WORKING BACKWARDS FOR BETTER BENEFITS - … BACKWARDS FOR BETTER BENEFITS BCS 13 th April 2010 Version 1.0 Issued 2. nd . February 2010. Slide 2. Brain Teaser . It all started with

Proprietary and Commercial in Confidence © Isochron Ltd

WORKING BACKWARDS FOR BETTER BENEFITS

BCS 13th

April 2010

Version 1.0Issued 2nd February 2010

Slide

2

Brain Teaser

It all started with an engagement in Standard Life in 1987 to document the jobs of 400people to meet the requirements of the Financial Services Act. We found people aren’t very good at comprehending things that happen concurrently ...

... and by 1989 we were presenting a research paper at the First International Conference On Dynamic Information Systems organised by the Technical University of Delft at the Noordwijkerhout in the Netherlands

Why does “backwards” work?

Why “isochron”?

Slide

3

Past, Present and Future

PAST FUTURE

Lights might be on and off and in any permutation;

Traffic might be moving or stopped and in any

permutation of movement

Light is green; Traffic is moving

Light was green; Traffic was moving

The present - an isochron

Power will have switched to red light

Traffic will have come to a stop

Future isochron

What happens when we join up all the places/events in space which are at the same point in linear time? (an isochron; “iso” equal, “chron” time)

Consistency across and along time Superposition;Paradox;

Consistency across and along time

Slide 4

So how do our brains handle time?Your brain is a network …

50 trillion connections in an average brain

10 billion stars in an average galaxy

Roger Penrose – “The Emperor’s New Brain”• Your brain has the capability to process, imagine, intuit,

handle paradoxes, and possibly a quantum function

- you’ve got it- I’ve got it- they’ve got it

Endel Tulving - Chronesthesia• Episodic memory • I imagine being in the future or the past

- I imagine as an observer (noesis)- I imagine from my point of view (autonoesis)

Steven Pinker – “The Stuff of Thought”• The language you use handles space, time and causality

- diet associated with coffee? = epiphenomenon - strike match or provide oxygen? = precondition- Kennedy -> shot -> not re-elected = transitivity- two assassins, one death = pre-emption- firing squad, one death = over-determination

... so is an organisation

We can easily make an organisation powerful - management using D4

We can easily create a future isochron - D4 RE table

We can easily manipulate time with language - D4 backcast plan

Slide 5

“Time is Deep and not Long”

What happens when we twist and join the end of a strip? (Mobius strip)

What happens when we join the edge of a Mobius strip?

An isochron is an infinite surface – but how can that be?

FUTUREPAST

• At any one point, the strip has two sides• But the whole strip has only one side

(August Mobius; Johann Listing, 1858)

• At any one point, the strip has two edges• But the whole strip has only one edge.• It joins at one point. Makes a Klein surface

(Felix Klien 1849-1925 Werner Boys 1879 – 1914).

In a Klien space:• Space; any one point would be at the same place as itself, of course;

- but also as far away from itself as it can be in space, the long way round • Linear time; any one point in linear time would be at the same point in time as itself, of course;

- but also as far away from itself in non-linear time as it can be, the long way round• Space and time would be infinite but also dimensioned (c.f. Calabi-Yau manifolds in String Theory, E Calabi 1954, S Yau 1978)

Slide

6

Past, Present and Future

PAST FUTURE

Sponsor could be at meeting or couldnot be at meeting

Sponsor is presentat meeting

Sponsor was presentat meeting


Sponsor will beat the meeting

Future isochron

So how does this apply to portfolios, programmes and projects?

Consistency across and along time Paradox; superposition

Consistency across and along time; Backcast Plan

RE Table

Programmes and Projects are episodes“Episode” - An outcome, together with the causal events that are attributed to it

Resources:People, skills,

facilities, objects

Events:Tasks, procedures,

processes, transformations

Outcomes:Changed states of

attributes of objects

Episodes join up over shared:-

(Fowler, Franks & Currie 1991)e.g. Sponsor

DBA Meeting room Bandwidth

e.g. SpecificationTestingTraining Building move

e.g. New procedureNew meeting regimeNew system working New location

Project A

Project B

The rest of the universe!

Proprietary and Commercial in Confidence © Isochron Ltd4/15/2010 8

384,000 km

0.3 secs

Which is why your programmeis out of your control

Time

2 m

Alpha Centauri

1 km

100,000 km = 2.5 times round the world

1 x 1012 km - way outside the solar system

Isochron

9.25 hrs

4.39 yrs

3 x 10-6 secs

7 x 10-9 secs

Space

MoonEarth

9.46 x 1012 km 9,460,000,000,000 km

Time light takes to travel

1.2 secs

Non-Local Reality (NLR) : what is really going on around your programme which you can’t see until afterwards

Alpha Centauri today, now

Diffence between space / time and NLR drags programme forwards in unforseeable ways

Slide

9

Episodes create other episodes

PAST EPISODE

Light was green; Traffic was moving


What happens at a decision point? End of and episode (outcome); decisions about the next

NEW EPISODE 1

NEW EPISODE 2

NEW EPISODE 3

Decision, or Truth)Table(Logic Division +Executes in old COBOL!)


Understanding this, what can we do about it? Do different:

Drive everything from the changes inthe business operational outcomes‐

the future isochron ‐

backcast

Take and sustain a right‐to‐left approach‐

make the future isochron not‐negotiable

Systematically identify all the businessbenefits of achieving the outcomes, thevalue of the future isochron, and use itto drive/fund “agile”

replanning

Focus ondelivering theprogramme

Salami‐slicingbudget cuts

Left‐to‐rightapproach


What happens when we methodologise this and apply it? ‐

NIW STRATEGIC BUSINESS PROGRAMME 2008‐09

£150m

£100m

£50m

Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Year 4 Year 5 Year 62007

£200m

£250m

Original estimate: £109m Salami-slicing + operational changes

D4 estimate: £114m factored for risk and double-counting

Corporate Value CaseD4 estimate: £238m

Actual: £114m exceeded D4 - business focus

- no wriggle-room


400%

300%

200%

100%

Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Year 4 Year 5 Year 62005

500%

600%

Original estimate: inc. two salami slices

D4 estimate: Cost Value Case

- factored for risk

D4 estimate: Revenue Value Case- increased revenue

Impact on asset value?

Actual D4 - business focus

- no wriggle-room

What happens when we methodologise this and apply it? ‐

BT NSOC PROGRAMME 2006‐7


Don’t we do all that already? No!

• Value Case (cash benefit statement; auditable and trackable)

• “Show me”

cash flow changes (Value Flashpoints)

• Four‐point estimates (Monte Carlo Box)

• Connecting to the valuation of the business (Value Drivers)

• “Show me”

business operational changes (Recognition Events)

• Realism (factoring off risk)

• Honesty (double‐counting off to IT and other infrastructure)


1 Recognition Events®

Vision

Other organisations

Pioneering and experimentation

Strategydocuments

Publicexpectations

Tangible ‘Show Me’ Outcomes1

• Real-life happenings that tell the sponsor and the stakeholders that their expectations have been met

• Sponsor; date; location; context• Not more number targets!• The destination, not the milestones• Can be built into PDPs

Implementation PlanThe key turning-points that we got right that caused successful achievement of

the milestones THIS AN EXTRACT FROM THE DIMENSION FOUR® METHOD

Backcast PlanThe key turning-points that we

got right that caused the success (“milestones”)

Reports and reviews

Value CaseThe sum of thebenefit values2

with the itemisation and audit drill-down

And the difference is? - simple enabling techniques

‘Sponsors’

Value Drivers

2 Value Flashpoints®

Some elements of Dimension Four® Methodology


Value Flashpoints

Recognition Events to Value Flashpoints

Recognition Events

…finance use the link betweenrisk, change and value tochallenge the process andkeep focus on the outcome

Just Three Tables:

15 Proprietary and Commercial in Confidence © Isochron Ltd


“Time must be lived forwards but can only be understood backwards”

Soren

Kirkegaard

1813 ‐

1855


Thank you

Documents

WORKING BACKWARDS FOR BETTER BENEFITS - … BACKWARDS FOR BETTER BENEFITS BCS 13 th April 2010 Version 1.0 Issued 2. nd . February 2010. Slide 2. Brain Teaser . It all started with