TYPO3 Conference 2016 - Day 1

The TYPO3 Conference T3CON16 is happening in Munich. This post describes talks of the first day.

Funding with the TYPO3 community - everybody pulling in the same direction

TYPO3 is a great CMS which can handle a lot of content and editors using working on multiple languages and various records. However the concept of workspaces can break with a lot of different situations like publishing multiple languages or extensions which don’t support the workspace API.

in2code realized that there was no working solution in the wild which can publish content properly. The reason was quite simple: It is really complicated. They came up with the idea to use a 2nd server and use one as stage server and one as a live server. The big question however was: Who has the money to build it?

The solution was to split the whole tool into smaller pieces and use the concept of software as a service instand of a onetime fee. The advantages are that customers get all updates and features for free and the regular fees can be used to improve the whole product.

The content publisher allows to have a secured stage server where editors can create and preview content. By implementing workflows, editors can check the status (draft, ready for approval, published) of content and can publish specific content to the live server.

As the product evolved, in2code decided to split the extension into 2 versions. The community edition is free and has most of the features. The enterprise edition should be used if the workflow feature is needed.

For more details, visit contentpublisher.in2code.de.

Funding Round TYPO3 Association - Questions & Answers

Alain Veuve and Mathias Schreiber are answering questions about the funding of the TYPO3 Gmbh. One component is a credit of the TYPO3 Association over € 500.000. Additional money is achieved by sales of the TYPO3 GmbH itself. This works already quite well.

Additionally, an extra funding will be started amoung the members of the TYPO3 Association. A regular invoice will be send to those who want to participate.

The send your junior program of the TYPO3 GmbH seems to get very successful and the planned start will be on 1st of December.

Jochen Weiland wishes to have more transparency regarding the budget and how it planned be used. It should be more visible why the Associations wants to collect more money. Everybody agrees on that.

Lesson learned

Daniel Hinderink holds a great talk about his view of the history of TYPO3. It all started with a plan of some guys many years ago to build a CMS and build in everything cool. An endless backlog was created which was impossible to fulfill for years.

The association has been drafted and founded in 3 months and a lot of things got wrong. The structurewas introduced in a Q&A style and most people on the board got funding the board itself decided on. Nevertheless everybody was surprised in the end that this lead to a lot of problems.`

Daniel has also some notes to himself:

  • Take maximum effort in getting stakeholder buy-in and getting expectations clear
  • Always be careful with titles
  • Make plans that take the capacities into account
  • Choose your battles wisely
  • Totally distrust your own judgement

And some more important private things:

  • Research everthing about comparable cases
  • No matter how much you like people, don’t protect them at all costs from the truth
  • Don’t forget to have fun
  • If you make mistakes, accept, apologize and learn

It all ends in inspiring people to share and how much Daniel loves not only the product but also the whole community and how things are done.

A great talk!

How leadership of employees via Objectives und Key Results (OKR) speeds up the digital transformation at EDEKA

Patrik Lobacher talks about Edeka, a retailer with more than 340.000 employees. Edeka Eisbrenner in Hannover is one of the most innovative and profitable retailer within the group. The manager looked for a system which enables him to lead several stores at the same time with the same, high quality level. He wanted to increase:

  • Employee motiviation
  • Customer satisfication
  • Productivity
  • Management absence

The traditional “Management by Objectives” comes to an end. It leads to unmotivated people. “Just 13% of all emplyees (worldwide) are really motivated in their jobs”. The MbO is top down, unidirectional, and there are no feedback loops and no transparency.

What is needed to make a succesfull digital transformation?

  • Strategy
  • Leadership
  • People
  • CUlture
  • Processes
  • Products
  • Technology
  • Data
  • Customers
  • Governance

As seen, a lot of those topis are related to the employee. Important in OKR are:

Values

  • Alignment
  • Transparny
  • Commitment
  • (Intrinsic) Motivation

Principles

  • Self organizing teams
  • Short interactions
  • Focus
  • Continuous improvement

Patrick points out, that this quite similiar to gamification which is proven to work in the wild as well. Startups are using the same strategy as well too.

If you are using OKR it is important to connect it permanently to the mission statement of the company. Mid-term goals (“Moals”) with a time frame of ~ 1 year make it easier to fulfill bigger goals. As a cycle it starts with the planning, the weekly OKR, a review and the retroperspective.

OKR

  • develops to a result and value-oriented culture
  • gives autonomy to the teams of the goal management
  • strengthen self-organizing teams
  • helps to keep focus and focus on priorities
  • increases productivty and satisfaction
  • enables and supports the “agile transformation” and the “digital transformation”

The challenges at EDEKA were:

  • Differnt working times
  • Different commitment
  • High amount of “Mini-jobber”
  • Different knowledge status
  • High stress level

Solutions for EDEKA

  • Culture audit: Find out how people work together
  • Vision-workshop why to use a agile leadership method
  • Training for all employees (at different levels)
  • Education of the “OKR-Masters”
  • One OKR-Master for each Team (checkout counter, cheese, meat, beverages)
  • Adjustment of OKR framework to reflect working environment
  • Choose software (in this case Trello)
  • Coaching of first events
  • Support

Learnings

  • Weeklys don’t work
  • Remote participation does not work
  • Some employees are overchallanged
  • General approach works good
  • Meta-goals for the OKR introduction are reached

Of elephants and butterflies…

Sabine Wojcieszak talks about the “elephant in the room” - a problem which is not properly addressed and grows therefore bigger and bigger. The zoo of the tech consists of cats, animals, dogs and dinos, goats, donkeys, horses, unicorns, elephants and butterflies.

Her talk is nothing new and common sense but still so rare. Therefore it is so important to talk about it.

Her intentions are:

  • think about yourself
  • motivate you for change
  • Remember the words

WIth an unaddressed elephant in the room you will suck in mediocrity and it is a danger to the success of the business.

What you can do: Either you can talk to colleagues, talk about it and get it out of the room or you can shut the door and keep it secret. A colleague can see me shutting the door and is loyal and will keep the secret. Another colleague is not that loyal and starts to play “chinese whisper” and everybody starts to know it and nobody talks about it

Why can this happen?

  • Overstrained with the situation
  • Bad experiences
  • No trust
  • No idea what to do
  • Feeling not possible
  • Rely on others
  • No team
  • Not intersted
  • Following own goals

In all cases, there is an absence of transpency. “They don’t want you to know anything, so they don’t share anything.”

After playing a “chinese wisper” game in the room, we all know that this is not the solution to deal with the elephant. As time goes by, the elephant costs a lot of resources, grows and produces a lot of shit. It grows and grows and greats tons of shit. BEcause of the big pile we can not see the elephant any more. Everybody got a different point of view to the elephant. It is bad for all of us.

And now she tells us: Replace the word “elephant” with “problem”. She reminds as to name the problem and to challenge it.

  • “A problem is urgent!”,
  • “A problem can be dangerous!”

However the words “shit” can be replaced with “bad decisions” and “resources” with “time, money & motivation”. She reminds as that people love to talk about problems, at least when it comes to other people’s problems.

As an answer to the quesiton why we should change she comes up with: Be the active game changer. Most hated questions:

  • Why is the situation as it is?
  • What is your role in it?
  • What can YOU do to solve it?

It all leads to a change but you need to leave the comfort zone. Maybe it is even a trip into the dark. An example is having “tooth ache”. Avoding it can make it far worse. When problems are neglected, they grow up and it is hard to deal with it!

However, there is no “one-size-fits-all” solution. A first aid is:

  • Don’t close your eyes
  • Address the problem openly
  • Address it ASAP
  • Avoid the blame game
  • Discover the origin
  • Ask “why”
  • Facts matter
  • Focus on solutions

Communication is the solution. If the elelphant is too big, ask for help from outside.

Some points for preventing elephants:

  • Common goals
  • Commitment over consensus
  • Feedback culture
  • Culture of transparency & trust
  • Deal positivly with errors
  • Create a culture of values

Before you start your move, think about the consequences for you! Being prepared will lead you to discover new adventures.

This was an awesome talk, thanky ou!

Negotiation techniques for better results

Franziska Brandt-Biesler talks about negotiations. Not all negotiations are difficult but when it is getting important for you it can become difficult. There are 2 levels:

  • factual level
  • emoational level

The factual level is quite easy to solve but it is getting hard when emotions kick it. There are 3 levels of stress:

  • Normal stress patterns: arguing, talking & not listening
  • Childhood patterns: Wine a little bit, getting illogical, getting aggressive, starting to crey
  • Instinctive patterns: Fight, flight, pretending to be dead (feeling paralyzed)

3 patterns which can be practiced, best to be done when not stressed:

  • Don’t preach. ASK! It is not about to lean how get better arguments! Present the problem and ask for opinions, … “What do you need to come to a solution with me?” It is about “how” instead of “if”
  • Avoid “yes, but …”! It leads to nobody is listening anymore but everybody prepares only arguments only anymore. “yes but” means actually “no, you are wrong” or “bullshit”. Anti-yes-technique consists of the steps “understanding”, “confirmation”, “counterargument”, “conclusion (‘I suggest’)”. You need to listen and consider!
  • Act compatibly! There are 2 dimensions: How fast do people react and decide? Is the relationship more closely or distant? You need to try to be on the same level on both dimensions but it is easier to move on the slow/fast dimension than the 2nd one. Every combination requires a different handling

I am looking forward to the video of the talk to see it again!