Then, I took a chance with a well-known entrepreneur at Torrenegra Labs – thanks to Leo Suarez and Alex Torrenegra. It was not a smooth transition. At the beginning I was supposed to work on a project (shh! It is a secret one), however after our first formal review on the scope and budget, we decided to keep this initiative on hold. It was back on December! OMG! What am I going to do?

Fortunately for me, Alex invited me to join the LetMeGo Team as the owner of the Referral Program (during my first three months here at Torrenegra Labs I offered my help on LetMeGo project giving a hand to launch the Beta on time). I joined the team last January. So, “What? Referral what?” I was confused and I was feeling ignorant, what is a referral program? and how am I suppose build a successful referral program?

I started working as Architect of the LetMeGo Subsystem on charge of the Referral Program, and then of course, as any good Architect, I started coding, but not coding like I was used to. That is when RRapido Methodology and I formally met. Even when it is a mix of Agile, Traditional Development and Test Driven development, I have to say that the most valuable asset that we have is our methodology. I’m not saying it is perfect or a “One-Size-Fits-All”, however I will give my impressions on it:

• Applied Test Driven Development reduces the chances of getting errors on late development phases or iterations (I will not discuss here if they are the same or not).
• Extremely well document UC, TC and UI – LMG is the first project I had participated on were tech docs are almost perfect and detailed good enough to allow clear trace between code, tests and UC – it is a little bit confusing because Agile Manifesto includes a line “Working software over comprehensive documentation” – what does it means anyway? Even on traditional approach you are always looking for “working software”.
• Noisy communications – RRapido fails on how things are communicated. We had what we call here in Colombia “meetin-gitis”, but through Skype. Most of the times we over communicate everything to everybogy. With time you get used to it, but it is like be in a party with everybody talking each other and with loud music.
• Microblogging looks like useless. We use Yammer, I microblogging tool for private(?) teams. We used it to promote our tasks every day -I’ve to admit that I’m not most dedicated team member to that.
• Small group with one “I-know-everything-about-the-system” manager. RRapido, and the most significant and valuable addition to our team is what Scrum calls the Product Owner. Alex is our product owner, he is a technical person that has developed a great “business” sense. With his experience and dedication RRapido and the whole project is kept on track. There is no doubt about it. One day without Alex is a day when things slow down (a little bit)

So it is time to talk about Mr. Alex or  Don Alex. I disagree about few practices on Alex management style however, and based on the facts and the results I say: He is on care of EVERY detail of the system, leading the team to a successful product and “working software”. He is the dream of every development team, a dedicated and objective Product Owner that understands technical challenges and risks of every decision. Alex does not ask for outstanding deliverables all the time, but when he does that, he also provides the tools and time to succeed.

RRapido Methodology depends 100% on the Product Owner -what we call Product Developer. He/she is the key of the RRapido Methodology, as the keeper of the process. It is so difficult to know about the system, the business, the market, the customer drivers, to have relevant technical background on the development, to have passion about the business, and also to be the process owner, that RRapido becomes a process for few -maybe a process that can be adapted for those who had worked with Alex.

Recomendations

As my dad always says, if your are complaining about something that you can change, why you do not change it. I decided then to write this post, sure that Torrenegra Team will read it and probably -if I succeed- will include few process to the methodology.

• Methodology is a set of steps, it is not a ToDo list. RRapido feels like a set of things to do, but I would prefer if we can set them as a procedure.
• Communications are noisy, One-on-One meetings are great, Publishing Notification Board is ok, all other are noisy. I would prefer a message board or workspace site.
• Microblogging is useless when weekly tasks have been set. Remove it or use it to assign tasks, not to report them.
• Documentation. I’m in love with documentation, it is not perfect, but it supplies all developers need to code, test and validate the required functionality, however, navigation between UC, UT and UI is painfull. I would look for another way to link UC and UI (maybe a two column page or something similar).
• By formalizing RRapido steps, dependency on the Product Developer role will be reduced.
• Test Driven Development Rocks!

During hard times we, of course, feel additional pressure on every duty we have to accomplish, on both personal and professional fields. So it is not difficult to explode and to fail on our communication methods and/or messages. Express our disagreement as a criticism could not be the best way, but it is common and widely used one. The problem is that communication is always between at least two actors, sender and receiver (source and destination), and probably our criticism will affect others directly. However, a problem is always a source of opportunities. Receivers, those who got criticized, can get the very best of every criticism and evolve it into feedback. There is no criticism without foundation, even for those how want to emotionally affect others.

As project managers we need to be the example, we need to effectively communicate information to every relevant stakeholder but, something that is not fully promoted is that we also have to handle the inputs from a 2-way process. It is not about giving and giving, it is about receiving and processing too.

Feeling comfortable about having a job is not bad at all, even more these days during this crisis time, but is it really enough? Dedicated workers stand out from others because they do not feel comfortable, they are always looking for opportunities of doing great and better things. When this comfortable feeling grows more than it should, workers start forgetting that they are in Colombia, and start asking for foreign benefits and privileges, and they even believe that they deserve them. And that’s wrong, that’s totally wrong. It is not bad at all to get few additional benefits, however, it doesn’ t mean we should take them for granted, we are still working in Colombia.

One of the amazing transformations of Colombian workers is: once we get used to a job,  we believe we can decide our own duties and decide what to do and when. Well my friends, most of the time and all around the world, bosses decides what must be done and when. So WTF! I really can’t deal with that, it piss me off. Job is responsibility, it is not about doing “favors” to the managers, it is about to do what it is supposed because you are getting paid for that. It is not because you want, it is because you have to -and I’m talking about legal, non-extra activities of course, but just to point that out.

Another endemic attitude is to look for responsible when there is no other guy doing the job. I will no get into this because… do I need to? A variance of this behaviour: people start doing EXACTLY what they were asked, even if managers are expecting a little support. They perform as machines, they do not evaluate and therefore there is no added value. If there is a misspelled word on their assignment description, they do not fix it, if there is something that requires some additional work or a little of analysis, they will try to delegate it. But, hey! keep in mind they are great developers, keep in mind we are not talking about junior resources. So why they decide to do that? Maybe I just pointed it out, it is because they do not want to assume their responsibility.

This comfortable behaviour is surrounding me for a little while, and I will say NO. I do not want to become one of those lazy but great workers that decide to keep their jobs by giving up their abilities. I will do my best tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow. Not sure what it means but probably I have an idea.

Project Management isn’t new in Colombia. At least for IT and software related companies Project Managers have been there forever (due to the nature of the IT and software development processes). But, there is something missing about PM here in Colombia: Team Building.

I do believe that Labor Climate and Team Building aren’t the same. As I said to Bas, almost all Colombians -good, not so good, and bad ones- will try to be your friend. Colombian people is really appreciated because of their willingness and attitude of service and camaraderie (did I write it right?). However those are two different things: try to be your friend, and be a good boss, project manager or director.

And that’s why Labor Climate seems to be amazing on Colombian SW development related companies even when “team building” is not a priority. And it could be good, because of its impact on the organizational behavior, improve the labor climate will probably  boost the team efficiency and collaboration. But, not to perform team building activities will be bad for long-term employee & employers relationship, because “personal” friendship isn’t necessarily based on the idea of personal and professional growth and career development.

Furthermore,  SW developers, designers, and architects, and IT project managers, prefers to have project-based relationships with their employers. And for those who know, contractors, even if they are good doing what they do, increase the probability of certain risks to occur -example: dependency on people because there is no knowledge spread opportunity.

To conclude. there is a big difference between “having a great time with amazing people at the office” and “having a great work experience”. It should be a balance between labor climate and team building to ensure a short-term motivation, but also a long-term relationship between employers and employees.

Self-organization is a process of attraction and repulsion in which the internal organization of a system, normally an open system, increases in complexity without being guided or managed by an outside source. Wikipedia

Self-organized teams can be identified by some simple rules -I didn’t think about it until I heard Esther Derby @Project Shrink- that I would try to explain as maturity levels.

• Stage One: Managing and monitoring their own work performance. They assess the complexity of the tasks and the skills required to validate and assign the work in an effective manner. Then they also monitor the progress and performance.
• Stage Two: Cross training. Team is able to identify its weaknesses and bottleneck and plan a training to transfer knowledge and skills across the team members.
• Stage Three: Hiring and Firing. This one is, one of the most difficult levels to achieve due to the ability of the team to manage/control their own cost and budget. Most of the teams do not have even knowledge about the assigned budget, the project expected profitability or even to handle overhead. This is because small teams are most of the cases self-organized and probably do not have other knowledge than its production skills -production means skills required to do the job. At this level, the whole team is able to participate during a new team member hiring process or even to decide -on a performance basis- who should leave the team.

Self-organized doesn’t mean at all “unmanaged” team, it probably means that team is a mature enough to execute few of the manager tasks -but not all of them. Even inside self-organized teams is possible to find a leader or somebody that gives directions to the team -because the team is designated to do something that for sure somebody is requesting somewhere. So, yes, self-organized also have to follow directions (client or top-management). So there is room for Project Managers. However it is complicated to find the balance between what has to be done and what has to be delegated by the PM without negatively affecting the performance. Team is mature enough to be empowered but, I believe, if there is nothing to be managed then it is probably because it is not a self-organized team, it is because it is probably a spin-off.

It depends on the project manager culture and his/her personal strategy of management implementation -could be based on trust, or performance control, or micromanagement, because not all of the PM out there will have the aptitude to handle self-organized teams. And by the way, not all the skilled workers will fit in a team of this nature, some people is great following instructions, other people would be more productive if they are empowered to take some decisions.

The team should feel that they are doing something useful. That their work is needed and also appreciated by the team and the project itself. They should feel their value. Also,they should be happier doing their work in that way (as part of a virtual team) than doing it in another way. Remember, you need a team that feels comfortable doing their work, and comfortable about how the perform or execute their work.

On any project, and even more on those that depends on specific people knowledge -like research, product development and software development- communication is the key. When you have a few genius working for you, you must ensure that they can share and transfer their knowledge properly during meetings and reports (that should be a few and not a lot). So the magic key to success in any project is communication, communication and more communication -please, it doesn’t mean a lot of meetings or a lot of reports. It means effective communication.

How to achieve an effective communication? It’s really easy these days and that’s why (probably) virtual teams are working better now -i.e. faster and cheaper. Technology is critical. Technology means cheap communication channels with video or audio, and also cheap shared spaces for files, documents and products. The use of online collaboration tools,  organized reporting structure (i.e. status meetings, daily status reports or weekly checkpoints), well supported audio and video conference infrastructure, and of course a good plan (not a complete plan, but a good plan that could be adapted easily) will increase dramatically the chance to succeed.

By achieving a good communication infrastructure, team will focus on the work they have to do instead of logistics. And now, the only thing you have to do, as manager is to understand and validate that you are part of a virtual team too. Obviously as PM you will feel the necessity of full control, however mature teams -and mature team members of course- will handle it in a better way -remember, they feel part of a team and also they like to be part of one.

Inside big corporations, most of the people work at their desk without ever having met their big boss, however, they receive mails from them all the time. You got emails from people you may not know in real, but you work with them or for them. Got the point?

Virtual teams aren’t new at all. But with technology, now PMs can ping them everywhere, all the time -everything is about perception and how you name the things

Asociación Colombiana de Ingenieros de Sistemas (ACIS)
Calle 93 No. 13 – 32
Jueves 20 de noviembre, 6:30pm

Más información e inscripciones en
http://www.acis.org.co/index.php?id=42

Minutos antes de empezar mi presentación estaba nervioso, no lo oculto y se que más de uno lo notó. Poco a poco el lugar se llenaba de personas, no más de 40 en total, que para este tipo de charlas informales es “un reguero de gente”. Mi ansiedad aumento al sentirme el menor (más joven) de todos los asistentes, y tal vez era. Para mi grata sorpresa, pero en contra de mi gastritis hipocondríaca, había un profesor de postgrado y un coordinador de postgrado en gerencia de proyectos de una prestigiosa universidad -ahora si tocaba decir cosas serias.

Al final, no recordé la mitad de las anécdotas que tenía preparadas. La charla estaba programada para 90 minutos, incluida la introducción y la presentación de los asistentes. Empezamos tarde -con la excusa de esperar a mas asistentes que hubieran podido tener un retraso- y, duramos aproximadamente 110 minutos – será que así son todos mis proyectos :-S

Lo bueno, las personas participaron, preguntaron, acordaron y espero que hayan concluido lo mismo que yo. Que no hay verdades absolutas, que para mí como ingeniero, una ciencia en la que todo “depende” requiere de un gran esfuerzo y cambio de paradigma. Empezar una PMO no es una fórmula, pero si tiene algunas tácticas.

Agradezco a los asistentes, su atención y participación, y desde luego su experiencia y aporte.

Acá les dejo el enlace de descarga a la presentación. Comentarios y sugerencias son siempre bienvenidos.

La publicidad es a los productos, lo que los abogados a las personas. Son tristemente necesarios. Los consumidores en su mayoría “somos” ignorantes ante nuestras propias necesidades, es decir: necesito un iPhone 3G? CLARO, necesito un iMac de más de 20″? PERO POR SUPUESTO. Quiero un Ferrari y si es posible darle la vuelta al mundo en una visión romántica mediocre WildOn. Simple: La publicidad ha sido eficaz conmigo y lo ha sido con mis padres y con los padres de mis padres.

Si el mundo no tuviera publicidad seguramente Nike y Naik, Diesel y Dyesel, Sony y Coby serían lo mismo a la hora de ir a comprar en el almacén. Pero no!

La revolución de los consumidores

No todo es malo, los consumidores como humanos hacen parte inevitable de la evolución la especie y con la modernidad y el avance tecnológico han descubierto que Internet no es sólo para hacer la tarea, o saber si fulana esta buenísima, o para chismear a través de Carelibro (a.k.a Facebook).

Los consumidores han especializado sus consultas y perfilado sus intereses alrededor de grupos de consumidores y hoy en día la decisión de compra de un producto es alterada incluso por personas al otro lado del planeta.

Hace algunos años, un solo comercial de televisión impactaba directamente a los consumidores, hoy los consumidores ni siquiera vemos televisión, y si lo hacemos, vemos lo que queremos, no lo que nos presentan. El DVR, Apple TV y la televisión por demanda sobre Internet, han modificado radicalmente la percepción del consumidor y por lo tanto la pauta sobre el medio ha sufrido una transformación. James Bond  tomando Coke Zero -increíble, que pasó con el Martini agitado por no revuelto? Llegará el día en que los anuncios sucedan durante los programas como en “The Truman Show”.

Nuevos Medios

Algo deprimente y patético que ocurre en la industria de la publicidad y el mercadeo en Colombia -y por experiencia lo digo, en la región- es que una cosa es la estrategia publicitaria y otro la estrategia digital -vienen a mi mente algunas joyas dichas por directores creativos de agencias reconocidas: “hágame el favor, Internet es para hacer páginas, quién va a entrar a mirar eso… NADIE!”

Digital, es una evolución de medio, como sucedió con la televisión análoga y digital, y la publicidad sufre en nuestros días una transformación similar e IGUALMENTE acelerada. Digital no es algo externo o complementario, es parte intrínseca de la estrategia.

Digital no es Internet, es Internet, móviles, aplicaciones Stand-Alone para experiencias de inmersión, juegos de vídeo, contenidos sobre demanda, todo en nuestros días es digital! -es que tratar de explicar una diferencia cuando para mí no existe es difícil.

El problema de las Agencias

El problema de las Agencias es que si existe un antónimo para Creativo, ese es sin lugar a dudas “Coder” -y mis disculpas a los que se mueven en ambos mundos. Las Agencias, que se limitan a producir algo para excitar los sentidos -comerciales de TV y Radio, pancartas, promociones en PoP, buen lo básico sufren un gran dolor y una gran frustración al encontrar que en digital lo que más vende pero que menos importa en el mantenimiento a largo plazo es precisamente eso que excita a los sentidos.

Un comercial se produce y no tiene nada detrás, una vez ha sido filmado y producido, es almacenado y ejecutado las veces que sea necesario. Una pancarta es producida e instalada y no más fin de la historia.

Digital, supone el 90% de los casos un mantenimiento a largo plazo, control de versiones, bases de datos, servidores de aplicaciones, compilar, pruebas unitarias… en fin… un mundo de complicaciones y obscenidades que hacen felices a los obtusos ingenieros que, claro, como se la pasan en frente del computador y son tan aburridos y sin vida social.

Hace unos días presencié una discusión entre un Gerente de Cuenta de una empresa nacional muy importante y mi jefe donde decían: “es que este no es un cliente típico, tu sabes como son los ingenieros, todo lo quieren explicado, y con detalles, como si ya hubiéramos empezado el proyecto” -yo sólo pensaba, pero como quieren vender una idea si NO saben como la van a ejecutar? Tal vez esa pequeña situación que no duró más de cinco minutos puede explicar donde reside el problema general de la industria de la publicidad y el mercadeo digital.

I’ve been working on digital agencies since I got my B.Sc. degree. It has been a long way working with several people who has been using the Internet as a marketing place. I’ve heard a lot of cool and fancy terms: from B2B, B2C, relational marketing, e-marketing to Web 2.0, Project Management 2.0, Business 3.0. But it is time to use this BS (blog space) to promote my own perception.

IMPORTANT NOTE: I have been working for small, mid, a big companies in Latin America, so when I wrote “my own perception” I meant “my own perception of the Latin America digital agencies’ business”.

The fact

The whole advertising industry is living a change Era. The digital life is here, and the most of the agencies do not have the power to deliver what is needed. However all of them want a slice of the pie. You can see it everywhere: Most of the cases those are only fancy names for business units with no more than three or four guys, sharing resources between other units, or with unskilled resources, expensive managers but cheap developers and digital designers (designers who deliver quality digital outcomes).  Few names are: Wunderman Interactive, iLeo, JWT Digital, Ogilvy Interactive, and the list goes on. I will not say those companies do not deliver their work, I say those companies do no have what they said they have, and for production items, it is ok, but for strategy purposes… ? Would you give your money to a financial consultant who do not have any expertise?

Most of the agencies do not have digital strategist or believes that anyone with a little understanding of what Web is -because uses a Hotmail account and knows who to unblock the PC without calling IT-  or what has been successful projects in other regions will work here -the Copy&Paste model”.

Most of the companies do not have PMO’s -even the company I work for, what a shame! . For some companies, even project manager is not a role. – PLOP. Colombian expression for a big WHAT?

Most of the companies believes that digital is like traditional and also believes that everything can be done. I can say, I’m a innovator, I really do like to innovate, it is my passion, I need to innovate to keep me motivated. However, innovation should be -on digital agencies- a conjunction of two ideas, the creative and the technical. It is a shame when creative leaders have a great idea, client services sell the idea to the client, the client approves the idea and then the execution cannot be done due to technical limitation or the most common scenario: it cannot be done as the client wants, within the time and cost – how does triple restriction sounds to you?.

Technical team has become the pariahs -IT Crowd TV Series?- and creative team believes that they have the truth, and only real good developers and technical leads will solve the problems. Most of us vote for a president or governor with the same ideal!

My humble opinion

Digital Life is here, and agencies should keep doing what they do best, however digital cannot be the “another biz”, it should be an integrated part of the creative process that will deliver a whole new experience, brand perception, promotion or whatever. Digital is no more digital as itself, it is Physical and Digital as one. because people will demand more homogeneous solutions. Keep Facebook in your mind and compare the following questions: how many people in the world use Flickr? -include poor and developing countries. How many people use EventBrite? Or Google Sites? common people, parents, grandparents? Facebook put things together to deliver a simple solution. Now, my dad uses it, young people, old people. They can upload pictures, share videos, create events, invite people, ALL IN ONE, nobody taught them, there is no book to learn to use Facebook -ok probably there are a few, but did you own one?

There is a whole new world of opportunities for digital, however digital should be an integral part of the original idea conception -there is nothing more frustrating than see people thinking about big ideas, and then asking: “What we should do to include digital? Client demands digital!” – What? (PLOP again and again) Digital should be part of the main idea and not an additional piece.

Misunderstanding

Digital creative and SW development are not the same. I’m tired. I repeat this every day at work but nobody seems to listen. Digital creative is not software development. It looks like the same, BUT IT IS NOT. Development is a formal process -a real formal one, with architecture, design, development, testing, includes documentation, code review, OMG the list could be huge. How many times and agency delivers the documentation of the project? Documentation of their latest TV commercial? Post Mortem, Metrics? Iterations?. Development is a science like math, creative is an art. NOT THE SAME

Maintenance is not a project. As project manager I recognize what is a project, and what is not. Maintenance is not a project. Digital agencies fails delivering maintenance due to the resource management. Most of the time, digital development also include software products, software products has a different lifecycle. So do not ask why IBM got the job -they took GM away from our side few years ago, so keep it in mine from Digital Creative to pure IT and coding company. Creative conception will be an initial part, maintenance do NOT include creative conception, and probably will be related to code, integration and infrastructure subjects.

Traditional creative can be repeatable task for traditional agencies, but not for software. Software products could take years to deliver an initial release! -KEEP IN MIND YEARS AS 365 and little bit more days! So please stop requesting projects of 2 months that include SW development -like a CMS, a CMS customization, MMOG, MMOC or any other atrocity.

Software Architect and Software Designers are not coders. Coders are Coders. Are you assigning standard developers to deliver highly detailed interaction diagrams?. Please HAVE THE RIGHT PERSON TO DO THE JOB. If you persist in your idea to develop SW -oook it is your call-, but please assign real architects and designers. BTW: Wireframes sucks, wireframes are not technical documents, UML people LOL every time digital agencies say “our technical documentation includes wireframes” – PLOP!

Few TIPS

Keep doing your job. It is a good job, it is not a bad one, just be part of the solution, try not to be the problem.

Choose a model, you can be creative and use technical partners to deliver SW -again if you persist in your idea of developing software. However there are other options like “reuse” -do not reinvent the wheel! most of eMarketing software needs were developed already. However if you have a crushing new idea, do not treat the SW development as something that can be done by anyone. Good software products requires excellent teams and a LOT of time, so what if you want an excellent software product? You need the best -ask Google if you do not believe me.

Choose a side: It is like StarWars, you cannot be a creative-oriented company and a software development- oriented company, you should choose a side. The good thing is you can always have partners on the other side, there is not a war between sides.