Reference linklist

For new visitors to this slumbering blog. Here are some posts worth reading.

About the Göteborgs Opera, iterative, incremental and "decremental" project development methods 

A day at the Opera 

My last big project, a complete new Customer web serving 42 000 internal customers
New Customer web is up and running

My stupid almost obsessed idea why I write in English

Why I persist in writing in English

Graphical design and usable websites

What is most important - Design or Design?

Intranet Usability by walking in the corridor

Own illustrations and part of my life philosophy  

It has to be fun else we cannot make it

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It has to be fun, or else we cannot make it

Kommdagar 2011 - inspiration & storytelling

At 25-26 August 2011 there was a big conference at Hotel 11 - target group communicators & informers from all over Sweden working for different landsting (regions) all over Sweden. About 350 people was gathered for two days.

To me it was an amazing event giving much inspiration and lots of contacts. I really liked the lectures and of course the food. The highlights were the lecture in storytelling by Matts Heijbel and the following workshop. Imagine spending half the day with telling stories and how to use it in organizational culture and brand development.

Read more at storytelling blog (only Swedish)
And watch my colleague tell a story 

The ending session with my old twitter friend and journalist at GP Eva Wieslegren was just as great - only a bit shorter. She had prepared an excellent lecture about how health care may work in the future.

Second runner up was Per Svanström and his class in search engine optimizing. I have heard that class there times now but the content change since Google change the algorithms. I ask the same questions and get new answers every time. This time the answers was better than ever. Since Google adjust the results to the geolocation and habits of the user it is very hard to work with search optimizing. Your own computer gets trained to show better hit results than the rest of the world. Now there is a way to go round that problem.

Search engine optimizing class

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It has to be fun, or else we cannot make it

Me myself and I, about Internet presence strategy and Google´s caches

Google has made a pretty good blogpost about how to manage on-line identities and some integrity issues. The intention is good but sadly Google never discuss anything about when something goes wrong and text & images are published that shouldn´t be. 

If you are lucky you can convince the website owner to delete that information. But then you must be aware that the same information still resides in Google caches for up to six months. I have seen a few scary examples:

• member directories never supposed to be public
• invalid information
• copyrighted information 

residing in Google caches for months after the initial source is corrected or deleted.

To remove Google cache information quicker than the ordinary indexing cycle you either have to own your website or convince the owner to fill in the information needed and send it to Google. It is easy to do with help of Google Webmastertools. When ready it takes not more than 24 hours before the content is removed. But if you for example want an indexed Tweet to be removed you can forget it. Twitter do never do such a thing since they probably.

• are to big to handle it
• do not take integrity issues seriously

They even direct the users to a useless page at Google where it is obvious you have to own the website to use the routine. How many of us owns Twitter? How many of us can follow that routine?

Well some people think "what is on Internet is supposed to be free". People have to be careful with what they publish. I do not agree completely since:

• some people write not so very nice things about other people. And if  I do not own the source I cannot remove neither the original text nor the Google cache content. Many website owners like huge blog sites for example have no idea how to remove content from caches.
• if you write something, publish it and then find out something was badly written or perhaps even wrong. you edit your text but old copy is still in Google's Caches for months. Unless you own the root of the website you cannot remove the cached content.
• if fake information is published or copyrighted material it still resides in caches after removal form original source.

I think it is great Google write about how to handle identities and integrity issues but I also think they should support the users a little bit more when things go wrong.

I also think every website owner, every bloghotel and places like Facebook, Twitter and MySpace should create simple routines for people to use when they want to remove information both regarding things they have written themselves and others.

I wonder where I did sign that Google and other search engines may use my pictures & texts in their caches after I have removed my initial source? Copyrights law is valid on Internet too but obviously not when it comes to cached content.

Anyhow - read the blogpost on top of page. It is a good start when you should make a Internet presence strategy. Set up a Google Alert on your name so you can follow what people write about you. My experience is that it doesn´t find all matches on my name or alias. I have seen information that I should have been notified about but I haven´t.  But try it since it is a good start. That is if you have an unique name.

My own strategy - based on experiences - is as follows:

•  I do not write anything of importance without having control of the Google caches. Blogger is excellent and provide a method to remove cached content. Removal from Google Index & caches 
• I set up social networks so nothing is searchable if possible and therefore not cached
• I cannot control what is cached at at Twitter so I am pretty careful with what I write. I follow up every evening and remove things not suitable to be there in the long run (like temporarily "eruptions")
• I never reuse the same alias at more than one service
• I never reuse the same mailadress when I register at service. Sometimes mail addresses have been exposed at Internet services by mistake for periods. If you use your ordinary mail address your alias is easily cracked (happened at MySpace for example once).
  Very often you can search for people by their mail address. This means aliases may be cracked.
• I never allow a service to use my mail address book for invitations to friends. A friend at an Internet forum revealed her true identity by sending me such an invitation. At the new forum she appeared under her true name.
• I try to separate all private writing from my business. I use different user names and different accounts. One part of me is public and the other one I try to hide from everyone except for the inner circle.
• My kids do not appear under their true names. I always avoid all possibilities to be connected with them
• I never publish the same information under different identities. It is so easy to cross read information.

These are my actions and I think it is a good start.

http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2011/06/me-myself-and-i-helping-to-manage-your.html

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It has to be fun, or else we cannot make it

New customer web is up and running

My last project - a new customer web for Regionservice at Västra Götalandsregionen is up and running since a week. The traffic from old web has been moved over gradually. Today we reached over 3000 visitors and 8000 page loads. There will be even more tomorrow and next day.

We wanted to make it easier for our customer - that was our vision. What did it become?

• Information and access to services is tailored for the specific customer. It is based on their contract with Regionservice
• A brand new search interface based on tagged information
• A traditional hierarchical menu based on words/concepts/associations that will remain in time. No organisation and no names of services is found in the main menu. The reason is that these words will change in time.

A survey showed me that 50 % of the users preferred searching and 50% preferred clicking in menus. So we kept the "traditional" menus and also the A-Z menu even though we focus on the search interface. The A-Z menu is a real pain to maintain and since search engine is a pain too I think we will remove A-Z in time. But we will not do that until search interface performs excellent.

The health care staff love A-Z, the usability study before the project started gave a very clear result. And since these users are very often of the type "not so very experienced" when it comes to internet we kept the A-Z. But I will try to convince them in time by make an appetizer at the A-Z menu showing them how search interface works. A kind of "did you know that you find what you want quicker with help of the search interface" in many different shapes. I have Google analytics showing me the most popular page and A-Z is number two - so it will take a while.

At new customer web you can search if you prefer that, you can click in hierarchical menus if you prefer and you can use A-Z if that is what you prefer. We satisfy all kinds of preferences. We want happy customers navigating the way the prefer!

The new hierarchical service menu hat will remain in time

All editors are still working with editing old pages, writing information message and a redirecting to new website. Next week we will start to delete old pages. I presume there will be a flood of phone calls and angry customers since old favourites and bookmarks stops working then. But I can cheer them up since this time the bookmarks will remain for ever (we use aliases that can be redirected the day we do next change)

A tailored view of ordering patient food.

Västra Götalandsregionen's main task is running health care. We are also working with making the region to an attractive place to live and run business in. My own department - Regionservice - is a huge facility management provider (or at least FMS provider to be). We are working hard with integrating our business processes so we efficiently can provide the health care with everything except for health care. We run the computers, restaurants, the logistics, the laundry, the cleaning, the administration of salaries, the conference centres, the receptions etc. We also provide the region with project leaders and different kinds of resources for rental. There are 56 000 employers totally and a lots of those are customers. We have about 42 000 PC and every single user is also a customer.

So now you perhaps understand why a user friendly is of greatest importance for us.
I hope they are happy with us!


My own part in the project was: project management, usability & graphical design 

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It has to be fun, or else we cannot make it

Report from my backyard - at work

This is a report from my business backyard literally. But at the same time I am at the front yard realizing communication plan, giving talks & demonstrations and educate service staff. I am having F.U.N

The new customer website is launched 6 May so I am just finishing the last of communication plan and launching preparations. Last week I had three days of editors classes. This week I have three days full of meetings with people giving service to customers (helpdesks etc). Next week I will have four introductory classes for helpdesk & service people who must be able to help customers with help of the new website. At least this is what people think I will tell them.

These meetings have however another more important agenda for me. That is to make everyone understand that "shit in - shit out". All persons delivering service must give feedback and report problems both customers and they self have while looking for informations & services at new website. We have developed a brand new search interface based on tagged information. But we need service staff´s help to set the right tags. We need the switchboard operators help to find what people look for. What people cannot find at the website they must give me information about.

Our new customer website will be the first "helpdesk" our customer get in touch with before they lift the phone. That is why operators and helpdesk staff is so vital for refining the new website. Of course I had tons of usability tests helping us taking decisions. But to trim the search interface will be a never ending project. And luckily I have got the perfect assistant to help me.

I love this phase of the project - the public part. I love talking at big and small meetings. I love to teach and develop my teaching. I love meeting all these beautiful people with experiences I do not have. They give me energy even if I must confess it also takes some energy too (this weekend was really hard since I was in coma half the time). But today I feel great again.

After a meeting far away I managed to slip into my home office for the first time of fourteen days. I got lucky when I saw the cherry three was in full blossom. I can see it from my new office at bottom floor but I have to almost lean out of the window. I picked my camera at afternoon coffee break and shot a few pictures. Sadly there were soft semitransparent clouds over the sun. But at next visit there will be no flowers left over so the photographing had to be today.

This cherry three has given me many great metaphors at work regarding presentations and web productions. This what it looked like today.

While looking below I think you understand why I have had great use of it for visualizations.

This picture is from last year when a truck hit it while trying to deliver some goods to the adjacent restaurant. I think it was a good thing to tear down that brick wall since it has given me,  my students and my listeners at talks so many laughters. It has been a great metaphor for crashed projects, crashed teams and relations, "see the light in the tunnel", contrasts between good and bad, ugly and beautiful etc. But I think the new fence is horrible (the truck drivers insurance company could probably not afford anything better). I preferred the brick wall after all. It had its charm while it still was functioning.

Pictures from SDC2011 and Scrum and Agile Fundamentals

Software Developers Conference 2011

Scrum and Agile Fundamentals with Alistair Cockburn

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It has to be fun, or else we cannot make it

I survived - does it make me to a certified Scrum master or Scrum mistress?

No I have nothing to write about. Or too much. My brain is still like minced meet after two days of Software Developers Conference at Göteborg and three days of "Agile fundamentals and Scrum master class" with Alistair Cockburn at Stockholm. I am however now a certified Scrummer. I not only survived Alistair´s class - I learnt a lot too. I listened to a lot of great speeches at the conference. I meet a lot of interesting people making me feel good. And I had F.U.N all the time.

I am happy to say I am not surprised about Alistair´s teaching ability. To be surprised is namely the eight deadly sin due to the Agile world. "Never surprise your customer". The way Alistair presents himself  - on his website and all youtube clips - and other peoples reviews made a potential customer like understanding what I could get. So I knew what I "bought" when I once e-mailed him in December and he delivered just that kind of class I wanted. Just that kind of class that makes me understand and learn the very best. It was actually worth some pain to get there.
Except for being an excellent teacher Alistair is a really good listener. He saw subtle gestures from the students and got back asking if there was any questions or explaining things that could have been misunderstood. An amiable person with an excellent presence in the room.

There are a lot of new impressions I will take care of in time. A few hightlights are::

• the way you can trim a project team with help of retrospective
• the value of self organizing teams and 
• the need of involving the customer even more than I do today

The class content was both familiar and new to me. No surprises but deepening my knowledge and made me understand better. The mixture of workshops and talks was excellent to achieve the goals.

I was happy anyhow when I at third round of the hectic ping-pong-ball game could recognize myself and one of my old roles in project teams. I was the last person just before throwing the balls into a basket. I screamt "we are doing great" at about third set. At fifth round still screaming "the quality is still improving - there are three balls all the time,WE ARE THE CHAMPS!" while we had shuffled the balls three and three at a frenetic speed making us sweat and getting lactic acid in our legs. It felt nice that old Bettina had a place in this "new" world.

No it is not a new world - it is my world. It is just that I haven´t had an label for it yet. And without a label I have had hard to get the managers with me. I am a natural Scrummer my boss told me - I just needed some theory and lots of practice. With a well known "method" it will  be easier I think. At least to get the managers with me. The team members must be convinced by acting.

When we had the last Aha moment that day I remembered what a pain "big balls" was in the ping-pong ball game. They took just as much energy as three small ones and gave only one point. I recalled how easy it is to run for "bad balls" and fix problems that actually not is within current project. So of course I said:

"Do not accept big and hairy balls"

I am definitely not a Scrum mistress (getting back to title of this post). Not the way those word can be misinterpret anyhow. But as always I like to explore words - amused by the way they change meaning. (And I am also a fan of bad jokes...as if you wouldn't have noticed)

Once upon a time the mistress was the wife of the master. A person with respect taking care of house, family and servants. But it also meant power. Something a Scrum master do not have. Something the word Scrum mistress may or may not associate to now a days depending on your own back sack of experiences and preferences. (Wiki about mistress)

Anyhow - I am the one I always have been. Just more prepared for the future and new projects coming in. For the moment I am too tired to figure out next step but I do recover well. Soon I will be back on track again. 

There is more to be said about this class and Agile development. But not today - not tonight. Tonight is reserved for catching up with bills. And simply sleep.

Links
Pictures from SDC 2011
Pictures from Scrum and Agile fundamentals
"It has to be fun" while learning the background why I initiated setting up this class and inviting Alistair to Sweden

Elvira lives at my office and she was very
happy for the "I survived pin"

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It has to be fun, or else we cannot make it