Scrum & Outsourcing

Agile development is a fashion nowadays. Anyone one who wants to shine in a professional discussion adds SCRUM keyword between his words. For making things short, Scrum is a very dynamic and flexible way of  work organization in order to conduct a project. In scrum we privilege persons and interaction over processes, working products over heavy documentation, client collaboration and trust over negotiation and contracts, and finally flexibility over planning.

In big companies, sometimes there is a need to reinforce scrum teams with external persons, which is known as technical assistance (outsourcing). This is a very risky strategy if it is not well managed and understood.

As said before, scrum is highly dependent on interaction among team members, and on their spirit of initiative and proposition. If the external members aren't motivated enough, scrum can be a nightmare for the project. Many reasons are possible of this lack of motivation: The external member intervene for a short period of time, he doesn't have a good vision of the project, the scrum master hides a lot of information considered important to his company... The problem with scrum is that documentation isn't present in abundance. It means that scopes and rules of work aren't well defined and in case of problems it is not easy to contractually repair the damage. When trust is not well present, hell of mutual accusations threatens the success of the project.

Scrum's name is inspired by Rugby. It is a team game. If you aren't sure about the external people you want to integrate in your team better not use them and work harder in the smaller team, or otherwise work in the standard V-model process.

Achraf

Capitalism and diversity

A few days ago, I was walking back home from work as usual, and I noticed that the grocery next door was bought by Carrefour, a big multinational retailer. I entered the shop, and I started wandering around to check what has changed. It was amazing how they managed to fill every small corner of the place with a shiny product. There was a much bigger diversity of products than the older shop had. I said to myself how great capitalism and the current global economical system are.

I kept thinking about it on the road ..but ...NO WAIT A MINUTE!! Diversity??? Actually what I saw in the shop was exactly the same as what I saw in the other branches of this retailing brand in Paris, in Lille...and in all the cities I have visited.

Capitalism means open markets and free worldwide circulation of goods. It means an inevitable and atrocious competition among companies on the international scale. It means a race toward critical size.and the dominance of corporates over local business. It means lower prices to make more profit. It means rationalizing all of  the production and distribution processes. It means convergence to the same model. Simply, it means you are going to eat the same McDonald hamburger and drink the same Coca Cola whether you are in London, Paris or Rome, in spite of all of the rich local diverse products you may have in those wonderful cities. What we reached is a local diversity, but a horrible global monotony! a global monotony that is killing all of the beautiful local cultures worldwide. Same fast food, same fashion, same music, same same same!! This is really sad, all of the richness that the humanity has produced over the past centuries are just fading behind modern capitalism.

The same effect has changed our individual human knowledge. The rationalization of processes and the search for minimizing costs, has lead to very very specific functions. Our jobs are very specialized in a specific subject: mobile developer, UMTS specialist... We need a doctor to solve all of our health problem,s we need a specialized person in every problem that urges in the house, we need a bank to take care of our money, we need, we need ... The knowledge scope of our minds is being narrowed continually.

I am not really criticizing, nor do I have solutions. I am just writing about what I see everyday.

Achraf

The laws of simplicity

Trying to be simple in my life is a cause I fight for everyday. Simple is the little that means the most, it is this pure knowledge or truth that finds its way directly to your heart and your mind. When I saw a book talking about simplicity in the hands of a work colleague, I couldn't but borrow it and check it out. The laws of simplicity is a book written by John Maeda, a professor in MIT's Media Lab and a famous graphic designer. In this book, the author doesn't go so far in explaining why simplicity should be a way of thinking and a way of life, he rather focuses on how to reach simplicity, by respecting a set of ten laws. Nevertheless, It is clear through the book that John Maeda is convinced by the importance of simplicity in business: Simplicity sells!
The ten laws of simplicity are the following:

1. REDUCE: The simplest way to achieve simplicity is through thoughtful reduction.
2. ORGANIZE: Organization makes a system of many appear fewer.
3. TIME: Savings in time feel like simplicity.
4. LEARN: knowledge makes everything simpler
5. DIFFERENCES: Simplicity and complexity need each other
6. CONTEXT: What lies in the periphery of simplicity is definitely not peripheral.
7. EMOTION: More emotions are better than less.
8. TRUST: In simplicity we trust.
9. FAILURE: Some things can never be made simple.
10. THE ONE: Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious, and adding the meaningful.

I found that the first four laws are the most important to achieve simplicity, and the rest of them are to be considered when you feel that you have exaggerated in your simplicity.

The first law, reduce, has reminded me very much of a chapter I read in Rework, a recent business book. In Rework, they underline the importance of reducing features in a product to focus on the essential, reduce company complexity and expenditures to have lesser business inertia (more flexibility). They advice to put pre-constraints on your work (scope, budget, time, material) to avoid complexity and avoid drifting from core business. To respect the Reduce Law, John Maeda proposes to the reader a tool he calls "SHE". SHE stands for Shrink, Hide and Embody.

• Shrink: The smaller an object is, the more it exceeds our expectations and impresses us. The more delicate and fragile it is, the more attention we give it. Ex: an iPod nano.
• Hide: Whenever there is a complexity, just hide it! and give the power to the user to control the presence of this complexity. Ex: Touchscreen smartphones: dial pad appears only when u click on a small icon on the home screen. Ex: in Cloud computing, the complexity of business logic and computing is hidden from the user, as it is put away from him.
• Embody: Now that your product is simpler, you have give it more value in the perception of the final user. This is mostly a business/marketing operation. Ex: The distinctive image perceived by apple products.

The second important law Organize is very inspired from the German gestalt theory of perception. According to this theory, when a set of elements are well organized, they are perceived as less, and thus simpler. The good organization of the iPod's buttons set made it one of the most famous mp3 player worldwide. Once again, the author provides us a tool to Organize: the "SLIP" tool. SLIP stands for:

• Sort: Group items into instinctive groups.
• Label: Label each group.
• Integrate: Merge groups.
• Prioritize: Sort groups by priority.

The third law is about Time. Everything that takes less time is simpler. Here again if we use the SHE tool in Reduce, we can reach simplicity. Shrinking the necessary time for a task to be done, by more processing power, or by smarter algorithms. When it is impossible Hide the elapse of time for example by using a progress bar, and finally embody your product with the value of speed.

The fourth law is Learn, is the fact that the products that demand minimum knowledge, or already existent one, are simpler. A product that doesn't require a manual to be read in order to be used is obviously a simpler product.

The rest of laws enriches the simplicity we are searching for, and limits the drift in simplicity. For example, It is necessary to know that without a contrast to complexity, the simplicity doesn't exist, just like good and bad. A product without emotions is a cold uncomfortable product, and thus not simple. I invite those who are interested in understanding simplicity to read the book and examine the complete set of simplicity laws.

PS: I am not a fan of Apple, but yeah, they know how to elaborate simple yet great products.

Achraf

Orange stressed

When I was searching for my first job, I always told this joke to my friends: people are suiciding in Orange to get out of it, and I am dying to get into it. Orange is the historical telco (France Telecom) in France who suffered in last years from a high number of suicides among its employees. Well it’s true, I never understood the deal till the day, in a bookstore, my eyes were caught by a black book with the Orange logo on it, and entitled: Orange Stressed.

The author of this book, Ivan du Roy, is a journalist in the weekly Témoignage chrétien and collaborator in the online magazine Basta!. In this book, Ivan du Roy gives us a historical glimpse of Orange and explains why we have suicides today in this great company. The chapters are highly backed with facts, especially from the Stress Observatory of France Telecom.

The story begins in the 1970s where France was way behind its neighbors in terms of telecommunications. To end this situation, the government of Gescard d'Estaing launched the Delta LP plan: Thousands of enthusiastic technicians were recruited by the PTT administration (Post, Telegraphs and Telecommunications) back then to modernize the network infrastructure of France.

In 1990 the transformation of the PTT into an international corporate began. The PTT was divided into two public companies, La Poste and France Telecom. In 1996, France Telecom was privatized into a corporation. One year later, 21% of its capital was sold, and its action was quoted in the stock market. Since that year, and till the day, this percentage kept on increasing. So why was France Telecom privatized?

Many factors enforced this direction. First, there was the Milton Friedman's neoliberalism influence with Ronald Reagan in the USA and Margaret Thatcher in the UK: in these countries, telcos were already privatized. Second, the European Commission, in order to Europeanize the telecom services in Europe, chose the deregulation of this sector. A green book was published on this subject. This decision was highly influenced by some European industrial lobbies (e.g. European Round Table of Industrialists), and a big think-tanker and business man played a key role in this influence: the Belgian Etienne Davignon. Finally, and ironically, it was the left wing in France with Michel Rocard that opened the Pandora box by transforming the PTT administration into a public company. It was their reaction to face the difficult economical situation at the moment. To pass their solution, they had an undeclared agreement with the second most powerful syndicate CFDT behind CGT who knew about it too late. The left wing and the CFDT paid the price of their decisions each one in its upcoming elections. For Ivan du Roy, this direction was a pure political choice, because the announced needs for privatization (modernization and unification of networks, technological revolution, cheaper services...) were already satisfied with the PTT administration.

In 1998, The European telecommunications industry was deregulated for competition. New competitors entered the French markets (e.g. SFR & Bouygues). The strategic response of France Telecom to this deregulation was the expansion in international markets, to catch up the market shares it has lost in France. The CEO of France Telecom Michel Bon led this strategy by a big number of fusions, acquisitions, OPA operations in Europe and in Africa (especially the purchase the UK mobile operator Orange which became the official trademark of France Telecom). Huge sums of money were also paid to buy UMTS licenses in different countries. The French state was blinded by the billions of Euros income due to the sale of actions and never controlled these operations as the main shareholder. Unfortunately, in the summer of 2000, the speculative internet bubble has exploded, and all of risky operations of France Telecom caused it huge amounts of losses and France Telecom was the most indebted company in the world, with 70 billion Euros of debt.

How to get rid of 70 billion of junk bonds? France Telecom will witness the era of cost killers. The new CEO Thierry Breton comes to France Telecom with an army of well paid cost killers. They put in place the NeXT plan to reduce the number of employees by 22000 in three years. Employees were pushed in different ways to leave the company. Cost killing rhymes with work intensification, reorganizations (delocalization…) and shift in professions to ones generating more cash flow like commercial professions. These huge changes caused a cultural choc to the employees. First, these changes question their history and values, in other words they would feel that everything they did before was useless. A typical employee in France Telecom is a technician with the public service culture deeply rooted in him. In a short time, we put him in call center, without convenient training, and force him to give the minimum time to clients, which is completely against his old public service culture. This brutal change caused major psychological problems which are highly reflected on the health of the employee and his private life, leading him to suicide in extreme conditions. Changes came from the top of the hierarchy without being well understood by the employees and the management of these changes seems to have been a big failure.

The alerts are in red for France Telecom: precarity of work, ratio of absenteeism and number of suicide attempts. The direction seemed to be in denial at first. In response to the suicide attempts, the company created cells to accompany persons in difficulty, but never questioned the organization itself. It didn’t consider the roots of the problem.

France Telecom is gradually waking up from this long sleep of denial; there are more and more forces from the inside that are trying to stop the drift of the financial logics from the reality of work.

If you are interested by the subject of stress in work due to modern organization of work, I strongly recommend you to watch the two part French documentary “La mise a mort au travail”. In one of the parts a small debate is held with Stephane Richard, the current CEO of France Telecom.

Achraf

Update: For french speaking readers, there is a recent interesting documentary on the subject by France 5. It shows what have been done in France Telecom since the arrival of the new CEO Stephane Richard who promised to solve these cumulated social  problems after admitting their existance. You can watch it on YouTube:

SS2I, Inter-contrat et Open Source

Tous ceux qui ont travaillé dans une société de service connaissent bien le cauchemar de l’inter-contrat. C’est la période durant laquelle le consultant n’est pas en mission, donc n’a pas d’activité. C'est situation psychologiquement dure pour celui qui la subit car le sentiment d’inutilité met en cause l'identité professionnelle du consultant.
Il y a des SS2Is qui renvoient ceux qui sont en inter-contrat a leurs maisons en attendant une mission. C’est ce qui est le pire pour le consultant. Mais Il y en a qui sont bien plus intelligentes et essaient d’utiliser le temps inactf du consultant :
- Soit par formation, qui est une une solution logique pour les deux partis. le consultant monte en compétence pendant ce temps libre, et la société valorisera plus son salarié. Seul gros bémol: ça coûte cher pour la société
- Soit par mise sur des projets en interne, souvent sur des petits projets et sur une courte durée, mais je trouve que c’est une solution inefficace. En fait, le consultant ne voit pas vraiment la finalité de ce quil fait autre que tuer le temps perdu, donc il a toujours le sentiment d'inutilité même s'il bosse sur un projet. En plus, le temps de se mettre sur le projet va rendre son intervention encore plsu inefficace.
Dans le cas d’un consultant développeur, j’ai pensé à un compromis entre les deux: inciter le consultant à participer à un projet open source durant sa période d’inter-contrat. En participant à un projet open source, le consultant apprend beaucoup, même il y en a qui disent que c’est la meilleur façon pour apprendre à développer. Donc on a le même avantage que la formation mais sans coût. Un autre avantage pour le consultant, c'est de travailler sur un vrai projet, qui a une finalité, et qui est comprise par le consultant.La société de service verra ses employés de en plus plus impliqués dans projets open source, car une fois qu’on commence, on aura tendance à continuer même si c’est sur le temps personel. La société peut communiquer à l’extérieur sur son implication open source. Les enjeux de ce genre d’initiatives sont les suivants: Comment convaincre le consultant a le faire? Comment procéder pour choisir un projet open source pour le consultant? Comment évaluer le travail du consultant?

Achraf