The Other CSI Myth

For anyone who remembers 80’s television, there was this show called Quincy that starred Jack Klugman as a pathologist who did forensic investigation into murders. I always had a special place in my heart for the show because my father worked as pathologist at the time and, when asked what my dad did for a living, I would say “he’s like Quincy, but without the solving murders part.” Back then, Quincy was often the only forensic investigator  people (especially kids) had heard of.

Fast forward about 20 years and most everyone knows CSI from the multiple TV dramatizations involving super sharp crime scene investigators using ultra cool technology to solve murder cases and bring perps to justice. Many have also heard that there has been a rise in unreasonable expectations from real people who assume their local forensics teams are staffed and equipped like the shows. There have also been spikes in enrollment in CSI (Crime Scene Investigation) training enrolments.

There is another, more technical myth which seems to be one of the root causes of the “un-reality” portrayed on TV.

The cast usually includes a techno-digital savant who can get anything done through a computer. They whiz and quip their way through impossible searches and triangulations – invariably uncovering a piece of data that helps the good guys win.

“I need a list of all buildings downtown that have southern facing exposures that were built between 1950 and 1960, and used the unique building material found on the vics shoes to seal the roof.”

“One minute, Boss.”

“A whole minute? You must be slipping!”

Maybe I’m stating the obvious, but those random pieces of data are not all sitting around in databases that talk to each other, no matter how talented the person doing the searching – no matter how powerful the computer system being used to to the search. I don’t know what’s more crazy, the idea of public city plans integrated, indexed and codified with that type of information for the past 50 years or the on the fly API creation to extract cohesive data from unknown databases (assuming they are all even online) in a minute or less.  NOT that I have any problem with creative license, I just want to call it out for the sake of emphasizing the role of data strategy as the driver for achieving desired front end interactions.

I can just imagine the aha moment when the people at Epsilon realized, “Hey, we hold all this data. Why not build an agency around it (http://www.epsilon.com/Purple@brepsilon/p32-l1).”  Again, it is not enough to own the right data, its data also control of the warehousing structures that must grow and adapt to ever-increasing complexity of user requirements. And with so many local and SaaS computing solutions and data entry points, only the enterprise level seems to have a shot at unifying the structures well enough to enable true capitalization of business intelligence.

The paradigm of single, unified, all-knowing data systems has not proven workable, yet everyone is clamoring for true connectivity. [It must be true, I saw it work on TV…]. I do believe that whatever solutions emerge in this area for small to mid-size companies will come from those who treat data strategy as an input to creative strategy and not the other way around.

A King Without a People

During the Rosh Hashanah holiday, I read a thought provoking essay on the nature of the holiday, especially in regard to the theme of identifying G-d as our King. Admittedly, my mind did wander a bit to the comparison between project leader and project team, but I quickly dismissed that as being A) not relevant for the day and B) overstating a bit the role of the PM 😉

The essay, written by Rabbi Shlomo Wolbe in his book “Alei Shor” volume 2, points out that the rule of a true king as a national, socio-economic reality has not been known by our generation. Unlike previous generations from all over the world, we only know democratic, socialist, communist, etc. forms of governmental rule. We don’t know what it means to live under the omnipotent and often whimsical rule of a single entity that is not a violent dictator.

If G-d wants us to be able to relate to Him as King, why did He let the actual experience of what it means to live under a king become historical and abstract? Also, and more practically, how are we to properly relate to the theme of his Kingship on the day of Rosh Hashannah?

Rabbi Wolbe explains that with the trend of the world at large towards renaissance and enlightenment, towards democracy and the voice of the individual, the cultural tolerance for complete submission to a single person’s law has waned to the point that only violent dictators can wield the power of “kings.”  There have been times, however, where people live in lands not their own while their king is in exile – working behind the scenes to regain his rule. The loyalists to this exiled king work underground to support and promote the interests and restoration of their nation and their king.

This idea, that G-d is our King in exile, and that we are scattered among the world to do our part to restore His kingship, is sourced in the well known Talmudic concept that when the Second Temple was destroyed 2000 years ago, the Shekina [name of G-d] went into exile with the Jewish people. While we don’t live under the rule of a foreign king, there is a pervasive imposition of the power of “zadon” – evil. This includes gross examples of violence and sexual abuse, along with more subtle versions of vengeance, argument, hatred and jealousy.

On Rosh Hashanna, we remind ourselves that our King is in exile, and our positive free choices in the face of the negative forces around us, are the acts of guerrilla warfare that contribute to the restoration of his crown.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChV5BZ8SmS0

“I hate process!”

Another challenge for any size production and development environment, especially in a matrix organization, is the question of commitment to meaningful process improvement and optimization. There is an added layer of obstacle if the organization is not large or mature enough to institutionalize operational mandates that are larger than the “thinking du jour” of the business owners, especially in creative shops where the major stakeholders tend to be generally adverse to overtly imposed processes.  Even processes rooted in best practices tend to run contrary to some peoples’ natural way of working and thinking about their work – therefore are known to publicly exclaim “I hate process!”

The obvious key here is transparent process. Making efficiency and quality process adjustments without certain team members even aware they were implemented. Subtle, nuanced – even elegant – refinements that meet the path of least resistance from project and functional colleagues. The problem is that  improvements are often needed to fix real production / development issues that are not so subtle, and real change needs to take place.

Cost saving tools like templates and forms are only as good as the process they come to support. They are not, and should not be, goals in themselves. Rather, they are the yield of issues identified and resolved.

Bottom line is that a PM as a change agent necesitates an organizational commitment to change. As goes the well known addage, the definition of insanity is doing things the same way and expecting different results.

“No TEAM in TEAM”

One of my most maddening PM realities out there is the common agency matrix situation where projects are run without clearly demarcated teams. It is not necesarily true at the larger agency level – although in digital I suspect its more than assumed, but the boutique to mid-size shops often have creative and technical resources acting as chef’s in a restaurant kitchen, filling orders on tickets without looking up to see which waiter and customer was doing the ordering. They and their work are managed solely by their departmental, functional manager and the PM, no matter how senior the title, is reduced to a de-facto project coordinator function.  The resultant reality is a project without a  team identity. IMHO, this is a huge detriment in running a project based production and development  operation.

SDLC vs. Interactive (part 2 of 3)

In thinking about this post I realized that there are so many directions to go in, such as methodology comparisons, stakeholder dynamics, the role of creative subjectivity in requirements definition and testing, etc. I do want to stay focused, however on the basic question of comparing software development to interactive development.

I met with a team yesterday in the midst of a website redesign project who was looking for a PM to replace a last-minute drop out. During the course of the discussion, the QA lead (coming from a software dev background) asked if I thought they should follow standard SDLC practice when building the site.

I asked back which part of the cycle would they consider NOT using…planning? analysis? testing? Once again, OF COURSE a system design framework can be applied to interactive technology development as it is technology development. It could also be used, and is used in relatable paradigms, to manage marketing and communication initiatives.  The trick is integrating the parallel management systems that these disparate  business functions use to implement their strategies. One example of where the rubbers meets the cement, IMHO is the relationship between front end and back-end development as the final and true implementation of interactive productivity, the place where  requirements validation is more than a set of technical protocols. How much work and re-work is logged becaue of disconnects there? In my experience, quite a bit.

A significant, and obvious, obstacle in implementing one single methodology to encompass all interactive (eg. website) production and development is communication. The words used and the concepts they conjure are different for front end and back-end team members, let alone their supervisors and senior stakeholders.

So what to do???

SDLC: Software Development vs. Interactive Marketing (Part 1 of 3)

As a digital project manager who came up the ranks through marketing and web, I am often asked my opinion on applying standard SDLC (system design life cycle) methodologies to web development. In other words, can the same PM processes that manage, let’s say, a large technical database project be used for managing a large advertising website?

As I’m sure you can guess, I am not the first to try and answer this. Check out http://www.learn.geekinterview.com/it/sdlc/sdlc-web-development.html for another post that seems to generally say “yes, they are related.”

The post above does not satisfy me. It’s too simplistic and doesn’t get at the heart of the issue. The primary difference between software and interactive marketing projects is not the project itself. Of course SDLC can be used to manage system planning, architecture, execution, testing and maintenance. It’s not the tasks being performed, its the PEOPLE doing the tasks that differ. Marketing projects introduce a new layer of team members and stakeholders, ones with subject creative ideas and preferences. The real question is can SDLC be used by interactive marketing teams like it is used by traditional software development teams.

This leads to an obvious discussion of different methdos of SDLC – waterfall, spiral, agile, etc – and how each rates as a possible method for each type of development. Stay tuned for part 2!

But it’s still just a guess, right?

I present the chart summarizing the numbers for the pitch – hours by milestone and associated costs, to design and produce a large digital media project.

Boss says with a slight sense of unease, “where did these numbers come from…what’s our back-up?”

I whip out sheet #2 – a breakdown of hours by department / function for each of the milestones. I explain that many of the numbers were discussed with relevant team members. I also state that I checked historicals of similar projects, but most of the examples were aberational in some way so there was no absolute direct comparison, but…

“But it’s still just a guess, right?” she interupts with a manifest glimmer of panic.

“Yes,” I say. “What else is an estimate supposed to be?”