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Preview Target User Group Example: Adelante Microfinance Group

Adelante is a small microfinance firm based in Los Angeles, CA that specializes in brokering loans to women-run, minority businesses. The company is funded by a Social Entrepeneurial VC firm based in Palo Alto, CA.

The organization is not-for-profit, with a board that participates heavily in strategic planning and even high-level operations issues. At any given time, Adelante consists of 10-15 people working full-time. Of those 10-15, anywhere between 3-6 are contractors.

Adelante has a CEO: Angenlina, who has a personal assistant: Eli. A Project/Office Manager: Bart who is assisted in day to day office management functions by a front-desk receptionist. The rest of the company is comprised of 3 Program Managers or Account Managers who are responsible for meeting with loan applicants and pull together custom microfinance products taylored to the needs of the people they serve, a lawyer, a CFO/Accountant and a personal finance counselor who has a PhD in Sociology and Cultural Anthropology.

Proposal for Ecosystem 1.0

  • Small workgroup
  • Small workgroup 2-30 people

WHAT DO THEY DO

  • Creates products and services (as opposed to consulting).
  • Multiple (3-5) Project Areas progressing in parallel. By Project Area I mean something that lasts for an indefinite amount of time.
  • Regularly take on new projects that they haven't done before

HOW DO THEY DO IT

  • Work group members work together on multiple Project Areas.
  • Flat organization. Individual Contributor to Management ratio is high.
  • Work group members work full-time or nearly full-time.
  • Everyone in the group does not necessarily work the same hours.
  • Scheduling meetings takes a few emails flying back and forth, but isn't a huge pain.
  • A lot of meetings happen ad-hoc.

SOCIAL DYNAMIC

  • A critical mass of people work in the same physical location such that a social rapport develops within the workgroup.
  • People know the names of each other's spouses and children and have probably met them in office social functions or socially outside of work.
  • People are familiar with each other's hobbies, likes and dislikes.

  • You've interacted socially with almost everyone (as a part of work or outside of work)
  • You could do things like Secret Santa and not have it be a complete disaster
  • You don't spend a week on 'technology-training' for new hires
  • Everyone knows about everyone else's major life events: Weddings, Births, Deaths
  • You send an email to 'everyone' in the workgroup to show vacation pictures or when you have a baby
  • You're still small enough to celebrate birthdays
  • You explain why you're taking a PTO, not just that you are taking one
  • When you send out PTO, people respond with chatty emails
  • You forward / IM jokes and funny links to each other

What you don't do

  • Have strict working hours
  • Propose a specific meeting time
  • Regularly coordinate meetings and events with people you don't see and speak/IM/Email with everyday
  • Get really out of sync with each other

Why it's hard to get small groups to use collaboration software

  • Email is good enough
  • Face-2-Face meetings are good enough
  • The collaboration tool needs to supplement and enhance the tight-knit collaboration that already takes place, rather than trying to replace it with technology.
  • Collaboration is already really high bandwidth, high fidelity. People know what's going on generally. The collaboration can't be a barrier to that interaction, something that gets in the way of collaboration, something that forces you to record things you already know. Because the technology will always be lower bandwidth and lower fidelity than the verbal and email exchanges people already have.
  • Not strict about responsibilities and roles, people 'cover for each other', take on new responsibilities as they arise
  • Not explicit about what people are allowed or not allowed to do (e.g. why don't reputation systems work for small groups?)

Group policies, processes and methodologies

Our target small workgroup is small enough to fall within our target user group definition if you don't have 'official policies' documented about work processes and procedure. No company workflows. The group makes up its own processes and people are willing to accommodate a range of work styles. (e.g. early risers, late-night owls, email versus IM versus phone versus in-person, tech savvy versus technophobe, etc.) The group is small enough that accommodating all these differences isn't overly distracting and/or disruptive to productivity. Instead, it's a boon for the company because people are motivated and take ownership of their responsibilities as a result of having so much personal freedom and mutual respect.

Individuals in the group are allowed to choose what technology they want to use: OS, email clients, IM clients, etc. Some even use personal email accounts, instead of their work account.

IT SUPPORT?

  • There's probably somebody tech savvy who deals with IT issues, but whatever IT resources the group has, it falls far short of a full-scale IT department. IT functions might be outsourced to a contractor who comes by the office once a week or on an as-needed basis. IT support could even come from younger, more tech-savvy relations of work group members.
  • Individuals have admin privileges on their own machines.
  • Individuals within the group are largely self-reliant when it comes to IT related tasks such as picking software, installing software, troubleshooting minor problems.
  • There are minimal restrictions on what software can be downloaded. No firewalls.
  • People may even use their own personal email accounts for work.
  • People's computers are not being monitored by the company.

Who will be the catalyst for adoption in this workgroup?

  • Most likely Helen the Hub since she has the highest need for the solutions we're providing
  • Helen will be a desktop Chandler users
  • Angie the Apex, Eli the Executive Assistant, Bart the Busy Body / Coordinator, Ivan the Individual Contributor, and Violet the Visiting Collaborator may or may not be desktop Chandler users...
  • However, they are part of Helen's group of collaborators
  • They will interact with Helen, either via casual use of the desktop client, Scooby and/or their email clients

Workflow and Design: What are small workgroups willing and not willing to do when it comes to using software? Symptoms of Small Workgroup Dynamics: Based on our user interviews

  • KEI
  • We all use the support desk via email
  • Would people use this system if they had to go to a website, login and file a ticket that way?

  • LPFI
  • LPFI does not use f/b and/or invitations in Outlook, even though they have exchange
  • Instead they organize / negotiate meetings via email
  • In fact most people's f/b calendars are really empty, clearly not reflective of their actual schedules
  • Mini uses the wiki to keep track of tasks with Eric, but not Mary-Kate

  • Creative Commons
  • CC fell off the wagon with their shared calendar system. Haven't instituted iCal to replace it. No one wants to own managing it.
  • CC is all Mac. But not everyone is required to use iCal and Apple Mail. People can choose what email client they use and whether or not they want to use a calendar.

  • OSAF
  • Internally, OSAF can't get people to dogfood Chandler
  • How many people have subscribed to the Sprint Week calendar?
  • Do people adhere to the tagging standards on our various lists?

Thought exercises

  • What are the takeaways from above?
  • In what ways are LPFI and CC unique, such that these observations wouldn't apply to other organizations?
  • How is this similar and/or different from people's experiences working elsewhere? How were those organizations different from these organizations?

Are there example of software that have failed for small workgroups?

  • What works for small workgroups? Why?
    • support@kei
    • bugzilla
    • mailing lists

  • What works about these things?
  • What doesn't work?

  • How are these examples applicable to us?
  • How are they not applicable to us?

Product differentiator

  • We're not trying to replace collaboration techniques that small groups use today. We're simply trying to improve the way in which people keep track of the interactions they have with each other by providing people with ways to:
    • Keep track of those interactions as a group, rather than separately as individuals
    • Edit and maintain communications as a group, rather than separately as individuals
  • This is accomplished via:
    • Read-write sharing
    • Access to read-write sharing from the web
    • Lowering the barrier between technologies (in particular Email, Calendars and Tasks)
    • Providing a simple framework for keeping track of information and tasks (Triage) that maps to the way in which people deal with Email today

Ultimate question: What's the right model for our target user group?


Questions to consider:

  • Who has needed to see your calendar/task list in the last week?
  • Who has needed to edit your calendar today/task list in the last week?
  • Who's calendar/task list have you needed to see in the last week?
  • Who's calendar/task list have you needed to edit in the last week?

For each question above:

  • Individual or organization
  • Total number of individuals?
  • What is your relationship to them?
  • How often does this happen?
  • How does this happen today?

  • What is the nature of the collection you are sharing?
    • Office management and logistics: Holiday, PTO, Events, HR due dates, HR forms, IT instructions
    • Project? (e.g. SMASH-cast): Tasks, Meetings, Discussions, Write-ups
    • Area of life? (e.g. Home): Chores, Tasks, Packing lists, Vacation plans, Family events
    • Personal calendar / task list?

What are the different things we collaborate on?

  • Drafts of emails being sent to the company, list?
  • Summaries of list discussions
  • Meeting agendas
  • Meeting notes
  • Specs

Adelante's Office Building

Taken from here

Adelante Offices - Interior

Taken from here

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