 years - not much change!

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Twinstan's interesting links roundup on Diigo (weekly)

• Geoffrey West: The surprising math of cities and corporations | Video on TED.com

  Finally another interesting talk at TED after many disappointments - companies die, cities don't don't.

• User Centred Design | Visual.ly

  A little simplistic, but I am a big fan of penguins ;-)...

• Home | CRM Idol

  Slightly depressing.

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Twinstan's interesting links roundup on Diigo (weekly)

• Requirements Versus Design: It’s All Design

  This guy is bang on - requirements analysis and functional design - rarely in practice can they be separated and in agile projects the analyst should revel in this fact and the opportunity it presents!

• An Agile Functional Specification

  In praise of specification, even in agile projects :-).

• The Fun Theory

  A Volkswagen initiative along the lines of gamification. I am not sure I morally agree with the Speed Camera lottery (rewards for sticking to the speed limit paid for by the fines of those that don't), but I am sure that it could work!

• Book Resources | Beyond Bullet Points

  Useful set of templates for presentation structuring a la "BPP"

• The Future of Social Customer Relationship Management

  I may be outing myself as a CRM ignoramus, but I had never heard of the Value TRInity (Customer value indicators based upon Transaction, Relationship and Influence) - not sure that it is a complete view, but it is catchy ;-).

• Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

  Having just been reading about how Kanban helps to create "Flow", I stumbled across this presentation about Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's apparently seminal work on the topic, "Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience."
  
  Based upon my normal disdain for the profession, I am a little worried that I am finding the writings of a psychology professor so interesting. Perhaps I am finally maturing.

• Kanban and Scrum

  A great overview of Kanban and Scrum, and how they can be made to work together. As always, common-sense prevails - take the best bits from both, but do so knowingly because otherwise you will break them both!

• LeanModel - LeanSSC Wiki

  Lean underpinnings for agile thinking, summarized well.

• InfoQ: Kanban System Design

  Another great presentation on InfoQ - this time, a thoughtful talk by Karl Scotland on combining Kanban and the thinking that underpins it (rather than just the process itself). I particularly like the fact that he connects systems thinking archetypes around flows and pressures with the motivation for the system, since I absolutely buy into this myself... though I still can't claim to really understand the systems thinking underpinnings (despite a half a dozen books and too many online articles!).

• Start With Why, Simon Sinek

  Saw the TED talk from Simon Sinek and enjoyed it. Web site is nice to.

• InfoQ: Testing for the Unexpected

  It has been a while since I have personally spent any time in the world of quality assurance, but, as so often, I have a strong opinion on the massive difference that "good" testing can have, not just on finding and avoiding problems, but also on improving the product that is being developed (think, "does the customer really want to do this this way?!?"). This is a nice presentation on exploratory testing in agile projects.

• Method Cards (Beta 1.0) | Design Thinking

  A nicely structured presentation on how to apply a process to the creative design process.

• S-Bahn-München zeigt aktuellen Standort der Züge in Google Maps an | Internet | News | ZDNet.de

  Now that is a mobile app worth having - realtime map of train positions in Munich... OK, so it is only worth having if you live in Munich... let's hope it extends to other towns soon!

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• Strategy 2.0: The Six Key Telco 2.0 Opportunities - STL Partners / Telco 2.0 Research

  Good overview of status quo on direction for telecommunications companies under pressure on all sides.

• How Strategic Planning relates to Enterprise Architecture

  A promising no nonsense start to this article ended in disappointment, but still the discussion around business capabilities and how best to segment them in the context of strategic planning is an interesting one. I remain convinced that the best way to frame these capabilities is through the customers' eyes (ie. via customer experience scenarios or journeys), even at the cost of some clarity in what the capability actually requires (in the case of inward facing needs); I have sadly yet to see much of this in TOGAF case studies or application.

• The Incredible Run of Google+ - Technorati Technology

  Wow, google+ is spreading like crazy. I don't dare speculate where this one is going, but if you are in the online business, you better start playing with this one!

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Trial and error - a beautiful thing

It has been a while since I posted a blog entry directly to blogger.com (though I hope that some people are enjoying my weekly roundup of interesting findings via diigo.com).

I finally have the beginnings of a plan for a bunch of entries that will hopefully say something interesting about the connections between systems thinking, design thinking, agile methods and business modeling.

I suspect that it is going to take quite a while for me to formulate this out (think years rather than months), but I just watched a talk by Tim Harford (known from the "undercover economist" books and newspaper columns) at TED Global 2011, that I think is a good way to kick things off, since it made a lot of sense to me and brings together the iterative and exploratory methods of both agile and design thinking for innovation with a degree of structure:

The basic premise is a simple one; the world is too complex for us to be able to find solutions to issues by thought and analysis alone, we need to accept that we do not understand everything and, more importantly, accept that trial and error is a valid way to find solutions. As Harford says, this is obvious, but not accepted (check out some of my earlier posts on common sense solutions not necessarily being applied).

Having accepted this premise, the key thing in my eyes is to work out how to become great (and efficient) at trial and error - that is, learning incrementally from what we do and the agile, design thinking worlds have a lot to offer on that front, be it sprints, retrospectives, exploratory design, customer centric learning. Add to this the rigour of systems thinking approaches to build better understanding of complexity to building or support decision-making frameworks and you have a winning combination.

More to follow.

Here is the video:

Twinstan's interesting links roundup on Diigo (weekly)

• Visually Launches To Automate The Making Of Infographics | TechCrunch

  I was sure that I had already posted on this.. must be getting old. Love the site, love the direction - one to subscribe to if you enjoy simple visualisations of complex data!

• Communicate Hope: Using Games and Play to Improve Productivity - 42projects | Management Innovation eXchange

  Another cracker on gamification from management exchange

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Twinstan's interesting links roundup on Diigo (weekly)

• YouTube - ‪Thundercats (2011) - Official Trailer [HD]‬‏

  A blast from the past.

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Twinstan's interesting links roundup on Diigo (weekly)

• Agile Connect 2011 - Keynote: The Essential Product Owner - Partnering with the Team

  Not sure this warrants a keynote, but a good presentation nonetheless.

• Cool Infographics - Blog - Britain's Changing High Street Businesses

  Another great infographic. Simple and easy to understand.

• Lego Takes Crowdsourcing up a Notch | ClickZ

  Cool!

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• blog thing | written by Stephan | User Experience Consultant at a Canadian IT service provider working and living in Germany

  tags: Shameless plug for a colleagues new blog.

• The 12 Best Evidence-Based Marketing Tools | Evidence-Based Marketing

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Twinstan's interesting links roundup on Diigo (weekly)

• Ultimate Wallboard Winner - an interactive backlog board

  Nice combination of technology and good old post-its on this development project to show project progress

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Twinstan's interesting links roundup on Diigo (weekly)

• Real-time local Twitter trends - Trendsmap

  A cracking site mapping twitter trend terms onto a map.

• Authors@Google: Brian Dunning Skeptoids

  Entertaining presentation on urban myths

• InfoQ: Using Design Thinking to Stop Building Worthless Software

  Less impressive than I had hoped, but a good solid presentation connecting design thinking and agility in product development

• YouTube - 35 years of CGI: milestones and fiscal 2010 highlights

  I think it best, I let this presentation speak for itself ;-)

• SINNRAUM - Willkommen auf der Homepage von Gunter Dueck

  I spotted this link on the skype profile of a very thoughtful colleague - this blogger is a published philosopher, maths professor and chief technologist at IBM. Will definitely be exploring further ;-)...

• How to design your Business Model as a Lean Startup | Methodologist

  Interesting that Osterwalder's canvas really does seem to be getting traction - great little blog article on a lead startup business model

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Twinstan's interesting links roundup on Diigo (weekly)

• Agile Architecture: Strategies for Scaling Agile Development

  It is always worth returning to Scott Ambler on agile modeling and architecture...

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

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• Eli Pariser: Beware online "filter bubbles" | Video on TED.com

  Great succinct presentation on why the personalisation wave online must be dealt with cautiously - I am convinced that the result of personalisation approaches will be overwhelmingly positive for the consumer, but only if it is accompanied with transparency about how it is personalising...

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• The value proposition in multichannel retailing - McKinsey Quarterly - Marketing - Pricing

  Another indicator that experience is the new value driver...

• Managing: How to Work More Like a Start-Up, Planning and Strategy Article - Inc. Article

  Not sure that I am entirely convinced by this, but it is a nice idea...

• 10 Podcasts to Help Your Ecommerce Business | Practical eCommerce

  A bunch of podcasts that I have not yet explored, but they look like they are worth checking out...

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Twinstan's interesting links roundup on Diigo (weekly)

• fourthway: The Real Underground 1125x788

  Cool morph between the london underground map and the "real" streetmap positions of the stations.

• BCG look at corporate portfolio management

  A nice easy read.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Twinstan's interesting links roundup on Diigo (weekly)

• YouTube - Bay XP Meeting Part 1: Agile Estimation, Mike Cohn

  Haven't watched this in some time - great overview of agile estimation approaches. Though I am not an absolute convert on this particular front, the talk gives an excellent introduction on the no nonsense thinking behind relative sizing.

• What is Visual.ly? A platform to explore visual data launching soon

• YouTube - 8 Regeln für den totalen Stillstand in Unternehmen

  What a fantastic overview of things NOT TO DO in an organisation. Sadly only in German.

  tags: Strategy organisational change management

• Sketchnotes 2009 & 2010 – A book by Eva-Lotta Lamm

  Nice collection of images around UX concepts

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Twinstan's interesting links roundup on Diigo (weekly)

• InfoQ: Architectural Decisions as Reusable Design Assets

  Perhaps a little over formal, but some formality about decision making in architecture is a must and this looks like a framework that might work...

• Gamestorming » Blog Archive » Who/What/When Matrix

  Interesting take on the effective meeting protocol

• Valpak Rolls Out Augmented Reality Coupons

  Cool augmented reality coupon app...

• Do-It-Yourself Project Management (And How Behance Does It) :: Articles :: The 99 Percent

  Yet another agile like project management approach...

• Herding Cats: Stages of Understanding

• Hans Rosling and the magic washing machine | Video on TED.com

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Twinstan's interesting links roundup on Diigo (weekly)

• GeekBeat.TV #153 | SXSW 2011 – David Ferrucci Talks About IBM’s Watson | GeekBeat.TV

  The Watson project is remarkable.. some how this managed to get past me without me noticing. Definitely worth checking out.

• YouTube - Leading@Google: Greg Shea

  Surviving "24/8" working week.. good stuff.

• Stop the Insanity: How To Crush Communication Overload :: Tips :: The 99 Percent

  Given my new resolution (see post from January), I will be paying particular attention to this blog stream...

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Twinstan's interesting links roundup on Diigo (weekly)

• Khan Academy

  What an amazing site - wish this had been available when I was at school...

• Structure_Is_Not_Organization.pdf

  I stumbled across this classic article on Tom Peters' blog by chance (at least 14 years after first having to read it in my organisational design seminar at Bath!) - I know that the 7S framework has come under a deal of criticism, but this article still stands up well, 30 years on.

• A Brief History of the 7-S ("McKinsey 7-S") Model | tompeters!

  Despite his more recent outpourings, Tom Peters' 80s classics are still well worth revisiting...

• Why Process Models but not Data Models? | Greta Blash

  This article matches my perspective - data modeling is a missing weapon in too many analysts' arsenal.

• Cool Infographics - Blog - The Infographic Noob Guide to Online Marketing

  A cracking infographic on online-marketing tools

• Effects of agile methods on website quality for electronic commerce

• Lean UX, Product Stewardship & Integrated Teams

• Lean UX: Getting out of the deliverables business

• Lean UX: Getting Out Of The Deliverables Business - Smashing Magazine

• Collaborative Design Facilitator Cards (First Iteration) | the architecture of everything

• The Dangers of Design by User :: UXmatters

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Twinstan's interesting links roundup on Diigo (weekly)

• The Evolution of CRM Communication Channels

  Kommunication ist alles...

• Herding Cats: Does Agile Need to be Named?

  Once again, Mr Allemann takes the "bling" out of agile and brings it back to what it is. Good.

• Announcing the ZapThink 2020 Poster: The Vision of the Future of Enterprise IT | ZapThink

  Lots of nice thoughts in one diagram

• Behance Network :: Gallery

  Endless fantastic case studies for creative professionals

• Persuasive Design or The Fine Art of Separating People from Their Bad Behaviours - Online

  and another one from Sebastian Deterding. Smart guy. Loads of examples.

• Gamify | The Gamification Platform

  Definitely need to get into this stuff more - big wave coming...

• YouTube - Meaningful Play: Getting Gamification Right

  Great talk on "Gamification"

• InfoQ and Agile Contracts

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• Open University - Systems | How To Register | Systems Open Study Group

  Another great free resource on systems thinking from the open university.. proud to be british...

• Systems thinking diagram types

  Great little tutorial site on diagramming

• BBC Systems Practice - Managing Complexity

  BBC & the Open University are just fantastic..

• E-Commerce News: Enterprise IT: The Enterprise Architect Gets Some Respect

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• Gartner Identifies 10 Consumer Mobile Applications to Watch in 2012

• Herding Cats: Agile & earned value management

  Cracking presentation from Glen Alleman about that gets away from agile rhetoric and once again puts it in more perspective of project management innovation over the years...

• Landingpages für generische Keywords fit machen | Conversion Optimierung Blog

• InfoQ: Agile Contracts

  Good summary, even if I still haven't seen many companies ready to move in this direction.

• The Bad Ass BA Observes the “Hunt for the Right BA”, part 2 | Articles

  More interesting that the previous posting - a thoughtful take on career progression in the analysis domain.

• Bad Busines Analysts, Project Managers, and Relationships | Elizabeth Larson

  Thought provoking, if a little clicheed.

• Zero Email Company: Atos Origin will keine E-Mails mehr - Golem.de

  A brave, but sensible goal...

• Facebook Connect for Ecommerce: Is It Right For Your Business? « Get Elastic Ecommerce Blog

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• A Case Study: A Business Analyst on an Agile Project

  For analysts new to agile this article provides a good overview showing that it is the same, but different to more traditional projects....

• LinkedIn Labs | InMaps - Visualize your LinkedIn network

  Very cool.

• Martin Jacques: Understanding the rise of China | Video on TED.com

  Not my favourite economist (ex editor of Marxist Today), but a timely reminder about the coming role of China.

• Business-IT: Strategischer Partner mit Mehrwert / Deloitte-Studie zur Entwicklung der IT in Unternehmen zeigt ein erweitertes Rollenverständnis | Deloitte | Presseportal.de

• The A-B-C of Behaviour - Johnny Holland – It's all about interaction

  Nice overview on changing behaviours for designers

• Accenture_Everything_Elastic_Technology_Vision.pdf (application/pdf Object)

  As much as it pains me to post the competition, this is a nice summary of Accenture thinking on the trends last year (and they were largely right).

• heise online - BPMN 2.0 für eine bessere Zusammenarbeit zwischen Fachabteilung und IT

  I really hope that the heise-editors are right and BPMN 2.0 does get established more universally on the business as well as IT side.. but I am not holding my breath.

• Cool Infographics - Blog - The Illusion of Diversity: Visualizing the Soft Drink Industry

• Worlds Top Leadership Gurus Speakers Trainers Leadership Development

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Twinstan's interesting links roundup on Diigo (weekly)

• YouTube - Tribal Leadership

  GoogleTalk on Tribal Leadership by Dave Logan - not sure I would buy the book based upon this, but it he has some interesting ideas

• The Rise And Fall Of Yahoo: The Infographic

• How Facebook Ships Code « FrameThink – Frameworks for Thinking People

  Some fascinating insights into software engineering and product development and facebook - even if only part of this is true it sounds like a developers fantasy.

• 11 Types of Analytics for 2011 « Get Elastic Ecommerce Blog

  Nice overview of types of web analytics tools

• GazeHawk - Eye Tracking For Everyone - Usability Services & Software

  Have had good experience with eye-tracking in general. I like the look of this offering - good pricing and looks like a reasonable reporting suite. Would be interested in any feedback people have.

• 2010's 25 Top Posts On The Forrester Blog For Interactive Marketing Professionals | Forrester Blogs

• The Sequel Map – Which Sequels Were Better or Worse Than the Original? — BoxOfficeQuant

  Just another nice data graphic - guess what - sequels are mostly worse than the original - probably not really a learning that requires a info-graphic, but it does look good...

• Book Review: The Design of Design: Essays from a Computer Scientist :: UXmatters

  Any book by Brooks is worth reading - this is definitely going on my reading list.

• Design Thinking | Employing Design Principles | Defining Ease of Use :: UXmatters

  A nice overview with some good links on design thinking

• End_of_Year_Letter_2011_technology.pdf

  Less succinct than the telco paper of (practically) the same name, but also pretty good. Once again, no real new insights, but a few nice facts on cloud computing and M&A in the technology sector.

• End_of_Year_Letter_2011_telecom.pdf

  A nice summary of the trends in the telco industry for the operators - nothing new, but succinctly put.

• Exciting Commerce: Businessmodelle für Fortgeschrittene: Die Erfinder-Bibliothek

  Links to a few interesting books on business modelling

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• The Agile Business Analyst: Seeing the Forest, The Trees, and the Grass…Mostly the Grass! | Robert Galen

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And so the year begins..

Sitting in Heathrow Terminal 5, waiting with a growing sense of gloom as the Departures board stubbonly refuses to post the gate to Duesseldorf, I think that I need something to take my mind off the delay to my flight that is inevitably coming; some New Year resolutions.

Some may recall, that last year I resolved only to improve the quality of meetings that I organised. Though it is for others to judge, I feel that I have been reasonably rigorous in applying the common sense rules, that we all know, but fail to apply to make sure that meetings are not a waste of time:

• No meeting without an agenda in advance (and that means with owners, objectives and timings - see entries on the Manager-Tools effective meeting protocoll, EMP for short - see here for previous posting on this).
• Prepare for meetings, thinking about what it is you actually want to achieve.
• Start and finish on time (and postpone/rearrange if necessary)... OK, this is one that I have not been entirely successful with for other peoples' meetings, but my own I have pretty much kept in plan.
• Meetings without agreed actions are just nice chats - "who does what by when?"
• Follow up on actions consistently ("duh, of course", as my younger brother would say, but if we are honest, it is this point that is almost always lacking).

Since, I was reasonably successful on this front last year, I am keeping my (professional and publishable ;-)) resolutions slimline once again:

1. Apply the principles to all meetings I attend rather than just my own - I think this is going to be really tough, but hopefully worth the effort.
2. Use the time available to me for work effectively - As with the EMP, it is a "no-brainer" to wish this, but how many truly prioritise work items appropriately consistently (I consider myself to be pretty good at this, but I certainly cannot say that I *always* apply rules a la Drucker's "The Effective Executive" - see also previous postings from me on this) and perhaps even more critically in the consulting industry, how many properly plan enough time for the different types of activity (and in particular thinking time)? A smart colleague picked me up on this last week - when do you do your thinking, he asked. My immediate response was, "19:00-20:00 and after 22:00". Though accurate, I do believe that a better response would involve some working hours and this leads to point 3.
3. Sleep more ... see the recent TED posting on this topic.

I hope I will be able to post a similarly positive update 1 year from now. We shall see. Wish me luck.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Twinstan's interesting links roundup on Diigo (weekly)

• Cool Infographics - Blog - The Ride of Your Life

• E-Commerce News: E-Commerce: The Towering E-Commerce 3.0 Wave

  Ignore the title and it is a pretty succinct blog entry on ecommerce organisation within traditional companies

• Epic Win - Level-Up Your Life

  Another example of gaming technology being used to change behaviours in the real world. Will try this one out for sure...

• European Multi-Client Retail Mass Market Benchmark 2010

  Some nice stats on retail mass market

• InfoQ: IT And Architecture: Inside-Out Perspectives

• The Relevance of User Experience: Using Every Opportunity to Impress Users | UX Booth

  Good anecdotes for the value of user experience for non-converts...

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