Showing posts with label Desirement. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Desirement. Show all posts

November 29, 2018

Say YES!

Really liked this sign on my colleague's desk.

It says:
Start With Yes

I remember an old boss who used to say:
Don't make me get through no to get to yes. 

The idea as another colleague put it is to:
Keep a smile on your face and your focus on the customer; everything else takes care of itself. 

Basically, it's all our jobs to make sure that the customer's needs are being met. 

That doesn't mean that we don't need to differentiate between requirements and desirements or that we need to deliver the yacht in the first go around.

As a 4th colleague put it:
The customer is in the water. They want the yacht. But I can give them a boat. It gets them to where they want to go, and they no longer need to swim. We can work our way up to a yacht.

Good analogy analogy and good things to keep in mind for customer service excellence! ;-)

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
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June 2, 2018

Agile Doesn't Mean Endless

So Agile development is great for iteratively working closely with customers to develop and refine information systems that are useful to them and the organization.

But even in Agile, there is a beginning and an end to the sprint planning and project management.

Taking Agile to somehow mean endless in terms of adding more and more requirements or scope creep is not what is intended. 

Agile has to be bound by common sense somewhere between what is needed for a minimally viable product (MVP) and what is achievable with the designated resources, objective, and scope. 

Good project managers always have to be sound arbiters and be willing to ask the tough questions and determine if something is truly a requirement or simply a wish list item that is out of scope (but of course, could perhaps make it in for future enhancements).

We need to understand the difference between genuine customer service and irrational project exuberance. 

It's not a dangerous project bubble we want to create that can and will get busted, but rather a successful project that is delivered for our customers that help them do their jobs better, faster, and cheaper.  ;-)

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
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October 23, 2011

Architecting Crowd Control

Last week (19 October 2011) T3 Motion Inc. in CA launched their all electric Non-Lethal Response Vehicle (NLRV) for "crowd control."

The vehicle is a souped-up three-wheeled Segway equipped two compressed air powered rifles able to shoot 700 non-lethal rounds per minute of pepper, water, dye, or rubber projectiles, and each vehicles can carry 10,000 rounds.

According to Trendhunter, the NLRV also has a "40,000-lumen LED strobe light, a riot shield, a P.A. system, and puncture-proof tires" as well as a video camera.

The notion of a law enforcement officer shooting an automatic (non-lethal, as it may be) to quell a riot does not quite fit in with general first amendment rights for peaceful assembly and typical demonstrations that as far as I know are generally NOT an all heck break loose scenario.

I wonder whether instead of a NLRV for handling riot control, a better idea would be a Lethal Response Vehicle (LRV)--with proper training and precautions--to handle homeland security patrols at major points of entry and around critical infrastructure.

From an architecture perspective, this seems to me to be a clear case of where a "desirement" by somebody out there (gaming, fantasy, or what not) should be channeled into fulfilling a more genuine requirement for people actually protecting our homeland.

The benefits of speed and maneuverability can benefit field officers in the right situations--where real adversaries need to be confronted quickly with the right equipment.

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