Returning to this idea, i realized that,increased releasing or increased deployment frequency has a beneficial effect on the overall velocity and quality of the release or deployment, while also improving team morale.

Because of this, I’ve been trying to create and respect strict deployment schedules, matching every development or bug-fixing iteration, namely(and usually)… every week.

It’s hard at the beginning and the first 3-4 iterations are tough (testing and deployment continues through the night because of inefficient planning and scoping) but after the team gets into the rhythm releasing and deployment becomes a trivial and actually fun activity.

Frequent release and deployment cycles also have a tendency of raising customer trust levels and wining some points for the development team, so release fast, release often, release good… and you’ll constantly get better results.

It is a known fact in software development that customer involvement in all phases of the project greatly increases the chances of success. Having the customer work together with your team gives them a greater sense of ownership, increases their interest and will ease the way to acceptance.

Customer immersion is not a dirty secret; the acceptance is not eased because they get a greater sense of ownership, it is eased because you are actually doing what they want. While working with the customer’s project team, during long projects, you will undoubtedly start to know them better, especially the team members that tend to interact often with your team. Nurture this interaction, accept them as part of the team, be honest and always respect their opinion. Remember that they know what they want and your job is to help them achieve their objectives.

Having said that, I have to warn you about two things: first, fraternizing only works on long term projects (I’m talking years… not months) and secondly, it must be genuine. Trying to fake friendship and involvement is a cheap trick that can be easily seen and that will turn them into enemies.

Together from day zero

Spend as much time as you can with the customer’s team at the beginning of the project. It’s that easy!

Photo by imcomkorea

Even if your customer is on the other side of the world, that is not an excuse – get laptops, get on a plane, work with them. If it’s in their offices that’s even better. I am writing this from my hotel room in Baku, Azerbaijan, after spending the entire day with the customer discussing and planning the start-up of a new phase of a national project.

No!, sending a team of analysts does not qualify as “quality time together”. Prove that you are on the same boat by bringing as many team members from as many disciplines as you can.

Quality time together will help create a bond between your teams and it will put the project on the right track. It will give your team the opportunity to prove that you are the real thing and most importantly it will:

• give you a valuable insight on your customers inner workings
• have a great project start-up together and thoroughly note their expectations
• allow you to adapt to their culture and filter out 80% of the misconceptions at minimum cost
• have your team meet the customer’s team so that in the future, when working together, even on critical incidents they will be able to communicate more effective because of familiarity
• exchange contacts securely and directly – detect and familiarize yourself with those key members that we talked about in Inception, or what you do before you begin

I you run an agile shop, have iteration zero together. Show them you mean business, involve them in the process, immerse them in the design phase, build a macro road-map together and position some stories. Demonstrate what you have achieved together in the first review and then…

Enjoy the fruits of your labor

A key factor of productivity and success, both personal and work related is celebrating.
Celebration and dissemination of success is a key technique that, when used properly and correctly, will advance your project, create long-lasting and successful collaborations, reduce stress and prepare everybody for the next big step.

Celebrating you success together, even small breakthroughs, beyond creating a bond between your team and the customers team also:

• gives an overall sense of good, the “closure” needed to proceed to bigger challenges
• proves that your mission is not impossible and that by working together you can accomplish anything
• proves to the stakeholders that the project is advancing
• bigger success stories are perfect for large scale dissemination, getting the project out of the hidden corner and into the light

You can celebrate together by taking the team out for drinks, having a small in-office party or just by having a time-out and discussing what you have just achieved. It all depends on the size of the achievement.

After the celebration, send an email to the customers team leader, project manager or even general manager stating what a great job their team does and what their contribution was to the achievement. Don’t overdue it and don’t CC or BCC the team, their manager will let them know, in his own way.

Shoot the messenger

Give them a direct channel for communication. If they want to get in touch with you, make it easy for them.

Give them your phone number and always answer. If you really can’t answer when they call, have an internal non-official maximum time of response and stick to it. If you’re doing something else, excuse yourself, answer and tell them that you will call them back as soon as possible.
If they use instant messaging or Skype, get an account and talk directly to them, whenever they need you.

You will be surprised of the long-term effects. When you will need them, and you will, they will also be available for you. Fixing dodgy or unclear issues will be a breeze, by avoiding emails and the incident tracking system you will win time, clarity and in time, friends and allies.

Mutual help and lasting relations

By following this simple set of rules, I have gained friends in every project that I have ever worked on, people that I still interact with and help and that also help me when I need it, be it introductions, references or even the occasional hotel reservation in their city. I enjoy meeting them and I always enjoy working with them.

Some of the topics expressed here will be elaborated further in my The lore of delivering software products series so stay tuned in for more information.

Photo by Louis Abate

What I have noticed though is that Twitter is pretty addictive once you really understand what it is, and what it’s not. Once you understand that it’s not just a website where you tell the world that you are just about to take a shower or eat a peach and you really start to use Twitter you’ll notice this too.

Ever had the feeling that you really want to see what the people you follow have to say right now?

Ever pressed refresh on you browser or clicked “Update tweets now” in you Twitter client twice in a couple of minutes?

That’s called “a distraction”.

It’s what makes you less productive by getting you out of your “flow”.

Humans are not multi-tasking. We just like to think that we are!
Once you are distracted and you loose your focus on the task at hand it may take a couple of minutes or even an hour for you to get back you rhythm.

So here are my four tips on how to avoid a productivity loss:

1. Don’t check Twitter updates very often
Checking what’s up on Twitter every second destroys your concentration. It isn’t really helpful either.
When you feel the urge to press refresh or to click that “Update now” button – just stop.

If you have a Twitter client go to the settings window and set the auto-update frequency to a large value, like 2 or three hours. This way you won’t see the pop-up that often and you won’t feel the need to see what everybody is saying.

In time you will get accustomed to the reality that tweets are not critical.

2. Only follow people that deserve it
If you will follow the first tip, this second one is a must!
By checking Twitter only once or twice every day you will accumulate a lot of tweets, tweets that you will have to either read or ignore.

Making sure that you only receive high quality tweets from high quality tweeters will make your time using Twitter more pleasant.

You can do this the simple way – just unfollow anybody that annoys you or that tweets things that you have no interest in (like getting rich instantly by clicking on a link)

3. Use a client that has good filtering
If you follow the first tip and check Twitter messages rarely you’ll soon have a lot of them to read. Even if you follow the second tip you’ll still have a lot of them so a good client that has good filtering will help you read what you are interested in.

Just filter by what you are interested in or by author and get the most out of the Twitter experience.

4. Only tweet if you have something valuable to share
One would say that if so many people are tweeting, a lot of interesting content is generated. Wrong!
Most of the Twitter content is noise. People announcing their third pizza for the day, people charming you into “winning a million dollars” or even automated bots auto-messaging and auto-following everybody.

You can help stop some of the noise and make yourself more useful (by not spending you whole time tweeting useless stuff) by just tweeting interesting content that adds value to your followers.

That’s it for my 4 tips on how to avoid a Twitter-induced productivity loss. Please leave your thoughts and experiences using the comment box.

Preemptive strike: If your job is monitoring Twitter for product-related complaints, if you are a marketer or publicist using Twitter as a business model or if you are a Twitter spammer you can just ignore everything that I just said.

The book isn’t fresh (2002 vintage) but it does cover a lot of aspects in a funny way, starting from the title and ending with the chapter quotes.

One example of a funny parallel is the one that gave the book it’s name:
“If the first thing you do each morning is to eat a live frog, you can go through the day with the satisfaction of knowing that that is probably the worst thing that is going to happen to you all day long!”

You can find it on Amazon (Eat that frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time), I found mine in a mall bookstore I buy my SF books from and managed to read two-three chapters a day on my way to work.