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Move It or Lose
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Move It or Lose 1
Move It or Lose
By Michael Hugos
In my personal life I am an easygoing guy. I like to take long walks. I like to sit in a local
coffee house and read a good book or visit with friends. In my professional life, however,
I have been accused of being as easygoing as a drill sergeant. I am passionate about
designing and building information technology (IT) systems that drive business agility.
What gives rise to this change of personality? It is the urgency I feel about getting things
done. In the very competitive and fluid global economy in which we all operate, a key
aspect of leadership lies in ensuring the agile and innovative use of IT. There's no magic
to this. To paraphrase a famous quote from Thomas Edison, the agile and innovative use
of IT is 5 percent inspiration and 95 percent perspiration.
Let's talk about that 95 percent part. It means a lot more than just working hard.
Executives can create a fast and flexible process to develop and deploy new business
applications. That process has to enable agility by showing your employees how to move
forward in quick, focused steps. Since all jobs expand to fill whatever time is available,
an agile process requires you to set an appropriate time frame for getting things done and
then shape the job so as to finish it within the time available. Agility means that you are
faster than your competition. Agile time frames are measured in weeks and months, not
years.
Similarly, business leaders can use process to boost innovation. An innovative process
calls for people to feel a sense of urgency in order to overcome the inertia of doing things
the same old way. Placing limits on the time and money that your employees can spend
to solve a problem is a great way to create urgency. In the past, I have challenged my IT
staff to create solutions that cost 10 times less than what our competition is spending and
that can be developed four times faster - what I call "10-4 performance".
Three Steps to Agility and Innovation
Agility and innovation starts with a frame of mind, and that frame of mind is embodied in
a three-step process I call "Define - Design - Build". It's a simple, easily understood
process that guides people through the development of any new system or business
process.
Each step produces a well-defined set of deliverables and has tight time boxes and budget
guidelines. You can probably figure out for yourself what deliverables should happen in
Center for Systems InnovationMove It or Lose 2
each step. (E-mail me if you want my list.) More important is the way that this process
enables agility and innovation.
The Define step takes two to six weeks and costs 5 percent to 10 percent of the total
project budget. The Design step takes one to three months and costs 15 percent to 30
percent of the total budget. The Build phase takes two to six months and costs 60 percent
to 80 percent of the total budget. You may ask how I know these time frames without
knowing the specifics of a project. My answer is that there is only that much time
available if you are truly going to be agile. If your employees can't define what is needed
within two to six weeks, then it certainly won't be an agile project.
Likewise, I know the design work will cost 15 percent to 30 percent of the project budget
because if people are spending more than that, they are designing something too
complex. More expensive projects will take longer than one to three months to design
and then will take too long to build. In sum, if the work cannot meet these requirements,
stop the project because whatever is being done is neither innovative nor agile.
How to Achieve 10-4 Performance
Here are some other things I have emphasized in the Define-Design-Build process. First
of all, every project needs a full-time person in charge who has the skills and authority to
get things done and is totally committed to success. I call that person the system builder.
Without such a person, no project can succeed. Make sure you have a good system
builder for every project you start.
Next, build robust, "80 percent" solutions rather than seeking perfection. Avoid the
temptation to over engineer your systems in an attempt to handle every possible
combination of events. Trying to build systems that can handle everything increases the
cost and complexity in an exponential fashion. Instead, develop systems to handle only
the routine, day-in, day-out transactions, and have people, not computers, handle the
exceptions and the one-off occurrences. This is how you build systems for 10 times less
than your competition.
Remember that big systems always constitute a collection of smaller subsystems. So once
the Define step is completed, big, multimillion-dollar projects can be broken up into
smaller projects to develop each subsystem. Instead of having one big project team
design and then build everything, this arrangement allows multiple smaller teams to
design and build subsystems in parallel, under the overall direction of the system builder.
This is how you get things done four times faster than your competition.
At first people may accuse executives who adopt a process such as Define-Design-Build
of being overly demanding and unreasonable. I admit my three steps have also been
Center for Systems InnovationMove It or Lose 3
called "Move it! Move it! Move it!" But do not relent. What you ask is possible - IT
groups can achieve 10-4 performance levels. Give people the training they need and the
opportunities to learn by doing, but do not lower your standards or extend the time
frames.
As your employees learn the process and become adept at using it, you will see a change.
People will develop an air of self-confidence and a positive, "can do" attitude. My IT
group at Network Services, a mid-market company, was recognized with two CIO 100
awards in a three-year period. Agile and innovative IT enabled my company to grow
revenue by more than 20 percent each year during that time.
Michael Hugos is a mentor and practitioner in business agility at the Center for Systems
Innovation in Chicago, Illinois. He is an award-winning business architect who integrates
technology and business process to create decisive competitive advantage. He is also a
speaker and has authored several books including Essentials of Supply Chain
nd
Management, 2 Edition and Building the Real-Time Enterprise: An Executive Briefing,
both published by John Wiley & Sons.
This article was first published in CIO Magazine 15 February 2006.
Michael Hugos can be reached at: www.MichaelHugos.com
Center for Systems Innovation
Move It or Lose
By Michael Hugos
In my personal life I am an easygoing guy. I like to take long walks. I like to sit in a local
coffee house and read a good book or visit with friends. In my professional life, however,
I have been accused of being as easygoing as a drill sergeant. I am passionate about
designing and building information technology (IT) systems that drive business agility.
What gives rise to this change of personality? It is the urgency I feel about getting things
done. In the very competitive and fluid global economy in which we all operate, a key
aspect of leadership lies in ensuring the agile and innovative use of IT. There's no magic
to this. To paraphrase a famous quote from Thomas Edison, the agile and innovative use
of IT is 5 percent inspiration and 95 percent perspiration.
Let's talk about that 95 percent part. It means a lot more than just working hard.
Executives can create a fast and flexible process to develop and deploy new business
applications. That process has to enable agility by showing your employees how to move
forward in quick, focused steps. Since all jobs expand to fill whatever time is available,
an agile process requires you to set an appropriate time frame for getting things done and
then shape the job so as to finish it within the time available. Agility means that you are
faster than your competition. Agile time frames are measured in weeks and months, not
years.
Similarly, business leaders can use process to boost innovation. An innovative process
calls for people to feel a sense of urgency in order to overcome the inertia of doing things
the same old way. Placing limits on the time and money that your employees can spend
to solve a problem is a great way to create urgency. In the past, I have challenged my IT
staff to create solutions that cost 10 times less than what our competition is spending and
that can be developed four times faster - what I call "10-4 performance".
Three Steps to Agility and Innovation
Agility and innovation starts with a frame of mind, and that frame of mind is embodied in
a three-step process I call "Define - Design - Build". It's a simple, easily understood
process that guides people through the development of any new system or business
process.
Each step produces a well-defined set of deliverables and has tight time boxes and budget
guidelines. You can probably figure out for yourself what deliverables should happen in
Center for Systems InnovationMove It or Lose 2
each step. (E-mail me if you want my list.) More important is the way that this process
enables agility and innovation.
The Define step takes two to six weeks and costs 5 percent to 10 percent of the total
project budget. The Design step takes one to three months and costs 15 percent to 30
percent of the total budget. The Build phase takes two to six months and costs 60 percent
to 80 percent of the total budget. You may ask how I know these time frames without
knowing the specifics of a project. My answer is that there is only that much time
available if you are truly going to be agile. If your employees can't define what is needed
within two to six weeks, then it certainly won't be an agile project.
Likewise, I know the design work will cost 15 percent to 30 percent of the project budget
because if people are spending more than that, they are designing something too
complex. More expensive projects will take longer than one to three months to design
and then will take too long to build. In sum, if the work cannot meet these requirements,
stop the project because whatever is being done is neither innovative nor agile.
How to Achieve 10-4 Performance
Here are some other things I have emphasized in the Define-Design-Build process. First
of all, every project needs a full-time person in charge who has the skills and authority to
get things done and is totally committed to success. I call that person the system builder.
Without such a person, no project can succeed. Make sure you have a good system
builder for every project you start.
Next, build robust, "80 percent" solutions rather than seeking perfection. Avoid the
temptation to over engineer your systems in an attempt to handle every possible
combination of events. Trying to build systems that can handle everything increases the
cost and complexity in an exponential fashion. Instead, develop systems to handle only
the routine, day-in, day-out transactions, and have people, not computers, handle the
exceptions and the one-off occurrences. This is how you build systems for 10 times less
than your competition.
Remember that big systems always constitute a collection of smaller subsystems. So once
the Define step is completed, big, multimillion-dollar projects can be broken up into
smaller projects to develop each subsystem. Instead of having one big project team
design and then build everything, this arrangement allows multiple smaller teams to
design and build subsystems in parallel, under the overall direction of the system builder.
This is how you get things done four times faster than your competition.
At first people may accuse executives who adopt a process such as Define-Design-Build
of being overly demanding and unreasonable. I admit my three steps have also been
Center for Systems InnovationMove It or Lose 3
called "Move it! Move it! Move it!" But do not relent. What you ask is possible - IT
groups can achieve 10-4 performance levels. Give people the training they need and the
opportunities to learn by doing, but do not lower your standards or extend the time
frames.
As your employees learn the process and become adept at using it, you will see a change.
People will develop an air of self-confidence and a positive, "can do" attitude. My IT
group at Network Services, a mid-market company, was recognized with two CIO 100
awards in a three-year period. Agile and innovative IT enabled my company to grow
revenue by more than 20 percent each year during that time.
Michael Hugos is a mentor and practitioner in business agility at the Center for Systems
Innovation in Chicago, Illinois. He is an award-winning business architect who integrates
technology and business process to create decisive competitive advantage. He is also a
speaker and has authored several books including Essentials of Supply Chain
nd
Management, 2 Edition and Building the Real-Time Enterprise: An Executive Briefing,
both published by John Wiley & Sons.
This article was first published in CIO Magazine 15 February 2006.
Michael Hugos can be reached at: www.MichaelHugos.com
Center for Systems Innovation
