VOC the WOC

Organizations involve in many upstream engagement activities like great product demo, road shows, white papers, catch lines, attractive ads and trade shows et all. After the contract is signed with prospective customer many small and medium enterprises organization that do not live up to the promises made cannot sustain for long in the business. Reasons are many. Ineffective communication between Presales, marketing teams with delivery teams is the major factor in failing to meet customer expectations. There are other reasons like inability to capture customer undefined expectations, non functional, performance, domain specific and safety requirements et all.

Customers particularly the end customers are interested on how the product / service will satisfy his expected and intended requirements rather than any white papers / case studies. We can take lessons from giants like Toyota and other BIG players like Ford, GM and Chrysler on how they implemented the TPS and continuous improvements in their plants by considering the entire Supply chain elements from vendors to end customers. Their checkpoints, rigorous inspection before delivery, feedback surveys and focus group analysis target the real time user experience and incorporate the feedbacks on continuous basis into the product design and evolution. The feel that the customer has on his experience of using the products of these great companies is converted into quantifiable requirements by Business group. These requirements get transformed into user design and finally product is rolled out. Rigorous inspection and testing takes place to validate multiple parameters of all customers and stakeholders. In spite of working on the upstream activities before production, on few occasions there will be some defects after the products reach end customer. Their extensive networks of after sales service takes care of even the few impacted customers and ensures that these companies really are seen as partners in progress for their customers. Customer remains loyal to companies who serve them with real intent of meeting and exceeding their needs and wants.

The IT industries particularly SMEs (Small and Medium enterprises) can learn from these invaluable customer experience patterns of Manufacturing practices particularly from Auto Industries and should develop a systems that focus on Upstream activities like Solid Architecture and a great design and evolutionary feedback systems that continuously take  inputs from the downstream activities to become better on a constant basis. Customer experience from various segments and domains should be captured and senior management should commit to remove the woes of customer by designing the initial phases of the product development in a thought out manner. If we want VOC (Voice of Customer) to be positive and delight to us we should consider eliminating the WOC (woes of customer) in the upstream activities itself.

In my last post http://3point4.wordpress.com/2009/11/10/leader-by-nature-or-nurture/ I have spoken my views about leadership mentioning that everyone is potential leader.

I will try to analyze few qualities of leader here. We are aware that a leader should lead by example. Actions of leaders inspire masses than their words. Taking care of their following / team / people leaders try to sympathize with the people and protect them in case crisis. It is applicable in all situations like war, office, home, society etc.

Leaders leave a legacy that can be emulated. By this the knowledge, skill and management expertise become available and replicated in the people they lead. This is very important.  With present day facilities like wiki, internet, web and may more it is easier for people to look for the best practices and comply with that.

Another important quality of leader is his disposition rather than position.

A leader may be a state head, sports hero, great artist or a scientist or social worker, true leader help people by coming to the level of people and understanding their problem from the masses perspective and provide service and help.  A true leader does not stick to his position (status) but dispositions himself / her and get to work to the level required to make things beneficial to all

More on this soon.

A legend goes in Indian history. Great King Janaka in his dream perceived himself as a beggar. After waking up he started questioning his very identity whether he was a king dreaming himself as a beggar or a beggar dreaming himself to be a king. Which state was his true state?

He decided to clear his identity confusion with his Guru and great sage Ashtavakra. Guru whispered into the ear of Janaka, neither this nor that is real. Neither meaning he was neither a king (The LEADER) nor a beggar (the led). But the Atman – The God Principle. Simply it means the self realization is the state of every aspiring human. In the contemporary world we should consider everyone as a leader. Only few manifest themselves by removing their ignorance (a feeling that they are not leaders) as leaders and others still clouded by their “subordinates” feeling remain to be led by others.

I was greatly inspired by this story that has sort of cleared confusion over my mind with regard to leadership, Quality and all positives attributes of Business. The debate as to whether leaders are born or made has almost become a non-issue. Leader is one who realizes the leadership ability in oneself. People who realize their potential (and remove the feeling that they lack leadership) become leaders, those who are clouded themselves with numbers and statistics (on the qualifications, social and educational backgrounds) as to who makes the leader, will not make leaders on their own or take a very long time to become leaders.

No statistics can be a pointer in determining whether Leaders have school background, university backgrounds, business education or wealth. Though education is a great aid in becoming a leader. What sort of education are we talking about? Is it about degree certificates / internships / on the job training in curriculum / Web based training? / class room / Web 2.0 kind of training? Yes all these can again be aiding the leader in grooming himself / herself. Great Leaders get motivation from common people and in turn motivate others. Great leaders did not require other people to make them, they realize at one point of time they have their inner abilities and go about working on it and finally realize thier leadership ability

A leader is one who identifies his potential and produces his best in the interest of the society. All mothers are leaders for they are selfless. All social workers, community workers, soldiers and serving people are leaders indeed.

A leader is neither born nor made but identified himself / herself and performs to the fullest potential of oneself.

A great Management and Productive thought of Thirukkural

Verse :

EthirathAk  kAkkum Arivinaarku Illai

Athira Varuvuthor Noy

Direct meaning:

Those people of capable intellect who can feel the imminent pains and have plans to tackle them,  know not of any fear from sufferings.

Lean Six Sigma inference

A Six Sigma methodology foresees and expects pain points and adresses them with fall back plans. This when combined with lean practices makes perfect formula in eliminating wastes and mitigating the unfavourable impact. 

Six Sigma uses FMEA, Risk Planning, Forecasting – Hence expects and reduces pains and preapres the solution. Lean eliminates waste increase productivity and beautifully compliments Six Sigma.

Preferable over Pleasurable

It is easy for the start ups and small organizations to choose the delectable (no process) the electable (disciplined process).

These delectable ways like skipping the upstream activities of development like Architecture, good design, non commitment to testing-early and committing downstream mistakes like avoiding unit testing, not doing enough test coverage, poor regression testing all these leads to failure of project deliveries. New start-ups and small organizations that do not have long term vision and trying to skip these best practices may pick up few wins initially from small customers but suffer in the long run.

The big problem that they will eventually face is Scalability and not able to even sustain the present growth either owing to the so called “path of least resistance” ways chosen and cultivated them deep into DNA’s of their organizations. Having been used to delectable ways of cow boy coding, ‘code and test as you like’ methods suddenly the organizations realize that they could no longer hold to present level of  raw processes.

Then the organizations will start to use some kind of “silver bullet” that would never work. They seek the help of external consultants and fix the process problems temporarily. Finally maintaining the ‘made up’ process becomes more painful than ‘no process’ state. This is the point delectable organizations will feel maximum disappointment. From no process to “forced quick fix processes” . Then they engage into activities like training, mentoring and motivating the staff and the self (Management themselves). All these come with huge cost and time expense.

Have a fairly long vision and deep insight in this competitive world of web 2.0, elect best practices and desist from delectable short cuts.

Choose the Preferable (Best Practice Process) over the pleasurable (skipping process).

Nallthorum Nadi Muraiseyya  Mannavan

Nallthorum Nadu Kedum.

 King who daily seeks to Analyze not, will lead his nation gradually perish

 A Leader who does not seek and analyze data will come to see his nation / corporation leading to attrition.

 In Agile analogy the product owner who is not collaboratively involved with his scrum master and the team on the status of backlogs daily,  will have difficulty in reaching his goal or will have to compromise on his project / iteration success.

If the basic communication itself is lacking in organizations how can people concepts like Scrum work. The very reason that Lean (Manufacturing counterpart of Agile) is more successful and effective in a manufacturing environment directly goes to prove that standardization of communication is the key element in achieving Agile and Lean Success.

Typically an average programmer concentrates only in coding and few other phases like Unit testing and requirements stages. It is essential that a basic project management exposure in general and communication skills in particular will need to be provided to the programmers to make them effective project management resources rather than coding workers. This again should start from Top Management and its commitment towards importance of adequate communication skills and training. Some examples could be good e-mail etiquettes, team discussion skills, client facing skills and the commitment towards responding to the queries and mails within stipulated time period. Training plays a major role in identifying and eliminating communication MUDAs from the projects and the organization.

 Some simple instances of ineffective communication MUDAs are :

1.Non responsiveness to e-mail

2.Not acknowledging the important tasks assigned (both internal / client tasks)

3.Showing non involvement in team meetings

4.Demotivating the team members

5.Ineffective time sheet management

6.Nitpicking trivial errors of co workers

7.Poor presentation skills. The list could be endless.

The point that needs to be taken home is that unless Communication MUDA’s are eliminated the project management won’t be effective let alone Lean and Agile concepts

Effect = F(Causes)

Y = F(X)

X = Toyota Way, Commitment, Consistency, organization wide internalization

Toyota way is the way. One actually falls short of words to explain the golden standard set by Toyota for operational excellence, Quality, commitment to company, stakeholders and society in general. Toyota practices all theses values by themselves and truly stands out as leaders for others to follow.

In the equation Y = F (X).

X represents the set of independent variables that impacts the out come (dependant variable Y).

Y is the effect and X represents causes. Many of the developing companies needs to understand the X’s and define them as clearly as possible. Without going into the complex statistical meaning we will try and simply analyze the cause variables. Factors like Toyota way, Commitment, Consistency and organization wide internalization can take up values like yes or no or partly followed etc. It is in this respect I try to consider them as variables and not in statistical connotations.

If we take X1 = Toyota way, we can consider following Toyota way to the extent possible say from 1% to 100%.  Lean management, relentless commitment and Total Quality and many other elements form the Toyota way. Combination of all these applied relatively to companies in their context forms this variable.

X2 = Commitment. Here obviously the Top Management commitment takes a very high proportion. If all the middle and lower level resources are highly committed to key objectives like Quality and productivity and Top Management does not reflect the same naturally the there will be less motivation down the levels and companies bound to suffer in the long term. Here the commitment index can take values again from 1% – 100%.

X3 = consistency.

Consistency may be defined as applying best principles like Toyota way in all possible opportunities, levels and all areas.

This can take values between 1% – 99%.

X4 = organization wide internalization

The best practices and methodologies do need to percolate down the lowest levels from the Top including supplies and customers forming the seamless Supply Chain.

Here also the index can vary from 1% to 100%.

When all these factors X1, X2, X3 and X4 work in synergy and in suitable combination the Effect Y will be the greatest.

Now Y could be defined as Best Market leader positioning, best service provider, Making difference to the world to a significant extent, profits etc as per the nature and objective of the companies.

Hence the cause variables need to be carefully chosen, understood, given weights and pursued at. The effect variable will get its full value automatically and need not be bothered about.

Performing what ought to be done(Xs) to the best of one’s abilities the Goal (Y) will be met on its own.

Meetings are becominng source for MUDA if focus and objectives are not maintained. Especially for Top Management longer meetings too frequently will almost always become overhead. In the spirit of Agile and Lean whenever possible stand-up meetings should be encouraged. The prepartion and punctuality for the attendees should be mandatory. Also the target audience for the meeting should be exactly what it takes to solve the agenda in question. As much as possible should avoid observers and non participants from the irrelevant meetings. I am not sure how much percentage MUDA is contributed by meetings irrespective of the level of employees, but surely there could be large scope of MUDA reduction my limiting the meetings’ time.

Atrin Varunda Varuththam Palarnindru

Potrinum Poththu Padum

The methods and processes if not chosen and applied correctly the project are sure to fail even if many resources are engaged in it.

Aruvinai Enba Ulavoe Karuviyaan

kalam Arindu Seyin

Is there anything difficult for a leader to do, if he implements the tasks with the right tools at the right time? Here the selection and application of tools using them in staging, production and testing environments is stressed. The right time refers to the suitable stages of development like using various tools appropriately through out the life cycle right from requirement, design, coding and testing phases.

Idumbaikku Idumbai Paduppar Idumbaikku

Idumbai Padaa thavar

Leaders challenge the challenges since they are focused and are carrying out their projects with meticulous planning and executing them with clinical precision. They do not succumb to failures during testing times, they endure the challenges gracefully and look ahead for the long term goals.

Karuviyum Kaalamum Seigaiyum Seyyum

Aruvinayum Mandathu Amaichchu

Leader is one who makes an excellent choice of the methods and tools, timing, deployment mode and undertakes challenging projects with confidence.

Soozhchi Mudivu Thuniveidal Aththunivu

Thazchchiyul Thanguthal Theethu

Collaborative consultation involving all stake holders should arrive at a resolution of pending action plans. Delay in executing the resolved plans will lead to failures.

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