The Power of the BCC

I'm rather fond of the BCC line.  It's not just for covert intel-sharing.

I was reminded of how much I appreciate its positive effect on inbox noise when I read this article the other day: Email Game-Changer: How to Cut Your Inbox by 60 Percent.

Mass email that doesn't amass unnecessarily
Mass emails to All Employees drive me bananas, especially when the common "Reply-All" would spawn more emails in my inbox.  I've been known to send a friendly email or two, encouraging folks to put such widely broadcasted distribution lists into the BCC line to prevent proliferation of "Me, too" syndrome.

When the distribution list gets out of hand
People manage up and down in different ways.  Sometimes though, it feels like there are people who cc: as many people as they can--as if the number of recipients equate to points in the email game.  I get that it can be necessary but it can often get out of hand, especially when the thread is about troubleshooting and goes in a different direction than it started, then half the people on the CC line aren't relevant to the topic anymore.  Moving people to the BCC let's them know the conversation is continuing but that you don't need to clutter their inboxes anymore.  If they want back in, they can weigh in or follow-up explicitly in another thread.  I use this tactic frequently when responding to networking emails.  The person introducing me doesn't need to participate in the planning of a meet-and-greet but it's nice to let them know I've followed-up.

Hint:  Don't forget to include in the email body who you've put or moved to the BCC, unless you really are being covert.

If only I could put myself on a BCC or UNSUBSCRIBE worked for long threads and wide distributions lists.

-Ann

Agile 2013 – My Crushes

There are a few people in the Agile community I totally crush on. Let me start over.

There are certain things about the Agile framework that I appreciate—most have to do with the values & principles at the heart of the methodologies. When I first started practicing Agile, I didn't fully understand why we did things the way we did but later, I not only learned to understand why but also found that the 'whys' mattered more than the 'whats' and 'hows.'

Have you ever been on a highly-functioning Agile team? It's amazing and there's just nothing like it. If you ever work on one or with one, I swear you'll never look back. Mature teams practice the Agile values & principles—that's what makes them so awesome.

Because I have an attachment to these values, I find myself enamored by those who share the same. When I read books, scan blogs, and attend talks, I listen for keywords, for passion, and for the same interpretations I have. I get inspired by these people and sometimes I even feel like a groupie.

So, how does this related to Agile 2013? Conference sessions can be hit-or-miss. The topic summary might sound interesting but the content itself isn't, isn't as relevant as you thought it would be, or the presenter is just bad. Sometimes you have to 'vote with your feet' and find something else. This happened to me in my second session, "Complex Projects Aren't Plannable but Controllable" so I left about 15 minutes into it. Luckily, I had scanned the schedule and marked back-up sessions to attend. #2 on my list? One of my Agile crushes: Mike Cohn.

The thing about attending session and lectures by my Agile crushes is that I've pretty much already heard what they have to say. Mike Cohn's presentation on "Agile Planning" wasn't new content to me but sometimes it's good to get back to the basics—play in the sandlot, if you will.

Curious who my crushes are?

• Kent Beck
• Jeff Patton
• Mike Cohn
• Ken Schwaber
• Dean Leffingwell
• Ron Jeffries

Agile 2013 – Measure Business Value

At Nordstrom, we are becoming more disciplined bout data-driven decision-making. In Direct, we have been using a scoring system to measure Business Impact for about year. We’ve tweaked this formula a few times and added some curbs to aide in scoring. As the organization has adopted the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), more business units are finding their own business value measurements but there isn’t a consistent formula across the company. There’s been some debate about this and I was hoping this session would provide some insight into how we can normalize business value for our enterprise portfolio.

I was a bit disappointed in the session because it was more about a facilitation technique rather than a methodology for measuring value. This was an workshop-format where the presenter, Chris Sims, taught us how to prioritize using stack-ranking card sorts. I know how to do card sorts and their value is has diminishing returns above 20 items and about a dozen participants. It doesn’t really scale and while cases have to be made to ‘sort,’ it’s not really as data-driven as we want to be as an organization.

I’m not saying there wasn’t value in the session; it’s just not what I was looking for. It’s a valuable technique to know and is incredibly useful at the team level and on small-scale engagements. Diana McCasey said it well, “It’s like an Agile 101 course on measuring business value but what we really need is Agile 401.”

Quotable Quotes

‘Incremental Value’ The things that make your product better but aren’t differentiating. It’s important to not ignore incremental value when measuring and comparing business value at the feature level. This is something I continually fret over when we look at WSJF prioritization. I often worry that we’ll lose sight of the things we should do to maintain the quality and value of our products that don’t necessarily increase their value. Unfortunately, the session didn’t provide any insight into this; but I’ll take the phrase and carry it around with me.

'Dimensions of Value’ Business value shouldn’t be measured one-dimensionally. We already measure Business Value multi-dimensionally. In Direct, we use Customer, Financial, Enablement, and Strategic Boost as factors in our formula. This isn’t new but I like the phrase.

Things to Read Up On

•  Kano Model

Agile 2013

This week, I’m at the Agile Alliance conference in Nashville, Tennessee, and I’m excited to share my experience and learnings with everyone.

First, introductions: I’m a Product Manager in Nordstrom Direct where I drive Customer Replenishment, Waitlist, and Returns Reduction for our eCommerce business.

I am an avid Agile advocate and served on the Nordstrom Agile Transformation Working Team. I started practicing Agile 10 years ago as a technical consultant, mostly using XP and then later incorporating Scrum delivery practices.  My first Agile project wasn’t a typical software development project; it was an 8-week vendor evaluation. The experience taught me what it meant to be disciplined and show results frequently. I ended up spending nearly 2 years with that client on 4 different Agile projects and I learned to value gathering feedback continuously and incorporating that feedback iteratively, traveling with lightweight documentation, creating shared understanding through conversation, and instilling ownership through team-lead demonstrations.

I got some Agile experience under my belt but it wasn’t until my next project that I really learned what ‘being Agile’ meant. I was working on a project to build a commerce-type engine and micro-site WCM that would be used to launch education about ASP.NET and SQL Server 2005. I learned the most about Agile from this engagement because of the team. I got absorbed by the values that the team not only passionately practiced but also embraced. I appreciated discussion and discourse about the Agile methodologies and I came to realize that Agile wasn’t about ceremony and practices but about the values and the team dynamic. I haven’t looked back since.

I could talk Agile for days so I’m pretty jazzed to be going to the Agile 2013 conference. What I’m hoping to get out of the conference: Understand how to better feed & plan at the Portfolio & Program level and manage the pipeline to Releases and Teams.

Single-tasking: A Week-long trial in productivity

I have been working some insane hours lately and I'm just exhausted. The worst part of it is that it doesn't feel like I'm making any progress anywhere.

I even started a Weekend Kanban just so I could stay somewhat sane on the weekends with my personal life and household chores.

Last weekend, I found this article, What multitasking does to our brains and I decided I would give this single-tasking a try.   This post is to share the results from my first week.

First, I had to decide what my "key changes" were going to be so I settled on:

• Block out time on my calendar for tasks
• Do work in 90-minute increments  
• Disconnect from distractions:  Close out of Outlook and Communicator, turn the ringer/vibration off my phone  
• Celebrate & reset:  Finish a task, take a break, and change locations

Block out time on my calendar
I had a discussion with some of my colleagues a few weeks ago and know some of them like to block time on their calendars for work-time but I've traditionally liked to keep it clear. I have a task list and I usually just work my way down it. Recently, however, I've had to block out little chunks of time to remind myself to print materials for meetings because I get so caught up that I forget and then run late.  If nothing else, those reminders served as interruptions so I could work right up until I absolutely had to get ready. Since I'd already bastardized my calendar, I thought it would hurt to try scheduling the rest of my work time, too.

What I've learned so far: Blocking out the calendar works but only if I stick to it. I came back to my desk from lunch one day and let myself get distracted by email and ad hoc requests. I didn't honor my appointment, didn't get to the work item until after I got home, and ended up working until 11pm.  I also found that I could really only block out time on my calendar and stick to it about once a day, in the mornings.  By the time the afternoons came around, there'd be a slew of action items that I'd have to deal with and could never get back to my work-time appointments.

Do work in 90-minute increments
90 minutes seemed like a long time. Sometimes, I have busy work that doesn't take 90 minutes but what I've realized is that most of the work I don't get done is the "thinking work." It requires a certain amount of down-time--to settle in and relax and let the creative juices flow. 

What I've learned so far: Finding 90-minute increments between meetings is challenging. I couldn't really test this out this week because my days have been mostly packed with meetings with a few 30-minute windows. Turns out, I could at least knock out a few small tasks. It felt a lot better to slot a small task in and get it done rather than try to get 30-minutes of a 2-hour effort done--regardless of its priority. Progress is king.
 
Disconnect from distractions:  Close out of Outlook and Communicator
Oh, to be disconnected. This was a scary one for me. I had resigned myself to closing out of messenger services but when my colleague suggested that I close out of Outlook, too, I was horrified. How could I possibly? But I knew she was right. Incoming emails are interruptions to my concentration all the same.

What I've learned: Closing out of Outlook wasn't really feasible for me. Sometimes, I needed to refer to emails--even if I didn't want the incoming ones, I still needed the ones I had already gotten. "Working Offline" was my solution. I'd leave Outlook open but go offline. I'd come up for air between "sessions" and log back into Outlook and Communicator. It also helped to let people know about my experiment--like my boss--so they didn't wonder why I never seemed to be online.

Disconnect from distractions:  Turn the ringer/vibrate off my phone
Phones are distracting.  There have been times in the past that I've turned off my phone so I could concentrate on work so this wasn't a far stretch for me.  Besides, I'd get reminders on my desktop and then get reminders on my phone which was not only redundant, but also twice as distracting.

What I've learned: It was nice to schedule times to check-in with my phone when I came up for air. I did run into one issue. I had a meeting with a colleague who didn't have access to my building. He texted me and waited 10 minutes before I finally saw it. If I'm going to be disconnected, I need to know when I need to be connected.
 
Celebrate & reset:  Finish a task, take a break, and change locations
Accomplishing something always deserves a celebration and a break. That part is a no-brainer but the article noted that changing physical locations helped with single-tasking. It was probably the most compelling and interesting suggestion in the article and the one that made me want to try it.

What I've learned: I didn't do it. I got so comfortable at my desk with everything right where I need it that changing locations would require me to pack up my stuff and find a new place to squat. That's precious time! But what I also found is that if I took a break and then came back to the same place, I just settled in and got distracted by the same 'ole, same 'ole.  I also found that when I finished small tasks, I would just move on to the next task, rather than taking a small break.  I need to work on this one a little more.

Other lessons learned:

• Come up for air in 30-minute increments to check emails, keep a pulse on things, and let folks you're still alive.
• Keep a notepad nearby for when you're feeling a little ADD so you can write down things you remember or things you have to do that aren't directly related to the task-at-hand.
• Switch to decaf.  You're less anxious about everything that way.

So far, I've found that I've been productive when I can stick with the plan. This wasn't the best week to try it out but I'm not ready to give up on this approach just yet.  This upcoming week looks a little more promising so I'll have to write an update next week.

Now, back to work.

-Ann

Excel & SQL: Better together

It's probably been about 3 years since I've had to crack open SQL Management Studio but this past week, I've been in SQL-land for hours at a time.

I'm rather fond of SQL. I have a few great memories of when I, as a BA, could school a developer or two with my magic.

Once was to build a dataset used to create a forced-direction network diagram of people who were connected to each other by being on the same email threads, regardless of whether they were recipients or senders. It was pretty neat because the solution was so simple: A UNION query with a self-referencing join.

That was my favorite win but my first time came about when I was listening to a developer complain about the tedious task of creating SQL statements to do some other tedious task.  Copy id from Excel, paste into SQL statement, run, copy id from Excel, paste into SQL statement, run.

"Why are you doing it like that," I asked?

"How else am I going to do it?"  He retorted.

"Use Excel."

1. I showed him how to create his SQL statement by building a string with an Excel formula and the ID column he was copying from.
2. Copy the formula down for all rows.
3. Paste into SQL
4. Run all the lines at the same time.

Bam! It was so simple, I think he felt kind of silly afterwards but grateful, nonetheless.

I love using Excel for building text strings.  I feel like I use it all the time as I did just the other day.

I have a list of IDs that I need to query against.  If I was in my own personal database, or in Access, I could create a temp table and populate it with the IDs and do a join but, alas, I am a simple product manager and wouldn't dream of creating any tables in databases that aren't my own.  What to do instead?

Build a SQL statement with an array for the WHERE clause.  Fastest way to do that?  Excel.

1. Start with your list of IDs.
2. Add a column for your SQL Helper.
3. In this column, in the second row (or first row of data), put in a reference to this row's ID column.  In my example '=A2'.

4. In the third row of the same column, you'll concatenate the second row with the third row, joined by a comma using the formula '=B2 & ", " & A3'.

5. Copy the formula from the third row all the way down your list.  Be careful not to copy the second row because that's just going to give you a copy of your first column.

6. Copy the last cell in your column and that's your array with all the IDs you need to query.

7. SELECT * FROM table where ID in (<paste array here>)

Sometimes I like to nerd out.

-Ann

Los Braggs: A Tribute to My Saving Grace

I started at my job a little over a year ago.  It's been quite an adventure for me.  The great thing about working with amazing people is that you tend to follow the same people around to different companies.  The risk with working with amazing people is that you tend to work with the same people.   Before Nordstrom, I spent 10 years working with most of the same people in 4 different companies, that includes working for myself.

At Nordstrom, I knew one person.  He brought me in but I had only worked with him once and only briefly met him on 2 or 3 occasions.  Essentially, I knew no one.  I had no work history with anyone and I had no credibility.  I thought it wouldn't be much different than a consulting gig.   I've had to earn trust and build relationships with people who didn't know me from Adam before.  It shouldn't be any different, right?

Oh, but it was and it didn't go well for me.  I approached my new job in the same way I would've approached any consulting engagement--hitting the ground running.  Within a month, I wanted to quit.  My role was new and everything was awkward and uncomfortable.  I felt redundant and ineffective.  My friends, former colleagues, and mentors told me to wait it out.  "Give it a year," they said.  By 3 months, I was depressed and irritable.  It seemed that my team hated me and I was on the verge of hating them, too.  We didn't connect and it seemed that everything I tried only made it worse.  "I'm done.  I'm just over it.  I am so tired of trying. I am just so tired," I remember saying.

I didn't want to give up and admit defeat.  I didn't want to be wrong, especially when I knew it could be better.  I wanted things to be so amazing because I've seen it BE amazing and, gosh, there's just nothing like it.

I found out about the Agile Transformation and I wanted to be part of it.  I joined the People & Teams track which eventually became Los Braggadocians.  And we are indeed amazing.

There's an energy that comes from being part of a truly Agile team and that's what saved me: My team and the Agile values.  It's difficult to describe what it feels like to be part of something greater than myself.

I once tried to describe that same energy about the greatest company I have ever worked for:

It’s in the intangibles and the intangibles are difficult to not only convey but also to measure.  Intangibles are the kinds of things that you cannot appreciate without ever having experienced them. It's like needing glasses your whole life then finally putting on a pair of glasses and saying, "I never knew it could be like this."

I like to think I had some hand in why our little Agile Transformation team is so great.  I hope that I fostered my passion for Agile values and principles and that it found its way to my teammates.  Even if it had little to do with me, I'm still so proud and happy to again be part of a team that makes me smile when I'm with them.