In an earlier post I mentioned that Jonathan Burns and myself were given permission to blog about a web 2.0 value disruption project that is currently underway.  This post is number two in the series that is expected to run until mid May.

Value disruption project posts

1. Introduction

Note: Clients names are kept confidential and/or disguised.

Value Disruption Project Scope

In November of last year we completed our three stage web 2.0 solutions program and delivered to our clients a project plan to develop three web 2.0 applications: expert blogging, internal collaboration, and a friends of ___ site.  We used a wall sized Implementation Canvas^TM to develop, with their team, strategies for reducing the risks and optimizing the rewards of the project.

A canvas to manage risk and rewards

Project Scope Items

The power of the canvas is that a team can simultaneously see all the strategic elements of a project.  And the design of the canvas forces users to adopt a risk-reduction, reward-optimization approach.  We completed a canvas for each web 2.0 application: Blogging, Collaboration, and Friends of___.

In terms of project risk:

• Blogging is the simplest of the applications with the least ambiguity and hence uncertainty.
• Collaboration is middle of the road and
• Friends of ___ is the  most uncertain and hence the most risky.

Here are highlights of three areas from the Collaboration Implementation Canvas: Risk, Rewards, and Uncertainties.

Collaboration Risks

• We can’t get the staff to use it so people view the project as a failure
• ISO compliance issues
• Not sufficient administration of system security
• We get the balance wrong on the scale of openness/lack of structure/ease of use and security/ISO compliance and end up with a tool that’s too complex and hard to use.
• There is unintended disclosure, we are highly regulated.

Collaboration Rewards

• Get projects done faster
• Improved productivity, find information faster -  Reduce email
• Keep track of what projects we are doing (macro level – not the details)
• Knowledge transfer to new staff
• Do repeat projects faster
• Retain IP of alumni
• Increase employee satisfaction
• Better logging of who edits the docs, revisions vs current “I drive” method
• Visible lessons learned
• Concurrent report writing (faster!)

After completing the risks and rewards they analyzed them to determine what they didn’t know.  In other words, they determined what they were uncertain about.

The challenge on all projects is not what you know, it’s what you don’t know.  So mapping the uncertainties, what you don’t know, is a critical step to reducing risks (as well as making sure the rewards are realized).  So, instead of making assumptions, determine what you don’t know and then go find answers to those questions.

Collaboration Uncertainties

• Who controls the level of access?
• How do we fit into the ISO document management requirements?
• What are the rules for a document becoming ISO official?
• What are the roles of the people in the walled-off garden?
• How do we migrate old technology?
• What are our metrics of success?
• How will this change our work-flow patterns?
• What projects types will we pilot on?

Mapping these uncertainties allowed them to structure the project, select the appropriate team and develop an initial set of actions to resolve the uncertainties.  They created a starting point.

Learning

Here’s what we found after using the canvases.

1. Each team was on board with the project.   The ability to see all the project elements in one place made them feel more comfortable that we, collectively, understood all the risks and had a good starting point for how to resolve the uncertainties.
2. It was a quick process.  The team was able to develop three implementation plans in about 4 hours.  Visualization of the entire project enabled the quick speed, in a team of 12 people.  (All 12 people agreed.)
3. The CEO, David L. appreciated the focus on risk management.  His role is to move the organization forward without exposing the organization to undue risk.  Explicitly determining the risks, as well as the rewards,  prioritizing them into the greatest areas of uncertainties, and then developing plans to turn uncertainties into known quantities made him feel confident his team has a deep handle on the issues.  When the CEO feels comfortable with the team that energy translates into enthusiasm.
4. Explicitly dealing with risks and their uncertainties brought us together as a team.  As we worked through the different applications we started to see how each individual had a contribution to make in dealing with the uncertainties.

Top Three Tips

Here’s my top three tips from this experience.

1. Explicitly focus project planning on risk-mitigation.  Pay particular attention to those risks (and rewards) that are uncertain.  Uncertainties represent the biggest failure point, especially in projects with high degrees of ambiguity.  You can learn more about risks and managing ambiguous projects that here and here.
2. Use a blank wall or wall canvas to map the project.  It makes all the elements visible to everyone so  conversations become more directive and integrative.  If you’d like to use our canvas, contact us at iCanvas@ennova.ca
3. As a seller of services, embracing risk is powerful.  The reason clients most often don’t do projects is because they legitimately see risks that they don’t know how to deal with.  Putting your team and their team together to explicitly discuss the risks and develop solutions for mitigating them is the most creative way to resolve this roadblock.  If you and your client team can’t find a way to mitigate the risks then you shouldn’t be doing the project anyway.

What risk mitigation strategies have you used?  What kinds of ambiguous projects do you run?  What other topics would you like us to blog about in this project?

Thank you for visiting http:ennova.ca

Jonathan Burns and I are currently working on a web 2.0 project with a client in the services industry.  We’ve received permission to blog on the project as it happens, agreeing to keep the names confidential.

Our purpose – Share value-disruption learning

It was formally launched on January 6th and it’s scheduled to run to mid May 2010.  The project scope involves creating three applications: blogs, internal collaboration, and A Friends of ____  site.  As a business model design expert with a practice in transforming businesses so they can value-disrupt a market, I’m most interested in blogging about our experiences in the following areas.

1. The generational divide
2. Methods for creating and managing risk reduced plans
3. Building and maintaining project momentum
4. Dealing with ambiguity resulting from project scope design
5. Disruption effects on the business model
6. Disruption effects on their markets
7. Team interactions and the role of trust and evangelists
8. The role of web 2.0  technology in managing the project.

Of course, what I post on is contingent on what happens so I won’t necessarily be following these topics in order.

Jonathan is web 2.0 technology guru, amongst other things, and so he’ll likely be blogging from a more technical side.  You can see his blog here.  I’m planning to blog once a week, time and constraints permitting.  Monitoring both blogs should give you interesting insights on:

• Web 2.0 installations
• Business technologies that are available
• How to deal effectively (or not) with ambiguous projects
• The power of disruptions and
• A host of other insights we can’t yet anticipate.

We’re excited about sharing our insights as they happen.

So stop by, or better yet, connect to us via the RSS feed on the blog as we tell the story of this project.

What other topics would you like to see?  Are you running any disruption projects that you can share?

Thank-you for visiting http:ennova.ca

It’s all about uncertainty

In a world of increasing commoditization we are forced to consider ever more ambitious and outside-the-norm ideas.  With that comes greater ambiguity and risk.

In an earlier post we discussed types of  risk.  It’s time to return to that topic and discuss ways we can reduce risk when implementing change in projects which contain heightened ambiguity.

The knowability of risk

The conversation in the previous post asserted that not all risks are equal.  Some risks we know a lot about.  For example, a cola manufacturer producing another flavoured drink pretty much knows the risks involved in launching the new product.

Risks such as:

• expected market demand,
• packaging alternatives,
• amount of required marketing spend,
• distribution strategy,
• etc.

have been solved in the past so they know the kinds of questions they need to answer and how to best find those answers.

Having done it many times they have developed standardized procedures for asking and answering these questions – standard roles and procedures that speed them to optimal results.   In cases such as these, the risks are largely knowable.

Knowable Risks

What we will explore now are situations where the risks associated with change are unknowable.  For example, imagine the same cola manufacturer now wants to allow consumers to help suggest and select new cola flavours through a web 2.0 application like this one.  The company has never done anything like this before.  It’s a new experience for them.  Consequently, they have little knowledge to draw upon to accurately identify and assess the risks and rewards.  No procedures exists.  No standard list of important questions to answer has been developed and vetted overtime.  They don’t know what they don’t know.  The risks themselves are uncertain.

Uncertain Risks

Organizational reaction to new ideas

Many organizations when faced with an outside-the-norm idea reject it.  They do so for any number of reasons.  In our experience the reasons boil down to a risk-reward calculation and the certainty, or in this case uncertainty, attached to it.

1. They have no experience to draw upon so they have a hard time assessing the benefits.  While they can clearly imagine the benefits, (customer selected products increase probability of launch success) their lack of experience makes them uncomfortable that the imagined benefits can be realized.  By comparison to other projects, they are uncertain about the benefits.
2. We are predisposed to focus most heavily on the risks of a new situation rather than the rewards.  Our evolutionary history (defenseless apes in the Savannah) selected for high risk-sensitivity.  When confronted with a new situation you’d better proceed cautiously.  That’s as true in the boardroom jungle as it is in the Savannah.

So, it’s entirely understandable that outside-the-norm ideas are regularly dismissed.  So that begs the question, in today’s world of increasing commoditization when the need to innovate is great, how do we start and run projects that deal with highly ambiguous situations?

Tips for dealing with ambiguous projects

Here are some starter tips for running projects that contain high ambiguity.

1. Manage uncertainty – not time-lines.  Start by recognizing that these kind of projects are different than the norm.  It’s much more about mapping the uncertainties and learning about them than it is about managing time-lines and milestones.  When you don’t know what you don’t know, well articulated and detailed project plans are not going to help (too many critical assumptions factored in).  Creating a reasonable starting point of what you know and don’t know, and then running low cost experiments to learn about the uncertainties (what you don’t know) is how to get started.
2. Embrace diversity.  Learning accelerates when people with diverse opinions and experiences are brought to play.  In the example above, the company could and should include existing consumers as part of their team.  They will provide insights about what they, as consumers, would want to experience.  Diversity keeps you from spending too much time going down false trails.
3. Go fast and slow at the same time.  When running experiments to uncover the answers to critical uncertainties get out there as fast as you can.  A good rule of thumb is 60 days.  Test roughed-out ideas with real people very fast.  Counteract that with the expectation that overall, the project will likely run slow.  It can take many months and iterations before the real answers surface.  Hence the need to test rapidly.
4. Review learning.  Finally, keep the momentum high by running regular (weekly) learning reviews. Sharing the learning on a regular basis keeps team members focused and makes each individual’s contribution that much more robust.

Questions business owners and executive team leaders can ask

Here are some question you can ask of yourself and your team.

1. How comfortable are we in discussing ideas that fall outside the norm of our experience?  How quick are we to judge?  Is our judgement focused too heavily on the risks?
2. How well do we as a  team or company deal with ambiguous ideas?  Do we devote sufficient time in exploring the uncertainties that arise from it?
3. What is our capacity to develop and execute low cost experiments?  Do we have procedures in place?
4. When dealing with uncertainty how well do we embrace diversity?
5. How well do our habits in selecting team help us in creating a wide range of potential solutions?
6. How well do we balance between aggressive targets for completion with sufficient allowance for learning and prototyping?
7. How well do we create and maintain momentum?   What is our capacity for tracking and sustaining project implementation?
8. How well do our reviews focus on learning?  Are we too focused on time-lines at the expense of managing risks through learning?

We’ll expand on this topic of implementing ambiguous projects in future posts.

Thank you for visiting www.ennova.ca