• Date: Wednesday, 12 June
• Time: 2:45 – 3:45 pm

Kirsty Sinnott from Water Corporation joins Paul Culmsee at the Melbourne SharePoint Conference this June to share with you how Seven Sigma assisted Kirsty and her team deploy a successful SharePoint project.

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If one was to start the journey of a five-year program of work, implementing SharePoint for a government agency, what chances of success would you give it under the following circumstances:
•   Conservative IT
•   Conservative PMO
•   Conservative organisational culture (risk averse)
•   No previous SharePoint experience on the part of the organisation
•   Massively time constrained first project in the program
•   Newly-formed team with no previous experience working together
•   First time agile delivery approach taken
•   Outsourced IT provider changes after 10 years during project

Contrary to what you might think, this first non-trivial project in the SharePoint program was very successful. Come and learn how the Water Corporation of Western Australia was able to create the conditions to deliver great outcomes under uncertain circumstances. From the governance approach, to information architecture, to change management, solution development and organisational readiness, there are many lessons that similar organisations can get value from.

Topics to be covered are:
•  Creating the right collaborative conditions for delivery
•  How to align diverse stakeholders
•  Choosing the right project
•  Choosing the right team
•  Developing a compelling direction which reduces risk
•  Engaging with users and stakeholders
•  Creating the right solution
•  Building capacity within and beyond the team
•  Adapting the governance approach along the journey
•  Applying lessons into the program going forward.

Solving Complex (‘Wicked’) Problems with Emergent Design Practice

In the Business Stream, Day 2 of the Australian SharePoint Conference in Melbourne this June, Paul and Dr Preston will be presenting how Seven Sigma and PsyOpus together solve complex problems with emergent design practice. We’ve used this method successfully from alignment to strategic planning. Come and listen to why our SharePoint projects are successful projects.

• Date: Wednesday, 12 June
• Time: 10:30 – 1130

Someone said that “modern problems are so complex that you have to know everything about them just to be undecided about them”.  SharePoint sometimes seems like a wicked problem if there ever was one. Part of the problem is that most organisations mistake the complex for the complicated. Knowing the wickedness of your problem is half the battle won. The other half is to employ emergent design practice. Emergent design practice is to create safe human and technological holding environments where people, organisations and communities can seek shared commitment through shared understanding.

In this presentation Dr Neil Preston and Paul Culmsee will demonstrate how to create safe human environments where people can speak their truth and to allow the wisdom of the crowds to solve complex problems. Emergent design is really how human beings solve complex wicked problems. Instead of stuffy linear agendas and tired old structured facilitated workshops, emergent design uses cutting-edge technological methods, like Dialogue Mapping, to capture the real non-linear and emergent way people in groups solve problems.

Learn how emergent design and Dialogue Mapping has been used to collaboratively design SharePoint governance frameworks, develop ICT strategy as well as case studies beyond IT. Hear case studies where emergent design and Dialogue Mapping has been used on problems as diverse as organisational restructures, community consultations and executive team development.

This presentation is for anyone who has experienced a wicked problem and is looking for a design process that genuinely encourages truth telling and decision influence.

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The common answer to most SharePoint feature deficiencies from inexperienced SharePoint software developers is “build a web part”, “create a custom control”, or “create a custom application page”. Whilst server-side coding is extremely powerful, and sometimes the only solution, often a client-side solution could suffice; meaning avoidance of the overheads commonly tackled with server-side development such as: Additional tasks for disaster recovery scenarios; The potential for seemingly minor performance issues to impact the entire system;  Difficulty in developing and maintaining.

This session will show how common business requirements can often be handled through smart use of XSLT, JavaScript/jQuery, and Marc Anderson’s SPServices library. No prior knowledge of XSLT or JavaScript is required. It may be helpful to have done some coding in the past and have seen HTML before, but is not necessary to follow the session.

After two years of hard work, Seven Sigma are proud to announce that Paul’s book, “The Heretic’s Guide to Best Practices” is now available for purchase. This book would not have been possible if it were not for Seven Sigma’s wonderful clients who have provided some amazing opportunities and case studies.

“Paul has written the book I wish I had: The Heretic’s Guide explains why IT/software (and other) projects go sideways using wit, humour and solid facts that identify the real reason for failure – we, the people, and our cognitive biases.

If you are a project manager, business analyst or general agitator and fomentor of trouble you need to read this book. It will challenge your assumptions, make you uncomfortable, smack you upside the head and then pick you up, dust you off and tell you why you’re feeling a lot like Neo in The Matrix.” – Chris Chapman

To put this in perspective, the incidences have not been that major except for the times when mother nature, after having a few bad days and unable to hold her fiery temper, erupted and covered the sky with ash.

The first time mother nature toyed with Paul was around the 2010 Euopean Best Practice SharePoint Conference. The Icelandic volcano eruption left a lot of people stranded and lucky for Paul, his flight had not left – he at least was stranded at home. Unable to deliver his presentation, Paul asked Andrew Woodward to take his place. Andrew, armed with Paul’s slidedeck and notes, did Paul proud.

Paul was again in the firing line from mother nature with the recent Chilean volcano eruption. This time the stress level was way high. Due to deliver the SPGov+IA master classes in Brisbane June 16-17, Auckland June 20-21, and back to Perth for our very first Issue Mapping Master Class June 23-24, when we heard that all flights in and out of Melbourne and Perth were grounded (Paul’s connecting flight was Melbourne) the day before Paul was due to fly out, the day before #SPIABNE was to start, we tried everything to make it happen. We changed flights, tried different routes, booked with different airlines, and each time our booking would be successful and we would be overcome with relieve and triumph. This feeling only lasted a short while – until the next cancellation notification came through. We were getting nowhere – nothing was flying out of Perth. #SPIABNE was rescheduled to June 29-30 and all attendees notified. The next bit of stress was trying to reach 3 attendees coming from Adelaide before they flew out – Adelaide was not affected by the ash clouds so there was no disruption to their flights! Mark, Kenneth and Scott, good thing we caught you in time!

SPIABNE went extremely well, fantastic feedback for both Paul and the course.

Brilliant. I wish I did this 6 months ago so I could use some of the tools to build project understanding + stakeholder relationships and not be facing some of the issues we’re facing now. Kristy Long, Energex

A fantastic course with a great set of tools – Don’t implement SharePoint without attending this first! Matthew Hindley, Coffey

I really enjoyed it. Refreshing insight to Governance and IA – great course! Scott Revell, Queensland Rail

Comforting to recognise that our challenges are common throughout the industry and to be armed with tools to address them. Thank you! Ricky Elias, DWS/QR National

Most amount of information that will help me master SharePoint and get my organisation to fet the most out of SharePoint. Kenneth Abraham, UNISA

The SPIA+Gov class in Auckland also went well.

Well done. Great level of info & materials. Husain Al-Badry

Terrific – great to attend something pitched at consulting not technical level. Warren Grant

Highly recommended. Andre Strik

A well thought out course with a lot of practical relevance. Mark Ashcroft

Very useful, entertaining, intense! Tom Cummins

The #IMPER Issue Mapping Class nearly did not happen. After Auckland, mother nature’s sense of humour took over again. The Chilean ash clouds circled Auckland and part of Australia again! And for the third time, Paul was affected. Flights were changed from the Perth end and then again on Paul’s end. Air New Zealand was the only one flying out of Auckland so we managed to score a ticket out. Once Paul landed in Brisbane, leaving the city became a bit of a problem. All flights from in/out of Brissy were cancelled, except for one. But this flight was understaffed (totally against regulation!). But this time, luck was on Paul’s side. This was his flight and a tired, overworked stewardess relented to do a double shift, taking Paul back to Perth in time for the #IMPER class the next day.

Feedback from the #IMPER class:

Definitely one of the best courses I have ever attended…I have already recommended to many people that they should get on the next course if possible. Jon Gorton

This course was brilliant.  The technique itself is a valuable tool for any business with multiple applications. Leisha Velterop

They say it happens in three: So, by all accounts, smooth sailing for Paul from now on, correct?

I recently participated in the Australian and New Zealand community SharePoint conferences and had a blast. First up, I was given the opportunity to keynote the Australian conference on day 2, where I spoke about SharePoint Governance home truths. It received very positive feedback and I was told by a lot of people that it really made them rethink their governance approach. In fact, in the New Zealand session, as I was going through some of the common mistakes people make, I could see people cringing as they knew they were guilty as charged. One attendee buried her head in her hands when I started talking about the “buffet of platitudes” (what is the “buffet of platitudes” you ask? Come to my class to find out!

The community challenge in Australia was a real highlight. This was a new addition to the conference where a group of conference attendees delivered a SharePoint solution for a not for profit organisation. WorkVentures was the organisation selected and the challenge progressed over three sessions, facilitated by SharePoint community leaders. Session one (Define and Design), was a business session which aimed to work through the high level requirements that WorkVentures had for an intranet, their aims for what they hope it would achieve and what they wanted included.  

This post was written on the assumption that you are familiar with some of Seven Sigma’s methods. If not, then we suggest you stop and read a couple of foundational posts first – especially if these maps do not mean much to you.

The Importance of Goal Alignment…

Nick Hadlee was supposed to chair this define and design session, but was unable to get to the Australian conference due to the earthquake events in Christchurch. As a result, I ended up inheriting this role, so I roped in Andrew Jolly to help me on this, because we have a lot in common and work in a similar way. User surveys had been conducted with WorkVentures staff and management, which gave some insights into potential focus areas for SharePoint. Even so, I had no way of knowing whether those potential focus areas made strategic sense. To resolve this issue, we examined WorkVentures 2009 Annual Report to understand their core purpose and strategic focus areas and various business units. After all, it is all well and good to develop some SharePoint functionality, but if you can’t see how that component helps achieve strategic objectives, how do you know it is the right thing to do?

The annual report proved to be a goldmine. It stated that WorkVentures had embarked on an enterprise improvement strategy prior to SharePoint and the community challenge being on the radar. This enterprise improvement plan, incorporating quality management, IT, HR and business strategy development, provided us the context to focus SharePoint as an enabler that fitted within the plan.

Andrew wasn’t due to fly into Sydney until the evening before the conference. So the day before the conference, Debbie Ireland and I visited WorkVentures on-site, meeting with the CEO, CFO and Marketing Director. The purpose of this visit was to ensure a shared understanding among us all of the alignment of the SharePoint community challenge outputs to the WorkVentures vision, purpose and strategic focus areas. From this conversation, which I mapped, some really interesting stories enabled them to pinpoint one of the key success factors for any SharePoint implementation at WorkVentures – “Bridging Silos”.

Ultimately, we identified four key areas of strategic focus for SharePoint that aligned to WorkVentures strategic goals. Below is a screenshot of the end-to-end alignment in map format . This map was used during the “define and design” conference session to help focus attendees on the purpose of SharePoint for this organisation, as well as noting the key areas that we would have to do well, to consider SharePoint a success.

Stories that led to the goal

Lawrence Luk – the CFO of WorkVentures told Debbie and I several captivating stories that surfaced the bridging silos area of focus. One interesting facet of WorkVentures was that staff from the whole organisation came together once per year – at the Christmas party. This is because each WorkVentures “division” or “business unit” is in effect a separate mini-company, with different goals, customers, vertical markets and regulatory requirements. Thus the problem of silos isn’t a negative one in the sense where dysfunctional “culture” is blamed as such. More that it was the simple fact that each business unit didn’t have a lot in common with other business units. The silo effect was a by-product and it was not driven by negative behaviours.

A great example of this was one particular business unit, Connect IT. It solicits organisations to donate old PC’s, which provides opportunities for skills development for disadvantaged people by teaching them how to refurbish these PC’s. These refurbished PC’s are then sold at low cost. A KPI for this program is the number of organisations donating old PC’s to WorkVentures to sustain ConnectIT. Lawrence had the experience where WorkVentures financial auditors, who had been doing the books for two years prior, asked him why they hadn’t been approached to donate PC’s as they had some. Lawrence realised that he almost missed a great opportunity to help the ConnectIT division achieve one of their key KPI’s. Furthermore, the auditor should never have had to ask themselves. Instead all WorkVentures staff should have this core KPI instilled and internalised so that they could proactively seek out these opportunities to help the other business units.

Another couple of interesting contextual facets illustrated that there were other forms of silo that went beyond a purely divisional basis:

• Most backoffice staff had never been to the Campbelltown office, where all of the “coal face” work took place with the community.
• English was a second language to many staff.
• Not all staff had their own PC’s.

These stories catalysed the conversation to many other examples of missed opportunities, where one business unit has the means to make a massive difference to the results of another. On reflection, it was realised that the nature of WorkVentures business units, being so independent of each-other, inevitably had a silo effect. There was a lack of awareness organisation-wide of the core KPI’s of each unit, hence bridging (not breaking) these silos became a key theme. If SharePoint was to have a long lasting, successful legacy, then it had to play a part in addressing this issue.

The define and design session live…

From there, with invaluable help from Andrew Jolly, we planned and then executed the requirements session with a conference audience of around one hundred people. We split the session up into several areas and the map below shows how we structured it.

After Microsoft did their intro, Debbie explained the context of the community challenge via a short PowerPoint presentation. I then took the chair and explained the vision and areas of focus map (the image above) and stressed to the audience that they were going to be participating in this session as well. I also stressed that no matter what solutions or ideas they came up with, they had to justify them against the four key focus areas, which I went through.

Then we got down to business where I dialogue mapped, with Andrew and I co-facilitating. We decided to focus people’s attention to the core goal of bridging silos as a topic area itself, and ask the audience how SharePoint could indeed bridge silos. We utilised three of the examples that Lawrence gave us  and then leveraged the wisdom of the (large) crowd to solicit ideas. Below is the dialogue map that shows the richness of this discussion (click to enlarge). You will see in this map that for each story told to us by Lawrence, we asked the question “How could we mitigate this with SharePoint?”. The purpose of asking the question this way helped the audience to focus on SharePoint as an enabler to a greater end – and not to be a tool looking for a problem to solve.

Given that we only had around 45 minutes to work with, Andrew and I could only spend around 15 minutes on the bridging silos area. But the map above shows that a lot of very valuable rationale from the audience was captured. The real benefit though was focusing the audience onto the broader goals and how SharePoint could enable them. This was critical to do, because now we had to switch focus from the lofty world of goal alignment to focusing on how SharePoint building blocks could be used to achieve specific ends.

We examined how SharePoint could augment the existing newsletter based method for dissemination of information within WorkVentures. We showed the audience what sample WorkVentures newsletter looked like and reviewed some of the key contextual aspects to newsletters within WorkVentures in terms of their creation, management, reach and format.  We reminded the audience about the importance of bridging silos and then called for ideas from the audience as to how SharePoint could improve the dissemination of news. What was particularly great about this session was that audience members began to relate SharePoint ideas against the key focus areas and identify some of the governance aspects that would be required to make it work.

For example, if you look at the map below (click to enlarge), one of the ideas for the newsletter was a fairly technical one: leveraging “word automation services to extract list or story items and create a PDF”. On first glance one might think “wow that’s fairly heavy” (and not to mention quite nerdy), but the justification for this idea was that it would still account for those WorkVentures users who do not have a PC and therefore access to the portal. Another idea was “Have backoffice staff create the content” on the basis that in doing so, they would get a better feel for coal-face issues that they typically do not see normally. When you think about it, this idea is not SharePoint at all, but more of a strategy for how SharePoint should be adopted and accountabilities for doing so (i.e. a governance approach!)

The key point here is that In both of these examples, audience members were clearly relating their ideas back to the previously established goals, which in turn were aligned to the WorkVentures vision, purpose and key strategic focus areas. Not bad for a couple hours work eh?

With the little time that we had left, we also looked at site navigation and structure, where the audience resolved that WorkVentures would be best served by a hybrid navigation model that was functionally driven primarily (i.e. task based navigation), but then divided into divisional areas. (As opposed to a purely organisational structure driven navigation model).

As you can see below, we made a point of always showing the four areas of focus for SharePoint overall, to ensure that decisions made were informed by them.

Conclusion

I have to say that given the timeframe and constraints, I think we did a great job of developing a shared vision for SharePoint, how it fitted into WorkVentures organisational and strategic context, and then focusing a diverse audience into looking at SharePoint building blocks through that lens. The dialogue maps were very rich, with some terrific ideas, and WorkVentures staff were thrilled to see the alignment of SharePoint to their strategic goals.

I use similar methods to this for non IT projects too, and I think that if we had a week to work on WorkVentures, we would have created something really special. Nevertheless, from my point of view, I think that the community challenge is an terrific idea, I enjoyed being a part of it, and I have to offer special thanks to Debbie and Andrew in particular for helping to make this into a really great mini-engagement. Hopefully we can do it all again next year.

Paul Culmsee

With the assistance of the legendary, not to mention intelligent Erica Toelle, of Fpweb.net, Seven Sigma has delivered another sold out SharePoint Governance and Information Architecture Master Class, this time in beautiful Seattle.

Although this is aimed at SharePoint crowd, the common feedback theme is the request to allocate much more time on Issue Mapping. Issue Mapping is one of many tools we at Seven Sigma have gained expertise over the years and one of many tools covered within the 2-day course. And yet, attendees continue to want to spend more time on that than SharePoint-related content

This class is not to teach attendees Issue Mapping; it only provides attendees with a very basic introduction on its effectiveness in gaining shared understanding amongst participants. For those who want to learn this technique in order to use it effectively, we offer a two-day Issue Mapping Master Class.

Overall feedback for the #spiasea was fantastic, scoring a 4.6 out of 5! Timing was the common factor that brought the score down. If you don’t already know, this class was originally a 4-dayer. From the 4-dayer, certain labs were removed and the content condensed to its current form. Admittedly, it is still very intense for 2 days, however Paul, wanting to give attendees value for their money, decided to keep it intense rather than cutting back on content, knowing that you all can handle the pace

For those interested to know thoughts of those who attended the #spiasea class, read below for Twitter comments..

jayincalgary

OMG. #spiasea was incredible! @paulculmsee is a legend. @ericatoelle is fantastic. @ruveng is awesome. Class is a winner!

SPSherm

Thanks @PaulCulmsee, great stuff, can’t wait to learn more & practice

benmcmann

thanks @paulculmsee @EricaToelle @ruveng for a great #SPIASEA. excellent course

ekcalder

just finished #SPIASEA awesome course! thanks @paulculmsee and @Ericatoelle

Read linkedin comments… more

Michal Pisarek

I think its by far the best course that I have been to on SharePoint or Project Management. To give you an example of how much of an impact it made on myself and the other guys from Habanero, the term “Shared Understanding” has already started to make an appearance in the vocabulary here. 4 copies of Dialogue Mapping have been bought with a few of the BA’s sitting in on internal meetings to practice the technique.

Bart Louwagie

From a non profit it seemed like a risky investment before I got there. I could not have been more wrong. Paul used every minute of the day to add the next great thought, tool, and idea, not holding anything back. Leaps and ounds of progress in understanding for me.

Ben McMann

The course was fantastic. Several of the concepts were confirmation of the work I have been doing over the last 5 years. My biggest takeway comes from a better understanding of the toolstack to help companies utilize SharePoint in a more effective manner, and the research behind why and when to utilize them.

The process to get groups of people to come to an agreed understanding on what they really want to accomplish – and then steer them down a road to effectively implementing solutions to accomplish that – is something I will take with me for the rest of my career.

Thank you all for the great feedback. Keep spreading the word for the next #spia.

Cheers to all

It is with great pleasure for Seven Sigma to announce that we have teamed up with Chapman Consulting to bring Canada our SharePoint Governance and Information Architecture Master Class.

This will be an exciting journey (professionally as well as personally) for Seven Sigma as not one team member has yet to set foot on Canadian soil, and not to mention the irresistible opportunity to partner with Chris Chapman, of Chapman Consulting, himself.

Paul first came across Chris’s brilliant writings on software development practices while he was writing a blog series on SharePoint project failure. Chris is definitely a kindred spirit with Seven Sigma at many levels, and we are thrilled to be working with him.

Chris is an independent, Toronto-based software consultant and Agile Project Coach specializing in SharePoint, .NET technologies and agile/iterative/lean software project management practices.  His passion is helping customers improve their ROI through the application of practical, pragmatic approaches to building their solutions.  Previously a consultant with Microsoft Consulting Services (MCS), Chris has  experience providing enterprise customers with subject matter expertise for planning and deploying SharePoint as well as .NET application development best practices. 

 He is MCAD certified (2006) and earned his Professional Scrum Master I certification in late September 2010 with Ken Schwaber, having previously earned his Certified Scrum Master certification in 2006 and was a presenter at the Agile 2008 Conference in Toronto.

Join Paul and Chris on 12 – 13 May, 2011 for the SharePoint Governance and Information Architecture Master Class.