David Alfaro: Scrum Costa Rica

     For traditional Human Resources department (well, the kind that maybe is still needed in textile manufacturer factories in the third world) the most outstanding sign of its success can be said in terms of: being kind, payroll done on time and deliver required Wage Statements with punctuality.

However, for a Technology Company, such achievements are not enough. How different is a Software company from a textile manufacturer factory?

1. Employees are Knowledge Workers:

a. Replacing a position is very difficult. It’s not just a prescriptive position; it’s also a lot of knowledge and expertise that is lost when someone leaves the company. So Talent Management (attraction and retention) becomes the number one concern for HR.

b. Psychology of Knowledge Workers is peculiar, complex. Programmers can be Systematic, Pragmatic and/or Opportunistic Programmers. We can be more demanding in the reason and effectiveness of managerial orders or “team building” requests: We can sense easily when HR is doing activities just for the sake of doing them, or just because HR wants to show off its power. HR needs to understand Geek culture.

c. Good Software Companies move at Internet Speed; the best move faster. That kind of movement requires embracing a lot of change and innovation. That means tolerance to continuous questioning of hierarchical structures and building self managed teams. Open discussion and constructive conflict, problem understanding and coaching. Exploring new ways of doing things and anticipating risks and opportunities on a daily basis. And very importantly, HR needs to understand and appreciate the needs and aspirations of sophisticated talent. The company is not supposed to dealing with a HR that has been left behind of technology and opportunities. HR is meant to be an adviser.

d. Employees are smarter. Like saying that my readers are smarter than me (why? Visit this wonderful article), HR must have healthy perspective of her ego and thrive for collaboration and dialogue.

2. Recruiting is a challenge: Any high performance company requires the right set of skills, among others things. Not only highly talented people but also highly agile people, able to work in an agile company, able to define and follow a reached approach and willing to inspect regularly such collaborative approach. In many cases a strict description of a job position is not useful, the kind of company I’m talking about have people able to contribute beyond the prescribed position. They are resilient. Where can HR find that kind of people? What would you do if you have a product and want to reach people that fit your persona description? GO WHERE THEY ARE! Where are the talented people? Where are people that keep up with technology? Web 2.0 is helping a lot. Don’t come whining saying you are not from the Technology world and those techie fads like blogging, LinkedIn and Facebook are unbeknownst to you. That’s the way talking today, whether you like it or not. Need to have any good idea of a candidate for a position? Take a look at her profile in LinkedIn, it is updated? Is she well recommended? Has a very remarkable blog? What can you see through all that? A LOT! Sure you have to do it wisely and good timed.

3. Information sharing is vital, of course, we deal with knowledge. HR needs to foster transparency of fluid communication between teams, between teams and managers/executive board. Sharing knowledge? Blogging has smooth conversations in many ways, especially inside the company. Where can you keep all you employees’ profiles updated? Again LinkedIn is by most the proven answer. More and more I hear about companies asking their employees to update their profile in Linkedin. Intranets must reflect such willing to communicate. Facebook can be an interesting idea, but whatever the choice is, invest to have a good intranet that ease the talking through the company.

4. Compensation packages must be based on performance, ROI, and must be transparent, understood by anyone. Remember, money is not the most important motivator. I highly recommend this article of Mary Poppendieck about it.

5. HR is strategic. HR is not just coordinating parties. HR is not meant to be in charge of merely operative aspects of managing people. It could be at the highest organizational level reporting to the CEO or even the Chairman. HR is an adviser. That means a complete awareness and constant contribution of company’s strategy. That means a complete understanding of technology market and company’s product portfolio and current strategic and future needs as the company evolves.

The speed of our technology world can be daunting; the HR Manager must help the company to embrace change, must help to be agile.

Recommended articles:

• Are You Ready for an Agile Future? by Susan M. Heathfield
• The New “DNA” of HR by John Sullivan

Do you know any HR Manager (who fits this description) willing to work in Costa Rica? Let me know.

Yesterday I heard someone saying proudly that he was able to conduct successfully usability test for non-internal-use product using his employees because they fit the target user profile, so recruiting users for the “usability exercises” was easy. That comment made me feel impelled to state clearly why you should look for REAL users to conduct usability test, and BTW what does REAL mean?

In Aggiorno we are totally concern about letting our users to shape the product, to give them value in the way the want. In Aggiorno we have a rigorous process to find the appropriate users to participate in our usability tests, so I can tell you we are able to observe high quality behavior during the usability tests, why?

Carolyn Snyder states it clearly in her book Paper Prototyping: The Fast and Easy Way to Design and Refine User Interfaces (Interactive Technologies) when talking about recruiting in general Usability Tests (that is, not only applies for paper-prototyping):

“Co-workers aren’t real users. Co-workers are usually not representative of real users, even if they talk to users every day or used to be users themselves. Your co-workers know stuff that real users don’t, such as your company’s business strategy, acronyms, brand, other products, and so on. Very likely, your co-workers know more about your interface—even if they haven’t seen it—than real users do. Therefore, the behavior of a co-worker usually isn’t a good proxy for what real users will do. (Possible exception: You’re designing an intranet or other interface specifically intended for employees of your company.) ”

Anyone who has assisted to any Usability Week will recall (as I do) the guidelines about recruiting once you have done a user profile that fit your persona description:

1. Look for people who never had seen the product you are going to test. Your target market has never seen your product, you need to watch the first impression the final users is going to get, the pains that someone you want to convince will go through.
2. Look for people who had never been in a usability test. Once someone participates in one Usability Test, that person, consciously or not, will learn what makes a facilitator taking notes, will try please or annoy the facilitator. Neutrality and the effort to emulate a real setting are lost. At least, allow six months between tests of different products for the same user.
3. Look for people unfamiliar with you. Any feeling linked with the familiarity with you easily mares the objectivity of the test. Consider possible user’s thoughts: “My friend/girlfriend/father/husband/boss has worked so hard in this product! I would be uplifted during the test, I’m sure this is a great product”, “I don’t want to be fired” “I don’t want to hurt my friend’s feelings” “I hate this guy, I will be sure to let him know that his product sucks”.

All the companies that charges you for recruiting users for usability tests set good part of their quality by finding users that comply with those guidelines.

Any “tropicalization” of such guidelines of methodologies doesn’t make them better. The realities behind them are still valid everywhere. Even when the product is created in a “tropical” country, there is no reason to loose those guidelines, specially when your target market is not “tropical”.

Still, I am not against reviewing the UX with co-workers, even so remember this piece of advice of Carolyn Snyder:

“You don’t want more opinions. I’ve yet to work at a company where there’s a shortage of opinions. The whole purpose of usability testing is to gather data from real users, not yet another internal opinion. It may not be wise to redesign an interface solely on the basis of internal feedback. If a co-worker gives you feedback that you don’t want to act upon (at least not yet), then you’re put in the awkward position of explaining why you’re apparently ignoring the valuable advice you asked him or her to give.”

Remember, a usability test is getting a REALITY CHECK, not yet another co-workers discussion. Is that easy Not at all! In the case of Aggiorno, we had had to go the places where our real users are, we had had to move our usability lab in order to get them. We want to listen, to watch as real as possible the Aggiorno use.

Feel free to let know any other useful guideline in recruiting users for usability tests.