Ola Sundvall

Category: Uncategorized

  • If I told you that your documentation sucks, would you agree?

    Photo by Nathália Rosa on Unsplash

    The real challenge when discussing documentation quality is that it is a topic with so many layers, bottom and dimensions. But I can tell you the following: maintaining documentation is almost an impossible task, when talking about quality and conformity, if you don’t do it right.

    It’s also hard to sort out what one actually mean when talking about documentation. In my world, the most obvious type of documentation and actually where I should start a “sifting project” if I got the assignment to do it, is in what many often, quite nonchalantly calls the “operations management system” or maybe “business management system”.

    This is most commonly residing in a folder structure on an internal server and consists of a more or less large chunk of word and excel files. Some organizations are that bold so they actually buy a system or a service to use for this, but many, if not to say most, organizations rely heavily on an implementation of Sharepoint that someone purchased years ago, maybe a bit clueless about what to use it for.

    The really minor version of the business management system is the word file in the small company that the employees in an ideal world receives printed in their hand at their first day at work. In Sweden often called “företagshandbok” or “business handbook”. Here one should be able to take part of decisions made by the firm’s boss(es), that are general and not subject for change that often.

    But what happens when new or changed conditions arise, and new decisions are made that might make the printed statements obsolete and possibly even contradictory to what earlier has been communicated? This is a phenomenon valid for all and everybody, regardless of size of the organization or pace in information changes. I should say that in the very same moment that a new decision Is made, or a circumstance popped up making writings inaccurate, the risk for trust within the organization start to erode. It might not be a big issue at first, but if the maintainer och the information don’t swiftly inform everybody affected by the change that new information is available, the risk is that someone find out and take advantage of it. Within a shorter period of time one realize at first, the respect for what has been decided lessens, and so does the attitude towards personal responsibility and engagement as well. This will do daily management more cumbersome to perform and time for information maintenance will be taken for handling errors and corrective measures.

    “But this is obvious!” say the initiated reader – “why even bother take time to write about such things that are always ongoing??”
    Well, maybe just because this is always ongoing, in far too many places. This also hampers the communication efforts and erodes the value of communication not seldom critical for the business in question. In a little bit longer turn it affects the profitability (or in a public service, level of value creation and effective use of taxpayers money.

    So, how should one do to get around this problem? I’m convinced that managers on all levels need to be continuously fostered in how to communicate. Because the communication culture is so firmly connected to the accuracy of what is communicated. I dare to say that if you manage to make everybody aware of the natural law of information, stating that:

    If one don’t have information, it is not possible to take responsibility,
    but if one have information, it is not possible to not take responsibility.

    Add to this that the information must be accurate, and you have a solid starting point for your work with communication planning.

    An additional bonus to this is that if you nurture a communication and information aware culture, overbody involved will be interested in and prone to put requirements on correct information to be correctly communicated.

    And this, is one of the most overlooked things in organizations. Now and everywhere.

    Technical documentation, often managed within some sort of Configuration Management Process, is partly a bit different though related. I will come back on that one in a future post. As well as the hurdles with how to actually get the organization informed for real. And that’s even one more future post.

  • Web3 and all of my questions, #2

    Photo by Shubham Dhage on Unsplash

    So I challenged myself to understand web3 a bit more in depth, described in the former post. I also felt a need to ponder a bit around the financial and/or business model parts. Please enjoy.

    Money or currency, in the meaning of being a representative for a certain value, is based on trust. If not trust for the actual currency can be reached, the value [of the currency] can’t be persistent. There is a reason that currency in the form we know and have defined it, is centralistic by nature since it is mostly structures in the form of regimes (nation states and central administrations) that has been (able to) guaranteeing the currency’s value by promising law and order, personal security and much more.

    We do have plenty of reasons to dive into history to see if there are traces of not centrally guaranteed currencies and to see what has been their trust attributes. Maybe I put this up on my todo list, but it feel like research best made by somebody with better knowledge in this

    What you need to manage in order to get DAO/Dapp adaption to broaden, stay and become a new norm
    Our current economic paradigm that is driving towards eternal growth, has also paved the way for centralistic and linear value creation for a very long time. The model of legal entities with limited liability as ownership model has the centralistic approach as a foundation: a possibly scattered association of owners put the entire responsibility for growth (=success) on one single role: the CEO, or Chief Executive Officer, if everything is done correctly according to the model. The owners are only to put requirements on return of the investment made.

    The limitation of liability in turn has its own limitations: the requirements are unavoidably to be formulated by the board, which is populated by the owners of the biggest shares of the company. This makes the owning more of a passive expectation (and belief or hope) on returns for the owners of small shares = less attractive from an impact possibility perspective. With all trust for success put on one role – the CEO – the risk for failure is bigger. On the other hand, with the right CEO in charge, the capability to achieve success increases largely.

    The conclusion is obvious: the centralistic nature och the Ltd company is unbalanced, which is its biggest strength as well as its weakness since the economic paradigm we have made the norm for centuries is based on growth of invested capital being the only thing that matters in the end.

    This is as I see it the biggest challenge for a DAO, at least as long as the DAO need to exist and justify its existence in a paradigm based on returns of investments.
    A fully decentralized DAO is also risking to be slowed down by the need for consensus, especially if the decisions to be made that are put in the ledger are on a very detailed and operative level. Here it is super important to find a decent balance between deciding and doing, so that momentum always is assured.

    Ways to keep DAO’s secured from intervention from big web2 enterprises is another area to explore since the web2 traditional entities have no interest in DAO’s if they don’t add on to capitalization of the web2 company in question. Ways to prevent web2 companies hijacking of DAO’s and Dapp’s and other web3 artefacts are essential as this is already ongoing.
    Reaching a critical mass of real web3 adoption in the real world is the only way to get things to happen and the ultimate questions to ask are:

    1. How should the incentives look like in order to get people to invest in web3 so that perseverance is reached as well as real competition to the traditional growth modell?
    2. How should web3 applications survive on their own means as long as the traditional growth model is the norm?
    3. How should an alternative economic model look like that can act as an alternative so attractive, that it in long term outperforms the traditional growth model, so the traditional growth model becomes obsolete? I have seen numbers around 70 years for a new economic model to replace an existent.

    There is an obvious risk that web3 becomes a vision entrapped in the large-scale enterprises of tech companies that harbor blockchain architecture in their cloud service infrastructure – would this then become a “real” decentralized architecture, or is it just web3 running on web2, and is this even a problem? I would say it can be.

    Maybe an alternative, decentralized-native infrastructure is the future. (One of) the big question(s) is how this will be payed for, and who would take the challenge, and risk, to invest in it?

  • I posted on Apples user forum for the first time – and got refused

    Photo by Kamil S on Unsplash

    Now this is a cry baby post – this is the feedback and my post text down below. I don’t think it was that bad

    Hi MrArne, 

    Thanks for participating in the Apple Support Community.

    We’ve removed your post How I solved MacOS Sonoma and the photos library sync dilemma because it contained either feedback or a feature request that was not constructive.

    To read our terms and conditions for using the Community site, see this page:  Apple Support Community  – Terms of Use

    We hope you’ll keep using our Support Community. You can find more information about participating here:  Apple Support Community – How To Articles

    If you have comments about any of our products, we welcome your feedback:  Apple – Feedback

    We’ve included a copy of your original post below.

    Thanks,

    Apple Support Community Staff

    My post text start here:

    N.B – this is not a question, it’s a proposition – not likable by all, but who am I to judge?

    To begin with – this should actually been written down here already, but my search attempts don’t find anything similar.

    I’m on a MBP M1 Max from mid -21.

    I started this computer fresh, no TM backup installed, since I endured the Catalina Hell on my old intel machine and solved these problems in the same way as now, with full success – like now.

    To clarify my prerequisites: I’m nowadays a blind optimist, relying on cloud storage instead of local storage and Time Machine backups, so I store all my files in a somewhat ordered (?) manner on iCloud (with a grotesquely big iCloud photo Library), OneDrive and Google workspace (paid version). Oops, forgot a small portion of Box.com and some residuals on Dropbox…

    So – the only thing to actually backup is the system. I have always been a proponent of backups, but I also realize that this is so much more complicated in order to really achieve a high and reliable quality level. Those of you who think I’m a moron may do so, I simply don’t care (until I need to realize that you were right anyway, by some obvious reason you are pointing out…).

    So, to the point:

    I copied all files I found too valuable and that was stored locally manually on an external disk. I then read in Apples support pages about how to perform a fresh (re-)install of Sonoma, which is much more easy now that it was before – nowadays a little more iOS-like 😬 – you reach it from the settings menu

    After the fresh install I logged in on the computer, with my iCloud-account and all the iCloud-stuff was slowly synced to the computer. Now I have a fully functioning Photo Library – and I need to repeat these steps on my wife’s MBA M1…

    I know that this is quite crappy by Apple from a quality perspective, but it is what it is… at least there is a solution on this very annoying problem, and as so many times before I guess it’s all about file access issues, but who knows where?

    This is a send-only account. Replies received at this address are automatically deleted.

    Of course, I had some badly hidden critique against the quality of the software, but was it so bad? I will never waste my time on posting my findings there, and at least that is somewhat benficial experience.

    It is also interesting because for me it is a sign of the functional dumbness that most enterprises get more or less trapped in.

  • Everything is production, really

    Photo by Arseny Togulev on Unsplash

    If I should summarize my work life so far, the common denominator for everything I have been in, made, or contributed to is

    Production

    How can that be?

    It might sound far fetched, but I can (actually) argue for this. If we look at value creation which could be another term to compete with production, I see that the process (or processes) that we draw to describe flow of value are similar – so similar so it’s more of a matter of self-identification that make you feel what sort of work you do – though I would say that you produce something in any case, because production without creation of value is non-existent (though some organizations surely do it, unfortunately).

    I will put up some theses to prove my point:

    1. Input and output (or outcome if you prefer to look at the bigger picture simultaneously)

    When we produce stuff, for instance in different industries, we need to put in raw material, instructions for how to treat these, and specifications for how we want the end result to look like.

    Value creation is more geared towards input of for instance customer needs, which isn’t necessarily tangible as some sort of hardware items – it could be totally immaterial. But there is an uncountable amount of needs through history that is fulfilled with some sort of tangible item.

    2. Resource assessment

    Both value creation and “pure production” can’t be performed without resources. The resources can be human’s time and skills, an AI prompt, machines and tools along a production line, software tools and platforms, code languages and so forth.
    Regardless of what you are about to accomplish, you need to assess what resources you need, how many you need (if the resource type is limited in it’s output per resource) and what pace you can expect from the setup you are planning.

    The exact same type of preparation is fundamental for creating value (though you rather shy for these dry and boring realities in the value creation context because value creation is something totally different and much more coomplicateed…)

    3. Manage and control (or orchestration and follow-up if you prefer)

    For production in the industry there is a lot of different and established, often branch-specific frameworks that is implemented quite well and also well taken care of, since product certifications, branch standards, CE markings and regulations require this.

    In the value creation realm things can be much less specified, depending on what type of business you’re in. It can of course be weighed down by really tough regulations and branch-specific requirements, whereas the value creation becomes constrained due to the circumstances and hopefully evaluated with that in mind.

    Finally

    To conclude this we can quite clearly see that value creation and production is just about same thing, different name.

    BUT – the value creation as a term always contains production, since folks working with production too often just see their own discipline as the almighty thing to do, where the need for customer focus, understanding and orientation etc, is overlooked.
    In these cases, there are a number of process owners and managers and so forth who constantly run around the production team and maintain customer focus for the ones refusing to adapt customer focus themselves. To defend the staff, many hardware work steps can be quite abstract to directly connect to a customer value, though they are unavoidably interconnected with an end result, which also is – an outcome.

    In for instance software businesses or IT-organizations on the other hand, we tend to push customer awareness and the need for creating customer values, not only outputs, onto the teams and resources directly. This is of course necessary and in fact fundamental in times of fierce competition and ever-evolving rapid development.
    The problem is that there are so many tasks necessary to perform, which are more of output nature and doesn’t fit in the outcome bubble since they are just secondary and more of enabling characteristics than direct wo-ho effects for the end user.
    Yet a lot, if not the most, in the immaterial producing business is about the same repetitive tasks that need to be performed, over and over again, without deviations – just like in any sort of industry… at least when we are looking at operations, which most often is overlooked since development is so much more fun to discuss.

    Meta-reflections:

    If we regard production as a subordinated process residing within a value creation – value, framework, wrapping, don’t really know what to call this entity – then marketing and sales also are subordinated processes residing alongside the production process. These are kind of production processes as well, where marketing’s output should be an irresistible urge to buy, and sales refines interested, so called prospects or leads, into buying customers.

    And existing or won customers are in turn refined to come into retention state – room for another production process… is this maybe called CRM…?

  • Vad menar vi med digital transformation och vem angår det?

    Eller – Digitalisering för nybörjare

    Härom dagen flimrade det förbi ett informationsfragment om digital transformation (igen) som jag inte kunde låta bli att glutta lite närmare på (igen). Det var en delning av en promotion för Internetdagarna.se, där Telias VD förklarade vad begreppet står för. Jag kan absolut instämma i det hon säger, men det finns en hel del mer i det här som rätt många tenderar att missa. Det här kan bero på att det jag vill uppmärksamma inte är så glamoröst och lättsmält, det reser en mångfald av ytterligare frågor och kan ofta lämna den det drabbar ensam med sina funderingar och utan underlag för väl avvägda beslut. Vidare tycker jag ofta att den här typen av budskap ofta drabbas av att korten blandas ihop i det man vill förmedla. Men vem är jag att påstå det och vad är det egentligen jag menar?

    Jo så här då:
    Telia pratar å ena sidan om sin förändringsresa i en strävan att skapa en mer kundorienterad organisation, här boostad med införandet av begreppet “kundbesatthet”… (Jag blir lite illa till mods av tanken på att ha en leverantör som är besatt av mig som kund måste jag säga. Det räcker gott om de är tydliga, transparenta och motsvarar, eller ännu bättre överträffar mina förväntningar. Jag vill faktiskt bara ha tjänster som passar mina behov, är tillgängliga och prisvärda.) För att komma dit behöver de genomföra ett förändringsarbete, gott så, inte helt ovanligt i stora och mogna organisationer. Vidare pratas det om ett nytt sätt att tänka när det gäller att driva sin affär och möta sina kunder. Jag hoppas de prototypar flitigt och omarbetar det som inte fungerar, ety Telia torde fortfarande ha en hel hög med gamla kunder som bara vill kunna ringa 90 200 och få svar på sina frågor – för så har en ju alltid gjort, eller hur? Sen ordas det en del om att de ändrat sitt förhållningssätt till sociala medier. Det är ju faktiskt helt nödvändigt idag och där kan jag nog tycka att de lyckats ganska väl även om inledningen var trevande och snubblande för ett par år sedan.

    Till sist nämner Telia sitt sannolikt smärtsamma och omfattande arbete med att stöpa om kundtjänstarbetet parallellt med systembyten, både för kunder och internt stöd.

    Sammanfattningsvis är det intressant att se hur en betydande aktör på den digitala tjänstearenan ser på arbetet med digital transformation – alla delar omfattas och hela organisationen berörs, ingen nämnd och ingen glömd. Men är det så för alla?

    Jag dristar mig till att påstå att arbete med förbättring av kundorientering inte nödvändigtvis är en del av digitalt transformationsarbete, det borde vara ett obligatoriskt grundelement i att leda verksamhet som ska leverera värde till sina ägare. Att jobba med sitt tjänsteutbud för att skapa nya värden för nya och befintliga kunder kan innefattas av digital transformation – men det måste inte alltid gälla. Att exempelvis bygga hus och meka cyklar är fortfarande något som har betydande analogt inslag, däremot kan hur vi kommunicerar vår förmåga att göra det och hur vi når våra kunder (även kallat marknadsföring resp. hantering av försäljningskanaler) understödjas och förstärkas med digitala stödtjänster, liksom naturligtvis automatisering av genomförandet.

    Vad jag vill komma till är att för dig som ansvarar för att leverera mervärde till ägare gäller samma sak som alltid har gällt och alltid kommer att gälla, d.v.s. att noga tänka igenom varför en förändring är nödvändig och vem som tjänar på förändringen som planeras. Det är sällan man löser en vikande efterfrågan eller en utebliven tillväxt om man inte jobbar med själva värdeerbjudandet och förändrar eller vidareutvecklar det i första hand. Att ständigt bedöma affärsmodellens relevans borde alltid vara nr 1 för alla. Digitalisering utan tydlig vinsthemtagning ska helt enkelt inte beslutas, oavsett om det handlar om automatisering av egna arbetsflöden eller nya sätt att driva sin affär på, eller att skapa helt nya affärer.

    Däremot skulle fler kunna tänka i banor av att “göra helt annorlunda” för att skapa nya möjligheter för värdeskapande. Det har fortfarande inte nödvändigtvis alltid med digitalisering att göra, men den är en allt viktigare möjliggörare för värdeskapande som tidigare inte ens funnits.

    Exemplet Telia ovan är en leverantör som verkar på en marknad i extremt snabb utveckling. Många andra gör det också, men långt ifrån alla. Hos “alla de andra” finns det minst lika mycket stora och spännande utmaningar när det gäller innovation, digitalisering och förändring. Men de kan vara svårare att identifiera i det brus som råder, och lätta att förväxla med “gammaldags” lednings- och förbättringsarbete.