Nathan @ e-gineer

Revving up the Google App(s) Engine

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan @ e-gineer) — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 04:36:00 +0000

Google have just announced their Google Apps Marketplace, a huge step forward for SME's and forward-looking Large Enterprises.

Google Apps is a powerful, affordable and highly reliable infrastructure. It is delivered at a cost point that is hard for even the largest of enterprises to match. The Google Apps features are still a little limited relative to Microsoft Office, but are improving all the time particularly as Google executes consistently and aggressively on their strategy of speeding up the web (Chrome, Chrome OS, DNS services, Caching) and driving low cost services to the cloud (App Engine, GWT). This is what disruptive innovation looks like - just good enough for low cost customers but quickly moving up the food chain.

Enterprises face notoriously difficult integration and usability challenges for their systems. In recent years we've seen innovation, forward thinking and major advances coming in the consumer space while enterprises watch helpless from behind hard to use, expensive to configure and impossible to integrate systems.

A Google App Store for Google Apps based on the Google App Engine will change this space forever.

Applications would be available for instant installation at a reasonable price. The integration and configuration would be much simpler, as organisations live on a predefined Google stack. (For good or bad, sometimes you just need to choose a particular cool-aid to drink for a while.)

Developers will flock to a platform that allows simple marketing and distribution access to SME organisations with a clear stack. It will reduce sales cycles, increase sales opportunities and provide a green field space for rapid improvement and innovation.

Overall, the enterprise software space will be disrupted one app at a time. It won't start in the largest companies, it won't be immediate, but it will be fast, continuous and drive corporate productivity to new levels.

Corporate Alumni: Pretend they never leave

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan @ e-gineer) — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 10:00:00 +0000

As much as we'd like them to stay, it's irrational to think that good people won't leave the company. The timing of internal opportunities may be out of alignment with their readiness. They may have family commitments. They may just need a change.

The trick is to pretend that they never left, and treat this change as simply a small step on their career journey. Good people will respect and value this approach, choose to stay because you are placing their interests at heart and highly likely return even if they have to leave now.

Build touchstones into their life connecting them to your company and reminding them to come home again soon. Stay in contact with your alumni through Christmas letters and gifts, encouraging them to keep their contact details up to date. Create an equivalent of the Australian Baggy Green cricket cap, a proudly displayed and hard won symbol of their time with the company.

Contact alumni at set intervals to inquire about their career and plans for the future. Offer development planning opportunities, even if they don't involve a return to your business yet. Show an interest and a passion in their future growth and be honest about true opportunities you may have (or not) for them.

Use your alumni network for job referrals, paying a similar bonus as that paid to internal employees for finding new hires. This keeps the connection, provides an incentive and reminds alumni in a low pressure way that you have ongoing opportunities that may interest them. It also ensures referrals are coming from people who know your business well.

Alumni are like friends living overseas. They are hard to stay in touch with, but one day they'll move back and we want to pick up right where we left off.

If you love something, set it free.

Arguing against a fear of open collaboration inside an enterprise

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan @ e-gineer) — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 10:00:00 +0000

Opening your organisation up to blogging or wiki's is difficult for many organisations. It flies in the face of traditional management control over messages and information. It opens the organisation to all sorts of crazy or litigious things that people may write.
Your milage and details will vary, but the basic argument for the safety of open internal enterprise collaboration goes something like this:

Anything people publish will have their name on it.
Is there anything an employee could write on their blog or a wiki that would create a problem for your organisation but does not breech existing policies around communication, confidentiality, etc?
If an employee breaches communication policy, is it more likely to occur in email or on a public forum?

Beyond all the policies and controls, your employees aren't idiots and should value their job. (If not, that's two good things to find out ASAP anyway.)

A soft boiled MBA

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan @ e-gineer) — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 09:57:00 +0000

After finishing my MBA at MGSM back in 2005 I'm finally ready to talk about it...

I did 16 subjects, 16 exams, 16 groups, ~48 assignments, thousands of pages of reading. I recall almost none of it.

But, as a result of my MBA, I am self-aware of my style in groups, confident in my breadth of knowledge and able to see business from different view points. I can make hard decisions more easily and am comfortable finding a balance between performance, friendship and opinions.

Oh, and having the piece of paper doesn't hurt either.

Two worlds colliding: Small and nimble versus Big and efficient

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan @ e-gineer) — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 00:02:00 +0000

Two worlds colliding

While running Synop I'll never forget bidding for a project in partnership with Telstra. We'd worked through a lot of the details and then were asked "Who should we contact from your legal department?". Given Synop had two employees at that point and we were both in the room, Peter quickly responded "It's probably easiest to just route everything through us as a single point of contact.".

Traditionally, small and large companies have enjoyed inherent advantages:

Small companies are nimble and intimate with customers.
Big companies have cost and expertise advantages through economies of scale.

Today, these worlds are colliding and the boundaries are completely blurred.

A natural change for small companies

Small companies can now leverage shared infrastructure like Amazon Web Services or Google Apps to drive down costs and enjoy economies of scale beyond what even large companies can imagine. Small companies can use services like oDesk or 99designs to access unique talent and expertise on demand and at low cost. Small companies can compete for consumer attention in small doses through Google AdWords and learn rapidly through metrics avoiding huge, high risk media spend.

A powerful ecosystem is working to solve these problems for SME's. That elusive market has offered so much promise yet been difficult to capture and service until today's models of engagement like SAAS emerged. Expect to see rapid innovation and adoption in this space.

Small companies are naturally hungry for savings and simple solutions to non-core activities. Moving to these new solutions won't always be technically easy, but it will be culturally consistent for many organisations.

Cultural shift in big companies

Unfortunately for big companies, the changes are more cultural than technical.

Adopting new infrastructure solutions / meeting external benchmarks threatens existing organisations through giving up control or creating order-of-magnitude improvements to existing services.

Social media provides big companies with a unique opportunity to build customer intimacy beyond call center boundaries, but requires fast response and 1:1 service. Internal processes and standards need to change to perform on par with community expectations. Layered decision making through complex policies will almost always be too slow.

Finally, the agility and pace of change required will be slower than proponents expect and faster than resisters can believe. Agility and embracing change are internal cultural parameters notoriously difficult to alter.

Conclusion

Traditional boundaries and advantages between small and large companies are being eroded. Rather than small companies trying to grow up, large companies will try to reach small company standards for cost and intimacy (also see Small is the new big from Seth Godin).

The winners will be those that can iterate change and learn the fastest.

Meanwhile, consumers get increasingly intimate services at lower cost!

UI Design for Non-Designers - From Models to Hypothesis to Metrics

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan @ e-gineer) — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 10:00:00 +0000

Agree on a model

User interface design is filled with opinion and belief - something that many IT teams struggle to resolve (but enjoy discussing at length). A/B Testing adds science to the field, but is relatively late in the process of application development.

We need a better place to start when choosing an approach to application design. After all, our initial designs will set the style and standard of our application in users minds.

For our team, these three questions usually put us on the right path:

What is the end user trying to achieve and what is the simplest possible process to enable that?
What models or patterns can we copy from respected or inspirational sites to achieve that process / interface?
How can we make the experience consistent with our existing sites / applications? (If the new idea is better, how do we update them to match? If they are better, why are we doing something different now?)

The design hypothesis

All our applications go through a design review process during the Implementation phase of the Clarify, Simplify, Implement process.

First we discuss, challenge and agree on these UI models to be used. This is only be effective if the application designers have already been through these questions, asking them honestly and challenging their own design. (Don't just look around for post-build justification.)

After agreement on these core principles and appropriate changes, the design review moves into a second phase of optimisation of the current design. This is where each field needs to be defended, pixel alignment becomes important and we do everything we can to reduce complexity and increase the aesthetic appeal of the application.

Optimisation with metrics

Now we have created our hypothesis of the best possible design for our application, we need to validate and improve it through A/B Testing, customer feedback and metrics.

The world isn't flat: Use enterprise context to enhance, not control

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan @ e-gineer) — Wed, 27 May 2009 12:21:00 +0000

Enterprises are rich in both context and control, while new social media sites start completely flat and without either. By embracing and extending our strengths, enterprises can take a shorter journey to successful and mature social media than the consumer models that inspire us.

Context and control

Most enterprise applications are built around two things:

Context - Who are you? What is your job? What are you trying to do?
Control - What are you allowed to do? What do we want you to focus on?

Public social applications start with neither, but work hard to build both over time:

Context - Who are you? Who do you know? What do you like to do?
Control - We prefer our members to participate and communicate in this manner.

Revolution and Enterprise 2.0

Practicioners attracted to Enterprise 2.0 typically start through a desire for revolution. We want to break out of the context and control forced on us by existing applications and cultural norms. We want new models to emerge, new opportunities to connect with others, new methods of working.

The best examples of these models are available in the consumer space, so our natural tendency is to recreate those tools inside the firewall. This also sits well with our desire for new models and new power. But, it is in direct conflict with the existing norms, powerbase and way of working.

We need to heed lessons on change from Machiavelli:

And let it be noted that there is no more delicate matter to take in hand, nor more dangerous to conduct, nor more doubtful in its success, than to set up as a leader in the introduction of changes. For he who innovates will have for his enemies all those who are well off under the existing order of things, and only the lukewarm supporters in those who might be better off under the new. This lukewarm temper arises partly from the fear of adversaries who have the laws on their side and partly from the incredulity of mankind, who will never admit the merit of anything new, until they have seen it proved by the event.

We need to embrace and extend.

Embrace and extend

Revolution towards a consumer equivalent involves the complete destruction or ignorance of existing context and control the organisation has created. This is a huge leap of faith and not one taken easily by any established organisation.

It's also pointless. Mature social media requires high levels of context (more than enterprises have already) and at least some level of control / agreed behaviour.

A better approach is to embrace the existing context in your organisation. Seed your tools with information that we know to be relevant and expected. For example, when building an internal Twitter, automatically have everyone following their bosses, peers and/or direct reports. When implementing a wiki, setup areas for each existing part of the business. Don't waste people's time and energy requiring the recreation of structures that we already know, use and respect.

Don't give up all aspects of control either. Some groups should have closed membership. Some areas should be locked for editing. That's OK, the world isn't flat.

But, extend both of the models above. Allow new context to develop without intervention. Remove controls that stop the development of context. Expect new controls and conventions to form within this community.

Conclusion

The context and control inside organisations is closer to the norms of mature social media applications than it is to new tools. By embracing the strengths of enterprise structures and extending by allowing users to create new context in emergent areas practicioners can drastically reduce the barriers to approval and adoption.

Successful Enterprise 2.0 uses context to seed flat tools, not to control them. Successful Enterprise 2.0 accepts controls on existing areas, but frees the organisation to create new areas, context and information. Successful Enterprise 2.0 knows that the world isn't flat.

Lachlan ... And then there were 4!

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan @ e-gineer) — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 12:31:00 +0000

Lachlan William Wallace was born in Sydney at 11:12am on the 2nd March 2009. Weight 3.62kg (8lb), height 54cm.

E2EF 2009 - Janssen-Cilag Case Study

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan @ e-gineer) — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 04:47:00 +0000

Here are the slides I presented at the Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum today.

Interested readers, may also like to see my detailed posts on these topics:

Jitter: Experimenting with microblogging in the enterprise

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan @ e-gineer) — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 10:52:00 +0000

Introduction

In February 2008, Janssen-Cilag Australia & New Zealand launched an internal microblogging platform called Jitter. Combined with our intranet's people search capabilities, this formed an interesting enterprise hybrid of Facebook & Twitter style capabilities. This People Search with Jitter solution received Highly Commended in the 2008 Intranet Innovation Awards.

While our intranet wiki JCintra continues to be highly successful, we wanted to keep building our culture of collaboration by capturing and highlighting the flow of ideas. We also wanted to make it easier for our field force to participate and collaborate.

This post is an overview of our approach and outlines some of the lessons learned for others to consider as part of their journey.

People Search with Jitter

This is the home page of the People Search component. Note the simple search box, followed by a list of recent/common searches and then a random face from the organisation.

On the right hand side you can see Jitter posts integrated with the main site news feed. The last 3 posts are shown as a group, and are injected into the news feed based on the latest post timestamp of the news / Jitters.

Searching for a name (e.g. Nathan) shows results from first or last name matches. This quick view allows immediate use of the telephone numbers etc, and incorporates information from our local company system (Juice) and other operating companies through integration with the Outlook Corporate Directory they populate.

Search results are immediate (no Enter click required) and use an AJAX component to prevent the need for full intranet page refresh.

Users may choose to search for a team name (e.g. Information), which returns a picture wall of faces from matching teams.

Note that team and individual results may be mixed together depending on the search term and matches.

Simple page displaying all information for Nathan Wallace. The latest Jitter post is integrated as a status message.

The organisational hierarchy is displayed, including peers, direct reports and his manager. Clicking on those faces navigates the hierarchy. Green arrows show if a team is present under that person.

SMS sending is integrated into the People Search. Messages can be addressed to individuals or entire teams.

If the sender has a mobile, the message appears to have come from their number. If not, there is no reply number, but instead a short text based name is shown on the recipients phone as the sender.

SMS costs are billed to the senders cost centre through the Juice system.

Users can post to Jitter by clicking "Update status" in the Jitter section of the news feed, clicking "update" in the Jitter section of their People Search profile or by sending a text message to the designated mobile phone number.

Posting is done inline, fast to complete and published immediately. Note that SMS following is also available in the system for real time notification of new posts.

An archive of previous Jitter posts is available for browsing.

Adoption and business impact

So far, 59 different people have contributed a total of 306 posts to Jitter. We’re excited that about 17% of people have tried posting, but disappointed that posting remains so infrequent and experimental. Here are some examples:

State of our public hospitals June 2008 report now available at: http://www.health.gov.au/ahca
Neuro Specialist Team your cycle meeting accreditation guide can be found on the Topamax specialist team private space. Please review prior to cycle!!
Suffering from glute meltdown...
Whoo-hoo! This weekend Trudi became the new Australian Swing Dance Balboa champion.
XYZ still appears to be down - I have requested ETA on when this may be back and will notify the business when I have an answer.
Please come and get some friday snacks from my fundraising box in downstairs kitchen. These are to buy new toys and equipment for my baby's daycare.
Dear colleagues, I need a lift to Gordon or Pymble for the next 3 days. Anyone live that way ?
Jitter, Jotter, Blotter, Blatter, Matter! Does it?

Jitter has settled into a pattern as our informal news channel. It’s used for public congratulations, for sharing links and for short news flashes. This is a communication need that is infrequent, but not served by email (too intrusive) or JCintra news (too formal).

As a comparison, our SMS message sending tool has seen 104 users send 1852 messages to 5162 recipients. It is commonly used for announcements to the field force and individual messages from office based assistants to travelling executives. Usage has continued to grow each quarter since it was launched.

Lessons Learned

The flow of news on JCintra has been hugely successful and filled a natural need for the organisation. But Jitter wasn’t responding to a need, it tried to create demand. Open collaboration and idea sharing are common organisational goals, but that doesn’t mean there is latent demand among the people of the business for the tools that enable it. With any new organisational capability, always stay focused on end users and helping them to solve a problem.

While Jitter is a highly flexible tool that people are already using for a wide range of purposes, we didn’t do enough to position this new communication medium or to demonstrate the business value. People didn’t know how to use this new tool. Some feedback was negative, but overwhelmingly people asked “What do I post to it?”, “What’s the business value?”. Without clear answers, people just waited to see what others would do.

People have no idea what Twitter is. People have no idea what microblogging is. Most people don’t know what wiki’s, blogs or social networks are either. When explaining Jitter, one user was even worried that this meant that all the SMS text messages they sent to anyone would now be published on the Intranet. These technologies are natural and well known to people like us, but for the vast majority of people in the world they are new, confusing and weird. Remember to design your solutions and train people as though your mum is the key user!

Microblogging is particularly difficult to position as a business tool since it’s so hard to say anything worthwhile in so few characters. For an organisation starting the journey of sharing ideas and thoughts, blogging may be an easier starting point. Posts can be more serious and business like. Blogs are better known, and at worst look more like normal web pages. Authors can craft and position their entries to meet the political challenges and communication realities of the enterprise. Even if your organisation is ready for fast thoughts and short posts, authors can evolve towards really short blog entries.

Conclusion

In a recent post on microblogging in the enterprise Ross Dawson said "It's a learning process. We must discover what a whole array of new communication technologies allow us to do as organizations. We don't know yet. But we do know that they might make a massive difference to how effective we can be. So those who are the first to work it out will be ahead. No doubt about it.".

At Janssen-Cilag, we’re a step or two closer to working it out.

Juice: A user-centric approach to IT equipment and new starters

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan @ e-gineer) — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 02:05:00 +0000

Introduction

A smooth new starter process and good day-to-day management of equipment are essential to the reputation and operation of all IT departments.

Traditionally, this is a never-ending cycle of standards, policies, delivery and backend information collection (CMDB). Frustrated users end up expensing high cost, non-standard equipment and building shadow IT solutions.

Determined to find a better way, we started a project with 3 aims:

It should be easier to buy something internally than externally.
Equipment orders and new starters are always urgent, so make that the default case.
IT needs macro-level control of standards and procurement. Users and managers need micro-level control of equipment and cost-benefit decisions.

With one person working on the process and another working on the system development, within 4 months we launched Juice. This case study presents our journey and results 12 months after launch, recognised by our Gold award in the Business Solutions category of the 2008 Intranet Innovation Awards.

Before Juice

High level standards were in place (e.g. Dell D630 laptop), but low level customisation was allowed (e.g. 4GB RAM instead of standard 2GB) leading to a wide range of parts and supported systems. With standards control and provision approval, ad-hoc decisions were continually required by IT as to what equipment should be supplied to individual users, for example, does this user do enough travel to justify a light-weight laptop? (Of course, in the end users work out to play the OH&S card and get what they want.)

Processes were designed for the best case (knowing weeks in advance about new starters), not the usual case (they start tomorrow). New equipment orders were placed as required, with a lead time of weeks to delivery and deployment. In addition, equipment was owned by and depreciated to individual cost centres throughout the business. This combination fostered a high level of ownership, but lead to protectionism, non-compliance, misallocation of costs and wasted resources as equipment sat in cupboards as departments tried to ensure a smooth entry for new starters.

This ad-hoc ownership and provision meant that broken equipment endured long downtime periods, particularly for remote users, as it was returned, fixed and then sent back. For new starters, equipment like PDA’s may even passed directly from ex-employees to new employees with no review, training or quality check.

Things worked before Juice, because everyone cared about the end user and worked hard to deliver. But, everyone was frustrated, spot fires were common and a lot of excess effort was required to make things run smoothly.

Managing equipment as kits

All equipment is now defined in kit form. For example: Dell D630 Laptop, BlackBerry 8100 Pearl, Lenovo 20" monitor docking station.

Each kit may have a number of accessories. For example: The Dell D630 Laptop includes a mouse, battery, carry bag, power pack and network cable. Whether they are new or previously used, shipped kits always include exactly those accessories. We chose to remove printed manuals, software CD's, etc.

Lost or broken accessories may be individually replaced through single-click ordering. No approval is required as they are cheap and considered essential to the functioning of the kit. If a kit is returned incomplete, we simply charge the user for any missing accessories.

Each kit has a key item (e.g. the laptop itself). If that item is lost, stolen or broken then the entire kit is replaced. For example, we will send a completely new laptop kit including all accessories and ask for the old laptop / accessories to be returned. This ensures that we are always shipping kits complete and tested.

Where possible we use a "swap & repair" model to deal with problematic equipment and minimise downtime. For example, if a user is having trouble with their PDA we simply configure a new one and send it out immediately. The old PDA is then returned, repaired and reused in the future by another user.

This kit-based approach is highly flexible and allows the system to move beyond IT. We also track corporate credit cards, phone numbers and storage lockers as kits in Juice.

The financial model

We decided that departments must control their own costs, while IT provides standards, service and guidance. If IT is a gatekeeper to individual needs and owns costs we'll always be crushed by low level decisions, limiting the business with strict policies and eventually worked around through shadow IT or creative business / safety / any reasoning.

Instead, IT must control the standards, options and service. While users and managers must own the cost and have the freedom to make personal equipment choices.

As such, in Juice all equipment is purchased, owned and depreciated by the IT department. Based on the cost and useful life of each kit, they are leased to users at a fixed daily rate. This has a number of advantages:

Equipment can be optimally moved between departments and users. (Items owned by individuals are heavily protected and difficult to relocate.)
Equipment moves from a hidden, uncontrollable cost (depreciation) to a controllable IT cost charged monthly. Managers can now engage in a conversation on how to reduce their IT costs or get better value for money.
Equipment is only required for active users & a buffer, so less capital is tied up in equipment for vacant positions.
Users only pay for a kit while they are using it. This encourages the reuse and return of equipment, and encourages IT to maintain the lowest possible inventory that meets service standards.

If a kit is lost, broken or stolen the residual value is charged to the owner's cost centre. While harsh in some cases, this provides encouragement to properly care for and safeguard equipment at all times.

If a user chooses to replace or upgrade a kit, they pay half the residual value of the kit they currently own. (This is a deterrent to upgrading early, but also discourages people from just reporting the kit as lost or broken.)

In the end, IT owns macro-level standards, cost control and service levels. Users own micro-level decisions, needs and cost-benefit choices.

Approvals and workflow

New kits (e.g. I need a data projector), kit upgrades (e.g. I want a lightweight laptop), or kit replacements (e.g. I lost my PDA) require manager approval. This single step workflow is fast, effective and completed by the cost centre owner.

Replacement accessories do not require any approval, they are considered essential to keep the kit in good working order and charged immediately to your team cost centre. For transparency, these charges do appear in the managers monthly bill.

Users and managers have freedom, transparency and accountability for their purchase decisions and costs. IT has no involvement in these approval or workflow stages, we are not a gatekeeper. Our job is to maintain an appropriate menu of equipment, agree recommendations of standard kits per role and to provide high quality equipment, service and training.

Onboarding & Offboarding

Without good people control, you cannot have good asset or equipment control.

Juice synchronises each night with our HR system, detecting any additions, reductions or changes to the organisation structure. Juice also stores a position hierarchy for the business, including predefined employee types with standard equipment. We synchronise the HR changes with the position structure to create appropriate orders in the system.

As a result, we have no new starter forms for IT. This is a huge improvement from forms requesting accounts, ad-hoc requests for security access and equipment orders done on a person-by-person basis. For managers, the work has dramatically reduced. For new starters, the process is far more reliable.

Juice also stores cost centre and team information, inherited down through the organisational tree. With this information, Juice simplifies approvals and allocates charge backs.

Order fulfilment, stock management & asset tracking

A key insight during this project was the importance of separating procurement (purchasing equipment) from fulfilment (distributing equipment). In many cases, Juice is actually solving a fulfilment problem since equipment is reused in the constant turn of employees.

The fulfilment team configures equipment, fulfils orders, checks returned equipment and orders new stock. This is a high touch process with considerable side activities to streamline the business. For example, we consider the redirection of phone numbers and the handing out of phones with a full battery charge to be a standard part of our service. The impact on users of this is remarkable – they can walk away with a phone that is immediately ready for business.

Separating fulfilment from procurement allows us to aim for a 2 business day turnaround on all orders. Kits are ready for immediate shipping and stock is ordered in batches using a simple two-bin Kanban system with visual cues. (Tracking stock levels in Juice is tempting, but much more complicated than visual cues.)

An order is only complete after the recipient marks it as received in Juice. This ensures that the delivery loop is closed and the user is satisfied.

Tracking kits in Juice gives us a full inventory of all equipment, along with its current owner and history of movement. This can be used for asset tracking, identifying troublesome equipment and timely upgrade of old equipment.

Business impact

The first impression on new starters for IT and the business as a whole has been transformed. On their first day we can now hand them a computer, mobile phone, mobile broadband, etc all configured and in working order. This truly shows that we are an efficient, organised company who value your arrival and expect you to be productive. In feedback to HR, basic logistics has gone from the number one frustration of new users to the item they are most likely to raise as unprompted positive feedback.

For managers, the new starter process now requires no forms and works well regardless of the managers proactivity or experience in onboarding. This is a huge relief and reduced burden on their time.

For day-to-day equipment purchases the adoption of Juice has been phenomenal. Within a year we’ve gone from no visibility or control of purchases to more than 180 orders being fulfilled each month. That’s 180 times each month that users can stay focused on their core job rather than worrying about equipment choices, shopping trips or doing nothing and remaining less productive.

Beyond the volume of orders, a great measure of success is the requests we’ve received to expand the catalogue into other areas. Not only did users as for data projectors to be added to the catalogue, but soon after we were asked to add a standard offering for data projector screens. High usability and simple ordering is actually driving users to request standard offerings!

For IT, Juice has increased our accountability through transparency, but it has also made it much easier for us to deliver high quality equipment on time. The process is clear, the orders are standard and our metrics are defined. Beyond that, and perhaps unexpectedly, we’ve also found the transparency has made our users more patient when we have stock delays or high demand. They can see their order is in the system and can trust that it won’t be missed or forgotten.

In short, Juice increases both control and freedom. Users have the freedom to choose which equipment best suits their needs, and control over their individual costs. IT has control of equipment standards (the menu), purchasing decisions and quality delivery.

Integration & next steps

The Juice model of ownership, approvals and cost control is highly extensible and flexible. We’ve continued to evolve the “kits” on offer and extend the system to cover non-IT aspects of our employees needs.

Juice is the database driving the people search capabilities on JCintra.

Juice is used for billing of consumable costs such as the SMS send feature of JCintra and our mobile broadband billing. In time, we will integrate per page costs for printer use and mobile phone charges.

We’re continuing to improve the processes around Juice, streamlining various activities. We automatically order name plates for head office staff and manage storage locker information for shipping of materials to field staff. In time, we will automate the ordering of things like business cards.

We will also continue to explore the capability of Juice to make other usually hidden information visible to end users. We imagine permissions and rights like signing authorities or system access controls tracked as visible assets in Juice - automatically triggering their setup for new users or revocation for leavers.

Conclusion

Juice was a low cost project that has had a large and growing impact on the day-to-day productivity of our business. The Clarify, Simplify, Implement approach pushed our team to convert our delivery process, remove the barriers for users and transform the financial model.

With Juice, users and manages have the freedom to choose the service mix they need, while IT controls the provision, standards and delivery of high quality equipment. Jobs are simpler, roles are clearer and we don’t need to fight for freedom or control.

Clarify. Simplify. Implement.

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan @ e-gineer) — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 10:22:00 +0000

Clarify. Simplify. Implement.

Working through a wide range of projects, our IT team has settled into a consistent project methodology: Clarify, Simplify, Implement.

Clarify: Work with key stakeholders to understand drivers behind the process. Question motives and key assumptions. Turn over all the rocks to see what lies underneath. (In traditional software terms, this is requirements gathering.)

Simplify: Relentlessly question, review and challenge the processes and solution being developed. Drive for consistency. Search for well-known models or applications you can copy. Don't be afraid to change basic assumptions, where simplicity can be enhanced. Always challenge the value of edge cases and try to eradicate them. Work hard to remove every single process, click, page view, icon, etc until you have something so simple that it feels right to everyone involved. (This is the primary value adding activity for IT.)

Implement: After the requirements are clear, and the solution distilled to its simplest form, start implementing. Do not start with a preconceived solution. Continue to loop through clarify and simplify while performing the implementation. (Use your preferred development methodology, provided it supports constant change and rapid prototyping.)

Tough love adds value

Consultants can gather requirements, and programmers can deliver code from anywhere in the world. But, tough love is only available from those you know and trust. This is the advantage and importance that internal IT teams offer.

External service providers make money through complexity and increased scope. It's in their interest to understand your desires, validate them and then do more work to deliver the wish list. IT needs to reject this model, and help prevent the organisation from becoming as complex as it constantly tries to be.

Simplicity is making hard decisions up front so users can save time and effort in every interaction for all time. Assumptions must be challenged. The status quo should not be accepted as always correct. Trade offs must not be avoided.

Tough love and simplification change IT from a human power tool into a true business partner who provides both leadership and support. Tough love is different to just being tough, it includes love. IT should never be a blocker and will occasionally need to be forgiving. IT should be open in communication and have the best interests of the business at heart.

Design reviews: Brutal refinement and pixel-perfect goodness

An essential part of Clarify, Simplify, Implement are design reviews. These form the ongoing basis for a loop of improvement beyond the initial pass of requirements gathering, simplification and implementation.

A design review includes the application/process owner, the key implementation team and a set of trusted peers. They systematically move through and challenge every process, screen, button, decision, layout and definition. Pixel alignment is important. Removing every excess user decision and superfulous design element matters. Entire pieces of the process or application may need to be redesigned or thrown out. Consistency is critical.

Design reviews are hard and tiring, but ultimately hugely rewarding. Project deadlines and a desire to move onto new problems make it hard to continually refactor your solution design and implementation. It's tempting to stop at good enough, when great is just around the corner. Hours spent discussing alternative user interfaces and nitpicking over definitions can seem like wasted or unproductive time, particularly when your not sure if anyone will notice.

Design reviews take good solutions and make them great.

Zero training

Every user is time poor. They have no interest or time for attending training sessions. Training is the first and biggest hurdle to adoption of your new system and process. While complexity exists and training is required, users can always reject or work around the process with a politically acceptable excuse - "It's too hard".

Our aim, through simplification, is to make people's life easier, reduce the burden on their time and remove all the excuses. The reward is adoption, engagement and relief that that finally it's been done the way everyone always thought (individually) it should be.

Staying simple

After launch, when everyone loves the new system because it just seems to easy, is when discipline becomes truly critical. Feature requests, small changes and extensions will flow from users and every single one "should be easy to add". The hard part is deciding which requests are worthy while ensuring that the system remains simple and consistent.

Clear, simple solutions challenge traditional project economics

With a robust process of clarification and simplication, two things happen:

The implementation phase is much easier. (e.g. multi-step, parallel workflow problems become one level approval).
The solution becomes very agile and iterative, since it's only through the project process that new clarifications and simplifications become apparent.

Traditional enterprise software projects start with large, feature rich solutions that cover the complexity of features and organisational behaviour that appear to be "requirements". Clarify, Simplify, Implement refuses to engage in projects until the status quo has been challenged leading to changes or understanding.

For example, we recently set ourselves the IT procurement challenge that "it should be easier to buy something internally than it is externally". On our journey to achieving this, the obvious first step was inclusion of a shopping cart (we were using Amazon as a benchmark). But, when we saw it working we realised that using enterprise context (e.g. cost centres tied to individuals using single sign on) we didn't even need the complexity of a cart. One click ordering is now the default process.

Project economics and style change to become:

Focused on user experience. All projects and features must provide a significant improvement to the user experience or process. If the cost of implementation outweighs that improvement, then keep looking for a simpler approach that is not so expensive to produce.
Just in time development and design. Accept that clarity and simplicity are a journey, no one has the vision to see that far in advance. Be disciplined enough to realise that sometimes small feature additions need large architectural change just to keep the overall application as simple and consistent as possible.
Optimised for lifetime value. The cost of an application must include the cost to end users of training, inconvenience and usage. For example, the cost of implementing single sign on must be compared to the cost of X users performing Y logins over Z years.

Small, simple projects are fast to prototype, easy to justify and responsive to business needs. Combining Clarify, Simplify, Implement with an iterative improvement process like the Continuous Application Release Cycle sets a journey of positive dissatisfaction and continuous improvement that will quickly change your organisation for the better.

Take the time to write short letters

Lack of time, politics and ego drive enterprises towards complexity. Complex solutions reflect our perception of the difficulty of our jobs, they reflect the important differences of every department involved and are an inevitable result of looking for quick wins by not challenging ourselves upfront.

As Mark Twain once wrote "I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead".

Unfortunately, most project teams take this approach, saving on delivery time and hard conversations and effectively hiding lifetime project costs in lost productivity, frustration and training courses.

Clarify, Simplify, Implement challenges this process and demands the writing of short letters. Users will thank you for it.

Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum - Janssen-Cilag Case Study Presentation

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan @ e-gineer) — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 23:52:00 +0000

Here are the slides I presented at the Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum this week.

Interested readers, may also like to see my detailed posts on the same topic:

Continuous Application Release Cycle

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan @ e-gineer) — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 22:40:00 +0000

Introduction

The Continuous Application Release Cycle is a simple process for providing predictable, stable releases in a rapid and sustainable way. It is not a detailed methodology for release planning, development or testing.

Agile methods, open source development and online applications (often in perpetual beta) have established the power of fast iterations and release of minor versions. Release early, release often! I've successfully used the Continuous Application Release Cycle with high velocity applications ranging from publically downloadable software (Sauce Reader) through to internal enterprise web applications.

The Continuous Application Release Cycle

Adopting this cycle brings certainty and momentum to end users while ensuring continuous improvement and low risk release management for developers. Developers move seamlessly from one version to the next, with only a small cross-over for bug fixing during the Beta period.

Release planning is a high level determination of the features and bug fixes that will be incorporated into the release.

Feature development & Bug fixing is the rapid development of wide-spread code changes to implement the planned features.

Design review & Feature freeze is a formal examination of the design and implementation of features for this release. Ensure they are neatly integrated into the application and do not compromise its integrity or simplicity. Build a final design / development plan to finish integration of the features, or delay their release until a future version.

Final development, Help & training and Bug fixing is a finalisation phase, with consolidation and review of the code base. New capabilities may be added to finalise features, but major surgery should be avoided. Help and training materials for new features are constructed in parallel.

Beta launch puts the application through standard test suites and launches to the Beta user group.

Beta testing & Bug fixing has Beta users installing, trying and testing new application features. Appropriate bugs may be fixed with careful control and testing.

Launch puts the application through standard test suites and launches to all users on production.

Production is wide-spread use of this application version. Bugs and feedback are collected for integration into the next version.

The CARC in practice

The length of the cycle varies depending on the type of application, but I've found that monthly releases work well in practice. The development phase lasts about 4 weeks, with 1 week of Beta testing before launch. Each version is in production for about 4 weeks.

The fast development cycle means each release has fewer changes, facilitating a short testing cycle and removing the heavy crunch that typically accompanies software releases. For developers, the key delivery date is the release to Beta testing. With experience, the release to production becomes increasingly routine.

Regular, planned releases keeps developers close to customer needs and allows rapid response to application problems or competitive features. End users enjoy a sense of momentum from the application, and become increasingly engaged as their suggestions, feedback and problems are quickly addressed.

Building Enterprise 2.0 on Culture 1.0

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan @ e-gineer) — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 22:00:00 +0000

Introduction

JCintra, our Intranet Wiki, has seen incredible levels of adoption and participation, with a positive impact on the way information flows in our organisation.

Over 18 months, JCintra amassed 23,335 content contributions from 239 (~70%) people. The number of contributions per month continues to increase steadily.

But, JCintra continues to function as an incredibly easy to use Intranet, rather than as a genuine Wiki. In fact, 85% of our 3000 pages only have one contributing author. (Interestingly, this behaviour occurs even at Atlassian, who build Wiki software as their business!)

This article documents our cultural journey so far, and outlines our ideas for driving the next phase of change.

Technical and Cultural Maturity

What does success look like?

Decisions about information sharing in organisations like Janssen-Cilag are complex. Some information should be open, but isn’t. Some information needs to be closed and controlled. Some ideas should be discussed in the open, while other ideas need to be carefully communicated.

Success is defined by what we do, not what we have the opportunity to do. Implementing a Wiki isn’t success, building an organisation that will take collective ownership and collaboratively edit content is. Technology creates opportunity for changes of behaviour and helps shift the conversation away from excuses (it’s too hard) to reasons (it’s too risky).

Frankly, at Janssen-Cilag, we don’t yet know exactly how we should be communicating and collaborating. But, we do know that the steps we’ve taken so far have improved communication, increased our flexibility and given people the power to run with ideas. We want to continue this journey, pushing more power to the edge of the organisation.

The Enterprise Collaboration Maturity Model

All knowledge work is either individual or group based, and it is always performed in an individual, shared or open environment.

The Enterprise Collaboration Maturity Model depicts these work models, and incorporates the cultural journey that enterprises take to reach each stage. Currently, Janssen-Cilag provides an open Wiki (high capability maturity) but primarily uses it as Groupware (medium usage maturity).

To continue our journey, Janssen-Cilag needs to become comfortable with the idea that published content is not finalised. Specifically, we need users to:

Make contributions in an open space that are not policy or announcements.
Edit work or information that is owned collectively.

Successful Enterprise 2.0 style collaboration requires both technical and cultural maturity. While technology opens immediate potential, organisations must grow towards new patterns of usage and collaboration.

The two cultural barriers to collaboration

There are dozens of reasons and millions of excuses as to why people won't share knowledge; but they all fall within two areas:

Sharing knowledge adds more work (“I don’t have time to share”); and
Sharing knowledge increases personal risk (“I don’t want to share”).

These negatives cannot be eradicated, but they can be minimised.

Reducing additional work

Collaboration and knowledge sharing take time. The technical process takes time, but more significantly, wording your thoughts takes time.

Tools for collaboration must do everything possible to reduce the friction of contributing. It needs to be so easy to use, that you can literally laugh at anyone who tells you it is too hard (in a nice, let me show you, kind of way). In practice this means single sign on, one-click editing and instant gratification on saving. Hurdles like slow technology, login screens, workflow approvals or training kill collaboration before you even start.

The time taken to correctly phrase thoughts and distil ideas is unavoidable, but can be minimised by changing our expectation of shared content away from “finished product” towards “work in progress”. Publishing information early and often (rather than infrequently and completely) moves authorship away from essays and succinct conclusions towards sharing of insights and decisions. The ultimate method for sharing without increasing work is to move the work in progress into an open environment (share everything by default).

Policy opportunities exist to move (but not reduce) the work of sharing knowledge. For example, information is shared verbally on the condition that the recipient will publish it for wider consumption. He who asks, documents. A solution like this rewards the giver with time, builds knowledge on-demand and provides learning reinforcement for the recipient.

Reducing the personal risk of sharing knowledge

Collaboration and knowledge sharing increase personal risk by creating a published, traceable flow of inputs (My mistakes are permanently recorded!) and making past information less valuable than new ideas (What if they don’t need me anymore?).

Risk can be offset by increased rewards, such as recognition for contributions or performance objectives based around knowledge sharing. In practice however, these are hard to implement or judge.

In fact, most people are comfortable with publishing or sharing "finished product". At Janssen-Cilag we've seen this through high usage of news announcements and publication of documents. Unfortunately, most knowledge work is a constant work in progress without a clear end-point and thus never reaches the point of being shared.

The solution is to encourage content contributions that are finished enough to be low-risk publishable, but are not so big as to never reach completion. Encourage people to contribute to a flow of insights and decisions that are made as part of larger projects. Adding to the flow of information (I'm adding to the discussion) is far less risky than publishing final knowledge (I own the final decision) or changing existing content (I'm changing the company position).

Own the flow and the stocks will come

News announcements have been the most successful part of JCintra. Open for publishing by anyone in the organisation, they have replaced email for announcements ranging from major organisational change through to baby announcements.

Through this flow of news, JCintra has become the trusted source for the latest information. "Did you see the announcement on JCintra?", is not an uncommon question around the office. As a result, users also expect JCintra to have the latest policies and information. By owning the flow of news, we've created the trusted source for information stocks.

There are three critical information flows, each of which creates its own stock over time:

The flow of news becomes a stock of facts and decisions.
The flow of projects becomes a stock of investigations and outcomes.
The flow of ideas becomes a stock of potential and experts.

A focus on capturing the flow has many advantages:

The system always contains the latest information, building trust and adoption.
The process is easy to enforce and success is readily measured (by monitoring email announcements, the only alternative).
Work and risk is minimised for contributors.
Through search, archived flows become a rich and readily available stock.

Over time, the flow of decisions and insights washes over the organisation, helping each person refine their mental map and build a personal body of knowledge. When new items fit their mental model, they can be increasingly confident and aligned in decision making. When news doesn't fit their mental model, they can seek clarity or raise an area of concern.

Focus on owning the flow of information, then have the patience to watch the stocks gradually compile.

Manifesto for Collaboration Tools

Shamelessly stealing from the Agile Manifesto, I propose the following values for building Enterprise 2.0 collaboration systems:

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools.
Ease of use over comprehensive training.
Flexible tools over completeness.
Responding to needs over creating demand.

(That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.)

We are building processes and tools to help with collaboration, but should never forget that the main thing is that people actually work together and talk to one another. We don't need to capture every conversation or every piece of knowledge, we just want to strengthen weak ties.

Training in systems is important, but only after we've done everything possible to design for zero training. In an enterprise, your Mum really is the end user; design for her! Always sacrifice features and power for ease of use. The minute you have to train people you will lose them to the "more work" excuse.

It's tempting to aim for tools that deliver exactly what people need in different scenarios. To always take tools that one step further to capture their exact requirements. In reality, people like to push and abuse tools that are comfortable, flexible and part of their every day work (e.g. email, Excel). Wiki's, blogs and search are great examples of simple tools that can be used for a myriad of purposes without needing a million customisations or extensions.

Finally, deliver solutions that meet an existing need. If you build it, they won't come. But, you can build it around where they already are.

Next steps for Janssen-Cilag

At Janssen-Cilag, our Wiki has settled into a steady pattern of news publication and simple intranet editing. It is well established and respected for these tasks. Our aim is to build on the strengths of JCintra, while expanding into new areas of knowledge capture.

First we will make internal blogging available to all employees. Links to new posts will be interspersed with news on the home page, creating a flow of ideas in the trusted location but not taking valuable attention away from the full content news items. The people directory will also have direct links to recent posts.

Second, we'll add a Twitter/Facebook style status capability to the people directory which has a history and can be updated via SMS. This is a powerful micro-blogging solution for our field personnel and will be integrated with the Office Communicator Note field. Recent status updates will also be incorporated into the home page news feed, but in a very lightweight way. (The Jitter screenshot shows our early experiment in this area, which we have decided not to launch but instead integrate into the people directory.)

Finally, we hope to expand our internal project management offering with something in the style of Basecamp, which can create a feed of project related milestone news for the home page.

Overall, the aim is to build on the strengths of JCintra by adding ideas and project milestones to the flow of information that washes past people on the Intranet home page. With time this will build a powerful stock but, most importantly, it immediately provides ideas and stimulation to drive interactions between individuals.

Conclusion

Successful Enterprise 2.0 style collaboration requires both technical and cultural maturity. Janssen-Cilag has adopted an open Wiki with the potential for collective ownership, but usage remains dominated by individual contributions to a shared space. This is reflected in the high usage of JCintra’s news column for announcements and the regular publishing of team and policy information.

To encourage an organisational shift along the enterprise collaboration maturity model, Enterprise 2.0 leaders should focus on capturing the flow of information. Over time, the flow builds not only a stock of searchable knowledge but also a reputation as the source of fresh ideas and trusted up-to-date content.

Building on the success of our Intranet Wiki, Janssen-Cilag plans to introduce internal blogging and personal status updates to encourage the flow of individual insights and decisions.

Note: Here are some of the articles I read while writing this post. Thanks also go to my team without whom this would all be theory.

Metaphors for interface design

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan @ e-gineer) — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 11:36:00 +0000

Over the last few years, user experience has become my primary focus when building processes and systems. But, I never truly understood the importance of interface design until I read this post by Andy Rutledge.

Andy intelligently draws a metaphor where words represent content (what you are saying) and body language represents interface design (how you look as you say it). He also beautifully illustrates that a huge component of all communication is non-verbal, although it is less than the sensationalist 93% that people inaccurately extrapolate from Mehrabian's communication study.

What is your interface design saying?

Our Intranet, the Wiki: Case Study of a Wiki changing an Enterprise

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan @ e-gineer) — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 21:30:00 +0000

Introduction

Janssen-Cilag is one of the fastest growing, research based pharmaceutical companies in Australia. It has more than 300 employees, split across Australia and New Zealand with around half based in the field. It is one of 250 Johnson & Johnson operating companies, which total about 121,000 employees across 57 countries.

In 2006, Janssen-Cilag completely replaced our simple, static HTML intranet with a Wiki solution. Over the 16 months since launch, it has dramatically transformed our internal communication and continues to increase in both visits and content contributions each month.

History of Janssen-Cilag's Intranet

Janssen-Cilag's previous intranet, InfoDownUnder, was a static HTML site, originally developed in 2001. Content was maintained using FrontPage, with only a handful of active editors throughout the company. IT was involved only to upload latest versions of content files from the development site onto the production server.

While some areas were lovingly maintained to a high standard, large sections of content were out of date. There was no search capability. Trust in the information was very low. News was distributed via email, not the web. The site featured excessive use of the blink tag, and New! icons highlighting content that was up to 3 years old.

Latent demand for change was strong.

Intranet requirements gathering

The culture at Janssen-Cilag is highly consultative and relationship based. As such, gathering information and buy-in is often achieved through a series of conversations and discussions, building a coalition of support.

Requirements for a new Intranet site were collected through 27 interviews with a variety of people from all levels of the business. Three themes emerged:

We need a trusted source of information
Whatever we do has to be simple
Just do something!

Each conversation varied widely in focus, but the format usually went as follows:

The floodgates open with a dump of information the user considers vital for the Intranet, which lasts about 15 minutes. (What can I get?)
They highlight search as a key requirement.
I would steer the conversation to questions about how content should be maintained. (What can you give?)

Pitching a Wiki to the business

With many years of experience building one of the first large scale completely open collaboration platforms for the web and then building heavyweight enterprise CMS systems for large organisations, I've personally come full-circle to the idea that the best collaboration systems are incredibly simple and open. Wiki's are a powerful starting point for any organisation, but latent demand at Janssen-Cilag created the perfect environment.

As such, I used the requirements gathering session as a chance to pitch the idea of a Wiki as the solution to our Intranet problem. After bringing the conversation to understand our content maintenance requirements, I'd talk through the Wiki approach and how it may work for Janssen-Cilag. My sales pitch went as follows:

We need a system where editing is immediate and very simple.
Getting people to contribute at all is hard, so we need to concentrate on letting people do things rather than worrying about what they shouldn't do.
The risk of letting anyone change anything is low, since we'll keep a complete history of changes so we can quickly undo mistakes and we can hold irresponsible individuals accountable for anything improper. (Reactive moderation rather than Proactive moderation).

In general, the response was incredibly positive. Predictably, the main argument against this system was fear of improper changes to content, particularly for information subject to regulatory control. I would counter this argument in two ways:

There are two ways to control people's behaviour: social forces and technical forces. Currently, we successfully rely on social forces to control a wide range of things like who calls or emails the CEO with their latest crazy idea. Technical forces are powerful, but with each technical feature we increase training and raise the bar against collaboration. Surely, we can see if social forces will be enough for all but the most critical of content?
Anyone can choose to monitor any content that they are concerned about (e.g. automatic email alert with changes). So, they can quickly jump in and correct any mistakes.
For exceptional cases, we may choose to lock down critical content and define clear ownership and responsibility for its maintenance.

At the end, showing people around Wikipedia was an incredibly powerful way to seal the deal, particularly since they have often used it to find information in the past.

There were no major objections to trying a Wiki-style concept.

Implementing a Wiki for your Enterprise Intranet

We purchased, customised and launched a pilot Wiki Intranet within two weeks and with a budget of $11,000 AUD. This included all graphic design and single sign on integration.

After evaluating a wide range of alternatives including MediaWiki, Twiki and FlexWiki; we selected Confluence by Atlassian. Our main concerns were support for a hierarchy of pages, strong attachment capabilities, news features, LDAP integration, high quality search and a decent rich text editor.

Our customisation focused almost completely on usability. People shouldn't know or care that they are using a Wiki. All that matters is that they can easily browse, search and contribute content. (In fact, after 16 months, only a small set of Janssen-Cilag staff would think of our Intranet as a Wiki. To them, it just seems natural that Intranet software would have evolved to something this simple to use.)

Here were our implementation decisions:

Integration with LDAP and use of NTLM for automatic single sign on is essential. We even hacked someone's starting point and open sourced our improved version.
Rich text editing must be available and as Word-like as possible.
Users like hierarchy and structure, the Wiki should not feel disorganised or completely free-form. (Confluence supports this with an exact page hierarchy capability.)
Sacrifice power and flexibility for simplicity. For example, our page design is fixed into a title, alphabetical list of subpages, page content, alphabetical list of attachments. While it would be nice to be able to change this at times, or order the attachments, or change the look and feel; it's far more important that everyone can contribute and clearly understands how things work.
Remove as many unnecessary features as possible. For example, labels are a great idea, but we already have hierarchy and most users don't really know what labels are.

Launch & user training

We started the new site as a pilot, launching as the source of information for a relocation of our head office. (Nothing drives traffic like the seating plan for a new office!) Information around the relocation was fast moving and changing daily for the two weeks between announcement of the move and our actual relocation.

Building on that success, we obtained executive approval to replace the existing Intranet. Over the next two weeks we worked with key content owners (most particularly HR) to show them how to create pages and migrate appropriate information. We made the decision to not automatically migrate any content, mostly because it was so old and trust in the existing intranet information was so low.

Our launch was timed with an informal head office monthly meeting, where around 100 people stand and listen to an update from senior management. We switched the site to live during the meeting, and had 5 minutes to present:

1 min: Highlight the desire for a trusted source of information that was simple to use.
3 mins: Full training that showed how easy it was to view, search, edit & maintain.
1 min: Point out that responsibility for building that trusted source is now in your hands!

That launch presentation remains the only formal training we've ever provided on how to use the system.

Continuing training has been provided through short one-on-one demonstrations (we only show, we never do) and a detailed help section (I'm happy to show you now, but for future reference here is the help page).

Adoption, statistics & business impact

The adoption of JCintra has been remarkable. After only 3 months, 111 people had contributed more than 5,000 changes. After 12 months, we had 18,000 contributions from 184 people within the business.

Most significantly, our contributions per month has continued to grow since launch. People are engaging and collaborating more with time, they are not losing steam as you might expect.

To drive adoption, we've primarily focused on owning the flow of new information. Early on, we established a policy that all announcements must be on JCintra. When necessary, they may be sent via email in addition to posting as news on the Intranet. Today, announcements ranging from major restructures to new babies for employees flow through the news page without clogging up email inboxes.

Owning the flow of news has established JCintra as a trusted source for the latest information. This translates into an expectation that the stocks of information (e.g. policies) will be available and up to date. Own the flow and the stock will come.

Business information that was previously scattered in email (e.g. Business Planning presentations) is now collected into a permanent, secure online space. We have a growing reference and history of information to build on and make available to newcomers. Knowledge management, previously a big concern, has moved off the agenda for the time being.

Content ownership model

For many Intranet owners, the model for content ownership is a key point of focus. With JCintra, our philosophy (successfully so far) has been:

If someone isn't willing to maintain a piece of content, it can't be that important to the business.
We happily show people how to do things with the site, but we don't do it for them.
Occasionally we highlight sections of the site on the home page, which is a great way to drive the defacto owners to clean it up a little.
We encourage people to have high expectations for content on the Intranet. If something is missing, please report it to the appropriate area of the business, or better still, add it for them.
The answer to verbal queries for many departments has become, "it's on JCintra". This reminds people to search first and ask later.
In the end, the quality of content in an area is a reflection on the defacto department owner, not the Intranet itself.

As a result, we've seen some departments embrace the Intranet in a big way, while others don't update content as much as we'd like. As expected, service areas of the business have been strong adopters, which means the main areas of Intranet content have been well maintained.

We've not yet adopted a formal content review process, but believe this will become more important in the next year of the sites life.

Keeping momentum & next steps

The primary barrier to continued success of JCintra remains the same as our initial barrier: encouraging a culture of collaboration and transparency. Some areas of JCintra have been highly successful in this regard, while other sections have never gained clear ownership or momentum.

JCintra works best when it is established as the source of truth for information and becomes the place where the work is done on a day-to-day basis. While ever the Intranet is a place that has to hold a published copy, it will remain as "extra work" and struggle in the competition for people's time.

Conclusion

Implemented with usability and simplicity as the key focus, a Wiki is a fast, cheap and highly effective way to run an Intranet. Users do not perceive our Intranet as a Wiki, with all the anarchistic overtones that brings. Rather, they see the simplicity and flexibility as a natural evolution of Intranet technology.

In a culture full of all the typical trust, transparency, workload and security concerns common to big companies; the simplicity of this system and its content ownership model cut through. Problems of driving collaboration and content updates remain, but they are exposed as the cultural and people problems at their heart since the technical and workload "excuses" have been stripped away.

Note: Our Intranet has evolved significantly from the screenshots above, which were taken from the time of launch to avoid business confidentiality issues in this public forum. The site now includes a wealth of content and tight integration with our data warehouse, CRM and internal operational systems. Read more in Building Enterprise 2.0 on Culture 1.0.

Getting your Blogger blog listed in search results

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan @ e-gineer) — Sat, 11 Aug 2007 21:47:00 +0000

3 months after her birth and simultaneous notification to the Google Crawler for indexing, Elimena.com was still not showing up in Google's results (or other search engines for that matter). I was shocked it was taking this long, and had resubmitted multiple times.

In desperation today, I thought it might be related to the Javascript trick I'm using to show the Flash Movie Header as a link that doesn't require activation to use. Looking at the source code, I noticed this fatal tag on every page of the site:

being added automatically by the Blogger template tag:

<$BlogMetaData$>

I was confused, since my e-gineer blog, also powered by Blogger, doesn't add this when using the BlogMetaData template tag.

To fix this check the following Blogger setting:

Login to Blogger.
Go to Settings, then Basic tabs.
Ensure that Add your blog to our listings? is marked as Yes.

If your blog is suspected as spam by Blogger, and they force you to enter a captcha code everytime you post, you can submit your blog for review by Blogger staff which should fix the problem.

If all else fails, simply copy all the code you need that is produced by the <$BlogMetaData$> tag and paste it into your template in place of the tag itself.

Cost allocation model for shared services

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan @ e-gineer) — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 00:15:00 +0000

Introduction

Earlier this year we conducted a review of the cost allocation model used to charge our local operating companies for support centre services like helpdesk, IT procurement, server management, etc. This post outlines the model we came up with and draws key principles for any agreement of this type.

The key is to keep everyone focused on costs, not on cost allocations. (Cost allocation just shifts costs around.)

When allocating costs from a shared service, the key aims are:

Provide customers with transparency and control over cost drivers.
Provide flexibility over the way resources can be used, while keeping a single consistent allocation model.
Leave choice over resource allocation and daily control with the service provider.

The costs for a shared service can be divided into 2 components:

Infrastructure
People

Infrastructure costs

Infrastructure costs should be completely separated from overheads and people costs. Examples of infrastructure include data transfer, rack space charges, outsourced server monitoring, etc.

Each infrastructure item has a total cost, which must be divided among the customers according to an allocation model that best represents the cost driver.

Example: Allocation of Infrastructure Costs
Data transfer into the data center for July cost $100. The allocation model for this infrastructure item is bytes transferred by each customer company. Foo Industries generated 75% of the traffic during July, while Bar Incorporated generated the remaining 25%. As such, the data transfer bill for Foo is $75 and Bar is $25.
Racks for housing servers in the data center are depreciated at a rate of $50 per month. Costs are distributed based on the number of servers used by each company. Foo has 10 servers in place, while Bar has 15. As such, Foo's rack charges is $20 for July while Bar pays $30.
Server monitoring is compulsory for data center servers and is charged at $200/server/month. This is billed directly to each company based on their servers in place so Foo pays $2000 and Bar pays $3000.

In the end, we have this equation to give the operating company cost for each infrastructure item:

ItemCostToCustomer = TotalCostOfItem x (CustomerUsage/TotalUsage)

People costs

People in a shared service spend their time on 3 things:

Project work
Ad-hoc tasks, maintenance and incident management
Managing other people

Each person working in a shared service has a specific cost. This will typically include:

Salary & benefits
Building and space costs
Equipment costs

Time spent on project work and ad-hoc tasks can be directly allocated to customers, but time spent on people management is harder to quantify. To solve this problem, we calculate the cost of time spent on people management and allocate it among all reports under the manager.

Example: Allocation of people costs
Alice is the manager of the shared service and spends 100% of her time managing people. She does no direct project work and does not complete any ad-hoc tasks. Her cost, including salary, building and equipment costs, is $100.
Alice has 5 direct reports, each of whom have 4 reports, giving a total of 25 staff in her team. Alice's cost is divided evenly among all 25 reports, adding $4 to the cost of each person.
Alice has no time to allocate among customer companies (she's done no "real work" afterall). But, her cost is effectively distributed by the work completed for customers since it is allocated to staff who do "real work".
Bob reports to Alice. His cost, including salary, building and equipment was $80. With the management allocation from Alice, his cost is now $84.
Bob spends 50% of his time on people management, 25% on projects and 25% resolving ad-hoc issues. Per the model, 50% of Bob's total cost of $84 is evenly distributed among his 4 reports ($42/4 = $10.50 each). The 25% project work ($21) and 25% ad-hoc work completed by Bill are billed to the customers directly.
Chris reports to Bob and spends all his time on ad-hoc tasks. His cost, including salary, building and equipment was $60. With the management allocation from Alice and Bob, his cost is now $60 + $4 + $10.50 = $74.50.
Of the ad-hoc tasks performed by Chris, 50% were done for Foo Industries and 50% were done for Bar Incorporated. As such, Chris's cost to Foo Industries is $37.25 and to Bar Incorporated is $37.25.

In summary, the allocation of people costs follows these principles:

All people costs are allocated and paid on an individual person basis. So, a company that uses 25% of Derek's time will pay 25% of Derek's cost.This is not the same as using 25% of total time spent by the shared service team and paying 25% of their total cost. For example, if we use resolved calls as the metric to determine ad-hoc time spent and include both L1 (average 300 calls) and L2 (average 50 calls) engineers in the cost calculation there is no potential reward for moving calls from L2 resolution to L1 resolution.
Time spent on people management (an rough estimate for each manager) is added to the cost of the people being managed. So, you are only charged for actual work being done but we recognise that part of the cost of using those resources is the management team in place.
Time spent on project work is directly allocated and billed to the customer requesting the project. It's important to appropriately separate these tasks from ad-hoc time. This ensures that we can see the real cost of project activities and keeps ad-hoc tasks reasonably consistent in complexity (thus evenly cost distributed).
Time spent on ad-hoc tasks is assumed to be the remainder after calculating time spent on people management and time spent on projects.

It's only a model

As always, this model is an approximation of reality. It will never be perfect, nor should we aim for it to be perfect. It's important to remain pragmatic and remember that a lot of the small inconsistencies and errors will correct themselves. (Two slightly wrongs can make a right in this context.)

You'll need to think about how to handle events like extended sick leave or annual leave.

The key is to remember to keep all cost drivers transparent and controllable. Try not to let generic buckets like "overheads" or "maintenance" creep into the model.

Conclusion

After 6 months use on a team of 25 people divided among 5 operating companies over 2 countries, we've found this to be a simple, flexible model that has given us unprecedented insight and high level of control over cost drivers.

We're now dealing with the hard (and important) problem of seeking real process improvement and cost control rather than looking for temporary advantage by playing with cost allocations to get temporary local advantage.

Promotion helps turn flows into authorative stocks

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan @ e-gineer) — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 21:19:00 +0000

Before the Web, the availability of information was tied to the ubiquity of the promotion medium. Today, all information is equally accessible¹, but promotion can accelerate its distribution.

Before the Web, information was strictly divided into stocks (books) and flows (newspapers & magazines). Today, through the power of search flows are immediately converted into stock resources.²

Before the Web, promotion could only be used to maximise exposure through flows. Today, promotion is used to speed up information flow. Speeding up dissemination of your ideas allows you to set the agenda, frame the context and establish yourself as an authority. In effect, speed helps establish your flow as the stock resource.³

When executed correctly, promotion today provides far more potential for long term value than previous mediums ever enabled. Establish the context and conversation and you will become established as the authorative stock.

Footnotes:

All information lives on a web page, and can be seen by simple distribution of a link. In that way, my lowly blog post is equal to CNN's biggest story of the year.
Background on stocks and flows.
Search engines are complex beasts and continually evolving, but this is roughly true of how they work.

Creating a flash movie header or banner for your site

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan @ e-gineer) — Mon, 21 May 2007 08:49:00 +0000

Rather than use a typical image header for Elimena's site, I wanted to try something different and use a flash movie instead. Here are complete instructions on how to create your own...

All the ActionScript code required is in a single block at the bottom of this post, but don't be too hasty as it won't make much sense without the options and other info I've described.

Import the video into Flash (FLV) format

First you need a suitable movie that can be looped in some reasonable way (i.e. the first and last frames of the movie have a reasonably similar appearance). I simply bought a short video from iStockPhoto. I selected the large web size, which provides good movie quality at a width of 640px (just wide enough for an effective site header).

Using Macromedia Flash Professional 8 (just download a trial version to get started), I created and new Flash document and imported the iStockPhoto movie (File > Import). In the advanced import settings you can crop the imported movie to 640x200px and trim the timeline down to something that loops smoothly and keeps the size reasonable. This process creates a Flash Video file (FLV) that can effectively stream as a simple static HTTP served file.

After importing the movie, we must set the background Flash document to the exact same dimensions and position. First, select the main Flash document (click in the drawing area, but outside any objects including the FLVplayback object) and then click the Size button in the Properties tab setting the dimensions of the Flash document to match the movie (e.g. 640x200px). Second, click on the FLVplayback object in the drawing area, then edit the X, Y position of the FLVplayback object to 0, 0 (perfectly aligning it with the document).

At this point we have a simple flash file that will play the movie end-to-end once.

Prepare the Flash container for ActionScript code

Before doing any coding, we need to prepare the FLVplayback object. (These will make sense below.) Click the FLVplayback object inserted above and then:

Change the Instance Name in the Properties tab to be video.
Set a cue point (Parameters tab > cuePoints) called EndFadeIn 1 sec into the movie.
Set a cue point called StartFadeOut 1 sec before the end of the movie.

Making your video loop

For continuous video, we need to both setup the FLVplayback object to loop and create a small fade effect to hide the jump from the last frame to the first frame. Unfortunately, and unbelieveably, there are no "make my movie loop" or "fade" checkboxes in Flash. Believe me, I looked for a long time in disbelief.

The ActionScript code below simply listens for the complete event on the FLVPlayback object and triggers the object to play again. This will cause it to loop around and around.

Using fade for a seamless loop transition

Unless you have a movie designed for seamless looped play, you'll most likely need to join the start and end together with a short fade sequence. This keeps the continuity of play, but hides the frame jump between the end and start of the movie.

Scarred by the lack of loop checkbox, but still optimistic I only spent half as long looking for the fade in and fade out video effects. Again, no such thing. To add fades to your movie, you need to add some ActionScript. Constant use of the onEnterFrame event leads to high CPU consumption (on my old laptop anyway, not so much on the brand spanking new desktop), so I brushed off my coding skills and put together something that achieves the effect with a very low CPU load.

The ActionScript code below catches the cue point events, using StartFadeOut to register an onFrameEvent handler that performs the gradual fade out and fade in of the movie loop. The EndFadeIn event deregisters that handler, reducing the CPU usage required to play the majority of the video clip. (I think this is a fairly neat & important trick that I didn't find used elsewhere.)

Linking the banner to your home page

All good site headers should link back to the home page. Still optimistic, I looked for the add hyperlink capability in Flash (which also doesn't exist). I then tried wrapping the Flash object in an anchor tag (also doesn't work).

The solution is to create a button in flash and use ActionScript to link to your chosen page:

In the Timeline panel, click the icon to add a new layer. This layer will be used to house the button without affecting our other content.
Make sure the new layer is selected.
On the Insert menu, choose New Symbol...
Use the Button type, name it Button Symbol and click OK. This creates a canvas on which we can make the button template that will be added to the library. (We have to add it to our document later.)
Select the rectangle tool and set the border to none and the colour to have an alpha of 0. You can now draw an invisible rectangle in the middle of this canvas. Don't worry too much about the size & position at this point.
Use the select tool and select your rectangle by clicking on where you know it will be.
In the Properties tab, set the width to 640px, the height to 200px, the X position to -320px and the Y position to -100px.
The Button Symbol is now in your Library, but isn't in the document yet.
To return to the main stage, click Scene 1 in the Timeline panel (should be just to the left of your Button Symbol link).
To add an instance of Button Symbol to the document, drag it across from the Library pane on the right.
Use the Properties tab at the bottom to set the instance name to btn and align it exactly by setting X and Y both to zero.
Make the button link to your chosen URL by adding this code to the ActionScript section:

on(release) { getURL("http://www.e-gineer.com", "_self"); }

Initially I thought this wasn't working either, as the link in the sample I copied was to an outside website which seemed to get blocked for security reasons in IE (silently) and in FireFox (with an error message that finally helped me understand what was happening).

Removing the "click to activate control" (Eolas patent) requirement

The final challenge is working around the Eolas patent. By default, your Flash object requires a single click to activate the control. This is very annoying when you actually want the whole object to act as a simple link.

The workaround to remove the activation click is fairly simple. Just create a Javascript file (e.g. header.js) that programmatically ites out the header HTML for embedding the Flash file. Here is example content of the Javascript file:

// Use external Javascript to load the object so it // doesn't require the user to click to activate it. // See http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/workshop/author/dhtml/overview/activating_activex.asp document.write('<object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" codebase="http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=8,0,0,0" width="640" height="200" id="Your Header Title" align="middle">\ <param name="allowScriptAccess" value="sameDomain">\ <param name="movie" value="/url/to/YourHeader.swf">\ <param name="quality" value="high">\ <param name="bgcolor" value="black">\ <embed src="//url/to/YourHeader.swf" quality="high" bgcolor="black" width="640" height="200" name="Your Header Title" align="middle" allowscriptaccess="sameDomain" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer"/>\ </object>');

And then use this code to include it where you'd like the Flash header to appear in your page:

<script src="/url/to/header.js"></script>

The ActionScript code

I added all ActionScript code to the Flash document itself (there are many possible locations, this one seemed cleanest to me). Select the Flash document by clicking in the drawing area outside all existing objects, expand the ActionScript task bar and insert this code:

// This is the length of time at the start and end of the movie
// used for the gradual fade.
fadeTime = 1;
// The frames per second of the movie.
fps = 12;
// Calculate the alpha increment to use when fading in or out.
alphaInc = Math.abs(100*fadeTime/fps);

var listenerObject:Object = new Object();

// To make the flash movie loop, upon completion the movie
// is set to start playing again.
listenerObject.complete = function(eventObject:Object):Void {
  video.play();
};
video.addEventListener("complete", listenerObject);

// To achieve the fade effect on each cycle (except when the movie
// first starts playing) we use an onEnterFrame event. Because of
// the high CPU load this causes, we use two cue points to set and
// remove a listener on this event as appropriate. EndFadeIn is
// set 1 sec after the start of the movie and StartFadeOut is set
// 1 sec before the end of the movie (These intervals must be the
// same as the fadeTime setting above.
listenerObject.cuePoint = function(eventObject:Object):Void {
  switch (eventObject.info.name) {
  case "StartFadeOut":
    // We are near the end of the movie, so register the onEnterFrame
    // listener which will control both the fade out and fade in tasks
    // as the movie loops back and until the EndFadeIn cue point is reached.
    video.onEnterFrame = function() {
      if (video.playheadTime<fadeTime) {
        video._alpha += alphaInc;
      }
      else if ( (video.totalTime - video.playheadTime) < fadeTime) {
        video._alpha -= alphaInc;
      }
      else {
        // Shouldn't be needed due to cue points, but just in case.
        video._alpha = 100;
      }
    }
    break;
  case "EndFadeIn":
    // We have faded in completely, so set the alpha to 100 for
    // certainty and remove the onEnterFrame listener for the time
    // being.
    video._alpha = 100;
    video.onEnterFrame = null;
    break;
  }
}
video.addEventListener("cuePoint", listenerObject);

Elimena joins the clan...

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan @ e-gineer) — Wed, 09 May 2007 23:57:00 +0000

Elimena Margaret Wallace was born in Sydney at 11:48am on the 9th May 2007. Weight 3.51kg (7lb 12oz), height 52.5cm.

Removing one way screws from window locks

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan @ e-gineer) — Sat, 17 Feb 2007 10:00:00 +0000

All the old window locks in our house make use of one way screws. Basically, the groove on the screw head is designed with a sharp groove edge for screwing in, and a gentle slope offering no grip on the edge for unscrewing.

Personally, I'm sceptical of their security value. My parents house was burgled when I was growing up and the ease with which people can kick through a deadlocked door left a lasting impression on me. Blunt force trauma on window locks would be highly effective and much more direct than taking the time to unscrew the locks.

My initial removal plan was to drill out the old screw, which is a pearl of wisdom planted in my head from years of watching heist movies and having legend-in-our-own-lunchtime handyman conversations with friends.

After 15 minutes of drilling on a single lock, I began to suspect that my drill bits passed down over the years like family heirlooms may not be sharp enough to do the job effectively. Visiting Bunnings for new tool parts is always tempting, but there had to be an easier way.

I highly recommend using a hacksaw to cut a new groove in the screw. The window locks are raised from the window itself, making it easy to avoid damage. Removing all the locks only took a few minutes after I adopted this technique.

The myth of train the trainer

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan @ e-gineer) — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 12:22:00 +0000

In the majority of cases, train the trainer is doomed to failure for 3 reasons:

Training the wrong people
Pushing work downwards
Playing Chinese whispers

Online training and video is the only solution that provides on-demand availability, consistency of quality and clarity of message all with a relatively low time investment.

Training the wrong people

By definition, train the trainer does not include training the average user. So, two alternatives remain, train the superuser or train the non-user (e.g. team manager). Unfortunately, both make lousy trainers.

Superusers are very knowledgeable about the system, but overwhelm average users with their skill, jargon and speed. The result is an impression that the system is best left to the experts, one of whom happens to be readily accessible and now assumed available for 24x7 support. (The same problem faced by computer nerds when helping their family setup a PC.)

Non-users don't have the ongoing interaction with the system to keep their skills fresh, or even the basic system knowledge needed to conduct training. The result is shallow training sessions with an impression that the system must be difficult to understand if even the trainer can't use it properly.

Pushing work downwards

Train the trainer is a beautiful trick that allows project owners to tick the box on training while handing over ongoing responsibility and ownership for use of the system. Arriving with hopes of a nice buffet lunch, the new "trainers" leave with a few PowerPoint slides and a major new unexpected component to their job.

Project owners are given time and resources to raise the bar and change behaviour through the implementation. If they can't find time to prioritise training, there is no way that users or managers swamped in their day to day tasks can do so. The result is a gap, which no one owns and everyone will eventually refer to knowingly as "the training issue".

It's proven again, you can't get something for nothing.

Chinese Whispers

Training is important in terms of showing people how to use the system. But, it's vital in terms of convincing people that the system is useful and helpful. Teaching someone a skill is not the same as motivating them to use it.

Unfortunately it's this motivation and drive that is most quickly lost and distorted through the train the trainer chain. Each generation of trainer interprets the usefulness of the system and the important parts of the system differently, adding their own spin.

Exacerbating this loss of knowledge through imperfect copying is the natural inclination in a casual training session to skim through the material, downplay it's importance and just skip the parts we don't understand ourselves with an embarrassed laugh.

Train the trainer is like being in high school and asking your friend to talk to the cute girl across the room. They mean well, but feel silly doing the task, are vague in their message and don't share your commitment to the outcome.

Alternatives to train the trainer

Typical turnover for a business is 20-25%, so new people are starting continuously and every single one requires training in the system. The need for training is relentless and always urgent.

In my experience, on-demand training packages (e.g. online, video) is the only viable solution giving the required flexibility and control over message while keeping resourcing to a minimum. These don't need to be highly professional or polished, but do need to be reasonably easy to update and maintain.

Making train the trainer work

Despite the common problems above, train the trainer can work when:

Trainers are actually trained in how to lead the training (not just taken through the training themselves). Materials should be prepared and core messages clarified for consistent and continuous delivery to new recruits. Make it simple and time efficient to conduct training.
Trainers are chosen who have some interest in providing training. Whether this interest is intrinsic (I love to share knowledge) or extrinsic (increased chance of bonus) it must keep the motivation level high to conduct quality training with the core messages intact.

Project Insulation

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan @ e-gineer) — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 09:50:00 +0000

I spent all of last weekend crawling around in our attic, cleaning out 70 years of dust and laying insulation batts. Total project cost (batts, tools, safety equipment) was $570 for an 82sqm ceiling.

By far the hardest part was removing all the dust from the attic. Our tiled roof does not have any sarking installed, which increased the amount of crap that is able to find its way in. Worst of all, our original ceiling is lath and plaster, resulting in a concrete ridge every few centimetres creating nice little gathering spots for dirt. It's worth noting that this ceiling dust is nasty stuff, full of lead and other contaminants so you may like to consider a professional cleaning service. (I've heard this costs about $1,500AUD and is probably the route I'd take if I ever have to do this again in my life now that I've proven my stupidity.)

First, I tried using our household vacuum cleaner. After only a few square metres the bag was full and the machine would overheat. Cooling it back down in the attic environment was difficult, making this a slow process.

Second, getting more desperate, I tried our outdoor blower / vacuum. Predictably, and not as spectacularly as I expected, it was only able to pickup a small amount of the gunk which it then promptly spewed back into the air through it's course filters.

I then spoke with Kennards about hiring an industrial vacuum ($68/day), which I'm sure would have worked well and is the solution a number of my friends took. (I would have done this earlier, but picking up an industrial vacuum is non-trivial when you don't own a car.) Unfortunately, we have an unusually small manhole that the vacuum would not fit through. I considered removing roof tiles and battens, but this seemed like a high risk strategy particularly with forecasts of rain on the weekend.

So, in the end, I spent a day and a half removing many kilos of dust from the attic using a dustpan and broom on my hands and knees. I refined the process down to brushing along each 2cm x 40cm plaster crevice towards the beam, and then lengthways along the beam. This gathered the most dust and piled it for an easier lengthways brushing over the plaster ridges.

All in all, brushing was reasonably effective, but is definitely not recommended.

Compared to cleaning out all the crap, laying the actual insulation batts is fast and easy. I settled on Bradford Gold R3.5 batts, which were not at strong as the R4.0 I wanted, but were immediately available off the shelf at Bunnings.

Understanding as much as I could about R-values, it appears that the typical recommendation in Sydney is R3.0. The primary problem in our house is loss of heat during winter combined with 12' ceilings, so I wanted as much protection as possible. In Sydney, we have a habit of believing we live in a warmer climate than reality suggests (hence no central heating and constant comments of "I should have brought a jumper"). BTW, don't be confused when the US uses imperial R-values rather than metric R-values. R3.5 (metric) is approximately R20 (imperial).

The one area I still don't understand is the use of vapour barriers with bulk insulation batts. I know that the vapour barrier is important to stop the build up of condensation. I know that it should go on the warm side of the insulation layer. But, I could never work out if I need a vapour barrier in simple pitched roof with batts on the flat ceiling. I couldn't find any instructions for vapour barrier installation in this scenario and in the end, it appears to be something people worry about more in environments with an extreme difference between inside and outside temperatures than they do in a Sydney style location. So, I didn't install a vapour barrier.

There are 4 things you need to know when buying batts: desired R-value, gap between your beams (450mm centres or 600mm centres), total sqm to be covered and how the hell you are going to get all these massive bags back to your house. The beam gap is easily measured in the ceiling and the total sqm can be estimated from ground floor level. I'd definitely suggest buying extra batts, so you can shove them in around the edges and not be stuck in the roof covered in crap wishing you'd had just one more bag delivered.

Delivery of the batts is an obvious choice, particularly when without a car the alternative is to pile them into a taxi or walk them home bag by bag. Unfortunately, on this particular night at this particular Bunnings the task was all a bit much. We got there, but only after they (impressively) called in the store expert from his holidays to help with the computer. $35 for a huge pile of batts delivered next day delivery after 4pm.

Opening a packet of batts is like pulling the cord on an inflatable raft. In one of the few home handyman lessons my father has passed down, I didn't make his error of opening them inside a small bathroom before taking the pack into the ceiling. But, our tiny manhole struck again as I squeezed, pulled and wobbled 10 packs through.

Laying the majority of your batts is dead simple. They fit perfectly between the beams and are fairly easy to throw around. Even with the recommended face mask and overalls I ended up fairly itchy on my arms, so be sure to invest the $20 in this gear. The only slight complication is making sure that you don't cover all the electrical wiring, I just loosened any fasteners and laid it across the top of the batts.

Batts around the edges require some trimming. I bought a retractable knife which worked OK until I woke up to the idea of cutting them with a beam as the "chopping board" at which point it worked brilliantly. Our roof has a fairly high pitch, so even laying in the corners was not too difficult.

Basically, with some preparation (i.e. buy batts & safety gear) and a little determination you should be able to completely clean and insulate your ceiling in a weekend.

One week later I'm finally able to kneel down again. More importantly, over the 40C weekend our house stayed cool during the day (great) and then relatively hot at night (not so great, but proves the effectiveness of the insulation).