Making great customer service even better

It was yesterday that I finally went to the Apple store to get Snow Leopard for my macs and in addition getting a Time Machine / Airport which I needed bad since my old router had become more than just a pain. I was a happy camper upgrading my MacOS but the happiness started fading away as I proceeded with the installation of the Airport and started running into problems. At first I thought the problems were with Comcast, my ISP, since that's where the problems have been in the past. I tried several ways and none of them worked. I went to sleep late last night frustrated by the fact that I couldn't fix the problem.

This morning I contacted Comcast and they said things on their end looked good so I tried once again to no avail, at which point I contacted Apple. Mind you, Apple has great customer care and effectively they helped me out right away. Oh, but the bump on the road became clear when the Apple representative told me there is a known problem when setting a guest network and so I should not set that network until the fix is published by Apple hopefully soon.
If Apple knew about it how come they did not make that info readily available to (a) keep customers happy with an effective temporary solution instead of frustrating customers who wasted lots of time trying to make things work, and (b) reducing their operational expenses related to this issue?

Lean-Agile enterprises make sure that efficiency doesn't stop when the product is done but goes beyond those boundaries to reach post-production. Customer care is a paramount aspect of it. Being proactive instead of reactive reduces inventory, movement, and unbalance.

BayAPLN September meeting update

Joshua Kerievsky gave a presentation entitled Agile Brushstrokes in which he made an analogy between software development practices, particularly agile practices, and painting styles. He mapped how certain art styles such as baroque (romanticism) and coco are rich, elaborate, and time consuming just the way traditional software development is; and some agile practices that get too heavy on governance or other controlling/monitoring activities could also get there. Compared also with expressionism, cubism, and impressionism. He mentioned that Impressionist Agile is the point at which the team moves so fast and fluently that aspects such as iterations and backlogs start fading away to allow room for more fluidity, but made sure to point out that to get there it is very important to get the basics well-rooted.

Make sure to assimilate the values and principles, understand fully the methodologies, and practice them for a period of time before venturing into exploring new forms otherwise you may end up in the same--or worse--shape than you were before adopting agile.

The chasm after the chasm

Agile is no longer a competitive advantage. It is at the summit of the Early Majority, meaning, either you do it or be left behind.

Micro-scrumming

Last week I visited Financiera Independencia (a large nation-wide microfinancing company in Mexico) after having trained 18 staff over a month ago. It caught my attention that one of the engineers had on his cubicle storage a micro version of a scrum table. He said it is very useful to him to manage his own tasks following the scrum structure. I thought it was both cool and cute.

A good start, part 2: Get your executives on the same page

After training Bursatec on scrum and itroductory-level agile management, I had the opportunity to give a brief talk to the executive team of Indeval--the intitution in charge of financial assets within the Mexican Stock Exchange. All excecutives were very receptive and discussions were right on target although short due to time limitations. I think there was a good outcome and executives seem interested on learning more.

It was easy to see why Indeval is such a successful enterprise: executive involvement, timely decsion making, front-running, investment on infrastructure and personnel improvement. Their current work towards lean-agile adoption is an important step forward as well.

Their got a good start and I look forward to working with them on stage 2 of their lean-agile adoption consulting for them and providing more training.

A good start, part 1: Include your customers from day one.

I spent the last three days training around 30 people from Bursatec, one of the most important financial systems enterprises in Mexico, which is responsible for the software systems for most of the Mexican stock exchange . The attendants showed lots of interest through their continuous participation, discussions and questions. It was great how inquisitive they were because it showed legitimate interest on learning Agile-Lean, how to use it effectively, and identifying what is beyond its scope. One important area of difficulty they emphasized upon was governance; not from the agile-lean standpoint but rather from the regulatory side in terms of allowing things to be done that way.

Of all things, the one I particularly liked was that for the first time I had a group where participants included the actual customers (2 of them). That gave a great opportunity to both the P.O.s and the customers to better understand how important they are in the success of their projects and the right way to do their part to be successful.

Kudos to Bursatec for a good start!