It really matters that you know where you are.

Key performance indicators (KPI’s) can inform the business about the overall health of activities across business silos and through political boundaries.

Establishing coherent KPI's is critical for being able to establish over a period of time where the issues are in a project. Especially where there are multiple areas where you can use the same measures to deliver information that is meaningful and comparable.

There is no point deploying a dashboard of KPI’s that doesn’t give you this kind of business context or al you will deliver is up to the minute information about things you know you know.

Here are my simple generic starter KPI thought. Its not a rulebook but you might find them useful : -

• Must be the same KPI’s across project or similar areas
• How long has the project been running 
  • Over 9 months = red
  How many people
  
  • Over 28 in an enterprise = red
  • Over 9 in a startup = red
• What is the revenue plan?
  • If revenue plan is not greater than overhead cost = red
• Is the management qualified and credible?
  • Some objective scoring metric
• Is technology bias a factor?
  • Some objective scoring metric
• Is everybody doing it?
  • Yes = red
  Is somebody doing it by way of validation?
  • No= red
• Are other groups doing the same thing internally using different technology 
  • Yes = red
  Is there a software technology and hardware bias in teams
  
  • Yes = red unless deliberate strategy

I was asked today by a client to explain why I think that in producing high level software requirements, its important not to pre-define the technology or constrain the person answering the requirement with a specification.

Consider the original BBC iPlayer. It had, I believe, an unnecessary technical constraint in its requirements. This was that it was wrongly (in my personal opinion) stipulated that it must work with Microsoft DRM technology. This meant that the iPlayer could only work on quite specific versions of Microsoft Windows, which as the EU pointed out four years later and tens of millions of pounds of development cost later would be illegal for an organisation like the BBC. I think that qualifies as quite a good example of a bad requirement which forced a technology choice upon developers! Not to mention lost opportunity costs and TV Licence payers money down the drain.

By way of contrast, in the early 90's Windows 3.0 and OS/2 2.1 were both examples of answers to the high level requirement ‘Windows Icon Mouse and Pointer User Interface based multitasking operating system implementing a File Manager, Program Manager, Calculator, Notepad, Control Panel and Command Prompt and various other standard applets and providing an environment upon which applications can be written and run conforming to the Common User Access Guidelines of the Systems Applicaton Architecture’ Im paraphrasing but that’s basically it.

Nowhere in that kind of high level requirement should it state how and in what way were they to be built. Windows 3.0 was written in Assembler. OS/2 2.1 in C++, they had vastly different use and performance envelopes. They were written by different teams to the same set of requirements in order to make sure there was internal competition at Microsoft. OS/2 famously was beaten by the 'B' team who brought us Windows 3.0 - They did a better job it seems of interpreting the high level requirements.

Microsoft also had the foresight to have more than one bet running in case their teams didnt make the right choices. Good advice. If possible always consider more than one technology approach and conduct an open review of your technlogy decision making process. Otherwise you'll be constrained by what your developers are comfortable with rather than what you need to be successful.

Disclosure: The author worked at Microsoft in the mid 90's and was a member of the BBC trust accountability council for BBC London for almost 8 years from 2000 and wrote a paper for the BBC on how crap the initial iPlayer was after it took him only a couple of hours to use google to assemble tools to defeat the Microsoft DRM technology and play iPlayer content nicely on his Apple TV in DRM free H.264. The iPlayer team initially didnt respond. Eventually the EU forced them to make iPlayer Mac and Linux capable although the Adobe software used for this is completely different to the original iPlayer technology.

Yesterday I had two new 'business development' activities in my calendar.

OpenCoffee - My rating, waste of time

First 'opencoffee' which is billed at www.opencoffeeclub.org as part of a worldwide collection of events where you are likely to meet other entrepreneurs and some investors -- if not, at least you can work in peace.

This was held at UCL coffee lobby in their new building opposite what used to be Dillons and is now Waterstones near Goodge Street Tube.

Its a part of London I never tire of, Tottenham Court Road doesnt seem to have the Akihabara cutting edge anymore but always its worth a look in my favourite shops, Morgan Computers (actually in New Oxford Street) and Computer Exchange next door to Goodge Street so I was early enough to do that.

So what of the coffee morning. Well I cant find much to write about it as I didnt engage with anyone. I know you know me and know thats probably my own fault, but I was kind of sort of hoping that there might be some structure or at least something for the new. Nope. So I sat in the middle of the room with Tweetdeck on and posted 'anyone want to talk to me about startups, product creation and product management in software companies' Nothing. I cut my losses and left, heading off to do half a day at one of my clients.

 @bootstrapcamp - My rating worth spending time on

Second, in the afternoon was the first @bootstrapcamp meeting sponsored by Sun Microsystems Startup Essentials. Billed as a kind of matchmaking exchange skills in the startup community the idea being that you OFFER everyone something SMART (specific, measurable, actionable, realistic and timely) in terms of skills that you have, and  you state a NEED again something SMART.

The cute idea being that its a kind of exchange where you dont necessarily find direct one-for-one matching, but that you might have three or more people involved in the 'transaction'.

The promise was for some direct 1-1 matchmaking but in order to get there the room had to agree how this thing would work. And therein lies the problem. For @bootstrap camp to work it has to be mind numbingly simple, and very timely. But this wasnt a simple community it was Londons startup software cognoscenti. I sensed we were losing the momentum when the organisers said ‘right then were agreed the basic unit of barter is the hour’ and someone from the audience said ‘i think we should say thats the one basic thing we are not agreed on’ I paraphrase but you get the point.

There were so many people jumping to technical solutions before defining the problem that I was reminded of the movie Galaxy Quest where the techie in attempting to give advice on a solution to a problem says  “Look around you. Can you form some sort of rudimentary lathe?”

To me the idyll of multi way bartering is what Money is for, and I guess (at the time of writing) that money is the best medium for that.

A direct ‘Swap Shop’ type of approach has simplicity and timelieness at its heart, as well as the immediacy of a single phone number (long lost 811 8055 I seem to remember) and the value of the deal is between two people who simply want to exchange skills and resources right now on the phone.

It worked for Noel Edmonds all those years ago and 6 year old kids could get the hang of it. It seems to me that it needs to be similarly constructed or doomed to complexity and obscurity.

My plan is to engage with @bootstrapcamp and invest time and resources in it. But my hope is that is becomes simplicity itself to deal with.  Twitter is surely the equivalent of the phone number to do a deal 'right now'...

Lets see.

I could take a moment to reflect that theres something seriously wrong with Sun because this computer boots to 'grub', has an OpenDOS drivers and tools disk, doesnt have a hostid, doesnt have the firmware environment of the 'old days' etc etc, but I won't because its a great little rackmount server and we dont want to run Solaris on it anyway, but VMware - because we need to host legions of Windows Servers to make our clients application work. Add a comment