Guidelines for Keeping Pace with Innovation and Tech Adoption How to Respond When Competition, Your Customers, and Automation Come Knocking Esther Schindler Beijing Boston Farnham Sebastopol Tokyo Guidelines for Keeping Pace with Innovation and Tech Adoption by Esther Schindler Copyright © 2017 O’Reilly Media, Inc All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Published by O’Reilly Media, Inc., 1005 Gravenstein Highway North, Sebastopol, CA 95472 O’Reilly books may be purchased for educational, business, or sales promotional use Online editions are also available for most titles (http://oreilly.com/safari) For more information, contact our corporate/institutional sales department: 800-998-9938 or corporate@oreilly.com Editor: Laurel Ruma Production Editor: Nicholas Adams Copyeditor: Rachel Monaghan December 2016: Interior Designer: David Futato Cover Designer: Randy Comer First Edition Revision History for the First Edition 2016-11-18: First Release The O’Reilly logo is a registered trademark of O’Reilly Media, Inc Guidelines for Keeping Pace with Innovation and Tech Adoption, the cover image, and related trade dress are trademarks of O’Reilly Media, Inc While the publisher and the author have used good faith efforts to ensure that the information and instructions contained in this work are accurate, the publisher and the author disclaim all responsibility for errors or omissions, including without limi‐ tation responsibility for damages resulting from the use of or reliance on this work Use of the information and instructions contained in this work is at your own risk If any code samples or other technology this work contains or describes is subject to open source licenses or the intellectual property rights of others, it is your responsi‐ bility to ensure that your use thereof complies with such licenses and/or rights 978-1-491-97412-4 [LSI] Table of Contents Guidelines for Keeping Pace with Innovation and Tech Adoption: Don’t Just Fail Fast—Learn Fast You Say “Disruptive” As If It’s a Good Thing Evaluating the Options Coping with Change 23 iii Guidelines for Keeping Pace with Innovation and Tech Adoption: Don’t Just Fail Fast—Learn Fast There are two kinds of fool One says, “This is old, and therefore good.” And one says, “This is new, and therefore better.” —Dean Inge New products, services, and methodologies clamor for our atten‐ tion All of them promise to make our lives easier, to help our teams become more productive, and to give our companies more opportu‐ nity to make money Some might even be telling the truth We all have guessed about when to climb on board with a new tech‐ nology, hot product, lauded programming language, or other hyped item touted as the latest-and-greatest innovation Even when the item truly is exciting, adopting it is a risk no matter what size of business you run or where you stand on the corporate ladder If you commit too soon, you may discover that the innovation doesn’t measure up to its promises, and its failures screw things up for your own projects If you jump on board too late, after your competitors adopt the innovation and work out all the kinks, your organization may find itself playing catch-up This is an age-old problem A hundred years ago, businesspeople argued about whether it was the right time to get rid of horse-drawn conveyances and invest in those newfangled delivery trucks But they had more time to contemplate the options These days, the pace of change is so fast that it’s hard to learn what an innovation is, much less make a sensible decision about the right time to adopt it It’s not like you have a choice, really Things are changing all around us, and we (as individuals and businesses) have to respond, one way or another “All organizations change, regardless of whether employees are ‘pre‐ pared and ready,’” says Kirsten Osolind, senior VP at strategy and innovation consulting firm Reinvention Consulting “You need to be on a constant quest to wrestle new efficiencies from existing assets You need to surf waves of opportunity You need to run at the right speed, in the right direction.” Fortunately, useful guidelines can help us make the “right item, right time” decisions, and assist in the integration of the new technology into existing business processes These suggestions may aid you in recognizing when and how to implement a technology change You Say “Disruptive” As If It’s a Good Thing In the late 1980s, I was president of a tiny computer user group in rural Maine We decided to put on a computer faire—the techie equivalent of “My dad has a barn; let’s put on a show!”—which ulti‐ mately drew about 1,000 people For a rural coastal community with a traffic light every 40 miles, that’s a lot I asked Pete Petersen, the vice president of WordPerfect Corpora‐ tion, to be our keynote speaker, in hopes that the guy running the business for the market-leading word processor would be willing to talk to us To my delight, Petersen said yes, even accepting my ohso-naïve topic suggestion of prognosticating the future of comput‐ ers I remember his predictions to this day “I can’t tell you what future computers are going to look like,” Petersen said “But I can tell you this: they’ll be smaller, cheaper, faster, quieter, and more powerful.” And he was right Nearly every technology change in the past 30 years has fallen into one of those categories We appreciate anything that’s “smaller, cheaper, faster, quieter, and more powerful,” whether those qualities apply to a speedier personal computer, a more effi‐ cient software development process, an RFID chip that communi‐ cates useful data across a network, or a SaaS application inexpensive enough for a small business to afford | Guidelines for Keeping Pace with Innovation and Tech Adoption: Don’t Just Fail Fast— Learn Fast When changes are gradual, they’re easy to weave into “business as usual” methodologies It doesn’t cause much stress to replace an aging computer with a faster model, and you get little corporate pushback if you suggest a tweak to “the old way of doing things.” But when we talk of innovation, often we refer to something really new The Technology Adoption Curve Human improvement isn’t always a single moment of discovery in which an entire worldview changes Those who study the creative process of innovation distinguish between incremental enhance‐ ments and true game changers Clayton Christensen’s The Innova‐ tor’s Dilemma (Harvard Business Review Press, new edition 2016)— which has a terrific four-minute video summary—calls these sus‐ taining innovations, improvements to “the way we’ve always done it” and disruptions, unexpected changes to existing systems that rede‐ fine a problem as well as the solution Everyone was looking for a better iron lung; instead, Jonas Salk invented the polio vaccine Steve Jobs cited Henry Ford as saying, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses”; even if the attribution is inaccurate, the sentiment is not Not every disruption is a technology disruption, the way that a new CPU or medical breakthrough might be Sometimes the change is a business model or a methodology MP3 music players were around for a while, as an expensive lackluster wannabe product category, a problem looking for a solution Then the iPod got it right With a different business model, Apple integrated hardware, software, and services; it created both happy consumers and a technological, musi‐ cal, and social juggernaut Disruption sounds like a marvelous thing when you’re the entrepre‐ neur doing the disrupting It means your business is doing some‐ thing truly unique (and, one hopes, profitable) to which other organizations must attempt to measure up That’s been true for ecommerce, Uber, phone cameras, Software as a Service (SaaS), social media, and dozens of other revelatory technology and busi‐ ness model changes If you run a business, though, disruption is a bad word It means shaking up the status quo, often with an uncertain outcome Not everyone wants to be disrupted; most leaders are content to be bor‐ You Say “Disruptive” As If It’s a Good Thing | ingly productive, profitable, and business-as-usual Disruptions are time-consuming distractions, at best This topic was deeply explored by Everett Rogers, a professor of communication studies, in his book Diffusion of Innovations (Free Press, 1962), and later cited at length by Geoffrey A Moore in Cross‐ ing the Chasm (HarperCollins, 1991) They summarized the technol‐ ogy adoption life cycle by identifying several classes of buyers and users (that would be you): Innovators (2.5% of the population, according to Rogers) The first to adopt an innovation, these people often pursue new products aggressively, while the products are still in develop‐ ment Technology is a central interest in their lives, and their endorsement means a lot to those who follow These people take risks, they are willing to put up with fewer product features because of the promise of more to come, and they accept that some bright ideas fail Early adopters (13.5%) Early adopters adopt the innovation when it’s still new, but no longer raw They are tech-literate influencers whose opinions shape others’ decisions They can imagine, understand, and appreciate a new technology’s benefits and relate them to other concerns But, as with the innovators, early adopters are willing to accept imperfections in the short term because they see where the innovation is heading Early majority (34%) The entry point to the mainstream, these people share some of the early adopter’s ability to relate to technology But, cautions Moore, ultimately they are driven by a strong sense of practical‐ ity “They want to see well-established references before invest‐ ing substantially,” he wrote “Because there are so many people in this segment—roughly one-third of the whole adoption life cycle—winning their business is key to any substantial profits and growth.” Late majority (34%) This group approaches change with a high degree of skepticism, usually after the innovation has been accepted in their society “They wait until something has become an established stan‐ dard,” writes Moore, and they tend to buy from large, well- | Guidelines for Keeping Pace with Innovation and Tech Adoption: Don’t Just Fail Fast— Learn Fast It’s more complex when fixing one problem raises new ones, as Spreadshirt discovered Sure, the Turbo Ninja Plus (hypothetically) promises to help your development team create its products faster, which certainly would make happier customers and stuff more cash into the company’s coffers But adopting it means that staff have to be trained to use the new tool, you have to upgrade the company’s servers, and you may need to argue with another department about changing the workflow Sure, the Turbo Ninja Plus is better than what you have now—but is it better enough? It might bring in more money—but are the profits more than the costs? In either case, you need to investigate the opportunities and meas‐ ure them against the team’s mission It’s a good idea to make a list of the criteria to use in deciding to jump on board Whether the Turbo Ninja Plus’s promises originate with a vendor, from the tech com‐ munity, or via a fad, often we can be distracted by features that sound appealing, but can’t demonstrate that they support the team’s goals “The question to ask about anything new is whether it adds real cus‐ tomer value,” Puri says “It must either allow customers to some‐ thing new that they want or need, or it must make core functions better, faster, or easier.” “Remember that innovation is applied creativity,” Puri adds “Clever‐ ness which does not add value to the underlying business needs is throwing good money after bad.” Sometimes, familiarity rightfully wins out over coolness “We tried to implement a new instant messaging solution to address email overload problems,” says Sushil Kumar, CMO of Robin Systems, a small but growing company “There are lots of discussions under way at any given time, which can form the basis for critical business decisions.” Traditionally these conversations happen in email threads, which can be difficult to archive and to share with new employees Kumar decided to test-drive the newest, coolest messag‐ ing application “However, we could not get people to use it,” Kumar says, “partly because of the product issues and partly because of the cultural issues.” Most users stuck to email, which meant more com‐ plexity—since employees now were having conversations in two places instead of one “We therefore decided to abandon the messag‐ ing app implementation until we were ready for it,” Kumar concluded Evaluating the Options | 13 That’s why it’s important to understand the value creation process in your business, says CA Technologies’ Berkes He suggests answering these questions: • What specific value will it bring to your customers and your business? • What are the risks? What are the opportunity costs for adop‐ tion? • Is it something that you can try to adopt incrementally, or will it require a “big dig”? Consider the Consequences of Adoption—and Failure Many people ask, “How well does it solve the problem or improve our ability to deliver on our promises?” But there are at least two additional issues to consider, as you analyze the Turbo Ninja Plus’s suitability to the task • What consequences would you encounter if you implemented it? • What would happen if you didn’t? As much as we’re drawn toward new and better solutions, imple‐ menting them affects the way we business (If they didn’t, why bother?) We like to think about the positive effects, such as improved efficiency or faster delivery time But what else might hap‐ pen? How likely is it to occur? What could you to ensure the best outcome? What would have to change in order for the adoption to be a success? The earlier the innovation appears on the technology adoption curve, the more often your answer is, “I have no idea,” and the more you should assume the associated costs are relatively high—at least in the short term For example, imagine you are considering adopting a new program‐ ming language that is optimized for part of your knowledge or tech‐ nology domain Only a handful of developers have any level of expertise programming in that language, so they’re harder to find and they command a higher salary than the average programmer on your staff Training resources are difficult too; nobody’s written a 14 | Guidelines for Keeping Pace with Innovation and Tech Adoption: Don’t Just Fail Fast— Learn Fast book about the language yet, much less created a track for it at your favorite programming conference Those concerns are balanced, presumably, by the advantages of being first to market and getting a head start on the learning curve, and by the actual benefits of the new language Plus, you don’t want to adopt the technology too late and miss out on its competitive advantage But those advantages are difficult to prove And what happens if your assumptions are wrong? Almost by definition, you are proposing a major change How com‐ fortable are the players and stakeholders with the disruption caused by the tech adoption? Don’t think only in terms of the managers and other people who have to sign off, who may never actually touch the new system Con‐ sider the line-of-business worker For instance, your chief financial officer may decide that it’s time to replace the expense reporting sys‐ tem Until now, every employee has had to email a spreadsheet and PDFs of receipts; that’s a pain for the accounting staff, especially as it has no useful reporting procedure and they need to construct their analysis manually But if you consult only the CFO and accounting staff about what’s needed in a new SaaS expense-reporting applica‐ tion, you won’t learn about the features most valued by the employ‐ ees who have to use the software Unless you meet with each group of people affected by the proposed change, you also won’t learn about their fears and desires, which absolutely reflects their willingness to make a change The following questions may help you evaluate the consequences Technology consequences • Does the Turbo Ninja Plus require you to change infrastructure? What depends on the current and proposed technology, and what does it depend on? What the changes cost, in dollars, time, and complexity? Will those downstream changes turn into a yak shaving experience? • What’s the reliability of the Turbo Ninja Plus? Based on what metrics, measured by whom? How does that compare to the current system? Evaluating the Options | 15 • What’s the performance like? How does that affect what hap‐ pens at a later stage in the process? • How can you measure its value? How long will it continue to provide value? • Do you need to provide training? How available is it, at what cost? How much staff time needs to be budgeted for the train‐ ing? What work won’t get done while they’re learning the Turbo Ninja Plus’s intricacies? • How you judge your team’s ability to implement the change, based on existing in-house knowledge? People and team consequences • How much support you have from company leadership? How much has the boss bought in to the proposed innovation? • What will it take to convince management of the suggested path? How you keep them up to date during the transition? What happens to the company, project, and your reputation if it fails? • What needs to happen to ensure user acceptance? Especially given that “new and different” is jarring? How can you over‐ come resistance to learning the new technology? • Do you have time to make changes and adjustments? Process adjustment consequences • How does the innovation affect current processes or proce‐ dures? For whom? • Does this have social implications? Does it mean changes in col‐ laboration or communication styles? • What are the direct and indirect costs? How does this inter‐ weave with other budgetary priorities? • What is the effect for the development or implementation teams? How does this affect their existing workload and work stress? In each case, also ask yourself: what would happen if we waited? 16 | Guidelines for Keeping Pace with Innovation and Tech Adoption: Don’t Just Fail Fast— Learn Fast Many of those questions may yield heartening results For example, if the Turbo Ninja Plus really is as fast as the vendor promises, your answers largely may be positive: customers get their products faster, employees aren’t frustrated by having to respond to downtime prob‐ lems, and you can break into new markets These questions should raise opportunities, not just challenges For example, Puri worked with a major bank that acquired a smaller bank “The original plan was to shut down the smaller bank’s bank‐ ing systems and switch their customers to the acquiring bank’s system,” Puri says “They found, however, that the smaller bank’s software was rated higher on user surveys We ended up combining the systems Now, all their customers use the smaller bank’s frontend software, while the older bank’s backend software handles the com‐ bined customer volume.” Even after you resolve all those questions, you still won’t think of everything In fact, it’s the problems you didn’t consider that are apt to hurt you the most, because you put nothing in place to address those issues Sell the Change Let’s say that you personally have concluded that the Turbo Ninja Plus is a good option Now you need to convince other people of that direction—even if the decision is yours to make “Successful organizational change requires a shift in perspective,” says Reinvention Consulting’s Osolind “Employees become an inte‐ gral component of the entire change equation.” Remember the technology adoption cycle? You might see the oppor‐ tunity of the Turbo Ninja Plus, but it is unlikely to be equally evident to everyone in the company When you discuss the new option’s advantages and disadvantages with managers, users, and other stakeholders, consider their worldviews too For example, when you talk with an early adopter about the Turbo Ninja Plus, you can bring up its technical specifications, its likeli‐ hood to give the company a serious competitive advantage, and the irritation of putting up with its growing pains To a technology enthusiast, it’s often worth taking a chance on something new, and such supporters are happy to invest in at least a pilot project Evaluating the Options | 17 But if you aim to insert something truly new into a corporate envi‐ ronment, acknowledge your listeners’ mainstream attitudes The same sales pitch you gave to the early adopters can turn off conser‐ vative decision makers Buyers in the early majority can understand practical value, but they want to be reassured that they aren’t the very first to encounter problems Stress the business references and metrics collected by other reputable organizations You can comfort these people by citing the Turbo Ninja Plus’s conformance to indus‐ try standards and its sustainable improvements Not every person says no because he is a technology laggard Among the reasons people prefer to wait before adoption are: Their needs are latent While they suffer the same effects as those who are excited about the proposed improvement, they haven’t actively identi‐ fied that a solution exists, let alone considered a product or ser‐ vice A trusted comrade can speak to the situation (“We never realized how much time we spent doing that!”), and hopefully you’re the person with that reputation, but in general these folks are immune to any marketing beyond word of mouth Help them see that they have a problem worth solving, and they will be ready to consider a solution without friction or interference They perceive a high cost of change That can be monetary: surely the budget can be spent on some‐ thing with a safer and predictable outcome? Or we know the product price will come down when the technology is more established? These people also may view the cost in terms of the difficulty of moving data and procedures from one system to another, such as a database transfer or rewriting code Consider how your implementation answers each of these concerns They are wary of losing competence Even minor changes affect employee routines and rituals, such as adding yet another social media client or recreating an invoicing process Even when a dusty old tool is substandard, it’s familiar, and you know how to work around its foibles A new system means discovering the new weaknesses (usually the hard way) without any idea of how to fix the problems Yet again, education can make a difference; so can creating docu‐ mentation that guides users from the “old way” to the “new way.” For example, when Microsoft worked (successfully) to dis‐ 18 | Guidelines for Keeping Pace with Innovation and Tech Adoption: Don’t Just Fail Fast— Learn Fast place WordPerfect with Word in business environments, it emphasized how easy it was to import WordPerfect files “It’s important to address each challenge head on, while making sure everyone is comfortable with the change,” says Kumar In practical terms, you need to build safeguards against unexpected roadblocks or failures “Education and realistic expectation setting is key to making sure adoption happens at a pace that is acceptable,” Kumar says “Selling a change impacts the entire ecosystem of an organization, from employees and customers to strategic partners, vendors, the supply chain, and processes/procedures,” says Osolind “Change leadership works best when you invite the entire ecosystem to help you rewrite the storyline When folks make decisions and feel like they are choosing for themselves, they’re more likely to be commit‐ ted to the outcome.” “Beyond communicating a clear vision, allocating the right resour‐ ces, and aligning performance management systems, the key to suc‐ cessful organizational change is removing barriers and creating circumstances in which employees’ inherent motivation and drive is freed and channeled toward achievable goals,” says Osolind “Doing so requires that aforementioned shift in perspective, where employ‐ ees at all levels are not merely informed about change or trained to manage and handle change but rather deemed to be an integral active component of the entire change equation Start a small groundswell Create a grassroots movement Train the trainer Con‐ sider perks for ideas and usage adoption at various levels.” Some organizations are more open to change than others For H.K Productions’ Davis, opinions are welcomed when backed with pro‐ active suggestions “We listen, apply what’s useful, and move for‐ ward,” says Davis “And as progress is made so are the minds of those who were hesitant in the beginning.” Ideally, you’d like to work for a company with a culture of innova‐ tion, where it’s okay to experiment and fail But that doesn’t have to mean, “Be the company that takes big chances.” “Any company has a culture that it should look at as an asset when it’s contemplating change,” says Dave Gray, management consultant and author of The Connected Company (O’Reilly, 2014) Those aspects shape decisions, including the choices you reject Evaluating the Options | 19 For example, says Gray, both Nokia and Samsung had similar strengths in manufacturing Nokia saw the digital culture on the horizon, so it sold off everything that wasn’t related to mobile phones, and invested heavily in software “They took major risks that were (in retrospect) obvious mistakes,” says Gray, because the culture of software and manufacturing directs different kinds of risks But instead of repeating Nokia’s mistakes, Samsung recognized its culture and its capabilities, and chose a different path, says Gray Samsung’s attitude: smartphones are coming, and we don’t know who will win—but whoever wins, they use Samsung hardware, whether it’s a Samsung phone or screen components that form part of Apple’s supply chain “The culture is the huge center of gravity you can use to accelerate on your path, like spacecraft going around Jupiter,” says Gray “But often, companies disregard their greatest asset.” Consider a Slow-but-Sure Approach In general, the smoothest solution is to change as little as possible Try the Turbo Ninja Plus in only one department, for instance Use it on only one product line It’s important to discover if the advantages outweigh any costs before you roll out to the entire company, says Wowza Media Sys‐ tems’s VP of engineering, Barry Owen “Better yet, a pilot project on one team and verify if the benefits are real,” he says This approach minimizes the disruption by keeping explosions small Problems are dealt with locally so that they don’t ripple across the entire project It also gives the company an opportunity to iden‐ tify “Oh, I didn’t think of that effect” problems and to solve them early, before implementing across the organization Incremental adoption helps avoid several types of risks Among them are testing the solution for actual readiness and discovering the transition’s unanticipated social and environmental issues To mitigate the risk of adopting too early, consider: • Performing benchmarking and quality evaluation of the tech‐ nology itself 20 | Guidelines for Keeping Pace with Innovation and Tech Adoption: Don’t Just Fail Fast— Learn Fast • Measuring the upward compatibility of existing systems to become informed about the impact of the change • Creating alternatives, so that a project’s success does not depend on the new technology being adopted (For example, create a plan for the project to still be accomplished with the previous technology, even if the old technology increases the budget or schedule.) • Measuring and monitoring pilot projects so that project estima‐ tion tools can be refined to reflect early experiences • Coordinating the new technology’s impact with support tools so that the entire set continues to work together Here’s how Spreadshirt’s Laures went about the process with his ecommerce upgrade His situation may include technical decisions and processes that don’t apply to your own Turbo Ninja Plus, but most of the steps have rough equivalents Define the order of migration Once Laures and his team committed to modernizing the company’s technology stack, they defined the order of migration “We analyzed those areas of the business that suffered most from the inability to change,” he says For example, most of their online marketing direc‐ ted traffic to the website frontend The company’s user experience experts had concepts sitting on the shelf that could never be imple‐ mented because of missing flexibility in the old, monolithic system Migrate only what needs to be touched “Tech people sometimes tend to work in an all-or-nothing approach,” says Laures In their desire to avoid complexity, develop‐ ers may conclude, “Let’s start from scratch on a greenfield and switch everything to the new platform once it is finished.” If you can swing it, great But at Spreadshirt that was not the case “The monolith consisted of a couple of million code lines covering three different business models, ERP, and production processes,” explains Laures A project to start again from scratch would have taken years, during which the old system would continue to suffer Plus, there are no real guarantees with that methodology Laures has never seen a successful Big Bang migration in his career “Touching only those components that will be modernized next is a better Evaluating the Options | 21 approach to reduce complexity, stick to the things that work, and still innovate in certain areas,” he says Minimize synchronization Once Spreadshirt identified the first component to update, they faced the next decision “Besides the Big Bang approach, there are actually two additional paths to modernization,” Laures points out: duplicate and sync and rip and integrate With “duplicate and sync,” you start from scratch (only for the single component) and duplicate the business logic within the (in their case) new microservice New components can use the new services, without being tied to the monolith “To ensure that the service has access to the required data, database synchronization between the legacy and the new system is set up,” Laures says “After that, new frontends can easily integrate with the new service using modern frontend technologies.” The alternative approach, “rip and integrate,” tries to avoid errorprone and expensive data synchronizations by switching off the leg‐ acy component after the new microservice is available and reroutes all clients into the new service This approach could also be seen as the last step of a component’s legacy migration, says Laures Assign one team per business concern Don’t ask the entire company or department to be involved in the change One team should own the entire business process Advises Laures, slicing team responsibilities along technical layers (the front‐ end team, service team, database team) might lead to unintended friction points And, when problems arise, it could result in some finger pointing between the dependent teams Organize the Transition Don’t throw a ton of resources at something that seems like it might be a good idea without concrete evidence of value or customer need, suggests CA Technology’s Berkes Start small, and evaluate progress at each stage “Accelerate the development of new ideas that are proving their value; chances are that you’re not the first one with the idea,” he says “And just as importantly, stop development of ideas that aren’t working out as hoped to make room for more promising ones with your limited resources.” 22 | Guidelines for Keeping Pace with Innovation and Tech Adoption: Don’t Just Fail Fast— Learn Fast Owen followed this process well when Wowza migrated from one software development tool to another The team began with a clear goal: “Modernize our version control infrastructure and get all teams on the same tool.” It articulated Git’s benefits to the organiza‐ tion: “Most new hires are much more familiar with Git than any other tool And lots of new tools and source repositories only sup‐ port Git.” And then the migration got under way, with these guidelines and activities: • Any new project is started in Git instead of SVN • Teams using Git help train the teams using SVN on best practices • Develop a migration strategy and use tools to migrate existing SVN codebases to Git without any history loss For example, one product used sequential build numbers instead of commit hashes; a way to replicate that in Git was needed • Make necessary changes to the automated build system • Practice migration Fix and repeat as necessary • Rip off the Band-Aid: “As of Monday we are using Git.” Note that training came first, so that the developers familiar with SVN didn’t feel lost with the new tool Owen’s team also tried to contain the change in a small group and to ensure the bugs were worked out before, as he puts it, the Band-Aid was ripped off Coping with Change When we individually grasp the promise of a Turbo Ninja Plus— which surely is smaller, faster, cheaper, quieter, and more powerful than the previous technology—quite often we’re tempted to drop everything and move to the new tool immediately But human beings are slow to change, especially when their current solution gets the job done If you work with other people, you need to get them to buy into your vision Any new proposal needs to take their reluctance into account It needs to resolve the reasonable questions, such as the late-stage mainstream buyer’s concern, “We want to work with proven vendors, not startups who might disap‐ pear overnight.” Coping with Change | 23 You don’t want to be in the position of espousing change for the sake of change Make sure you can articulate the benefits to the people it affects, says Wowza’s Owen They need to understand why this is making their life better You need to acknowledge the frustrations during a transition to the users “Be practical and understand that you may lose a bit of productivity for a time,” says Owen “Be patient but firm There can be pressure to go back to what was comfortable Continue to reiterate why you are making this change.” Consider a Formal Change Management Process “Fail forward, faster, and bigger That is what leads to break‐ throughs!” declare the people who lust for change “You only miss the boat if you’re not moving fast enough!” These people are in the minority, and (happily) are rarely found in larger organizations Whatever the nature of your Turbo Ninja Plus, people are the big‐ gest challenge in any adoption process, particularly when it’s forced upon them Adoption should be a participatory process, with users prepared for and actively involved in the transition planning as well as in the implementation phases Ensuring that everyone partici‐ pates in the process encourages the adoption to be driven by the team and not imposed from above The result is a team owning the adoption effort and tailoring it to its current culture If the innovation is disruptive enough, the change may be more for‐ midable than even the best project manager can handle It may behoove you to hire or retain a professional change manager to guide the organization through the process, support employees, and play the role of liaison and advocate for the business activities Modern change leadership combines information technology with human resources, sales, marketing, and business-process change, says Osolind, to reduce risk, overcome operational complexity and cultural resistance to change, and create future growth opportuni‐ ties Learn from Your Experience Even when we’ve done things a hundred times before, it sometimes takes a few iterations to get a process or product just right That’s even more so when you adopt an unproven Turbo Ninja Plus, both in technical terms—the feature you need isn’t implemented yet— 24 | Guidelines for Keeping Pace with Innovation and Tech Adoption: Don’t Just Fail Fast— Learn Fast and in terms of integrating it into your workflow or finding the right business model Sometimes it’s outside your control For example, Jacob Cantele, CTO of Concierge Auctions, learned that the first draft isn’t always the real innovation Cantele’s company wanted to scale the business to respond to the volume of sellers wanting to put their property on the Concierge Auctions platform But in the initial attempts they discovered that buyers were not ready to take the plunge—not until other mobile platforms created a stable ecosystem “There wasn’t a lot of precedent for these types of purchases via app,” says Cantele “It took Uber and other apps to make buyers feel more comfortable.” Instead, Concierge Auctions refocused on improving its website and making it more mobile friendly “That experience strengthened the product and marketing teams and helped them refine the user expe‐ rience,” says Cantele “The app was relaunched last year as Instant Gavel, and now 80% of the company’s auctions are done via app.” Even when the transition goes well, you should conduct an honest postmortem to assess how well the tech adoption project went For instance, after the SVN-to-Git migration, Owen assessed what went right (“We survived and now have all the teams using Git; no more SVN All the teams now understand multiple branching workflows and adapt to fit their product”) and what could have been handled better (“There was a lot of fear, uncertainty, and doubt created by the change; and we could have done a lot better job with training on things like GitFlow and best practices and setting up test repos where folks could figure all that out”) The assessment isn’t only after the fact Know when to pull the plug, too “You need to have a rigorous, data-driven system to evaluate the development of new ideas,” says CA Technologies’ Berkes “Having well-defined gates, metrics, and effective governance of innovation is essential to prevent zombie projects that go on and on without ever delivering real value, or pet projects based on individual whim.” Rather than view this as giving up, look at it as a fact-based decision that celebrates the learning gained by having explored the idea “Don’t fail fast—learn fast!” he says In any case, Berkes urges, have a process in place for continuous improvement, and develop a culture of introspection to identify areas of opportunity and formulate specific, actionable plans to address them “For example, sharing technology across our many Coping with Change | 25 product teams has historically been a challenge,” he says “Just a few months ago, we started an Inner Source program to allow easy and fast-paced code sharing across CA’s entire technology community The program has really taken off, which is a good sign that it’s solv‐ ing a previously unmet need.” Ultimately, we search for balance On the one hand, we want to develop cool, innovative stuff that sets us apart, using the most modern tools and technologies On the other hand, we don’t want to bet on the wrong horse And it’s all under pressure Startups are nip‐ ping at your heels Technology is automating everything, including our own jobs Management is demanding research on a schedule And users and customers relentlessly demand the next best thing (as long as you don’t actually change the things they like) It isn’t simple But perhaps with these guidelines, it’s a little easier 26 | Guidelines for Keeping Pace with Innovation and Tech Adoption: Don’t Just Fail Fast— Learn Fast About the Author Esther Schindler is a longtime tech industry journalist and has translated geek-talk into English since 1992 She loves to explain how technology can, indeed, improve the quality of life Find her on Twitter at @estherschindler Bring chocolate ... tool.” It articulated Git’s benefits to the organiza‐ tion: “Most new hires are much more familiar with Git than any other tool And lots of new tools and source repositories only sup‐ port Git.”... enterprise, volunteer with a community organization, or lead a tiny development team, there is a shared purpose It might be, “Create software that makes architects shout with joy” or “Give homeowners... well does it solve the problem or improve our ability to deliver on our promises?” But there are at least two additional issues to consider, as you analyze the Turbo Ninja Plus’s suitability to