Author: Scott Berkun

Tricks for writing: book darts

Posted on in Writing Wellby Scott Berkun

For years I was a notorious page corner folder. I’d mark corners of passages I needed for research with a fold, making bibliophiles cringe and scream. I thought books should look used: it’s a sign of love that a book traveled, got scuffed up, filled with post-it notes or coffee stains. I love when readers post photos of my books that have lived good lives.

But then, I love books and want them to last. It’s really not nice to mark up books that aren’t yours (but are owned by friends or libraries). If I had a better way I’d have used it, I just didn’t know of one. So when I showed my brother-in-law a particular good book (with my folds on every other page) his eyes lit up. That Christmas I was gifted a set of book darts.

IMG_3198 IMG_3199

Book darts are small arrow shaped strips of metal that you can place on pages to mark a passage. They are easy to use, easy to remove, and do zero damage to books. It’s a great paper clip-esque design: minimal and clever.

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I use these things so much in my research that I own several hundred of them (I’m faster at marking pages than I am at reviewing the marks later).

They’re sold in various quantities at bookdarts.com and some bookstores sell them too. If you are student or writer and spend your days making notes in books, I highly recommend them.

This week in ux-clinic: Getting the new up to speed

Posted on in UX-Clinicby Scott Berkun

This week in the ux-clinic discussion group:

Right now, our company is growing by leaps and bounds and an initiative has been put forth to reduce the time it takes a new hire to become productive. My question really is what approach have others seen work when it comes to getting new hires (fresh out of college/grad school) up to speed as usability engineers or designers?

How long does it typically take a new hire in your company to be completing projects on their own?  What topics are included in your training program and what format do those training sessions take (e.g., lecture style, one-on-one w/ a mentor, hands-on “lab” type training, etc.)?

This week in pm-clinic: interviewing managers

Posted on in Management, PM-Clinicby Scott Berkun

This week in the pm-clinic discussion forum:

Times have changed at my company and I’m looking for a management role. I was hired as a software developer, but have picked up some project management work through promotions. Since I have no experience either interviewing potential PMs/managers or being interviewed myself, I don’t know what to expect in seeking out a FT management position.

What are three questions you ask of any project manager you interview? What is the minimum criteria to get a hire? How do you deal with ambiguities of assessing management skill, compared to something more easily demonstrated in the interview, like programming or design knowledge?

How skunkworks got its name

Posted on in Innovationby Scott Berkun

The history of innovation has many legends, some of which hold more truth than others. The legend of Skunkworks, in my research so far, holds up well.

The term is commonly used to mean secret projects done within an organization.

The name was born for a special defense project, the P-80 aircraft, at Lockheed. The plan was for a special team to set up a new office: still part of the company but independent in direction. The bet was that to innovate they needed to be managed in a different way than other projects in the company.

skunkworks

The name skunkworks has everything to do with their first office. it wasn’t glamorous: it was a tent in the parking lot outside the main building. A nearby plastics factory gave off a nasty odor, reminding engineers of the ‘Skunk works’ factory in Al Capps comic strip Li’l Abner. The name was picked up by the staff, and carried on. The Skunkworks would go on to build the U-2 and SR-71 Blackbird planes. You can read more about the organization in Skunkworks: a memoir of my years at Lockhead, by Ben R. Rich.

Some famous skunkworks type projects include: The Xerox Alto, The Apple Macintosh and Toshiba Laptop (one of the first production laptops in the world).

Know of other famous examples? Please comment below.

How honest should you be?

Posted on in Managementby Scott Berkun

On NPR Seattle (stream) right now is a show exploring the danger of white lies. Philosopher Immanuel Kant believed lies, of any size, were wrong. But the NY Times ethicist Randy Cohen thinks that lies can be good in some cases, such as when they protect someone’s life.

So when working with other people, what are the ground rules? How do you decide how honest to be with people about:

  • Their performance / quality of their work
  • What you really think of their ideas
  • What your true motivations are
  • How you feel about how things are going
  • The reality of the project schedule

I bet there is a high correlation between how honest the average person on a team is, and how well that team performs.
Anyone agree or disagree? What factors contribute to how honest you are?

Embarassing web tales: part 1

Posted on in Uncategorizedby Scott Berkun

No CS degree can hold up against the dark powers of an aging mind and the ocassional typo.

The contact form on my main site, normally a reliable way to contact me about speaking gigs, interviews or feedback on stuff I’ve written, has quietly been sending all of it’s little missives into never never land. Instead of forwarding to @scott…, it was forwarding to @scptt…, which is about as good as dev / null or the nearest black hole.

Now I’m sure someone out there has the unfortunate circumstance of their parents naming them Scptt, but I dodged that particular bullet.

So if you’ve been wondering why I’m such a jerk for not answering your questions or responding about speaking at your conference, company or backyard BBQ, now you know why. Apologies all around. Please try again and all will be well.

(Hanging head in shame)

The architecture at Google

Posted on in architecture (real), design, Managementby Scott Berkun

There’s a great little article on Metropolis all about the design and architecture of the Google campus.

The authors of Peopleware and Joel Spolsky have long written about the importance of workspaces in productivity and human performance, but there’s no better example of a major company investing in environment. I know many small companies that do it right, but it seems once they hit the 200 or 500 person mark, many of those perks go out the window (har har).

I’ve been to the Google campus a few times – it’s the creative spaces and strong use of color that charmed me. The ceilings are high. The spaces are non rectilinear. And I never had the quick sense of repetition that dominates most offices everywhere (Office, office, office, hall. Office, office, office, hall) Even the training and lecture rooms have character and dimensions that generate some kind of response.

At the right of the essay is an index of photos, giving a great sense of their approach to office design. Not for everybody, but sure gets you thinking about your environment.

Note: For those old enough to remember, the Google buildings were originally the home of SGI (Silicon Graphics Inc.) The first time I was on campus I kept thinking I’d been there before and eventually figured out why.

This week in ux-clinic: vision and collaboration

Posted on in UX-Clinicby Scott Berkun

This week in the ux-clinic discussion group:

While managing a small design team how does one manage both a strong design vision, and maintain a sense of collaboration and team ownership over that vision at the same time? How do you keep your team of real designers from becoming production crafts people when the design vision is quite strong from the beginning? Let’s assume for this thread that the strong vision is internal to the design teams and held and managed by the design manager.

This week in pm-clinic: turning the tide

Posted on in PM-Clinicby Scott Berkun

This week in the pm-clinic discussion forum:

I have just joined as a Project Manager at a software house employing 130 people, 90 of which are involved in software. The engineers are talented but number of PMs is low and failed projects is high. CEO is technical, but sees PM is a discipline he has neglected for too long. Hence the board have hired myself and one other PM to help.

Many engineers are anti-management and believe they don’t need managing, but after 3 weeks I see major problems of out of control work, lost budgets and late schedules. Some engineers fear I’ve been hired to cut headcount and are anxious (though I anticipate that the opposite may be true).

My preliminary moves to add structure to projects has met great resistance: some engineers refused to attend a weekly team meeting.

How can I bring order to the chaos without resorting to the stick method? How can I get engineers to buy in to the Project Management ethos? I already feel I’ve alienated some by my job title, and I don’t want to do more damage.

The motherlode of book writing statistics

Posted on in Writing Wellby Scott Berkun

I know some of you read this blog because I’m a guy you sort of know who wrote a book, and you’re interested in writing books – If that’s true, say hi or post a link to this entry on your blog, so I know you want more on the book writing process.

Found a page of book industry stats (warning: questionable validity) – link from India, ink:

  • 58% of the US adult population never reads another book after high school.
  • 42% of college graduates never read another book.
  • 80% of US families did not buy or read a book last year.
  • 70% of US adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years.
  • 57% of new books are not read to completion.
  • 81% of the population feels they have a book inside them.
  • 70% of the books published do not earn out their advance.
  • Most readers do not get past page 18 in a book they have purchased (!).

The rest are here at Para Publishing. Again, I can’t verfiy these stats. And even if I could every genre or book market is different, so YMMV anyway. The page does have sources for most of these links, but they’re of varying quality.

Also see India’s post about how book interiors are designed.

New coke: an innovation case study

Posted on in Innovationby Scott Berkun

newcoke.jpgThere was a report today of Coke employees selling trade secrets, which reminded me of the New coke saga, a tale of failed innovation.

Most who were around in 1985 recall this as a huge fiasco, where a bad drink was rejected by the public. But the details are much more interesting, as Coke did many things right from an “innovation as strategy” perspective.

What went right:

  • Coke chose to move forward in response to real market pressure, rather than defending their existing products.
  • They had their best R&D & flavor people design the new product.
  • Extensive taste testing and veteran approval were sought, and all pointed to them having a better product.
  • They put big $$$ behind a major rollout campaign.

What went wrong:

  • The press conference (April ’85) was a disaster. Coke failed to explain why they made the change and did not acknowledge Pepsi taste test, or any taste testing done by Coke in R&D.
  • Pepsi attacked with counter-ads, including a full page ad in the New York Times.
  • According to Gladwell’s Blink and other sources, the successful taste tests of New coke didn’t suggest people wanted an entire 12 oz. portion of the new formula.

The result:

  • There was initial acceptance and the product did well it’s first weeks, sales up 8% compared to previous year.
  • However public outrage grew, with groups protesting New Coke (especially strong in the south).
  • By June ’85 there was enough public pressure and complaints from bottling suppliers that Coke execs were under pressure.
  • In July ’85 Coke brought Classic Coke back to the market.

It’s a great story of the risks of innovation. Coke did many things right – their greatest mistake was underestimating their customers lack of interest in innovation: they were surprisingly happy with how things were.

(See wikipedia’s excellent entry on the New Coke saga).

What innovation means: a short report

Posted on in Innovation, Managementby Scott Berkun

[Post updated: August 2015. Also see the best definition of innovation]

The word innovation is used in so many different ways I’ve categorized them here. As an expert on creativity I will put these common uses in context below.

Innovation is commonly used to mean:

  • A New idea: Innovative = creative thinking. It doesn’t have to necessarily be a good idea, or something that can be made into a product, just interesting, different or creative.
  • A New + Good idea: an innovation has to be new, but also good or better than previous things in some way. Something can be innovative in concept, before it’s a product or a tangible, usable thing.
  • A kind of product: Some people separate ideas from innovations and they draw the line at products. To be an innovation means you not only have an idea, but successfully deliver it to the world as a product. It’s not an innovation if it isn’t out in the world in someones service. So you can take someone else’s ideas, and if you’re the first to make a product out of them, you’re an innovator (e.g. Edison and the lightbulb, Apple and the iPod).
  • A kind of successful product: Some business books mark new ideas that fail commercially as below the innovation bar. So the Apple Newton and The Apple Lisa, wouldn’t qualify as they were commercial failures. But the Macintosh and the iPod qualify as innovations.
  • Something that is cool or perceived as cool. Often this is based on novelty, in that the idea seems new. But as the people making this judgement often aren’t experts in the history of a particular kind of idea, they’re often falsely perceiving an idea as novel.

The mere fact that the word is commonly used to mean so many different things means it’s a poor word to use. Odds are high that if you use it to mean one thing, the person listening to you will think you mean something else.

Innovation vs. Invention:

Some academics define invention as a specific creation, but innovation as the effect the creation has on an industry or culture. So a product can be an invention, but not an innovation, unless it has a profound impact on the world. This is humbler way to use the word as it is based on the impact of your invention, rather than the creation of the invention itself.

Innovative Organizations

Things get even messier when people talk of innovative organizations (another popular trend). Here, innovation means one of three things:

  • Results: An innovative organization is one that produces innovations (whichever definition you pick from the above). Think of research labs or teams of people directed to create new products.
  • Processes: It’s not the results that are necessarily innovative, but the way the group goes about doing it’s work is. So a bank might still use U.S. currency and offer loans, but the way they organize or make decisions is creative, new or different. Of course it is possible to have both innovative processes and results (e.g. IDEO).
  • Strategies: Many books aimed at executives like Seeing what’s next and Dealing with Darwin offer ways to think about business and beat competitors where it’s the strategy that has innovative elements. But here it’s hard to discern between a good strategy, an effective strategy, and one you simply haven’t heard of before.

What does all this mean?

A great place to start is to ask: when in the history of business has there been a time when innovation wasn’t important? Never. There has always been competition and greater rewards for people who could execute on better ideas for things. If you agree, then why has the term, as fragmented as it has become, grown so popular? and what does this means for popular perception of what innovation is, and how it happens? And did I miss any common uses of the word innovation?

Also see: Stop Saying Innovation and Best Definition of Innovation

The lost concept of the holiday

Posted on in Uncategorizedby Scott Berkun

Holidays are important to me, so much so that I invented my own awhile ago. But today I had a strange experience that makes me think in the U.S. we’ve lost the idea completely.

Today is July 4th, Independence day and we’re supposed to be doing fun things to celebrate the birth of the United States (and hopefully remembering times when the world thought better of us).

But surprise, surprise. My local supermarket is open all day. As is the neighboring video rental store, Thai resteraunt and various other stores. And the biggest surprise was how good business was: it was hard to find parking.

What’s going on? Are holidays only holidays for some now?

Hypocracy disclaimer: my wife is sick today and on a lark I called the video place. Since they were open I drove over and picked up some food and a movie for her. But I had the strangest feeling the whole time that things would be better off if all those stores were closed.

The 3 People In a Room Test

Posted on in Innovation, Managementby Scott Berkun

Does your head hurt when you read business books? It shouldn’t. I rarely read business books anymore since they’re often so divorced from how the working world actually functions.  It’s one thing to disagree with an author’s ideas, but if comprehending their points feels like running uphill, in the rain, at night, while pelted by icy-cold jargon and sedative-tipped diagrams, it’s hard to imagine there’s enlightenment waiting at the top.

Peter Drucker’s Innovation and Entrepreneurship and The Effective Executive are half as long, twice as honest and three times as good as most new business books, depend on zero jargon, and don’t make the miraculous but empty promises often found in business book sales copy.

As a counterpoint to feeling lost in a book, here’s a test to use.

The 3 people in a room test

All decisions in any organization eventually filter down to the level actual work gets done, the level where it’s 3 or 4 people in a room doing the work.  This is true independent of industry, strategy or the size of an organization.

So when reading a book that loses you in theory and jargon, ask: How does this impact the 3 people in the room?

  • How does this concept change how those 3 people should work?
  • What impact does it have on how they make decisions?
  • Does it change how they relate? Communicate? Their roles?
  • Does it effect how those 3 people get rewarded? How empowered they are?
  • Might it change their goals? Or how those goals are defined?

If what you’re reading has no impact on what goes on with 3 people in the room, go up a level. What impact does this have on the people who manage the 3 people in the room? No impact there? Ok, go up another level, to middle managers. Nothing? Ok, keep going.

If you can’t find a place where, in application, the ideas you’re reading changes something, stop reading. Unless you’re enjoying the book for some other reason, you deserve something better.

So how do you decide when to abandon a non-fiction book you’re reading? Do you have a better method than the 3-people in a room test?

[Edited 2-12-15]

Book research help: rate of tech adoption

Posted on in Innovationby Scott Berkun

It’s a long shot on a holiday weekend here in the U.S., but I’m trying to find good sources for the following:

  1. Comparative rates of adoption for radios, televisions, PCs, Internet and cell phones from 1950-present.
  2. U.S. Data as well as world or by-country data on #1

I’ve found a few sources here and there, but about 80% of the magazine and web material that mentions this data fails to provide any source references, which kind of sucks.

All pointers welcome (Web, book, journals, whatever). Cheers.

This week in ux-clinic: Drive by critiques

Posted on in design, UX-Clinicby Scott Berkun

This week in the ux-clinic discussion group:

One of the bad habits in my company is the drive-by critique: we throw so much criticism at UI that it’s common for people who show a prototype or new design at a meeting to get pounded on by everyone: tons of questions and criticisms, and downright cynicism. It’s not personal – it’s the flavor of the group, but for folks who have to show creative work it’s just not fun. After a few minutes of critique, the discussion usually moves on to other things, leaving the designer on the floor.

How do you change the flavor of how critiques are done? Or is this just part of working on UI in this industry? We have to show our work to groups, but there has to be a better way.

This week in pm-clinic: mystery of personal goals

Posted on in Management, PM-Clinicby Scott Berkun

This week in the pm-clinic discussion forum:

In the company I work for, we have personal development discussions between manager and developers twice a year. One part of the discussion is goal setting for the next half year period, and I’m a new manager doing this for the first time.

Obviously, we want the goals to be measurable, realistic, specific, and all that. I am not that interested about general properties of good goals as I am confident (ok, arrogant :) about those. Instead, I want to see real examples of goals that have worked well or well written goals that failed. Not team goals, but individual goals.

The whole personal goal thing is shrouded in mystery – no one ever shows real examples from real reviews for real people, and I hoped pm-clinic might have some people willing to anonymize goals from people on their team, prior teams or share some of their own goals.

I realize that goal setting is dependent on context and I don’t expect that looking at other people’s goals would be transferable as such. Instead, I hope to get new ideas and food for thought in this subject that is new to me, and for that reason good and bad examples (with light commentary) would be valuable. Thanks.

Replacing the desktop (not yet)

Posted on in design, Microsoftby Scott Berkun

bumptop.jpgEvery so often the urge surfaces to replace parts of GUI, like Menus, toolbars and the desktop. This popular demo of BumpTop, from the U of Toronto, goes after the desktop.

First, some history: Back on IE4 in 1996 and again on Neptune (and here) in 1999 we brainstormed, prototyped and evaluated all kinds of radical re-inventions of the desktop (and GUI systems). For a time it was our mission, and we tried, read, played with, or prototyped just about everything that had been done. The conclusion (at least mine): The desktop is a ghetto. People spend so little time there during their day that reinvention doesn’t buy you much.

Certainly not enough to deal with re-learning basic tasks. Unless your reinvention carries over to replace File.Open dialogs and their bretheren too, it’s a low mileage revolution. (Not to mention how you get web-apps to follow your new models too). Especially these days with better search and big storage, people don’t suffer much from their messy, poorly organized desktops. Any UI problems there are noise compared to, say, fighting with web-based e-mail apps or on-line banking sites.

One perenial mistake we made in the Windows group was thinking of System UI (Toolbars, desktops, file folders) as a primary place. We spent so much time trying to build the system as a good experience, when the best thing we could have done would have been to get out of the way (admitidly harder than it sounds). Even then, as now, it’s the web and apps that get 90% of people’s time in any OS.

Now, Bumptop: This is fine research work and a great demo. They got an amazing number of details and subtlties right. It is the desktop metaphor to the max: you can shuffle, flip-through, scale, and crumple, just like things on your real desktop.

It’s certainly cool, but what difference does it all make? It’d be easy to run a baseline usability study, and compare human performance with Bumptop vs. Mac or Windows (A note to anyone else doing other GUI reinventions). Does all the visualization and pile manipulation speed finding things? For newbies or for experts? Who knows, but it’d be easy to find out and would cut the hype.

Even if it does – how much time a day do you spend organizing stuff into folders? If you’re like me, as little as possible. I clean things up when it gets too messy, but generally I avoid my desktop, or any file/folder/maintance, as much as possible.

If you do watch the video and get bored, skip to 3:00 in – more advanced manipulations including stuff I hadn’t seen before. If this stuff floats your boat, check out the Data mountain project from MSR, or Maya’s DEC project. There are tons of other visualization projects from the last 2 decades, but I’m too lazy to dig them all up for this post :)

(And now, since it’s 3pm in the peak of summer in Seattle, I’m going to get as far away from desktops as possible, and go outside to play with the dog – you should too).

Mistakes in technical leadership (Hacknot)

Posted on in Management, Software/Web developmentby Scott Berkun

For the last half-hour I’ve been jamming on essays at hacknot, on leadership and management in the tech-sector. The essays are somewhere between Joel On Software and Paul Graham in topic and tone, range from ethical challenges, opinion bias, and Delusions of crowds, to critiquing claims of agile methods.

Not sure why but I like finding writers who don’t rush their stuff into daily posts, but wait until they have something solid to say every few weeks and try to say it well.

Hacknot’s latest is a list of Mistakes in technical leadership.

(Link from architect’s linkblog)