I got a comment on my blog following my post on rates going negative, and it’s given me food for thought about other related posts.  So to that end, I’m going to talk a little about measuring spreads and looking at indicators of spreads widening or tightening.

First, a little 3-D info visualization wizardry (SAS is awesome).  Here’s a 3-D surface I created based on 5 years of daily data at the 2yr, 5yr, and 10yr durations for investment grade bond spreads over Treasuries:

Just like the Treasury yield curve, you’d expect the spread curve to be upward sloping (longer duration, more risk exposure, so you need to be paid more).  But you can see in parts of the surface where it wasn’t.  Why?  Because default and migration risk (the risk of a credit migrating to a riskier state) was higher in the nearer term than further in the future.  In the Treasury space, an inverted yield curve is usually a harbinger of an upcoming recession.  Something to pay attention to.

So I started thinking about how to estimate spreads and spread changes.  There are models and model vendors out there, for sure.  All have respective strengths, but also one universal weakness: they are abstractions of the real world.  There’s no way you can encapsulate the whole world into an equation or even into a system of equations.

But having said that, it pays to look at them because the gains you get by viewing risk in a defined, systematic way are much better – more consistent and more measurable – than trying to assess it judgmentally.  The literature talks about structural models based on the work of Merton.  I’m not going to delve into the model, but suffice it to say it relies on the interplay between a company’s equity and its debt.  The easiest way to look at this?  Stock options.

And to that end, I looked at the VIX and its relationship to credit spreads.  Because the VIX measures volatility of equity options, it seemed to be a quick easy way to shortcut/bypass all of the other work that goes into estimating spreads and it’s easily accessible data.  The document below gives you a sense of what I looked at and how.  Specifically, I ran some regressions to look at how various spreads responded to levels in the VIX over the last 5 years:

On the surface, it does a pretty good job of explaining spreads.  When I performed the first regression using a linear model, the R-squared was 0.87 – pretty high & pretty intuitive.  As the VIX rises, spreads tend to increase.

But it does have some issues.  If you look carefully, you’ll see when the VIX is very low, the model tends to overestimate where 2yr spreads will be.  As the VIX rises, the model starts to underestimate spreads and then overestimates again when volatility is at its highest.  Plus, it didn’t fit the data at the higher end of the VIX spectrum at all.  You can see there are diminishing marginal effects at work (After you get beyond a certain level of volatility, spreads don’t rise as fast as they did before).

So I re-estimated the data using a linear-log model.  Here you can think about a percentage change in the VIX corresponding to a basis point move in the 2yr spread.  I liked the fit of the line better, but looking at the scatterplot, it’s clear it follows a similar pattern as the linear model.  Overestimation of spreads when VIX is low, but then it underestimates as the VIX increases.  And it underestimates pretty consistently across the different durations and grades.  High grade spreads tended to fit better than the high yield spread I tested, but high yield companies have more idiosyncratic risks than the investment grade ones do.  Some companies are just not run well and a simple model like this is not going to pick that up.

So what have we learned from this?  While both types of models are correct in relating the relative movement between the VIX and spreads, accuracy is lacking especially at the points where we’re most concerned about spreads: when volatility is  above normal and rising.  You’ll need to rely on more than just the VIX/optionality of debt & equity in the firm’s capital structure to make an accurate assessment of spreads.

It’s a good place to start, but it’s incomplete.

Would you all agree with me that war is an ugly, but sometimes necessary thing? No SANE person ever wants to go to war. But when diplomacy fails and our national well being, safety, and security are at stake military action is sometimes necessary. When military action can no longer be avoided, for it to be truly effective it must be conducted violently and with overwhelming force to quickly defeat the enemy and make them KNOW that further resistance is futile. Contrary to what many opponents of any war believe, fewer people on both sides die if you hold to these principals. When you try to make war “nice,” as our spineless yellow bellied politicians have done, it turns into a slow war of attrition, a war of a thousand cuts. The enemy that threatened you is never defeated and will ALWAYS be a threat until they are defeated. They gain strength day after day and kill more and more of your people a few at a time.

With regard to Iraq, Afghanistan, or any other conflict in which our military is employed, just about every conservative I know, be they politician, talk show host, fellow soldier, sailor, Marine or airman, have universally held the opinion “let us win, or bring us home.” That includes me. When we went into Iraq and Afghanistan, there was a genuine military purpose and legitimate national security goal. Once the initial military victories on the ground had faded into history, the politicians got involved and began to tear down the success of our military. Especially those liberal politicians who didn’t want us to go to Iraq or Afghanistan in the first place, but who would not speak out because the POLLS said speaking out against the actions wasn’t popular. Cowards.

As each day passes, the liberals withdraw more and more support from our military men and women who are on the front lines risking and sacrificing their lives for America. The withhold money, new weapons, and reinforcements. They attack and belittle the military in the press. The two most notable examples of this are senator Harry Reid of Nevada who said the war in Iraq was lost before the surge ever began, and congressman Jack Murtha (spit) of Pennsylvania who with no proof or evidence came out publicly and loudly to proclaim that U.S. Marines in Haditha, Iraq were murderers and baby killers. Of course they were proven innocent, but Murtha (spit) couldn’t and still hasn’t found a microphone to say he was wrong, or that he is sorry for what he said. He calls himself a former Marine, but I assure you any REAL Marine would rather disembowel himself than shake this traitors hand.

Now we have the Obama administration about to prosecute three Navy SEALs for capturing a terrorist on the field of battle ALIVE. Keep in mind that usually SEALs don’t CAPTURE anyone. They kill them. Why are they being prosecuted? Because the terrorist, the mastermind of the abduction, torture, execution, and burning of four Blackwater agents whose bodies were then hung from a bridge, this scumbag got a bloody lip. I’m sure he wasn’t read his Miranda rights either. He should have died of acute lead poisoning. Navy “leadership,” in politically correct lock step with Obama and the liberals, tried to give these SEALs non-judicial punishment which would still effectively end their careers. Seeing the absurdity of this they exercised their option and demanded a trial by Courts Martial. God bless them.

Yesterday I heard several people who had been ardent supporters of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan say it was time to bring our troops home. Radio hosts Roger Hedgecock and Glenn Beck were two of the more notable. When our Commander-in-Chief (in this case the campaigner-in-chief) and the rest of our national command structure no longer support our military in a time of war, when they will throw our own soldiers under the bus, when they WILL NOT ALLOW OUR MILITARY TO WIN, it is time to bring them home. The lives of a million of those dirt bag, swine excrement, satanic terrorists is not worth the life of even one single American.

Bring them home. Now.
+

Navy SEALs Face Assault Charges for Capturing Most-Wanted Terrorist

Wednesday, November 25, 2009
By Rowan Scarborough

Navy SEALs have secretly captured one of the most wanted terrorists in Iraq — the alleged mastermind of the murder and mutilation of four Blackwater USA security guards in Fallujah in 2004. And three of the SEALs who captured him are now facing criminal charges, sources told FoxNews.com.

The three, all members of the Navy’s elite commando unit, have refused non-judicial punishment — called an admiral’s mast — and have requested a trial by court-martial.

Ahmed Hashim Abed, whom the military code-named “Objective Amber,” told investigators he was punched by his captors — and he had the bloody lip to prove it.

Now, instead of being lauded for bringing to justice a high-value target, three of the SEAL commandos, all enlisted, face assault charges and have retained lawyers.

Matthew McCabe, a Special Operations Petty Officer Second Class (SO-2), is facing three charges: dereliction of performance of duty for willfully failing to safeguard a detainee, making a false official statement, and assault.

Petty Officer Jonathan Keefe, SO-2, is facing charges of dereliction of performance of duty and making a false official statement.

Petty Officer Julio Huertas, SO-1, faces those same charges and an additional charge of impediment of an investigation.

Neal Puckett, an attorney representing McCabe, told Fox News the SEALs are being charged for allegedly giving the detainee a “punch in the gut.”

“I don’t know how they’re going to bring this detainee to the United States and give us our constitutional right to confrontation in the courtroom,” Puckett said. “But again, we have terrorists getting their constitutional rights in New York City, but I suspect that they’re going to deny these SEALs their right to confrontation in a military courtroom in Virginia.”

The three SEALs will be arraigned separately on Dec. 7. Another three SEALs — two officers and an enlisted sailor — have been identified by investigators as witnesses but have not been charged.

FoxNews.com obtained the official handwritten statement from one of the three witnesses given on Sept. 3, hours after Abed was captured and still being held at the SEAL base at Camp Baharia. He was later taken to a cell in the U.S.-operated Green Zone in Baghdad.

The SEAL told investigators he had showered after the mission, gone to the kitchen and then decided to look in on the detainee.

“I gave the detainee a glance over and then left,” the SEAL wrote. “I did not notice anything wrong with the detainee and he appeared in good health.”

Lt. Col. Holly Silkman, spokeswoman for the special operations component of U.S. Central Command, confirmed Tuesday to FoxNews.com that three SEALs have been charged in connection with the capture of a detainee. She said their court martial is scheduled for January.

United States Central Command declined to discuss the detainee, but a legal source told FoxNews.com that the detainee was turned over to Iraqi authorities, to whom he made the abuse complaints. He was then returned to American custody. The SEAL leader reported the charge up the chain of command, and an investigation ensued.

The source said intelligence briefings provided to the SEALs stated that “Objective Amber” planned the 2004 Fallujah ambush, and “they had been tracking this guy for some time.”

The Fallujah atrocity came to symbolize the brutality of the enemy in Iraq and the degree to which a homegrown insurgency was extending its grip over Iraq.

The four Blackwater agents were transporting supplies for a catering company when they were ambushed and killed by gunfire and grenades. Insurgents burned the bodies and dragged them through the city. They hanged two of the bodies on a bridge over the Euphrates River for the world press to photograph.

Intelligence sources identified Abed as the ringleader, but he had evaded capture until September.

The military is sensitive to charges of detainee abuse highlighted in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. The Navy charged four SEALs with abuse in 2004 in connection with detainee treatment.

Earlier this week I was invited by TPI to participate in a small discussion group for a feature in CIO magazine. The conversation was based around recent research conducted by TPI that looked at today’s major challenges for IT service management and governance.

I am not about to reveal the details of the research or of the very interesting discussion that took place. What I am going to comment on are the remarks made by CIO Magazine editor Martin Veitch.

Martin started the meeting by outlining the ‘top of mind’ issues that he is hearing from his extensive CIO contact base. He briefly discussed the old ‘image issue’, of CIOs as techies who fail to appreciate business goals and the need for technology alignment. This he dismissed as no longer valid. CIOs are well aware of the need for business alignment – and they are increasingly focused on some of the issues that make this hard to achieve.

Among those issues are the dramatic changes going on in technology.  For example, the impacts of Cloud Computing are only now being grasped and it will raise a wide variety of strategic and governance challenges, as well as opportunities. Among the implications is the need to review existing and future contracts. Emerging technologies will revolutionize the relationships with some existing suppliers; in other cases, it will mean forming relationships with brand new suppliers. Terminating, renegotoating and new sourcing will be a major effort and fundamental in its impact – especially with regard to getting good alignment with business needs.

So the role of Procurement will be critical to the CIO’s success, but so will the way that suppliers respond and offer creative new commitments. The dependence on contracting and commercial competence goes much deeper than in the past – and many CIOs have realised that it is a core dependency for their performance (echoing the views recently expressed by Professor Leslie Willcocks of the London School of Economics).

At last, CIOs are looking at a world where the latest technologies and the methods of service delivery allow them to re-think budgets and operate with dramatically reduced up-front costs. They can begin to move IT expenditure from a capital expense to operating expense. They can ‘gain revenge’ on many of the suppliers who they feel have ‘for years, taken advantage of them’ (in particular some of the major software suppliers).

CIO thinking is that they increasingly need to multi-source and to enter into either shorter term or more readily terminable agreements. Again, this has massive implications to the resources they need at their disposal – and it will also have major impact on suppliers and their business economics, plus the way they interface with and manage customer relationships. Not in itself new news – but potentially revolutionary for the world of contracting and contract / relationship management.

At this point, many CIOs apparently despair of obtaining the right resources within the business and take the view that they must develop commercial and contract skills within the IT department. They see a need for core skills in negotiation; they know that they must raise legal and financial awareness within  their staff. They must become ‘masters of outsourcing and offshoring’, understanding the impacts of culture and business practices on their projects and deliverables. Governance is another major issue, requiring appropriate contractual protections and the ability to oversee supplier performance.

So with technology now becoming the great business enabler, contracts and commercial professionals must step up to the challenges and opportunities that are being created. This new world calls for more creative relationships, supported by commitments and performance metrics that safeguard contractual outcomes. And the message from CIOs is clear – our community on both buy-side and sell-side must either step up to the plate and deliver against business needs, or the CIO community will acquire for themselves the skills needed to safeguard their success.

On episode 54 of the OWASP podcast, OWASP chapter head for Germany, Georg Hess and CEO and co-founder of art of defence speaks with Matt Tesauro at the OWASP’s AppSecDC show on the top 10 release candidate 2010 and the impacts it will have on the industry.

Listen here for OWASP insight on the release candidate.

By Robert Gelinas

© 2009.  All Rights Reserved

Outcome-Based Business Models synchronize vendor and client goals, eliminate adversarial dynamics, and create the best opportunity for a true “win/win.”

Allies Not Adversaries

When Ross Perot left EDS/GM and founded Perot Systems, one of the first market segments his new company sought to serve with IT Outsourcing services was the data center operations of State Governments.  What was unique about his approach was that his pricing model wasn’t based upon traditional man-hour rates, headcount, flat project fees, etc.  Instead, he simply asked to be paid as a percentage of the current operational cost savings he created with his services.

In effect, if Perot could reduce an organization’s existing IT operating costs by, say 30%, and he took a percentage of that, then the net savings was still a good deal for the client—with no “breakeven point” that had to be achieved at some theoretical point in the distant future before appreciating the savings, plus the cost of the operation was coming from existing budgets, and therefore already funded.  Plus, the more Perot was able to save them, the more he made.

A scenario like this puts both the vendor and the client into a business model of mutually compatible and synergistic goals.  The client values the tangible and desirable goal of lowering their costs/expenses, whereas the vendor believes their value proposition could genuinely result in major new operational efficiencies.  But rather than the vendor telling the client that they have to pay X in order to receive benefit Y, i.e. direct cause and effect, in Perot’s case, instead they made X a factor of Y.  If Y (benefit produced), then X (payment).

This logic effectively takes off the table the notion that the client could potentially end up paying X cost but maybe not receiving Y benefit as promised, essentially having to bear all the risk of the relationship and financial investment alone.  But the synergy of this approach goes further, creating the opportunity that the vendor might even deliver results superior to Y, and thereby increase their own ROI (2X?), by virtue of the business model structured to be in the vendor’s best interests to do so.  More value delivered to the client means the greater the vendor’s reward.

Fees for service as a percentage of savings isn’t the only example of this principle.  In some instances, direct costs savings might not be a practical objective – e.g. where an incremental investment is what is required to achieve a greater business goal.  That doesn’t mean that an Outcome Based Business Model is precluded.

For example, what if the goal for the client is to generate a specific revenue goal; or to achieve a certain degree of Gross Margin, Net Operating Income (NOI), Profitability, or Earnings Per Share (EPS); or perhaps to bring a deliverable product or service to market by a specific target deadline that gives the client a competitive advantage in their own market.  What about an Annual Growth Rate (AGR) target?  All of these goals can have a compensation component for the vendor who is able to make them happen.

Shared Risk

The obvious downside to the above thinking is that there exists the potential to shift virtually all of the risk of success over to the vendor, away from the client.  If the proposition is purely – “We’ll guarantee your success, Mr. Client, and after we do, then you can pay us” – who wouldn’t want that deal?

Sure, there’s always the inherent risk of operational disruption arising from any significant change to an environment or process, but one would think that after some proper due diligence, if you are talking about a credible vendor relationship that you would consider using anyway, if all other considerations are equal, and the only difference is a pricing structure that puts all the performance obligations on the vendor with no advance financial risk to the client until the success has been achieved – that’s a very compelling business proposition.

To be clear: the extreme interpretation of this idea here is analogous to the home contractor who tells you that their labor and materials are free until the job is done, when you’re 100% happy, and then you pay.  Unfortunately, the only vendors/contractors who offer such “deals” are those who are supremely confident in what their work will produce, the carrying cost of the job is not cost-prohibitive, and the risk of the client not being happy when done is highly unlikely.

This approach may be reasonable for small-scale endeavors.  But what about large, enterprise-class undertakings that might be months or even years in scope, involving many fulltime personnel and resources, where the ability to defer vendor compensation to the very end isn’t a financially viable strategy? Is an Outcome-Based Business Model still an option?

Yes.

When You’re Lost, Buy a Map

Embarking on a year-long or more, six- or seven-figure project, or multiple overlapping projects long-term, and doing so starting from scratch with a brand new third-party vendor, can appear to be a very risky proposition in terms of having any reasonable assurance of long-term success—regardless of how well-reputed or experienced a vendor is that you may be considering using.  The vendor may do everything right themselves, but a client’s own organization may have idiosyncrasies and nuances that just don’t integrate well with outside parties that create stumbling blocks and potential risks.

Plus, as noted above, it might be completely unreasonable/unviable for any outside vendor to be willing to take on most or all of the financial risk of a major, long-term endeavor prior to the execution and production of all deliverables and results.

In all likelihood, the client has some idea of what they wish to achieve, even if the roadmap to achieving it working in concert with an outside party isn’t fully understood.  The client may, indeed, have some idea of what it would take if they did it all themselves, hired and deployed all of their own resources, obtained all the requisite tools and implemented all the necessary best-practice processes, etc.  But knowing those facts is what likely prompted the client to seek out third-party help in the first place – i.e. in an effort to reduce costs, accelerate time frames, and produce a stronger result.  But the exact parameters of what it would take for a third party to achieve the client’s goals in terms of time and money and operational process are completely unknown.  And even if these variables were fully known, i.e. coming in the form of a traditional bid, a budgetary figure and target deadline does nothing to mitigate any of those risks and concerns associated with assuring long-term success.

So how can this dilemma be resolved?  Enter the expert Business Analyst.

All the pertinent variables in the “master equation” in terms of what needs to be accomplished and what it will take to do it successfully can be quantified.  Moreover, the business drivers that served as the catalyst for initiating and approving the project(s) themselves can be identified and quantified – i.e. in terms of the goal of increasing revenues and/or productivity, producing better margins, lowering operating costs, generating higher EPS, etc.  All of that data can then be synthesized into a Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) / Return on Investment (ROI) model.

That TCO/ROI Model can then serve as the foundation for an incremental Project Plan, broken down into phases/milestones, whereby “Success” can then be defined and quantified, not in terms of a single end result, but in terms of sequential achievements that a vendor can then potentially viably shoulder, taking on a measure of that risk and/or make an investment with sufficient confidence that their own operating costs are neither cost prohibitive nor is the outcome of the incremental deliverable uncertain.

For the client’s benefit, the production of this Gap Analysis, TCO/ROI Model, and Project(s) Development Roadmap is a relatively small investment in terms of both time and money – which is an investment that needs to be undertaken regardless of who ends up doing some or all of the work. That’s Key to understand.

Thus, the risk mitigation strategy becomes simple and clear:

1)     A client should first invest in a Development Roadmap, predicated upon objective and highly quantitative Business Analysis within the context of Client Defined Business Objectives

2)     The Roadmap then provides the Basis/Foundation for Incremental Win/Win Outcome-Based Business Model Transactions, with Shared Risk and Investment

3)     Vendor Integration and Partnering can then be evaluated moving forward based upon Pilot/Test projects to establish effective communication and collaboration processes, and the trust and confidence necessary to proceed with the execution of the full Development Plan

The Best of All Worlds

Outcome-Based Business Models, with shared risk and investment, is the most financially advantageous and lowest risk scenario for a Client-Vendor relationship – for both parties.  It is possible to enjoy such a business model, even in the context of large-scale business objectives if approached with the proper strategy and an incremental and evolutionary development process.

Robert Gelinas is the President and CEO of JPE Inc. Consulting (www.jpeincconsulting.com). He has spent over 20 years in the IT industry as a senior executive and sales and marketing leader, having built many national and international Enterprise IT sales and marketing organizations.  He has both an extensive Fortune 500 background as well as a wealth of successful Start-Up experience. He is also a published novelist, writer, publisher (www.archebooks.com) and frequent public speaker on both IT marketing and the writing and publishing industry.

Word on the street is that Visa is set for a major mobile payments announcement in next 6-8 weeks. Separately, US MNOs are also rumored to be collaborating on Near Field Communications (NFC) payments with acquirers. Could it be that the log jam on NFC is about to be broken? Is Visa developing new rails to support mobile payments? Let me say up front that this blog represents “connecting the dots” more than a definitive market projection.

The US market is ripe for a break from the 6 party political “fur ball” that is hampering delivery of mobile payment (Card Issuers, Acquirers, Network, Merchant, MNOs, Handset Mfg). For those outside the US, MNOs have substantial control over handset features and applications, and have been leveraging this “node control” to “influence” direction of payments. The central US MNO argument being: “it is our customer, our handset, our network we should get a cut of the transaction rev”. Unfortunately existing inter-bank mobile transfers/ payments are settled through existing payment networks that provide limited flexibility in accommodating a “new” MNO role and the network rules leave much room for improvment in: authorization, authentication and consumer “control”. 

Outside the US, the situation is much different, as consumers have great flexibility in switching MNOs, have ownership of their handsets, and are largely on pre-paid plans. The MNO challenge for payments in this environment is largely regulatory. Many countries (EU, HK, Korea, Japan, SG) have open well defined rules for MNOs role in payments (example: ECB ELMI framework within the EU), while other countries are highly restrictive and are in the midst of developing their legal and regulatory framework. Even in the countries where MNOs participation is defined, they have largely benefited from the complimentary role that the service plays with pre-paid plans (not in interchange at POS).

Globally, MNOs are looking for a payment platform where they can benefit from interaction between consumer and merchant, with flexibility to deal with a heterogeneous regulatory environment. The competitive pressures on Visa/MC are much different then they were 5 years ago (when both were bank owned). The network fee structures and rules were written with banks and mature markets in mind. Emerging markets present a much different set of opportunities, as MNOs lead banks in brand and consumer penetration within every geography.

All of this leads to the case for a new “Mobile Payments Settlement” network, a network which will alienate many banks. I expect to see Visa roll out the initial stages of this network in the next 2 months with an emphasis on NFC. Quite possibly the best kept secret I have ever seen from a public company. I’m sure many Silicon Valley CEOs are crossing their fingers (with me) on this, as a “new wave” of innovation is certainly close at hand that will drive growth (and valuations).

For those not keeping up with the 50 or so product announcements a day on NFC, handset manufacturers committed to have NFC enabled phones to consumers in mid 2009 in the GSMA 2008 congress. NFC capabilities are numerous (Vodafone YouTube Overview), and may represent a true disruptive innovation surrounding payments. There have been many very recent product announcements that will enable existing phones to use NFC, and P2P Capability. All of which will blossom in a more “fertile” mobile settlement environment. See one example “future” Visa mobile service here: http://tomnoyes.wordpress.com/2009/09/24/googleoff/

Side note: This is not all bad news for Banks, as the structure will certainly provide for existing cards (debit/credit) and may deliver substantial revenue through cash replacement (small < $50) transactions. More details on structure of MNO in settlement 2 weeks….

Select Product/Alliances Below:

• http://www.corporate.visa.com/media-center/press-releases/press921.jsp
• http://www.neustar.biz/pressroom/files/announcements/VISAFINAL.pdf
• Neustar http://www.americanbanker.com/issues/174_125/-383355-1.html
• http://www.nearfieldcommunicationsworld.com/2009/11/04/32152/zenius-adds nfc-to-standard-mobile-phones-with-bladox-waver/
• http://www.paymentssource.com/asset/article/2703061/att-certifies-charge-anywhere-mobile-payment.html?pg=
• http://www.morerfid.com/details.php?subdetail=Report&action=details&report_id=6376&display=RFID
• http://www.nfcnews.com/2009/11/18/attachment-turns-iphone-into-rfid-nfc-reader
• http://www.bladox.com/
• http://www.celent.com/124_1187.htm

Mona Sahlin menade uppenbarligen allvar när hon sa att Socialdemokraterna måste vara tydligare med vad de vill. Man har nyligen offentliggjort sin valstrategi för valet 2010 där man presenterar aldrig tidigare skådade nivåer av klarhet. Eller vad sägs om:

• “Rätt budskap, rätt illustration med rätt kommunikatör till rätt målgrupp”
• “Tillsammans med v och mp”
• “Söker mandat för S-ledd röd-grön samarbetsregering”
• “Ett antal gemensamma aktiviteter”
• “Effektivt resursanvändande av personer och pengar”

Dessutom har man nu löst ett par gordiska knutar och fattat flera revolutionerande beslut som att man ska samarbeta med SSU och S-kvinnor, framstå som ett framtidsinriktat parti,  berätta för väljarna varför man vill ha deras förtroende, och att LO ska vara en central del av valrörelsen. Som sagt, revolutionerande.

Aftonbladet frågar den nytillsatte valgeneralen Bo Krogvig om det inte är riskabelt att berätta för motståndarna hur man tänker angripa dem. Krogvig svarar: “Det kanske finns en risk, men den får vi väl ta.”

Det var så sant som det var sagt. Den rödgröna röran får passa sig noga nu för genom att skänka den borgerliga alliansen detta vapen har man nu avslöjat allt om socialdemokratiska valrörelsen…

Simon Hedlin Larsson

How Peter L Bernstein’s work helps us make the safest decision with regard to global warming.

Probably like me you hadn’t heard of Peter Bernstein. He was instrumental in understanding risk and that alone makes him worth knowing about.  Here’s the entry from Wikipedia:

Peter Lewyn Bernstein (January 22, 1919 – June 5, 2009) was a financial historian, economist and educator whose development and refinement of the efficient market theory made him one of the country’s [USA] best known authorities in popularizing and presenting investment economics to the general public.

Watch the YouTube video before reading on:

You could not have missed a fundamental message in the interview – if the consequence of something is critically harmful then don’t take ANY risks. Bernstein’s book on risk is Against the Gods.

Some weeks ago, we started a debate on Learning from Dogs about Climate Warming.  It was between Prof Alan Carlin who is sceptical about the evidence being presented and Patrice Ayme, (a nom de plume) a mathematician and scientist, who is certain that mankind is harming the global climate.  You can read both sides of the debate by clicking on the On Climate Warming theme link.  If you do, you can see that there was some pretty vigorous ball play between both gents which is all very well but it isn’t helping the common man work out what to do.

The challenge for ordinary thinking persons is that we have to make a judgement as to which ’side’ is right.  We don’t have the tools or the knowledge to review the core science and come to an independent decision.  Acknowledging this, the author sent an email to both Alan and Patrice:

It seems to me that there are some fundamental, rational questions that need asking and I hope that each of you wise men, in a final contribution to this topic, will address them.

1. Is mankind having an effect on the atmosphere of this planet which will be harmful?

2. Is there any room for error in your answer to Q.1.?

3. CO2 levels in the atmosphere are higher than has ever been known by science.  Is that a correct statement?

4. Are the activities of mankind causing the increasing levels of acidification in the oceans of the planet?

5. Are the activities of mankind causing the rising sea levels of the planet’s oceans?

6. Is man-made global warming happening: yes; no; unclear?

7. Is there a rational argument for assuming global warming will threaten mankind’s existence on the planet?

Unfortunately Alan Carlin replied saying:

Paul,
I have now concluded that I do not currently have time to respond to your seven good and interesting questions and still meet my high standards for documentation and references.  I could, of course, simply express my current opinions based in some cases on limited research on those topics that I either have not researched or have not recently done so.  But I do not think that would help anyone.  The issue is really not my opinions but rather how and why I arrived at them.  That takes time and research, which I cannot currently undertake because of other continuing obligations.
Thank you for your interest and much needed concern to better illuminate the current wide differences between alarmists/warmists and sceptics.

These are the answers to the questions supplied by Patrice:

1. Is mankind having an effect on the atmosphere of this planet which will be harmful?

Two degrees Celsius warming globally, planet wide, in the average, may mean twenty degrees Celsius warming at the poles, on current trends, extended linearly (non linear effects ought to make the situation even worse, quicker). Thus Alaska would become  tropical. Amazingly, not only did it happen before, but it seems to be the Earth preferred climate.   Our present BIOSPHERE is not adapted to this though: crocodiles could swim to tropical Alaska, but where are all temperate and polar fauna and flora going to go?

2. Is there any room for error in your answer to Q.1.?

Not really: when the plane is going to hit the mountain, it does not matter where if it’s a few degrees higher or lower.

3. CO2 levels in the atmosphere are higher than has ever been known by science.  Is that a correct statement?

It is correct for the last 15 million years, according to the latest (2009) research, when CO2 concentration was limited to 300 ppmv (except for possible transient peaks; extreme volcanism can rise and lower CO2 quickly). It is not true for the warmest geological periods (which were much more extensive than the glaciated periods)

4. Are the activities of mankind causing the increasing levels of acidification in the oceans of the planet?

Half of the increased CO2, so far, has gone in the ocean, some reacting with water to make carbonic acid. Latest research suggests that plankton will start dissolving by 2100. A lot of CO2 was just dissolved, as in a carbonated soda, (e.g. Perrier), and may, most likely will, come out if warmed up and shaken (as is now happening in the Antarctic ocean).

5. Are the activities of mankind causing the rising sea levels of the planet’s oceans?

The giant icecaps of Greenland and Antarctica are, overall, melting. Since some Antarctic temperatures have gone up 4.5 degree Celsius, if one ascribes that spectacular rise to man, then so it is.

6. Is man-made global warming happening: yes; no; unclear?

The warming is just a degree of freedom of the system in which increased energy is flowing, as the lower atmosphere warms. Warming can involve the oceans, or the ground itself. When one looks at the temperature gradient in the latter, by digging holes and measuring the temperature gradient, the signs of irresistible warming are blatant. As the warming proceeds, new sinks for the increasing heat open up, slowing down the apparent warming, as they suck up the energy. So looking only at a temperature gauge is a mistake. So far, the temperature rise in the temperate and tropical areas has been tiny, but the effects in the polar areas, where the refrigerators and sun shades are, have been tremendous.

7. Is there a rational argument for assuming global warming will threaten mankind’s existence on the planet?

The problem is more global carbon than global warming per se. Global carbon threatens an imminent collapse of the food chain in the ocean. This has happened before, and was caused by volcanoes (which belch SO2 and CO2). Mankind’s ongoing existence is a military problem. As the biosphere collapses, nuclear world war has a high probability of occurring. As the defeat of Britain and France in May-June 1940 showed, and the victory at Midway confirmed, one time extraordinary events, not easily reproducible in war games, do happen in real war. So it is not clear that civilization will survive. But it is clear that billions of people will die.

So back to Peter Bernstein.  I do not know if Alan Carlin or Patrice Ayme represent an accurate scientific understanding of the future of our climate and world.  Probably the majority of the Learning from Dogs readers are in the same camp.

Governments are no help at all because the cynic in me thinks that anything that assists the taxation of people (and global warming is a great ’sales’ pitch) won’t generate impartial evidence.  Even independent research centres that spend government monies may be loathe to ‘bite the hand that feeds it’.

Bernstein gives us the answer.  If the probability of global warming/excessive global carbon were happening then the consequences for all the children and grandchildren on this planet would be critically damaging.  On that basis, there is no choice.

We must step up the political force across the world’s governments to make sure the next generations have a viable planet on which to live.

By Paul Handover

I have spent the last 20 years of my professional career building web-based products and services and growing businesses on the web. During that time I have worked for early stage startups,  fortune 500 behemoths and everything in between. Most recently I worked as the  CTO of Napster, a late stage startup. I had a lot of fun there. We rebuilt all of the consumer facing applications, beat waterfall and a “business vs. technology” mindset out of the organization, and generally introduced elements of risk taking and excitement back into the culture.  But probably the most interesting and valuable part of my Napster experience was  the acquisition of Napster by BestBuy in October of 2008. As a result of that event, I learned a tremendous amount about the differences in philosophy, attitude, and approach that inherently exist between a mature multi-billion dollar corporation and a smaller online startup.  Though many of the words and concepts we used to talk about markets, products, consumers, and projects were the same, our interpretations were very different.  At first we ignored or marginalized this, thinking that by working together we would ultimately end up “on the same page”. Eventually, it became obvious that we needed to spend a fair amount of time developing a common language and digging into the perspectives everyone was bringing to the table.  I am a strong proponent of both formal approaches to Customer Development (Steve Blank, Eric Ries) and lean/agile approaches to Product Development (Lean, Scrum, XP).  I bring this up because my thoughts and attitudes in these two areas color how I view  products, markets, businesses, and consumers and definitely impacted my experience with the BestBuy acquisition. As the transition progressed and we all began to acquire real working experience with one another, I identified a set of issues that I believe lay at the basis of many of the challenges we faced.

1. Empirical approaches to Product Development are easy to talk about but hard to do  (deterministic approaches die hard)
2. Flexibility is easy to champion and talk about but hard to build into any culture that has focused on efficiency for many years
3. Extreme disaggregation of functional disciplines has many negative consequences (PMO)
4. Thinking about technical risk is easier than thinking about market risk
5. “Complete” is not a meaningful concept and its pursuit causes problems (No Pareto)
6. Easier to focus on reducing internal risks than product/market fit risks
7. Hierarchical decision-making is more comfortable than demonstration based decision-making
8. Corporate IT organizational cultures are completely different from product development organizational cultures
9. Product Management is a poorly understood discipline
10. With large cash reserves can come a willingness to create complexity where it is not needed

I am going to spend the next couple of weeks detailing each of these observations and talking about how I am applying some of what I learned in my current situation

3109714    การประเมินความเสี่ยงต่อสุขภาพ    Health Risk Assessment

ศึกษาและประเมินความเสี่ยงทางพิษวิทยาของมลพิษในสิ่งแวดล้อมต่อสุขภาพอนามัย และแนวคงามคิดการแก้ไขและลดความเสี่ยง

(Study and assess toxic effects of environmental polllutions to health; concepts of resolution and reduction of risks.)

(3109714 จุฬาลงกรณ์มหาวิทยาลัย)

3109802    การประเมินความเสี่ยงทางนิเวศน์    Ecological Risk Assessment

ผลกระทบของกิจกรรมต่างๆ รวมทั้งการปศุสัตว์ต่อสิ่งแวดล้อม การสร้างแบบจำลองทางคณิตศาสตร์ของสารเคมีในสิ่งแวดล้อม การคำนวณผลของสารเคมีต่อสิ่งแวดล้อมและสิ่งมีชีวิต แนวทางการจัดการคุณภาพสิ่งแวดล้อม

(Effects of activities including animal husbandry on the environment; mathematical modeling for the fate of chemicals in the enviroment; calculation of effects of chemicals on the environment and biota; environmental management.)

(3109802 จุฬาลงกรณ์มหาวิทยาลัย)

So it’s been real slow.  Mostly hampered by the awful cold I got last week and the impending baby birth this week.  I haven’t done any new business in a while and it is sad to say that I have very little in the way of liability outstanding.  This is a tough business to break into.

I have some stuff pending, but pending doesn’t put food on the table.

-bbc

Diabetes Risk Test – American Diabetes Association.

At a recent meeting where signatories of the UN Global Compact discussed the topic of the impact of climate change on human rights, my initial thought was the two areas are exclusive.  However, as speakers from the International Business Leaders Forum (IBLF) and the Institute for Human Rights & Business gave their views, the real impact climate change can have at grassroots level began to sink in, making it very likely to be a hot topic at the upcoming Copenhagen Climate Change summit.

Commerce can be a good thing, bringing benefits such as growth, jobs and infrastructure development to countries. This has been experienced in many regions of the world – in particular and most recently, in China and India. Companies have extended their global reach and contributed to growth in the developing world through direct investment, joint ventures and other routes, giving them an influential position in some of the regions they operate in.

However, with climate change playing a part in changing the environmental dynamics of the world they operate in, the role businesses play when facing significant climate change and human rights challenges will change.  For example, there is gathering momentum from the United Nations and lobbying groups, as exhibited through the frameworks that have come into existence over the last decade; for example the UN Millennium Development Goals and UN Global Compact.

This may be the start of a process that sees climate change related human rights issues being viewed in the same way as corruption – i.e. factors which affect individuals’ and communities’ human rights will be viewed in the same way as corruption is viewed today, with stringent rules, legislation and policies in place. As the consequences of climate change are experienced more intensely and lobbying groups’ activities gather momentum there will be increasing pressure on companies to better manage the impacts of their operations. Investors and the media will also play a more active role in exerting pressure on companies than ever before.

Human rights challenges in the future could include mass migration as a result of climate change factors such as sea level rises causing flooding, and soil erosion impacting land fertility. If not managed these could have a massive impact, with the worst case scenario being conflict – how will Bangladesh’s neighbouring countries respond if flooding induces mass migration? Conversely, the droughts of East Africa may drive inhabitants towards Southern Africa, which has benefitted from above average rainfall over the last few years. What will reaction there be? Biofuels offer an alternative energy source, but what are the real costs associated with it? For companies, ensuring their risk management process is flexible and sophisticated enough to incorporate all these variables will become a necessity.

Managing stakeholder relationships and collaborating (rather than competing) over the use of scarce resources can ensure the benefits generated are shared with the local communities. Defining policies and internal strategies is the first step, but the greater challenge lies in ensuring the wider impact is considered and plans executed so that real benefits are generated, for both companies and communities. With the stakes so high, finding such solutions and implementing them becomes critical.

This blog was written by Aarti Shah

     Why are so many people scared to embrace freedom?  I think that there are many reasons, but the one that stands out among my guesses is this:  freedom brings with it more responsibility than most people can face.

     With freedom comes a need to care for oneself and to care for the people that one is responsible for.  It is possible to succeed hugely, but it is also possible to fail hugely. 

     Nobody wants to fail.  Nobody hopes to fail.  But sometimes it happens.

     I think people are afraid of freedom, because if they are free and if they fail, then they can blame nobody but themselves.  They have to admit that it was their own choices that brought about their failure.  They cannot blame “the government” or “society.”

     And they must resort to asking others for help.

     It is much easier to live with a “safety net” in which you force others to agree to support you in case you fail.  You force strangers to support you because it is easier than swallowing your pride to ask for help from people who know you–your own family, friends, associates, and community members.

     And if you do succeed financially, it is much easier to live with the false sense of guilt for being rich if you can say, “I pay my taxes.  I do my part.”  It keeps you from having to actually choose whether to give up your precious mammon to help others out or to remain greedy and stingy.  It even allows you to ignore your own family members and, if you have any, friends, because it’s “the government’s job” to take crare of them–not yours.

     Yes, freedom and responsibility go hand in hand.  I am happy to say that I am one of the few is willing to accept both freedom and the responsibility that goes with it.  How about you?

Crises are generally defined as decisive moments, particularly in times of danger or difficulty. Times of danger or difficulty can arise because of various hazards, i.e. of natural, man-made (voluntary or involuntary) and public opinion/media type, hitting the organization or the system under consideration.

Any hazard type can generate harm, losses, i.e. consequences, which can be limited to physical losses, or evolve into image related damages. These last ones are sometimes more difficult to fix, especially if a corporations ends up looking like an arrogant monster that “could just come in and throw lots of its money at a problem that was more than just a money issue…” (Albrecht, 1996).
Sometimes poorly managed issues, or poor risk communication, can lead to trigger public opinion/media hazards, like boycotts, blockades of facilities, strikes, media campaigns etc.
In studying potential for crises one has to remember that “instead of the past determining the present (the historic approach), future is colonized by risk, and therefore determines the present.” What that means is that we cannot only look at the past (statistical approaches) to predict the future.

A vivid example of a “new crisis” is a relatively recent “Chocolate Scandal” in Switzerland. A major (world renown) food company, famous for a celebrated chocolate brand, sold in the same identical package since decades decided to mandate a worldly renowned architect and designer to repackage the brand. As soon as the new, very attractive, space-age package was on the shelves of supermarkets people responded with a double outcry. On one hand they had lost their beloved traditional package (a classic type of crisis), and on the other, the new package was an environmental monster, due to its volume, and not recyclable (“new” type of crisis).
What was born as a show-off design and marketing turned out as a loss estimated at 24% of the annual sales volume.
A simple equation for your thoughts: Future does not generally coincide with the past, and as we move forward they will diverge more and more! Beware.

For B2B vendors that are in the business of selling software, One common method of driving customers to your product is providing a time limited, demonstration version of that product.

This can be a great way to let prospects try before they buy. When done correctly and simply, It can give prospective customers a real world look at the basic features and functionality of your product.

While there is nothing wrong with providing demonstration versions of your software;

If you don’t do it right, don’t bother!

A story of the the demo that can only be used by experts.

I have been looking for a particular software tool for my organization. The market and vendors in this tools competitive space has hundreds of products, so it is not as if there is zero competition. In my research I found one vendor that had a product that looked to have the features I was looking for, and it also had a demonstration version of the product. My first thought was great!

I downloaded that demo and then looked on their web site for installation instructions. None.

I extracted the downloaded package and searched it all for installation instructions. None.

I called their sales team for instructions. None.

Let me give a little bit of background, this tool is not a stand-alone product that you double click the SETUP file and follow the bouncing ball until it tells you to click FINISH.

This software is a departmental tool that can be configured to use a few different Web Server products for the front end portions that people interact with, plus several different database products for the back end data storage. The installation and configuration of this type of software gets a little more complex as you have to get the pre-requisite components  (web server and database server) properly configured and set up first.

What happens?

I start the application installation, then get some cryptic error message that kills it dead.

Now, unlike my my previous rant about graphics and tutorials, at least software and servers are in my skill level!

So I have been able to overcome the errors and blow ups one by one to determine what is happening after the installation dies! I fix that one piece, try again, it dies again, I track down that reason, try again….

You get the idea. frustration. Hours of time wasted and I am not even at the stage where I can actually evaluate the product!

Would everybody keep doing this trial and error install? For a demo version of software? Probably not!

Who is the audience of your demo?

If the target market of your demo software is senior marketing, sales, or operations staff. Would they be able to try it on their own? Do they even have an IT team available for the hours of what I went through?

Or will this type of frustration have them just saying forget it?

The three choices; easy, difficult, and the hard way

The easy way to provide a software demo is to ensure that it is entirely self contained, no external dependencies at all. Everything your software needs is installed automatically.

A little more difficult is acknowledging the dependencies mentioned above, but at the minimum having explicit warnings and instructions on what is required, and what will be expected.

The hard way is the trial and error that I have been going through.

If you are planning your demonstration software the hard way – you probably have killed any benefit of your demo!

You can get updates to this blog by clicking the RSS icon on the Home Page!

Photo Credit Doug Becker via flickr

More than 500 civil protection professionals will come together tomorrow in Brussels, for a two-day conference on how EU countries can develop their resilience to disasters. The third Civil Protection Forum will be launched be the EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas, who said today that “Europe is ready to do everything possible to strengthen its resilience to disasters to reduce the high cost to human life.”

Climate change is likely to increase the frequency and impact of natural disasters and Europe has to be prepared for this. Already, thousands of people lose their lives every year and many more face long-term disruption to their daily life.

“Last year alone, some 20 million people worldwide were forced from their homes by natural disasters. The financial costs are also high: disasters cost Europe an estimated €15 billion a year. The Forum will be a vital platform for debating the challenges facing us and in helping us strengthen our disaster prevention and response,” said Stavros Dimas.

The third Civil Protection Forum will focus on resilience and how Europe can strengthen prevention and response measures to deal with natural disasters and other challenges such as, terrorist threats, chemical incidents and other accidents more effectively.

Three debates with high-level speakers from the world of politics, business and research will take place a) on when and how to prepare for disaster, b) risk perception, and c) self-sufficiency among citizens and what form a disaster management strategy in Europe should take.

The conference, “Towards a more resilient society”, will debate future challenges for European civil protection, the technological developments and how to involve people in preparing for disaster.

An exhibition involving international partners, training organisations and innovative technologies will run alongside the conference. This includes an earthquake simulating platform, part of an exhibition on the disaster that hit the Italian city of L’Aquila earlier this year.

Source and more information about the Forum, visit: www.civilprotectionforum.eu

The Governement Actuaries Department (GAD) will be opening a new office in Glasgow in the New Year.

GAD provide actuarial advice to the public sector anywhere in the world and are growing their insurance team because, as they explain,

“Actuaries can play a key role in helping insurance companies run efficiently and effectively. They can also help insurance regulators and others in the public sector understand the work of insurance companies.”

The insurance industry focuses on the measurement and management of risk, particularly important in the current economic climate.

For more information about GAD and the insurance industry, read their latest newsletter.

Search for actuarial insurance jobs.

Why does it take so long from the inception of a deal to getting it signed? And why is it that final negotiations always seem to be rushed, leaving many open items still to be resolved by the implementation team?

This was the gist of questions raised by IACCM member Mark Hope in a recent note. He went on to say: “I wonder whether you have or could research data that identifies the ratio between thinking time and doing time, as I think this would be fascinating and actually get to the nub of delay. There is a part of me thinks we as a community are accepting too much criticism for the overall delay and that we should focus on speeding up the buying decision and selection process more than the execution process”.

Mark’s comments relate to relatively large and often quite complex acquisitions, often related to technology or outsourcing. I am sure they resonate with many. We see initiatives kicked off with a great flurry, only for interest to dwindle as new priorities intervene. Then suddenly, an executive somewhere wakes up, or starts demanding to know the status of ‘their’ project – and suddenly reaching closure becomes urgent and everyone is seeking scapegoats for why it didn’t happen already …

Does this sound familiar to you? And does it seem unfair that often the convenient scapegoat is Procurement, or Contracts / Commercial, or Legal? We know we are innocent victims – don’t we?

Well, perhaps sometimes we contribute to that delay. But even if we do not, isn’t it time that we recognize reality and do something about it? Because in answer to Mark’s question regarding research data, we do have some very interesting facts. For example, we know that complex contracts require the coordination of multiple stakeholder perspectives and the responsibility for orchestrating those (and then reconciling the results) is often rather vague and inconsistent. We also know that the quality of executive sponsorship is key to project speed and almost certainly a major factor in its success. And we know that the lead-times to which Mark refers are highly variable – some companies have typical closure times of 5 – 7 weeks on projects where others take 25+.

Mark is absolutely right to imply that much of the delay in individual transactions is outside the control of the contracts / commercial / procurement organization. However, I would contend that we are at fault, because we know this is happening, we know that fingers will point at us, yet we do little or nothing about it.

Most executives understand the value of time. They would like faster execution on projects. They realise that ‘panic’ action frequently results in corners being cut and a loss of quality in the results. So why are we not responding to those issues by proposing a more rigorous and measured business process, aimed at improving review and approval quality and cycle times? Why are we not collecting and collating the data to find out what causes these recurrent delays? Why are we not benchmarking our company’s performance with that of major competitors or like industries? And why are we not then reporting to executive management on the steps needed to improve cycle times and generate better negotiated agreements? Some of course are doing precisely this – and helping their company to competitive advantage (se for example the results of IACCM’s ‘Most Admired Companies’ surveys and interviews). But many are not; they are simply waiting for someone else to fix the problem.

Mark has asked an excellent question and makes a very pertinent observation. Because in the end, is the answer not to ask ourselves ’Do we want to be victims, or leaders?’ Is this not a key example of where we have an opportunity to add value to the business and be instigators of change? And just remember what happens to those who fail to lead; in general, at some point, the accusations that they are ‘the problem’ start to stick – and suddenly the group or function faces massive reorganization and loss of power.

So be proactive. Don’t wait for others to find their answers to the question ‘Why does it take so long?’ If you need data to support you in this initiative, then you know who can help you  …. it is IACCM.

The latest recommendation from a US task force is that women don’t need regular mammograms until age 50.  The old recommendations were to start at age 40.  The USA Today article provides a number of statistics for risk of death from breast cancer.  When stats are given as a percent, I like to extend it out to an actual number.

MAMMOGRAMS, RISK OF DEATH Mammograms reduce the risk of dying from breast cancer by a fraction of a percent, research shows.10-year risk of death from breast cancer: Ages 40-49 Ages 50-59 Without screening 0.33% 0.89% With screening 0.28% 0.69% Absolute reduction in risk 0.05% 0.20% Source: Steve Woloshin, Veterans Affairs Outcomes Group

Of 10,000 women aged 40 to 49, 33 are expected to die within 10 years from breast cancer.

If those same 10,000 women had screening, 28 would be expected to die within 10 years from breast cancer.

Of 10,000 women aged 50 to 59, 89 are expected to die within 10 years from breast cancer.

If those same 10,000 women had screening, 69 would be expected to die within 10 years from breast cancer.

So, screening 10,000 women aged 40 to 49, would save 5 lives and screening 10,000 women aged 50 to 59 would save 20 lives.

BUT if the 10,000 women aged 40 to 49 are screened annually for 10 years, 5,000 would have a “false alarm” at least once and many would undergo investigations because of that false alarm.

Basically, screening all women aged 40 to 49 is not cost effective.  Individual women with other risk factors, especially a family history, should be screened early and often.  That is a much more effective use of resources.

I found out about Chris Guillebeau through the IWTYTBR Financial 6-week bootcamp where he did an awesome live webcast.  Checked out his blog, and he’s a genius on unconventional living and “travel-hacking.”  One of his FREE pdf books is A Brief Guide to World Domination, where he just lays it out (I’m not finished reading it yet, but it’s short).

He asks The Two Most Important Questions in the Universe, and I’m gonna try to answer them.

#1: What do you really want to get out of life?

Used to be the military, but now I’ve got a few things I’m sure about.

• Travel free, observe the world at work with no strings attached and see what makes people tick.  Perfect my own philosophy.  This involves paying my debt.
• Start a business (I’ve got an idea, but it’s a secret!)  Maybe get some of my inventions into production.
• Live unconventionally, not buying a house but maybe joining (maybe even starting) a little yurt community, to save on mortgage and get away from silly consumerism
• Perfect my “kit,” all the physical possessions I need to get by (wait for this in another post!)
• Really get discipline and spirituality in my life; I’ve been looking hard at Buddhism because I’m beginning to really see the importance of awareness to me, and looking at aikido for tons of reasons, a big one being able to peacefully, confidently and (gulp) lovingly diffuse a conflict.
• Wow, I think there are more.  But most important really is the kit, so I can feel self-sufficient and materially fulfilled, and then financial freedom.

#2: What can you offer the world that no one else can?
Alright, good question.  First thing, I love construction-work, doing carpentry is something I totally dig on.  I’d love to travel the world doing it, and I can’t see myself getting sick of it.  I can’t see myself ending up stuck in a cubicle either, so this would be good for that.

I’m not scared to make sacrifices and big changes, or big risks if I have to.  Very adventurous, not scared to work hard, and I’m driven.  So I could do a physical, fast-paced job outdoors not many people are willing to do, and do the mental part of it.  I think project manager would suit me better than computer programmer.

ON with the ebook, and then we’ll see what’s up.

http://chrisguillebeau.com/3×5/

I recently created a post on a BA’s role on agile projects. The essential message was, simply, that there is no BA role. There’s also no PM role either. However, both disciplines have an immense number of skills that are incredibly valuable in agile projects.

Sprint Zero

• Identifying users: Understanding who to talk to and who the prioritised feature sets and requirements represents if the first skill needed on an agile project. A BAs skills in stakeholder segmentation is the perfect starting point as is documenting them as personas.
• Collecting user needs described on story cards: BAs have a great number of skills in eliciting requirements. In Sprint Zero all that is required is documentation as a story card:”As a [role] I need to [activity] in order to [outcome]“This gives you great traceability throughout the project because everything as to tie into enabling the user to undertake the activity and give them the outcome they seek.

Articulating the skinny solution

• Prioritisation of requirements: What requirements are more important than others?  BAs have skills in negotiation, liaison, workshop organisation and execution. Pair a BA with an Information Architect (IA) or user-experience designer (UXD) and you get a good idea of the prioritisation of their needs and how they need to be articulated during the iteration phases as complete feature sets. Remember it’s not about having mandatory, desirable, etc. Instead, agile requirements are listed in priority order with a minimum set — the things we can’t do without — forming the skinny solution.This is where the BAs skills are essentially lacking because it’s more in the province of cognitive and behavioural psychology. The skinny system reflects users’ hygiene factors.Pair a BA with an IA, however, and the way to elicit the hygiene factors will become clear.

Planning an iteration

• Work estimation and benchmarking: What is the team going to produce? What skills are required? What activities will be done in this iteration? How long will elicitation and validation tasks take? These are all questions that BAs because of their ongoing involvement in projects are readily able to answer.I like to ensure that I’ve got a wiki handy to note the aspects of the estimation so that I can change the estimation into a benchmark once the work has been completed. Over time, this becomes a valuable knowledge tool because I can simply say “when we last did it, it took [this long]“
• Risk analysis: While doing work it’s the job of all team members to understand issues and risks as they arise and communicate them to the team’s leader, Sensei or Product Owner. The ability, therefore, to analyse on the fly is vital to the team and a skill that BAs have in spades.I find that differentiating between a fear and a risk is the hardest thing for peope to grasp. People often fear that something will eventuate, but when you start to boil things down into hard facts abouta) the impact the issue will have, and

  b) the actual likelihood of occurence (based on research) then fears can rapidly vanish when also paired with constant communication from standup meetings.

  In this way, the BAs skills are best applied in the Roshi, Scrum Master or Project Lead roles.

Understanding the context

• Elicitation and observation: Analysing how people work, why, and the outcomes achieved is an important part of a BAs skill set.  Whether done through interviews, focus groups or a contextual inquiry (my own favourite), understanding the context of use and communicating it is a BAs core strength in agile environments
• Communication: How do you relate to the rest of your multidisciplinary team that you know the context of use — both from a user and systems perspective? BAs have a variety of tools they use regularly coupled with a talent for customisation of communication mediums and messages so that information is passed on to others with maximum efficiency.So what are some of these tools?
  • Storyboards (which I love to draw!)
  • Plans on a page (epic stories)
  • User pathways
  • Behavioural and process flow diagrams
  • Context diagram
  • Logical data model

  Notice that these are all light-weight, can be done in a short period of time, are easily changed, and are, essentially, placholders for a conversation.

Understanding the human, strategic and system requirements

• Custodianship of requirements: Understanding context is one thing, but then drawing the relationships between context and the needs of different people, and then taking into consideration the constraints, is a BA’s bread and butter. Where other disciplines, particularly UXD, tend to have greater strength in understanding and documenting context, the BAs strength has always been in elicitation, translation and communication of requirements, and then the management of these requiremens through to solution design, validation and implementation.For people like me, who tend to like to work at the ‘big picture’, having a BA who is detail oriented is a must.

Solution design

• Translation, communication and business representation: This is my favourite part of the iteration. While other team members might be responsible for the organisation of information of a system, its interaction design, and its systems architectural design, the BAs skills best served during the design phase is in representation of business and end-users. This is largely because their role as custodian of requirements makes them the most familiar with what is required and what the outcomes need to be when putting everything together.

Validation of the solution

• Diplomacy, negotiation, and whole-of-project representation: While programmers use automated testing in agile environments one aspect that can’t be automatically tested is whether or not the system behaves in the way that matches the way users need and want to use the product. Here the BAs diplomacy is his most valuable asset to bring to the agile project. He has to balance the needs of everyone, as well as their expectations, to help negotiate an agreement that the solution works, or whether additional things need to be incorporated in order for the solution to be acceptable to those who will use it.Of course, the outcome also needs to be communicated to The Powers That Be. With their strong skills in diplomacy and negotiation, a BA is able to represent the team and project as its Roshi, Scrum Master, or Project Lead.Then there’s letting the team know they’ve not suceeded in producing a valid solution. Lots of people get very attached to what they think is the right way to proceed and having users tell you that it’s not what they want can be incredibly frustrating. It means that the BAs skills of diplomacy are not only valued as an outward facing ability but also as an inward facing one as well

Implementation

• Diplomacy and sign-off: Having completed the ISO13407 cycle final implementation the feature set needs to be signed-off. Someone has to remind users and the business of how the iteration has been conducted and the points of agreement throughout. This can be a delicate matter particularly given many users and sponsors want a big thick document to read at their leisure and then sign.I usually print and package all of the smaller deliverables and put them into a folder. The first page lists the milestones and activities, agreement dates and who was present/represented, and when agreement was reached. The bottom of the page has the dotted line on which to sign.
• Setting expectations: I’ve found other sponsors don’t care so much about being this formal, particularly given the BA has been in constant communication with them and set expectations along the entire feature set iteration.

Ultimately, while there is no actual BA role, a BAs skill sets are of incredible importance throughout an agile project. This is a breath of fresh air for those of us who are only invited by the PM to elicit requirements during the first stage of the a waterfall project only then to be brought back onto the scene to help with users acceptance testing. This, ultimately, is why as BAs, we should all be championing agile. And if you’re not, then you should be!

So where are your strengths? What skills do you use most often as a BA in agile environments?

M

Gold Is Rallying Because….

Courtesy of Jesse’s Café Américain

Gold is the ultimate currency.

It resists the attempts by the monetary authorities to debase it, because except for concerted attempts to suppress its price through non-profitseeking selling at key market points by central banks, and naked short selling by the global commercial banks in the paper markets, gold cannot be created and controlled by financial engineers like Ben Bernanke.

It provides a refuge, a store of wealth for private citizens during a period of general currency risk.

A simple chart should suffice.

As part of the quantitative easing regime, the Fed has so debased the financial system that dollar debt is paying negative interest rates once again as it did in the 1970’s.

In other words, it is costing money to hold dollar financial assets because of the mispricing of risk being engineering by the G7 central banks.

So, people and some central banks are seeking refuge in a stable currency that is beyond the control of the financial engineers.

"With the exception only of the period of the gold standard, practically all governments of history have used their exclusive power to issue money to defraud and plunder the people." Fredrich August von Hayek.

"The gold standard has one tremendous virtue: the quantity of the money supply, under the gold standard, is independent of the policies of governments and political parties. This is its advantage. It is a form of protection against spendthrift governments." Ludwig von Mises.

Alan Greenspan himself states the case most eloquently in his famous essay from 1966 Gold and Economic Freedom.

"This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists’ tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists’ antagonism toward the gold standard."

When the currencies of the US and Europe are debased by the financial engineers for the sake of the banks, when spendthrift governments run enormous deficits to fill the pockets of their special interests, informed wealth seeks a refuge in places where it cannot be so easily consumed for the exclusive benefit of the political elite.

This is sadly the case today, especially within the Anglo-American sphere of influence, from which the dollar had become the new opium trade, viciously addictive and debilitating. And so we have seen an historic flight to safety that began in the developing world, but is gaining momentum as the global dollar regime falters.

If you hold dollars, the Fed and the Treasury can confiscate your wealth, virtually at will. That is real power.

When the Fed lifts interest rates to again provide a positive return against inflation, then gold may stop rallying and reach a stable equilibrium price. This will be more difficult to do than it was to debase, as it is always easier to destroy than to create.

And it may be difficult to determine when that time comes, because the US bureaucrats have so thoroughly altered the Consumer Price Index over the past ten years that it is no longer a fair measure of inflation. Therefore it is a challenge to determine what is real and what is not, what is priced fairly and what is not. This is the hallmark of the modern western bankers and their accountants, and their demimonde in politics and the media.

Still, the message of the market is quite clear, to anyone who will listen.

A pleasant Thanksgiving holiday to my American friends, and a reminder to the rest of the world that you must muddle through without the direction of Wall Street for the next few days. How fitting that Thanksgiving was declared a national holiday by Lincoln in the depths of the Civil War, and made official by the Congress in 1941, at the end of the Great Depression, on the cusp of a terrible world war.

And Lloyd, I would not join the many and be happy at all if you took your own life as you have recently confessed that you feared they would. But there might be a cause for celebration if a master of the universe such as yourself would simply take this timeless message into you heart, and make it the light of the rest of your life. That is the right pricing of risk, the proper valuation of all that you are.

"Come, let us sing to the Lord; let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation. Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving; let us make a joyful noise to Him with songs of praise. For the Lord is a great God, and a great King above all. In His hand are the deep places of the earth, the heights and strength of the hills. The sea is His, for He made it, and His hands formed the dry land. Come, let us worship respectfully, let us kneel before the Lord our Maker. For He is our God and we are the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand. Now, if you will but hear His voice." Psalm 95

No time for despair, now is the time to be surprised by joy.
 

"I do not think of all the misery, but of the glory that remains. Go outside into the fields, nature and the sun, go out and seek happiness in yourself and in God. Think of the beauty that again and again discharges itself within and without you, and be happy." Anne Frank

See Also: Jesse’s The Tide of History and The Spirit of Change