My business is driven to ensure that IT projects are successful and one way of achieving this is to get all people (customer experience, business, IT etc) in an IT project working together at all stages of the project. In addition to this, they must have successful communication and empathy for each others’ perspectives.
I once saw a user-centred design project where all the right step were put in place to involve users but the requirements at the end we not implementable. The developers had been ignored. Why?
By understanding the way different people think we may be able to overcome communication barriers between tech and business teams.
As a psychologist, entrepreneur and business person I have always been keen to understand why the business and IT factions of an organisation have so much trouble communicating with each other?! To my mind, much of it can be explained with a Star Trek metaphor.
Trekkies have unique (predominantly left brain) ways of thinking about problems and their experiences that is lost to predominantly right brain thinkers.
Let’s look at language for example.
Only once you understand a language framework, say English, you can interpret what people are saying. If you learn a second language at an early age, you will have a propensity to learning a third, forth or fifth language. This is because you have learnt the framework of ‘learning a new language’. If you haven’t learnt this framework at an early age you will find it incredibly hard to do so in later life.
Culture is a framework that we use to associate meaning around social interactions in our lives. In some cultures a particular behaviour, say spitting, is a ‘normal’ thing, however, in another culture that behaviour is entirely unacceptable. Exposure to multiple cultures provides an individual with the framework to accept behaviours that are further from their original cultural ‘program’ .
Frameworks are used by technologists to make sense of logical, but complex , data relationships in computing. Once a code framework is learnt, say Java or CSS, then within that a developer can spend hours, even days ‘having fun’. Without the framework to think from, any programming will be totally pointless. With a framework coding can be incredibly creative.
If a left brain thinker gets enough exposure to Star Trek, the overarching logical framework is learnt and can become very interesting to them.
Man, there must be a book in this… Let me know if you want to help me write it, I’ve started!
BUSINESS OUTCOMES
Business/IT communication is so important to understand because of what it does to our lives. We end up with train wrecks like the Australian Customs Service new process management system. The design project was not user-centred, people were not consulted and it was really hard to use. This meant that the Unions boycotted it, nearly shutting down the Autralian economy, as freight stockpiled on our wharves.
Even if the users are involved early in the project, poor communications between predominantly left and right brain thinkers can still make the project fail. Let’s tackle the major left/right brain dichotomy first. Then we can get users involved. Only once we understand how people think can we clear the mind space to look into the finer details of project communication.
LOGICAL FICTION
A recent experience on a technology project lead me to ask a business focused techie if she thought that kids who like Star Trek will likely enjoy technology careers? ‘YES!’ was the resounding response. ‘I can’t put my finger on why… but that is absolutely true!’
I pondered this and asked a few friends if they agreed. All of them did, however no-one could give me a good reason.
Talking with Mark Neely one night over a glass (bottle) or two of red, he put it down to ‘Logical fiction’, which is why it appealed to left-brain dominant people (e.g. technical). In a later email he expanded on this:
There were no ‘impossible’ plot twists, or ‘impossible’ technologies, or impossible sequences of events. As such, it was ‘predictable’ (not in terms of story lines, but in the sense that there was a higher order of logic underlying all of the plots). This is down to the fact that they commissioned a linguist to ‘invent’ the Klingon language, so it was useduniformly throughout.
Because it was logical, and borne of well understood scientific principles, it was truly a conceivable future scenario, one that was ‘just around the corner’ from the current (temporal) date etc.
The best way for me to explain what Mark is on about is by discussing frameworks.
WORKING WITHIN A FRAMEWORK
Things that we do in life are necessarily bound by frameworks. They help us draw meaning and understanding from our experience.
BACK TO STAR TREK
I never got into Star Trek myself, and was not interested to even try and get it. I’m right brain dominant. People are polarised over Star Trek, why? Because it comes down to the predominance of left vs right hemisphere thinking.
Once people understand the framework they may become a trekkie. They are part of a group of people that have learnt to draw meaning from the framework set out by the creators.
Logical reasoning and frameworks are the reason that trekkies have a propensity to take up programming.
WHAT ABOUT MY CREATIVITY!?
Usability, accessibility and information architecture people are often involved on projects too late in the process. For example, I was at one of the Commonwealth Bank’s digital agencies doing a presentation on Accessibility. It was after a new microsite had been completed and the site was pretty much inaccessible to people with visual impairment. We wanted them to change some of the interactions to be more accessible. The resounding response was… why should we do that? It will limit our creativity! Nevertheless, they had to rebuild the product.
I contrast this to my recent experience working with an agency right from the start of the technology project using a user-centred design approach. They absolutely loved the experience and their perception was that they could be entirely creative within the constraints of the framework which we set up with them at the beginning. Because these boundaries were set and there was little change to the framework during the project, the technical people felt totally comfortable with their role, and able to be creative.
The user-centred design approach can still go wrong, particularly if the developers are not consulted in the beginning (by a business analyst or similar). There’s nothing worse than simply giving the developer a requirements spec without consideration of what their code can actually do (or not do).
In the example where usability was wheeled in at the end of the project, the techies were left to their own devices and put a lot of time and effort into creating their own user interface framework. When I threatened to change it down the track they became very defensive. In the second example the framework was created with them at the start of the project. It was correct from a users perspective and did not need to be changed. Therefore the project was on time and on budget.
THAT’S ‘COOL’ CODE
The picture keeps falling into place for me. If you don’t acknowledge a technical person’s creativity, and get them involved at an early stage in the project, then you will get them offside and forever have a battle on your hands. Technologists ARE creative. Given the right framework, they will come up with something that, in their mind, is incredibly funky!
Business people always neglect developers’ creativity. How do I know this?
- Both developers and business people do not get involved at the start of projects. Either the developers go ahead and build what they think will work or business people try to force their view onto the technical team, without due regard for the tech guys knowledge, skills and abilities.
- Business people wonder why, when things change half way through a project, developers get shitty.
- I even inappropriately told someone they couldn’t be creative working for a bank. If I understood what creativity meant to them I would not have said that. I know now.
- Einstein was creative…