the BPM freak !!

REWORK – Change the way you work forever

January 2, 2022 2:37 pm / Leave a comment

‘listened to the Audible version of the book “REWORK – Change the way you work forever by Jason F. & David Heinemeier Hansson”. One of the finest and a MUST-READ book. It has a provocative collection of ideas, tips and suggestions which were leveraged by the founders of Basecamp (earlier 37Signal).

📌Some key takeaways and quotes from the book are ideal for productivity management, product management, entrepreneurship, marketing, culture and more:

🔸️ A small, profitable & sustainable business is a great accomplishment than just aspiring and planning to build an empire or getting intimidated by the very thought of starting a business
🔸️Solve your problem with less, then pick a fight (this has been the central point around which multiple scenarios, examples and stories were shared)
🔸️No time is never an excuse, if you are struggling with time management maybe your priorities are wrong or not well defined
🔸️Build half a product, not a half-assed product [adaptability is key] – offer less but do it better
🔸️Schedule meetings with defined agenda, must have participants and actions items to improve productivity. Avoid meeting fatigue
🔸️The art of saying no is also important (at times that helps you define priorities)
🔸️Clear communication or articulation is key for any task or position
🔸️Long term planning is a guess-work, focus on vision, strategy and short-term goals that are achievable
🔸️Inspiration is perishable, so if you are high-on-inspiration get the idea into action as soon as you can
🔸️When the authors founded Basecamp, they had this question “is this something we need or want to use?” There was no need for focus groups, market studies or middlemen, we had an itch so we scratched it
🔸️Being the anti-__ is a great way to differentiate yourself and attract followers. Its like being the fresh alternative by “one-downing” the competition
🔸️Make decisions faster and more effectively
🔸️When we think about building a business or new products, items like resources, equipment, expertise etc. keep bothering us but the great way to deal this is by questioning Do I really need this? Could I get started with less?
🔸️Regarding hiring do it yourself first and if it hurts hire
🔸️Always own your bad news so that you have control and helps you avoid rumors
🔸️ASAP is a poison word avoid it

🔸️Don’t confuse enthusiasm with priorities

#book #books #reworkthebook
Book Summary image source: Basecamp site

Hooked – How to Build Habit-Forming Products by Nir Eyal

January 1, 2022 6:20 pm / Leave a comment

“Hooked – How to Build Habit-Forming Products by Nir Eyal” via Audible

💫In summary, Nir interestingly calls out the key traits of building products that improve usability, adoption or simply put have the users hooked or addicted to the app/product that is developed.

📌Some key takeaways:
⭐There is a 4-step approach that market leading products use to influence user behavior which is referred to as the “Hook-Model” i.e
🔸️Trigger: something that initiates or starts a behavior
▪️External Trigger (what gets the user to the product? e.g. email, ad or call)
▪️Internal Trigger (what does the user really want & what made him visit again? e.g. opening FB/Twitter)

🔸️Action: something that the user does to earn a reward & this has to be the very simple & easy step with out much thinking associated with it. Anything that gets done with a little or no conscious thought becomes a part of the habit. The behavior model by B.J.Fogg states that:
💫Behavior = Motivation*Ability*Trigger
▪️Motivation: the urge of the user to act upon a scenario
▪️Ability: the ease of taking an action e.g. for viewing a link/video I do not have to enter a list of 10+ fields which adds to friction, frustration & hence failure to engage the user. It should be quick & intuitive
▪️Triggers: a point to activate the user behavior or interest

🔸️Variable Rewards: reward is what makes the user keep using the product or visiting the app over & over again & the psychological study indicates that if constant or consistent rewards are given to users, the interest of the user declines over time because what drives the user is the anticipation of the reward & not the reward itself e.g. if we get the same offer from the Bank everytime we tend to ignore it.

🔸️Investment: It is the time & effort put by the user to create value for themselves. “The more users invest time & effort into a product or service, the more they value it. In fact, there is ample evidence to suggest that our labor leads to love”. If we put blood, sweat & tears in building a product we overvalue the product than its actual value ‘coz of investment done.

💫”IKEA-EFFECT” is a great business-model wherein, the company ensures the users put time & effort to build their own furniture themselves & love the art of building & hence the product

⭐As some habits or addictions created can be for good or bad – Nir also talks about the morality of manipulation if done by the makers.

⭐One thing that I loved about this book was it kept the listener engaged & engrossed throughout, with tons of real-time examples & scenarios making it more relatable than preaching.

⭐A lot of inferences that can be drawn from the book to the way we design & build apps, products or solutions. Usability, Variability, Flexibility, along with engaging a user to invest/act in a simplistic model forms the bedrock for any product to scale or excel or improve the experience index

#book #books #productmanagement

How Low is Low-Code in practice?

August 16, 2020 2:56 pm / Leave a comment

LowCode or NoCode platforms are not just limited to drag-&-drop features or model driven approach or empowering citizen developers. It is way beyond that. It is not about a tool or a product – it is an experience we give to the adopters (whosoever it may be).

The 5 key imperatives for a seamless low-code/no-code implementation are:

Strong governance with a Controller or an Admin
- to avoid creation of tons of apps & redundancy that may invite for a consolidation/re-engineering exercise at a later point
Standardization with a Coach or Mentor or Tech-Advisor or CoE/Guild
- primarily to ease out things as a technology-ally e.g. building Integration connectors, authentication/authorization components, guidelines, standards etc..
Fabric for re-usability
- by defining a composable Business Architecture & the possibility of having Business Functions as a Service(BFaaS) beyond just technical reusable components. If we may term them as “µProcesses” similar to self-sustained micro-services
Resilient Platform with e2e Telemetry
- it is critical if the vision is to have an army of apps built & deployed at scale. Observability is the key that mere monitoring techniques
Framework for automated & ease of deployment
- the agility in business process has to be baked in with well-defined automated release management pipelines. DevSecOps powered platforms definitely play a pivotal role in addressing the BuildApps@Scale factor.

In summary, pre-emptive & pro-active checks coupled with automation are paramount for better adoption of these platforms & giving an edge to users than the traditional reactive based approach with troubleshooting/debugging & triaging etc. that amplifies the IT-Chaos

Additionally, Low-Code/No-Code is not a direct replacement for your enterprise wide Digital Transformation Journey & long standing technical debt buried under your heritage/legacy applications. It is just a catalyst for initiatives and programs that require a lite-touch-to-modernization (quick-realization, easy-to-deploy, faster RoI, idea-to-apps@scale)

Happy Learning! 🙂

Will All Data Driven Processes Be Automated Sooner or Later?

December 6, 2019 5:32 am / Leave a comment

There was an interesting discussion initiated by Peter Schooff @bpm.com few months back

Will All Data Driven Processes Be Automated Sooner or Later?

Will All Data Driven Processes Be Automated Sooner or Later? …What do YOU Think? https://bpm.com/in-the-forum/6460-will-all-data-driven-processes-be-automated-sooner-or-later #BPM #process

My Thoughts:

That’s definitely the ‘nirvana‘ state which every enterprise is thriving to achieve. Data Driven approach will be a key lever for organizations to realize the potential of Self-serviceability & Self-healing processes.
But, the question is, will every data-driven process be eligible for automation sooner or later?
The answer is ‘maybe not’. What’s more important is Quality of Data!
Even if we have tons of data that are not interlinked or just provide discrete info – it does not meet the purpose.

A simple scenario:

A leading financial institution that wants to automate the Customer Service operations (as it has tons of data collected over the years w.r.t its Customers) may not succeed if the data in store are just siloed/half baked info or mere transactional notes.

Quality of Conversation is critical than just providing pointed transactions which have white spaces in Customer Engagement (it’s like a trade-off between AHT- average handling time & conversation time or simply put speed vs time)

A data driven approach with a wish list of automation should ensure the Quality of Data is not compromised. Else it will show unexpected behaviour which can turn out to be a costly affair.

To put it in one sentence:

“Data Driven Automation approach should preach Quality of Data”
Tweet

If organizations do not have clean/qualified data, that should be the prerequisite exercise(as data discovery) for smooth & uninterrupted automation to follow.

Will All Data Driven Processes Be Automated Sooner or Later? #automation #data #RPA #process

Happy Learning!! 🙂

Image courtesy of [Suwit Ritjaroon] at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Happy New Year – 2019

January 3, 2019 4:54 am / Leave a comment

Wishing everyone a very happy and prosperous New Year – 2019
Add Colours to your Life, Stay Healthy & Stay Blessed!!

The Year Ahead for BPM – 2018 Predictions from Top Influencers

January 27, 2018 6:36 am / Leave a comment

The Year Ahead for BPM – 2018 Predictions from Top Influencers https://t.co/jUFlq9ZVSu @mtki2006 @maxjpucher @pieterv @exomin @skemsley @sfrancisatx @JimSinur @swensonkeith @ESMatBPL @PeterFingar @neilwd @cmooreclarity

— Peter Schooff (@PSchooff) January 11, 2018

On my blog: A variety of opinions on what’s ahead for #BPM in 2018 https://t.co/P7PDCw37q3 #dpa

— Sandy Kemsley (@skemsley) January 17, 2018

(more…)

Customer Journey Mapping

January 27, 2018 5:47 am / Leave a comment

Nice Read! Article on Customer Journey Mapping by Sandy Kemsley

Slides from my #opexweek presentation yesterday on customer journey mapping and process improvement https://t.co/Gnm9ZM4q30 pic.twitter.com/pcYNEmMIl2

— Sandy Kemsley (@skemsley) January 24, 2018

Happy Reading! 🙂

Image Source: link

What do you think will be the key business drivers for BPM adoption for the year ahead?

January 26, 2018 6:05 pm / Leave a comment

There is an interesting discussion initiated by Peter Schooff @bpm.com

What’s a clear sign a company could use RPA? You Know a Company Could Really Use Robotic Process Automation When…

What Will Be the Key Business Drivers for BPM Adoption in the Year Ahead? What do YOU think?
https://t.co/3mut1Kim9B #BPM #theyearahead #2018predictions

— Peter Schooff (@PSchooff) January 16, 2018

My Thoughts:

Key Business Drivers for BPM Adoption :

If envisaging an end-to-end Process from a Customer viewpoint (like day-in-a-life of a user or customer journeys) are given due importance compared to lines-of-code (LoC) implemented from a technical front (seeing the business from a technology lens) – then it’s time to “thinkBPM” or “betterBPM”(existing Impl.)
Streamlining & Optimizing existing Business Process loopholes
New Compliance & Regulatory process changes (as stated above e.g. GDPR)
Building easily maintainable & configurable processes (demand for low code platform)
Reduction in Operational Overheads
Data insight driven Process Enhancement (with enhanced Decisioning for developing Self-Healing Processes)
Organizations planning to jump on the Digital Transformation Bandwagon! (BPM being is one of the levers to digitalize the processes)
Another step closer, to bridge the gap between the Business & IT (BPM has been striving to achieve this from the day of inception)

What do you think will be the key business drivers for BPM adoption for the year ahead? What’s your take?

Happy Learning!! 🙂

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What’s a clear sign a company could use RPA?

January 9, 2018 9:39 am / Leave a comment

There is an interesting discussion initiated by Peter Schooff @bpm.com

What’s a clear sign a company could use RPA? You Know a Company Could Really Use Robotic Process Automation When…

You Know a Company Could Really Use Robotic Process Automation When…What do YOU Think? https://t.co/31VUmWWLqY #BPM #process #RPA

— Peter Schooff (@PSchooff) January 4, 2018

My Thoughts:

You Know a Company Could Really Use Robotic Process Automation When…

..the workforce is involved in Mundane Monotonous Manual intensive tasks
..a rhythmic Keystrokes pattern on the back-office/front-office floor makes more noise (comparable to an industrial manufacturing unit)
..the agility in Customer Experience is negated by the sluggish back-office operations driven my manual hand-off
..cost & priority of modernization or digitalization of every ancestral/legacy system is not the need of the hour
..a Band-Aid solution like RPA is enough to heal the gaping wounds of the heterogeneous & messy heritage application landscape
..reduced labor expenses, improved efficiency, reduced cycle time & importantly overcoming labor fatigue/human error (in scenarios involving routine activities) are the business KPIs
..scaling labor for onboarding & training has an increased TAT (with RPA it is easy to multiply the bot workforce)
..there is a demand to convert the heavyweight head-down workforce (involved in routine assembly-line tasks) to knowledgeable/ intelligent workforce
..every discrete application in the enterprise landscape works in silos (with no defined integration) and have their individual priorities/transformation roadmap but a unanimous business objective to achieve “automation“

Typical head-down workforce activities in a scenario like a Customer Onboarding are:

scanning paper forms to digitize it
‎manual rekeying of data (data entry)
‎4-eye check (reviewer to confirm, data entry is flawless)
‎manual hand-off of tasks with follow-ups
‎manual classification of documents and bucketing it
‎toggling across multiple screens/apps to copy and paste data (or fetch/compare info) – involving no traceability/audit trail