Tag: Customer Obsession

Eye Of The Beholder

Eye Of The Beholder

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In My 20 Year Career Is Technical Debt, the author outlines how most everything he’s worked on is eventually deprecated and replaced. It’s a hazard of technical work, where new approaches, frameworks, and solutions are being invented regularly. We’re not building cathedrals that will still be standing five-hundred years from now. At least not in the sense that the stuff of our creation, the ones and zeros, are still going be on a storage medium and flowing through a CPU long into the future (with some rare exceptions).

But that’s not the point. What you build doesn’t matter, it’s all going to end up technical debt (if you’re lucky) or deleted (if you’re not). What matters is the outcomes enabled by what you’ve created, and the relationships you’ve developed along the way. If your code plays a part in improving people’s lives for some period of time, then it’s done its job. And if those around you are better for having collaborated on it, you’ve done yours.

That’s all we can ask for. And it’s enough.

Little Light Of Mine

Little Light Of Mine

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Klaus Teuber died this week. His career began in dental hygiene, but by its end he’d designed one of the world’s most influential board games, The Settlers of Catan. I learned it about 20 years ago from a college buddy, and right away fell in love with its balance of strategy and luck. Enough of the former to make it interesting, enough of the latter to appeal to a broad audience. It also requires deft handling of social dynamics through alliances, trades, and the occasional threat.

It’s hard to overstate the influence this game has had on my life. Quick games of Catan formed early bonds between myself and my wife during the stress of having young kids. When we moved to San Diego it was a vehicle to make new friends in an unfamiliar area. And it’s been a staple of family game night since my children were in middle school (I still remember exactly where we were when we taught them to play for the first time). The above photo is from a game played just last night (I’m green, and I won with 4 cities and longest road).

I once read that a typical person will have a direct influence on 10,000 others over the course of a lifetime. No idea if that’s true (or what “typical person” could even mean), but the point remains that whatever influence we each have, it’s likely larger than we think. Certainly Klaus Teuber had no idea that his game would affect me and my family so positively. But I’m thankful nonetheless.

When I die, it won’t really matter what systems or organizations I’ve built, but it will matter how those systems and organizations have influenced the people involved, and promoted human flourishing more broadly. My tools are technology, but they’re not the goal.

Spirit And Truth

Spirit And Truth

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As I was reading Things they didn’t teach you about Software Engineering, I found myself frequently nodding along. There’s a fountain of wisdom here. Seriously, go read it, or at least go read the headers, which are helpfully summarized along the side of the page.

One worth a deeper dive is this: domain knowledge is more important than your coding skills. I cannot agree more. If you don’t know your customer, it’s unlikely anything you build will add value, no matter how perfectly it’s constructed. And given that the typical end-user is rarely going to be a developer themselves, this knowledge won’t come automatically. It needs to be pursued intentionally.

I’ll go even further, though: knowledge isn’t enough. When the going gets tough (and it will, because programming is hard), a team needs more than information about their customers to keep them moving forward. They need an emotion powerful enough to overcome diverse roadblocks. They need empathy.

The best engineers don’t just seek to know about the problems they’re solving. They internalize those problems, engaging their emotions alongside their intellect. When a customer has a challenge, they feel it in their bones (it’s not by accident that we use the metaphor of a “pain point” when describing problems). When a customer is angry at a missed deadline or poor quality outcome, they lean in, acknowledging failure. And when a customer is overjoyed at the success of a new product launch, they get to share in that happiness.

Empathy is the key that unlocks the willpower to achieve great things. Regardless of technical prowess, show me an empathetic developer, and I’ll show you a good one.

Sean Maguire Was Right

Sean Maguire Was Right

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Don Norman came to mind today, a not uncommon occurrance. I’ve mentioned him before, but not loudly enough. If you care at all about building great solutions, technical or otherwise, reading The Design of Everyday Things is a must. Here’s my favorite passage:

The idea that a person is at fault when something goes wrong is deeply entrenched in society. That’s why we blame others and even ourselves. Unfortunately, the idea that a person is at fault is imbedded in the legal system. When major accidents occur, official courts of inquiry are set up to assess the blame. More and more often the blame is attributed to “human error.” The person involved can be fined, punished, or fired. Maybe training procedures are revised. The law rests comfortably. But in my experience, human error usually is a result of poor design: it should be called system error. Humans err continually; it is an intrinsic part of our nature. System design should take this into account. Pinning the blame on the person may be a comfortable way to proceed, but why was the system ever designed so that a single act by a single person could cause calamity? Worse, blaming the person without fixing the root, underlying cause does not fix the problem: the same error is likely to be repeated by someone else.

The notion of system error is quite profound, applicable to technology, organizations, governments, even entire civilizations. Leaders of all stripes do well to consider its explanatory power.

Just discovered that Don has a new book coming next month: Design For a Better World. Pre-ordered!

That Last 20%

That Last 20%

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I got an email this morning from a reader who asked if I had an email subscription feature on this blog. I didn’t then, but now I do! Want my writing to hit your inbox the moment I publish? Just add your email address into the widget at the top of the sidebar and hit subscribe. Easy!

You know what wasn’t easy? Trying to get that widget to match the rest of the site. At first it looked like this:

Gross. Luckily WordPress supports adding custom CSS. Unluckily, that means I had to fiddle with CSS, which is a special form of hell. I couldn’t get it perfect on all browsers, but it’s not bad now:

While I was at it, I made a few other visual tweaks to the site, primarily shrinking the masthead height, which has always bugged me. Here’s the final code snippet. Not the prettiest, especially with all those !important keywords (generally they’re a smell that your CSS is too complex), but it gets the job done.

.navbar {
    display: none;
}

.site-header {
    height: 300px;
    min-height: 300px;
}

.site-title::after {
    margin-top: 0.5em !important;
    margin: auto;
}

button.wp-block-button__link {
    height: 34px !important;
    margin-left: 0px !important;
    padding: 0px 5px !important;
    background: #fab526;
    font-weight: bold;
}

input#subscribe-field-1 {
    padding: 5px !important;
    border-bottom: 2px solid #ddd !important;
}

.search-field::placeholder {
    color: #B9B9B9;
}

If you happen to notice any weirdness on your device/browser of choice, do let me know, eh?

Livin’ On A Prayer

Livin’ On A Prayer

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Today marks a unique milestone. It’s exactly halfway between the day I started my professional career as a software developer (June 4, 2001) and the same date the year I turn 65 (June 4, 2044), ostensibly about the time I retire (though who knows, I’m a bit of a workaholic).

Richard Rohr, the Franciscan priest and writer, speaks of “the two halves of life” in his book Falling Upward. Indeed, midpoints are a common moment to reflect on how far one has come, and how far one has left to go. I’m no exception to that. I’ve been blessed to have been in the tech industry for over 20 years. Done some fun work. Some interesting work. And I hope, some work that’s used technology to improve people’s lives while having a positive influence on those around me along the way.

It’s a common refrain that technology in its myriad forms has ruined humanity, whether it be social media and cell phones in 2022, the printing press back in the 15th century, or even agriculture in ages past. Maybe I prefer to see the bright side in things, because I believe that despite our faults in wielding it, the evidence shows that technology has unlocked human potential and made lives better in innumerable ways. I wouldn’t wish any of it away, and moving forward it still can, should, and must be used for the betterment of us all.

This will require us to remain vigilant and disciplined, ask tough questions, and apply our knowledge well, but I believe that it’s possible to do so. I’ve tried my best these first twenty-one and a half years. Here’s to twenty-one and a half more!

Adventures With APIs

Adventures With APIs

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I’ve written before about the advantages of knowing how to dig around in DevTools to reverse engineer website interfaces. This week I’ve had three further instances of doing this work to good effect.

The Friendly Skies

Firstly, I travel a lot, enough that I now have Executive Platinum status on American Airlines. This means I’m first in line for complimentary upgrades, but only if there are seats available. So I wanted an easy way to go straight to a complete seat map to look at availability without needing to go through a full search on the website. Turns out there’s a magic URL that does just that, and all you need to do is pass it some parameters. So I present to you, a quick and dirty seat map lookup form. Give it a try!

While that’s cool, I wondered if I could make it simpler by leveraging a flight data API like the one from FlightLabs. That was pretty straightforward as well. Though I couldn’t embed it in WordPress, I did script it up in Python for your enjoyment. Just pass it a flight number, and it’ll do the rest. Neat!

Shake It Off

This week Taylor Swift tour tickets went on sale, and needless to say it broke Ticketmaster, despite their best attempts to add friction via pre-registration to enter a lottery to win a code to join a queue to enter a room to maybe get lucky enough to click fast enough to buy tickets. Sadly I was unsuccessful at securing seats despite dozens attempts across several days. But I did learn something about the API Ticketmaster used to check queue status, so all was not lost.

When I first joined the queue, the following was displayed:

Of course I was curious: how many more than 2000 people were there… 5000? 25000? A million? So I opened up DevTools, and took a look at the calls coming back from the server to check status. Lo and behold, there was a wealth of info in an easily digested JSON block:

Wouldn’t it have been helpful to display that information to the user? At least the exact users in line, and the expected service time value. No idea why it wasn’t shown, other than Ticketmaster not being known as a terribly customer obsessed company.

Automating ******** Across ****

The final example can’t speak of publicly other to say my penchant for automation will save my employer a sizable amount of money. In these uncertain economic times, that’s always a good thing.

A Tale Of Three Meeting Invites

A Tale Of Three Meeting Invites

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Subject: Planning document

(body of invite is blank)

Subject: Discussion on planning document

Agenda

  • Review document content
  • Finalize edits
  • Action items for customer review

Subject: Internal discussion on planning document

Purpose of this meeting is to finalize the document that will be presented to the customer next week. Please read in advance of meeting (link).

Agenda (unless you know a better one)

  • Review comments made on document content
  • Finalize edits in real-time as a group
  • Decide on action items for customer review
It’s Not Personal

It’s Not Personal

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I love Raising Cain’s. Their chicken fingers melt in your mouth, their sauce is top-notch, and the Texas Toast is a perfect bonus. I give it the edge over Chick-fil-A for best fast-foot chicken joint (though it’s close).

A few days ago I stopped by to get my typical 3 Finger Combo (with a lemonade and extra sauce, natch). It was pretty crowded and noisy, with many folks waiting for food, either to eat there, take with them, or to deliver on behalf of another (thanks to services like DoorDash, GrubHub, and UberEats, one can no longer make assumptions about how busy a restaurant is by the line at the counter, which is another customer experience post worth writing, but I digress). After saying what I wanted, I was asked to provide my name for the order. I did so, carefully pronouncing the short u in Jud which I’m regularly doing (it’s not a reference to the 2nd greatest Beatles song of all time, instead it’s pronounced like the country singing mother-daughter duet from the 90s, though only spelled with one d). I think they heard it right, but I couldn’t be sure.

While waiting for my food, I reflected a bit on this experience. I get the objective: make the experience more personal, so that when my order is ready I’m called by name and I thus feel like it was specially prepared. But that approach is flawed, because it fails to work backwards from actual customer desires. I suspect I’m not alone in that I don’t want a “personalized experience” at Raising Cain’s like I do at my job; I want to get the delicious chicken that I ordered quickly and accurately. An order number not only suffices, it does the job better than a name, for numerous reasons:

  • A number guarantees uniqueness in a way names do not, decreasing likelihood of an order mix-up.
  • Numbers are more easily distinguishable audibly compared to names. My name is often misheard, and it’s not nearly as tricky as many others.
  • Gathering a name requires an extra step in the ordering process, slowing it down. A number can simply be assigned.

These benefits have analogs in computer science, for example the advantages of searching a database using a unique identifier vs free text fields. Which someday when I need to explain the latter to someone who’s less familiar with the technology, I might just use the former as a metaphor: the act of ordering is adding a row to a data table of “customers waiting for orders”, and the person calling out the order once it’s ready is querying that table. A good database design seeks to make such queries unique and performant.

Further, the model of indicating a parking space number when getting curbside delivery is remarkably similar to hash-based lookups. Hmm, I probably need to turn this into a larger talk someday.

But in the meantime, when I’m asked for my name at a restaurant checkout counter? Call me “three one four” thank you very much.

That Personal Touch

That Personal Touch

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Meeting regularly with your direct manager is an important mechanism for ensuring your work stays customer focused, getting actionable feedback and advice, and ultimately helping you achieve your career goals. This page captures a few of my thoughts on making them effective.

Firstly, you as an individual should own these conversations. Take the lead in setting an agenda, and come prepared with discussion topics. Your leadership has limited time, so use it wisely. Frequency and duration are up to you as well, though generally I’d say more frequent and shorter is better than one marathon session per month. However, there are times when longer discussions are needed, especially when goal setting and discussing performance.

Discussion topics can vary, though generally as a manager I’m less interested in discussing status on your day-to-day tasks and projects, unless you need advice or guidance on a specific issue you’re facing. I have other mechanisms to keep tabs on project health, so I’d much rather focus on personal development and goals. That being said, if you really want to give your manager a dump of what you’re working on (or just vent) that’s fine, but be careful not to use up all your time in this way.

Finally, I recommend taking notes during all 1-on-1 discussions, and especially having a mechanism for tracking action items for both yourself and your manager. I do that on my end for all my team, and share these notes in an email after each meeting, but using something more rigorous (like a ticketing system or task board) might be even better

Possible Agendas

Here is an example agenda I’ve used successfully:

  • Highlight / lowlight since we last talked
  • How can I help you this upcoming week?
  • What’s the status of your current annual goals?
  • Open discussion (you pick the topic)

And another agenda that also works well:

  • Personal check-in: how are you feeling?
  • Quick updates
    • Previous 1-on-1 action items
    • Tasks and projects
    • Current goals
  • Discuss current challenges and potential solutions
  • Recognize successes with gratitude
  • Create and review action items

And a third one:

  • Personal check-in
  • Task/project/goal progress
  • Review of priorities
  • Workload and expectations
  • Blockers
  • Feedback
  • Concerns

Discussion Questions

These are some questions I like to ask during a first 1-on-1 to learn more about how a person prefers to be managed:

  • What do you most need from me as a manager?
  • How do you prefer to receive feedback? In writing? In person? Another way?
  • How can I know when you’re struggling and need help?
  • Are there any manager behaviors that particularly bother you? If so, how can I avoid them?
  • What ongoing 1-on-1 cadence would be most helpful for you?

More generally, these are question I ask to help me as a manger how to make work more enjoyable:

  • What motivates you to perform at your best?
  • What do you wish you could spend more (or less) time doing?
  • At the end of the month/quarter/year, what would you like to say you’ve accomplished?
  • At the end of your career, what would you like to say you’ve accomplished?
  • If you could change one thing about work that would improve your life, what would it be?

These questions help me ascertain and guide someone’s career growth:

  • What impact do you think you’ve had so far? What additional impact would you like to have?
  • What aspects of your role do you love (or hate) and why?
  • What are you learning, and how are you growing here?
  • Is there a new project you’d like to work on? Or new goal you’d like to work towards?
  • What do you need training on? What do you need experience in?

Finally, these are question I ask to get feedback on my own performance as a manager:

  • How can the team improve its communication?
  • How can I help you be more successful?
  • How can we help you do more of what you enjoy?
  • How am I doing? What can I be doing better?