JRobots Contest

I just learned that my company is sponsoring a JRobots contest for the software engineering staff (of which I am a member). This is probably one of the best, and yet worst, team building events I've heard of. I mean, we're good at programming, but who wants to drudge through coding work crud if you could be programming a 'bot instead?

I predict reduced productivity through the contest end.

BTW: There is a substantial prize for winning. Anyone have a strategy suggestion?

Whadda mean by Success?

Companies frequently claim they are seeking success. What is success? Most of the time and to most people, success equals making a ton of money. I think that is a rather narrow approach to success. Let me offer a different definition of success, one that is particular to B2B service providers.

Success is when significant value is created for all parties.

Profound, no? This means that your success as a service provider is directly tied to the value you create for your client. Furthermore, you have a vested interest in making sure you are providing the right service and the right product. And you also must understand that you must price to create value for yourself too. Perhaps this really ought to be obvious, but all too often we fall prey to one of the pitfalls mentioned below.

All too often there is a temptation to offer extended value for the client. This usually manifests itself as undercharging for services, or waiving service fees for value-added services. This can also be by overzealous sales staff promising what cannot be economically delivered. I'm working with a client now which is getting nearly all their services free, yet is extremely unhappy with us. Why? Because somewhere along the way, they feel they were promised services we don't normally render. When we came back to them and suggested that they might pay for these services, they escalated, and now we are giving them a number of services which are outside our scope of expertise. On top of that, some of these services we have not had great success in implementing, probably due to other kinds of incomplete communication of requirements, which compounds the client's unhappiness.

All of this sounds terrible, but reading until now, you might yet see opportunity for success. Not entirely! You see, part of the sales process assured the client their existing processes would not be impacted. So, the client's desire was to replicate their process work flow using our tools. Unfortunately, our system is not a work flow modeling system, and as such cannot easily accommodate deviations in the preprogrammed work flows. This leads to some very weird procedural hacks that the client must remember to do "just right" in order to replicate their processes. I think that while the client may get the system working, it will never be as successful as is possible.

Another counter example of a value equation gone wrong is when the vendor manages to capture the majority of the value for themselves. A few years ago I worked for a company that had adopted a new tool to assist in development of its core product. In fact, this tool really wanted to replace the programming staff. While this might be a laudable goal, the tool fell short on several counts. Management, however, persisted in requiring its use because the vendor had negotiated an agreement by which they were paid a minimum usage fee for a fixed period of years. That's right -- management had literally locked themselves into a net-negative value deal, and instead of eating the (rather large) fixed amount, they opted to persist in using the tool hoping that additional experience would make the warts disappear. The vendor had literally made it too expensive to not use the tool, and they had no incentive to improve the tool as the payments were fixed in a long-term arrangement.

So how should this process work? In a perfect world, I would like to see a discussion of what services can be provided, and for what reasonable costs. This discussion should include a complete review of the current business processes, and a mapping and gap analysis of business process to tool capability should be created. No more should wacky process hacks be allowed to gum up what would otherwise be a much more efficient system. The question "Why do you need to do that?" should be asked frequently. Answers to this question frequently show an underlying deficiency in an existing process which, when resolved, increases overall efficiency, increases value and locks in long term success.