I’ve been…

…so many people over the past few days again, it was delicious. It was that time again, where a plethora of nerds descended upon the non-existent town of Bielefeld and gathered to eat, drink, be merry — and play games!

The food was delicious, the drinks came in just the right amounts and potency, the merriment filled the days but I guess what you really want to hear about are the games. Let me indulge you. I’ve been…

…a progressive alien species, trying to gain control of the galaxy during its second dawn. Alas, I could not make use of my extraordinary powers of research, as every attempt to expand my realm was thwarted by the vicious robotic remnants of the Ancients fleets. During most of the game I just held on to my meager three sectors, eking out some technological progress. Only once I managed to assemble a fleet and watched it get annihilated by the Ancients in a short but brutal fight. (Eclipse, Second Dawn of the Galaxy)

…a successful Unicorn Breeder, filling my stable with the most wondrous of creatures, scheming and plotting to bring misery to my fellow Unicorn enthusiasts, trying to be the first to fill all slots in my stable. A hilarious game, full of puns, innuendo, and most of all, unicorns! (Unstable Unicorns)

…a sailor, a pirate, no, a cultist, trying to direct the course of our ship to the chosen location. Covert collaborations with fellow pirates or cultists, mutinies, bluffing, and the occasional surreptitious changes to the logbooks steered our proud ship. And never did it reach the safe harbor of Bluewater Bay, but instead got fed to the Kraken or entered the dreaded pirate island… (Feed the Kraken)

…a greedy innkeeper, luring adventurers into a near-certain deathtrap. My cunning plan was to feed them to the naked-bear-thing I had chained to the dungeon below my humble establishment. But the motley crew of ne’er-do-wells and murder hobos managed to not only dispatch my minions and beasts, nay, they made off with all of my ill-gotten-riches and escape through the undersea on a magical obsidian rowboat. (The Undertavern, run with Into the Odd rules)

…Loddar, the DIY-King of YouTube, hiking through the black forest as part of a streamed challenge, with four other more or less well-known internet celebrities. Loddar, a cabinetmaker in retirement, gained internet-fame when his grandson filmed his antics testing how well the new rip-stop trousers would protect him against a chainsaw. Clueless about technology he now got thrust into a gaggle of youngsters who film themselves doing weird and (to Loddar) incomprehensible things for the sake of something called „Likes“, which he didn’t quite got. But his grandson said this was good stuff, and the likes would translate into income somehow, and Kevin knew computers after all. What followed was deliciously silly, full of drama and eventually even action, with high speed car chases and bullets flying everywhere! (a custom adventure with a d100 FATE derivative)

…an english industrial baron of the 19th century, building factories and transport links all across the Black Country, vying for domination through two distinct eras of early industrialization, seeing train tracks started to displace the narrow boat channels. A brainy but accessible game with glorious artwork and theme. (Brass Birmingham)

…Peter Rath, the holy sinner and bearer of the tome of 99 demons. A moderately famous fiction author, secretly a vampire of the White Court, Peter spent the past few years very privately, minding family and his own affairs. But the recent devastation of Berlin and the retirement of his sister from her office as head of the paranormal investigation unit drew him out of hiding once more. He joined a small task force trying to figure out what eerie things were responsible for recent oddities around the local cemeteries. Weird Pterodactydemons were fought, ancient religions uncovered and a long-term plan on keeping these forces of evil at bay became implemented. After an inspired lecture, Peter found himself the head of a new holy catholic order, secretly blessing places to protect them, and doing who-knows what else! (Dresden Files RPG)

…a middle-aged summer camp guide in the Midwest. She desperately needed a job, and found a lot more than expected, when she walked into the lone guy who squatted in one of the camp huts, hastily shoving something into a freezer. A few hours of increasingly bloody and campy fun and drama, topped by two women chainsawing a Wendigo into sausages. (Fiasko)

All in all an excellent few days, a fun NYE party and a welcome reminder of good friendships.

Organisational Purpose and the Kano model

If you work in product management, you should make yourself familiar with the Kano model.

Noriaki Kano, a Japanese researcher and consultant, published a paper in 1984 with a set of ideas and techniques that help us determine our customers’ (and prospects’) satisfaction with product features.

The resulting categories have been translated into English using various names (delighters/exciters, satisfiers, dissatisfiers, etc.), but all refer to the original articles written by Kano. You can read up more at https://foldingburritos.com/kano-model/

Using the understanding from this model, product persons classify features of a product as follows:

  • Basic/Threshold
    These are features that are indispensible. If they were not present, anyone using this feature would be immediately dissatisfied. Think of a hotel room that is lacking a bed. These are the „must-have“ features.
  • Performance
    Sometimes a feature or capability exceeds expectations. Some basic functionality turns out to be very fast or intuitive, or looks very pleasant. These are Basic/Threshold features that come with improvements. A real-world example would be an extra-comfy bed in the hotel room, or that one discovers more power outlets than expected.
  • Excitements
    Features that are completely unexpected, things that one wouldn’t normally associate with a given product or service are Excitements. Users would not think of asking for them when a product is described, but when they find them, they are delighted about it. Usually, this is a novelty factor („I would not have expected a cold brew coffeemaker in this hotel room, but I like it!“), and they will not always be the deciding argument for a purchase. But they are noteworthy and will ensure that the product or service is remembered well.

I’ve found this model quite useful when it comes to prioritizing tasks, or to figure out whether a product is „ready to ship“.

What makes teams tick?

For the past few months, I’ve been on a bender reading various books on how to best run a team or a company, how to be best manage people, or how to generally think about work. The current item in that stack of books is „Reinventing Organizations“, by Frédéric Laloux. I’ll not go into the details and my criticism of the book right now, but one thing that tickled me was the story of how a brass foundry stated that part of their purpose was to be be loved by their customers.

As a result, workers take delight in hand crafting little presents to put into the crates when shipping an order of gearbox parts.

And that brings me back to the Kano model, and that I think we should add one quality: Is it satisfying or exciting to make this Feature?

We see a lot of work in the FLOSS sector embodying this quality. Something gets made because the people working on it found it exciting. Either because they wanted to have the resulting functionality, or because building it is an interesting challenge, or because they could already envision the reaction of the users when they’ll find the hidden easter egg.

Trying to find out what features have this „exciting to make“ quality can be a tremendous boon for product people, and I will surely add this to my toolbox! Partly because you can now select for maximum team satisfaction, but also because you can recognise rabbit holes and nerdsniping before it happens and let the team know that a certain functionality might be cool to build, but isn’t helping in any of the other Kano qualities.

Manual of me

I’m working with computers and humans for long time. That has shaped a lot of my opinions and habits. In order to get the best experience of working with me, here’s a handy manual:

Working hours

I’m neither a classical night owl, nor an early bird. That means that I keep pretty normal hours. I also do believe in a healthy work-life balance, so I do my very best to stick to the normal weekly working hours. As a result, you can depend on me being around at 9:00 AM and should not schedule any substantial meeting later than starting 5:00 PM in the evening, as I’ll be aiming to clock out at 6:00 PM.

You will probably still occasionally find me going through email or chat notifications in the middle of the night or the weekend, but please do not count on this (unless there are pre-agreed circumstances and emergency protocols).

Knowledge and skills

Most people have one area of expertise where they have incredibly deep knowledge. My depth is width.

That means that I know more than the average layperson about nearly any given topic I come across professionally, but I am also aware that there are most likely a lot of people out there who know much more about it than me. If you have a problem outside of your area of expertise, chances are that I know at the very least the most useful search term or person that helps you with the next step.

My depth is width. Make use of that.

Managing and Delegating

Knowing that there are more senior experts on most topics in the organisation leads me to be pretty hands-off when it comes to the How and What (Solution) you are doing when I am managing you.

I tend to mostly think and communicate about the Why, When, and What (Problem), because it is my belief that these are the things you will need most to do your best. Answering the Why, When & What (Problem) questions give you all the ressources and constraints you need to define your problem space and find the best approach. Me, as a Product Person telling you as a Designer How to draw a picture would be pretty silly. And I won’t tell an engineer which kind of motor best serves the stated purpose.

If you manage me, I expect you to do me the same courtesy.

When I delegate a task, I will always strive to include a proper definition of done, a timeline, and a useful set of constraints. (See my writing about Nerdsniping)

Communication

I try to put an emphasis on asynchronous communication. That means that you will receive a lot more chat messages, tickets and comments, emails, and text messages than live phone calls or desk visits from me.

Asynchronous etiquette

With those, I stick to the „No Hello“ rule, getting to the point as quickly as possible in a fire-and-forget way. My expectation there is that even though you haven’t acknowledged receiving the communication immediately, you will still get it and give me a useful feedback as soon as possible and convenient.

As I’ll do the same in return when you send me such messages, here are some examples of what you can expect as answer:

  • a simple emoji indicating yes, no, on it, love the idea or similar. It should be pretty readable in context and also indicates that I’m probably in some situation where I cannot write anything more.
  • a direct answer to your query
  • a follow-up question
  • a request to send me the inquiry over a certain more documented channel (for example as a ticket or an email)
  • a deadline as to when I will actually get you the answer or complete the task.

Reaction times

If there is no deadline mentioned in the initial request, I will assume it is not urgent. If I didn’t mention one in a request by me, it is certainly not urgent.

Notification etiquette

I manage my notification settings in a way that reflects my availability and mental state. If I need to concentrate, most things that could go beep at me will be switched off. That means that your chat message might sit unnoticed for quite a while.

Or it might got noticed, but paused with a „remind me in 20 minutes“ marker, or similar. I have set up numerous filters that surface things that could be urgent, or silence things that have no impact on my current work.

It is my expectation, that everyone does something similar, which sets my own expectations of reaction time. For more on that, read my text on Spam everyone and use your filters!

Emails

We will probably exchange a lot of emails. My aim will always be to

  • meaningfully populate the „to“ and „cc“ fields. If you find yourself in the „cc“ field, I only want you to know about the content of the email, but have no expection that you act in any way on the email.
  • set meaningful subject lines. I will change the subject line, if the email conversation drifts to a different topic. I will split up a single email into different new subjects replies, if there are several conversations at the same time.
  • answer within 24 hours of receiving the email, at the very least in order to acknowledge receipt and tell you when I’ll get around to actually answering any questions inside.

Synchronous etiquette

I will do my very best to never call you out of the blue. At the very least, you will get an asynchronous message asking if you have a specified amount of time to talk about topic X. That ensures two things:

  • you actually have the time and do not have to sacrifice context switching effort at the wrong moment
  • you have a topic at hand to ease any potential anxiety and to judge whether the time you have and the time needed for the topic match.

There are of course exceptions and emergency situations where we simply have to talk to each other right now, but those should be the exceptions.

Also, this does obviously not apply to watercooler talk in the company kitchen :).

Meetings

Meetings where a group of people discuss a problem or topic should always be scheduled at least 24 hours in advance. They have an agenda that states the purpose and shape of expected outcome. („we need to decide on a roadmap. After this meeting, we should have one“)

My instinct is always to keep the number of participants as low as possible. This is to keep the meetings productive, and to not waste anyones time. Please do not feel slighted for not being included. If you feel I erred, let me know why you want to join. If in any way possible, I will add you regardless of the reason you give me. The reason is just there to ensure you’re properly included and have a voice. At the end, everyone in the meeting should have had an equal amount of time to speak.

Meetings facilitated by me won’t overrun their booked timeslots and will usually have time for a biobreak after at most 45 minutes.

Tools

I love tools and will always be curious to try out new ones. That can became a source of procrastination, but overall, the gains outweigh the costs so far.

Mainly, I stick to text-based things. Markdown editors, email, chats. Tools that help me manage notifications and set filters are always the first things I check out and set up. Things that automate tasks are high on my list too.

I love talking about my findings and help you set things on your end, if my time allows.

Darmokra and memes

I’m a huge nerd. My hobbies include 3D printing, pen and paper roleplaying games (reading, playing & writing them), shooting foam darts at people who pretend they’re zombies, and other stuff.

That also means that I will very often insert memes and pop culture references into conversations. You can rely on me adjusting the amount to the audience (it might even reach 0), but the preferred mode is OVER 9000!

Doge with pixellated sunglasses. Caption reads "DEAL WITH IT"

reduce anxiety and nerdsniping

A part of my job is asking people things along the lines of „can you look up if XYZ is feasible“ or „what would you need to do XYZ“ or „can you make me a proposal about this?“.

And there are always two things I give them along with the task:

  • how much time I expect them to spend on it at most
  • the level of detail I want for the answer

This is not to set pressure on them, but to take it away: With this information, they will have a better understanding on when the task is done, how much effort they can put into it. Asking things this way is a part of the SMART set of goal criteria. In case this term is new to you, here’s the breakdown of this acronym:

  • Specific
  • Measurable
  • Achievable
  • Relevant
  • Time-bound

SMART is a mindset that helps specify goals and tasks in a way that ensures they have a decent chance of being met with success. And it allows the persons you give this task or goal to measure themselves against that yardstick, so they don’t start second guessing themselves. This lowers anxiety, is compatible with Auftragstaktik-style of management (which I highly recommend) and also ensures that your engineers aren’t nerdsniped.

That last thing is a real danger if your engineers are any of the following: Competent, inquisitive, enthusiastic, intelligent, willing-to-learn, new to the field, experienced…

This approach is especially important if you work remotely: You want to trust your team to work without close supervision (which is a bad idea anyway if you have any kind of knowledge workers). And if you’re working remotely, you’re missing a lot of small cues that you could pick up in an office: Are they nervous? Are they burying themselves in research, as evident by the books and open browser tabs? Is that topic you’ve given out as a backburner research task eating up all their mental cycles, because it is all they talk about when fetching coffee?

The micromanaging approach would be to check in with them often, ask about progress, and so on. Which not only increases anxiety, but also keeps them distracted from the actual work. (And probably pisses them off too — I’ve threatened to quit over micromanaging more than once, with the full intent of following through if it didn’t stop. Thankfully, I had enough standing for that to be effective.)

Instead you need to preempt the nerdsniping and anxiety and communicate clearly what is expected, what is out of bounds, and the time you expect them to spend on the task — as opposed to the deadline where you need the result.

So when I ask someone to research a topic, I say things like this:

I need this in a week, but you really shouldn’t spend more than 4 hours on it, spending more effort on this would not be helpful. If you cannot provide a thorough answer after that time, that is an answer in itself for me!

If you add this task as part of the normal duties, and not on top of them, you take out most, if not all anxiety, you make the result a reliable measure, ensure that the other tasks won’t take a hit, and give the engineer an understanding of what they are looking into.