On blogging - a post that never was - and an elephant in the room

I tweeted this:

Ugh!Didn't like http://bit.ly/mIdJU Really? I should write my own blogging software? If I write a novel should I write a word processor?

Which resulted in this response from Dumbledad.

Mark, really I wanted to comment on this tweet of yours(http://twitter.com/Mark_Stringer/status/1762534980 ) but you haven't blogged about it! Anyway, surely if I usurp a post on your seriously undangerous picture you wont mind ;-)
Don't you think that in the early days of the novel writers were developping tools in tandem with the novels themselves. One thinks of Proust's layers and layers of stuck on corrections and rewrites. Even now some writers use old typewriters, some a mass of post-its in a shed.
So, we're close (ish) to the start of blogging wouldn't you expect bloggers to tinker with blogging tools. Some wont have the skills to build tools, but some will. Some wont have the skills to customise tools, but many will. And they'll all have the skill to customise their blogging process.

I understand Dumbledad's point - and I agree with it to some degree, of course people with all manner of abilities should carry on innovating, improving an customising tools - as if anybody could stop them. But that still doesn't stop me disliking that post. I think it tries to create the impression that you have to able to do this kind of tinkering to even start SEO'ing your blog. And this just isn't true. Surely, making this the first point in your list would tend to put of the 99% of people (maybe more) who can't write software.

I don't want to create this impression. I would like as many people as possible to know just how much they can do - how easy it is to say what the hell they like - and get people to read it via search engines, without knowing a single thing about the technology (this is why I think Darren Rowse's #31DBBB is a very noble pursuit). There's nothing wrong with people learning everything about the technical stuff later, but putting it right at the front feels a bit like a smoke screen.

Perhaps hidden behind this - let's not call it dishonesty, let's call it - "strange emphasis", might be a discomfort with the way the world of the web and blogs and SEO is changing. Certain aspects of the business of setting up and promoting a website and a blog - and some much more complicated sites - are becoming very cheap and easy to do for people who have a minimum level of technical skills. The person I know who knows most about SEO is a photographer. At the same time, the technical knowledge of the "not technical" people is increasing in areas that are directly useful to them. A friend of mine was just telling me yesterday that he tried to tell a film director that he couldn't have something that he wanted on a blog - the film director's response was "Why not? I can get that in moveable type - look just give me access to the CSS and I'll do it."

OK - this is how I manage to shoe-horn this post into a blog about Agile software development methods. The cost in time and money and skills requirements of knocking up a pretty darn good state-of-the-art website is falling catastrophically. The way things are changing is going to play havoc with "established" models of software development - even Agile ones. Talk to a lot of companies that try to make money from web development and they'll tell you that they only really make money on the "easy" bits - setting up, hosting, CMS. It's devlish hard to make money out of actually writing new software. What's going to happen when the punters can easily do all those bits themselves and only ask the technical people in to do the difficult bits? This is something that occurred to me when I listened to a 10-year retrospective talk "Agility in the UK" at SPA2009. Some of the speakers seemed to think that we were still in a world of "soviet style" 1-2 year development projects.

Web developers: are they?

(photo courtesy of Phil Guest)

or are they heading for?



For further information, contact Mark@agilelab.co.uk (07736 807 604)

Change glorious change - why Agile is right for schools

A deputy head of a large rural primary school coming out of special measures recently described her working environment as one of continual crisis management. She talked about the way that they have to run the school pretty much on a week by week basis with continually changing priorities, an unstable staff base with a lot of absence and transience and with continual external interference.

A now ex-principle of a large academy school in London described the changing curriculum and increasing focus on creative, enterprise, innovative and project based learning as one in which teachers are now project managers as well as educators. He went on to describe the fact that projects have to cope effectively with continual flux in resources and with the time constraints of the timetable and therefore the notion that careful planning will somehow ensure success is a misnomer - it is the ability to deliver projects by coping effectively with continual change, reshaping and re-prioritising as you go that will ensure successful outcomes.

These two examples represent opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of school 'type' and current 'success status'. Yet despite this they both require internal process for leadership and management that can cope successfully with constant re-prioritisation, constant resource flux, limited time. They also need process that is light weight (teachers are time poor), easy to learn, flexible, works for external collaboration, is formalised enough that it can be reported upon and have success criteria built in, all of which is offered by Agile.

The following elements of Agile all map effectively onto the needs of schools:

1. Iterative working - by planning in terms of what can be achieved over a period of one month/half a semester/a term or whatever time segment works in terms of an individual school, Agile fits naturally with a school's 'heart beat'
   
2. Constant prioritisation - by recognising that demands on staff time and school priorities change on a term by term basis (or week by week in the case of a school on special measures), an approach that deals effectively with this is essential
3. Velocity - having a system built in that allows planning to respond effectively to constant change in time available to those delivering projects allows the project to fit the available time of those involved rather than the people having to fit the project and therefore massively reduces the risk of failure
4. Stories - the use of a narrative based needs and outcome communication approach allows Agile to work effectively as a planning and negotiation tool (particularly when used with inter-iteration re-prioritisation) with all stakeholders within a school community including governors, teachers, support staff, local authorities, partner schools and organisations, parents and pupils
5. Test-first - by determining how successful completion of tasks is to be recognised and negotiated before work begins, it becomes clear to understand what has been done and what hasn't and provide a clear progress reporting mechanism
   
6. Stand-up meetings - Agile works best with regular short meetings where people look at the stories they are working on, report on progress made and barriers encountered. These meetings can happen effectively in the coffee-length restrictions of break time, the 10 minutes available at lunch or before registration or before going home

This is just a sketch exploring how Agile would work in schools, but Agile grew out of the need for an approach that could deal effectively with constant change in needs and resource flux and does not allow these inevitable challenges to lead to failure. Therefore it would appear that Agile may well have a lot to offer school leadership and management.

No cappuccino required: how to develop functional peer to peer networks for rural creative businesses

One of the key challenges facing those charged with supporting the development and sustainability of rural creative businesses is how to achieve the benefits of the urban creative business clusters in the rural setting? Urban creative clustering provides a range of formal and informal benefits that include access to new business opportunities, the provision of support services, access to networks and collaboration opportunities.

A key quality of these clusters is prolific peer to peer activity. So much important interaction takes place in the pub or coffee shop. The ease at which a marketing and sales transactions can take place at a moments notice over a cappuccino in Hoxton is something that is difficult to reproduce in the rural setting. This is reflected by the fact that a common characteristic of many rural creative businesses is that the individuals involved were once located in urban environments and continue to work with, and invest time in sustaining the relationships they built up during their urban pasts (including periods of study).

One of the benefits provided by these urban peer to peer transactions is the way that the small or micro creative business can enjoy a bolt-on effect in which they can get business development outcomes with no investment made other than half an hour and the cost of the coffee. The cost of achieving the same outcome to the rural creative business can be much higher. It includes investing in constant networking activity just to keep up the level of visibility that often comes for free for businesses within urban clusters. The added time commitment and travel expenses that must be invested for such activity alone should not be under estimated, particularly given the speculative and potentially high risk nature of such activity. In the rural setting these additional costs become prohibitive.

To reduce this increased cost and risk it is essential that rural creative business development and support agencies consider the nature and characteristics of successful and sustained peer to peer interactions, regardless of whether they take place in the rural or urban environment:

1. They are peer to peer collaborations (e.g they do not involve a hired in expert that imparts wisdom and knowledge)
   
2. They are outcome orientated (e.g "lets meet for coffee to discuss a pitch I have been asked to respond to that you may want to come in on")
3. They have a co-dependence nature to them in which one party needs that bolt-on capacity, skills, knowledge or contacts provided by the other party
4. There is a clear business imperative and benefit to both parties underpinning the interaction
   

Therefore if those involved in supporting and developing rural creative business want to go some way towards making up for the lack of peer to peer access common to the urban cluster and reduce the risk factor when considering new models for developing these networks they should treat these 4 characteristics as requirements. If such activity can not achieve collaborative peer to peer relationships that are genuinely co-dependant, outcome orientated and address genuine business need for both parties then they are probably a waste of time and money. There will be a range of different ways that this challenge can be addressed but cappuccino is not required.

Making creative and business sit together with less conflict

One of the big questions raised time and time again by those involved in supporting and developing creative businesses is why it is that creative people are so good (and prolific) at starting businesses but not so good at sustaining and growing them?

Many more businesses are started by creative practitioners than those from a business background. Creative businesses are responsible for more new job creation than any other area of economic activity in the UK. London is a world powerhouse of creative business and yet despite this the failure rate of creative businesses is very high and of those that make it past the 3 year mark, many never grow beyond a dozen or so employees.

While there are a multitude of reasons given for this, such as the unwillingness of those that run such businesses to break through the 'lifestyle' barrier needed to grow or sustain a business to the difficulty in accessing investment, there is an important factor that is common to most, if not all, such businesses. This is the conflict between creative process and business process. It is not an untruth to reflect that these two areas of discipline are simply very different and require different attitudes, skills and knowledge but to end the consideration here is also neglectful.

One way to consider the root of the creative and business conflict is to look at the way that the processes that traditionally underpin creative and business activity are shaped. Business planning and execution is understood as linear. To attract investment or secure borrowing in order to build a business so that it can be sold or can realise the long term exploitation of IP is understood to require 3 year projections that provide a month by month picture and use language that suggests risk reduction achieved through careful long term planning. Here change is to be managed rather than embraced.

Creative people are at their strongest and happiest when thinking and working cyclically, embracing risk and dealing with constant change. This is true of those engaged in the creative application of science and art. Such people make hypothesis, explore and test such hypothesis, review the results of this activity and then adjust their hypothesis accordingly. It also true that business planning should be constantly reviewed and updated in light of progress made and lessons learned. Therefore cyclical activity is also common to the ongoing delivery of such plans even if it does not make the initial research and preparation of such plans any more palatable to the creative person. It does however give us a very important pointer to finding new ways of addressing this challenge.

Clearly we need to continue developing new processes and practices for engaging business heads with creative practitioners in ways that allow them to develop long term sustainable relationships. One such process I will refer to as Agile Business Planning. By using Agile process as the basis for business planning and development delivery we allow the creative practitioner to use processes that are familiar as they are cyclical, embrace change and risk continually and yet deliver continual and visible outcome. Such process is also SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time managed) and can dovetail with the long term visioning and projection orientated nature of established business planning practice. It is simply delivered week by week, month by month, using a set of tools that are owned and understood equally well by the business head and the creative head and therefore reduce conflict allowing the creative business to grow and become sustained.

What can Agile do for school management?

Having spent many years working on co-design and partnership projects with schools, I have become aware of the fact that schools in the UK, and particularly secondary schools, are in a constant state of flux. Even the best performing schools are continually managing change as handed down to them by government or because they get specialist status, being rebuilt or trying to become more outward facing through working in partnership with industry, cultural organisations, HE and FE. Then there are those schools that get entirely new management teams as they become academies or are working to get themselves out of special measures. These schools have to deal with change upon change and at times will feel like they are in constant crisis mode.

As Agile methodologies begin to be applied in new environments, it seems that schools are an obvious candidate as organisations that could really benefit from Agile. Some of the reasons for this are as follows:

• Constant change - as mentioned above, schools are continually working in an environment of constant flux and Agile is all about constant change.
  
• Lightweight processes - teachers are overworked and are resistant to anything that feels like additional management, administration or responsibility - Agile is simple and does not require reams of additional paperwork.
• Minimum iteration - in schools resources, particularly time, are scarce. Teachers will buy into a process and a project if they can see that it is delivering for them. Agile delivers results quickly and requires visible success criteria.
• Needs orientated process - the Agile use of 'stories' as a key concept used for defining goals and considering prioritisation is very useful for schools. Teachers often think in terms of 'need' and 'limitation' and both these are core elements of 'stories'.

Schools are expected to work in terms of projects more and more. Teachers need to be able to work together and with external organisations on project development and delivery in order to respond to the constant change that they are faced with. Agile is much more suited to the school environment than traditional project management approaches. It is flexible, easy to understand, lightweight and quick to implement, delivers visible outcomes quickly and responds effectively to constant change.