Short Termism just an urban legend

Most of the projects that I have worked on that failed were, in my humble opinion, hopelessly overstaffed, over engineered and over there (i.e. had a whole bunch of cultural issues to contend with due to having large number of expat consultants).
My other contention is that teams of no more than 5 people work well, larger teams fail spectacularly.
I was recently dismayed to find that the 7, plus or minus 2 rule for the number of things we can retain in short term memory was just an Urban Legend. I always thought that might be an explanation of the small team size success factor.
I still think it's a good guide, and the maximum project/company size then pans out at around 3906 people. For a project, I would suggest it is a couple of orders below that, at around 156 people. If you have a bunch of very smart people then you could use 6 or 7 as the base number, but in my experience you're only as strong as the weakest link, and just because they're smart doesn't mean there won't be problems!
Think about it, is it possible for a CEO to know exactly what the key issues and resolutions are for each of the business areas if there are more than 5-7 of them? Is it possible for a Project Manager to understand each team's responsibilities and status if there are more than 7 teams reporting to them?
The size of a company or project could be categorised by the band in which they fall, each size of company would require different levels of support infrastructure to keep it functioning efficiently.
So, the bands would be 1, 6, 31, 156, 781, 3906.
Where a set of tasks are very well defined then team sizes can be larger (e.g. checkout operators), but going beyond 9 people will probably lead to fragmentation of the 'team' into 'sub-teams'. That may not be an issue, but where team goals are concerned, it probably is.
Anyway, I think what I'm saying is, don't have more than 5 people in a team unless you have very clearly defined tasks, and even then, don't have more than 9 unless you plan on barking out orders and expect blind obedience.
But it's all Urban Legend, and there's no inherent limit on our capacity to deal with multiple things simultaneously....

Some people think kids and mobiles are a bad idea, but Walt Disney...

It was recently announced that Disney is going to be an MVNO on Sprint network. They will apparently be targetting kids, which is a little risky given the concerns on health (get those lawsuit disclaimers ready!).
On a positive note, the synergy that can be gained by Disney's brand and mobile use will be pretty compelling.
It also further emphasises why operators should be looking to MVNOs to do the interesting bits like triple play and concentrate on something they can actually do, like making sure the access is of great quality at a good price.
I've been arguing for the total victory of the MVNO model for a while now, and it seems there is a growing shift in that direction.

No such thing as bad publicity!

Here in Thailand there is an entrepeneuring firm selling potting compost. The Thai word for 'earth' or 'soil' is 'din' and the name of their compost is Din Ladin.
The bags have a life size portrait of international bad boy Osama Bin Ladin (I would have got you a picture of a bag, but they were quickly recycled into motorcycle seat covers by the members of my wife's family).
Apparently sales are going like a bomb!

P.S. Any American CIA reading this blog, please be advised that it is extremely unlikely that Osama is actually involved in this venture, so sending a large taskforce to flatten this small company might be considered overkill.

UPDATE: I got a picture! My daughter got in the way a little, but innocents always get in the way when you go after the bad guys!

Please, please, don't pay me!

One of the things that frustrates the hell out of me about working with Telcos, is their inability to re-evaluate what they do and view it in today's context.
A recurring statement that is all over the mobile industry is related to mobile operators trying to tempt their Prepaid customers over to Postpaid. This has to be one of the most illogical strategies on the part of the telco! Why do you want to give free credit to your customers and spend a fortune on sending a paper bill, when they clearly want to pay you in advance?
Prepaid is just a different way of paying for your service, you don't change as a customer just because your payment method changes. If people really do change when they switch to Postpaid, then there has to be another, easily solvable, reason why they do.
They might like the typically lower per minute rates for Postpaid?
They might like the fact that they can keep calling even when their balance runs out?
They might like the personal attention (spam)?
I haven't heard a good argument for why prepaid costs more per minute (and don't give me the IN costs one until you've spoken to TIM).
I haven't heard a good reason why you can't set up an auto-top-up mechanism.
I don't know why you can't find out about the customer even though they are Prepaid.
Do banks run around trying to give you a free overdraft facility? Not mine!
Solve the problems on Prepaid, and start moving your postpaid customers over to prepaid.

Skype Roadmap

Having used Skype for quite a while now (I first heard about it in the summer of 2004), there are things I like about it and things I don't.
I have also spent the last 10 years working in the Telecomms industry as a Technical Architect and Product Strategist/Manager, so one of the things I would really love to see is their roadmap.
In the absence of anything better to do on a Sunday morning and as a welcome time-out from playing with my 1 year old daughter, I thought I would have a go at producing my own.
As this is a blog, it's very much 'first draft'.... ;)
First thing is to determine the themes, looking for market trends and needs to how they fit the brand and ethos of the company.
Let's put a few words out there: Share, Presence, Talk, Partner, Community, Organise, mobility, Emergency, Video, Message, Collaborate, Conference.
Ok, here's how I would see the themes/categories
- Skype in/is the Community
- Hypercommunication, Free yourself!
- Share the Wealth

The items I would put under each of these are just a few of the things I'd like to see, but would be the things I think would push Skype out to more people, hopefully attaining critical mass.
- Skype in/is the Community

• Allow multiple profiles, separated by Community, user signs into a specific community. Ideally users should be able to create their own communities and define the profile fields. Enables businesses to use Skype as well. Community presence should be manageable within the community (this is debateable for Skype to be a commercial enterprise)
  
• Create a proof of concept with Emergency services in one area, for complete communication. E.g. Conference with you, ambulance and central office as they attempt to reach you. (also under Hypercommunication)
  
• Expand Personalisation and Organisation of contacts and Skype application - skins and contact 'notes' (add details on the person)

- Hypercommunication

• Call forwarding without relay; enable creation of rules to forward communication based on source and destination. e.g. a call arrives from Community (see above) X and is routed to mobile phone after 3 rings or if presence is not 'open'
  
• Application and file synchronisation (a la Groove)
• Personal RSS/Atom within community - ability to be alerted to changes in community profile. E.g. Community profile may contain links to recent blog postings/comments
• Ability to assign SkypeIn numbers to a community
  

- Share the wealth

• Initiate Premium Rate Skype Ids; Operate the same way as PSTN numbers, i.e. appear as SkypeOut, but revenue is split between Skype and provider. Premium rate should be a community attribute, i.e. the same id can be free or premium depending on the community presence that initiated the call (but they would have to be controlled by Skype)
• Enable Sharing of credit on SkypeOut; create a transfer balance function using the authorisation mechanism as a basis, i.e. request for balance initiates outside and is authorised by the balance sender. Using APIs a 'push' mechanism could be developed if needed.
• Put Skype on a Router, with remote configuration. With the features defined above, plus the Skype Router, just about everything can be done.

This is not an exhaustive list and I left out a couple of things that I might want to do myself.
The items above come down to one architectural change, i.e. implementation of communities, with a few simple added features at the community level to enable some new forms of communication.
Let's hope we see some of it at least.

Show me the Muni-nets!

As Om Malik wrote 'it has become highly fashionable to comment about Municipal Networks' , so, being ever so fashionable myself (ahem!) I felt strangely drawn to comment.
Municipal Networks are quite obviously a good idea, from the point of view of the community, as they provide ubiquitous internet access at no cost.
It takes a bit of vision to see where the benefits come in, but not so much that it's beyond the average town hall politician, so why does Om have so much difficulty with it?
Well, it's scary! If all the cities and communities decided that municipal networks were a good idea then where would we be? The telcos would be pretty much out of the retail business, unless they provided something of significantly higher quality at reasonable cost; something I find very hard to imagine from the telcos I have worked with.
With the right tools (that most local and national governments are, at least, attempting to build), then education, information, services and communication can be made available to all citizens at low cost. There are also more than enough private services that could be delivered on top of the network to fund it's operation however in my opinion this is more of an argument for partnering with a telco rather than competing with them (or introducing a new entrant).
There are problems in policing the uses to which the network is put, as well as the civil rights issues of being able to monitor people on the network, but the benefits could be enormous.
These are issues worth resolving or deciding to ignore (we can't police everything and we certainly don't have all our civil liberties intact), people can make of it what they will.
The communications world is changing and the network is drifting with tectonic certainty away from the services delivered over the network. There will be earthquakes, businesses on the fault line will be damaged or destroyed, and one thing is for certain: As a communications business you need to decide which side of the divide you are on.
As a telco, I would be re-evaluating my business strategy...
To paraphrase Bernie Taupin: 'If I was a voip provider, but then again, no, Or a man who makes content in a mobile device show
I know it's not much but it's the best I can do
My gift is my network and this one's for you
And you can tell everybody this is your network,
It may be quite simple (even stupid) but now that it's done
I hope you don't mind
I hope you don't mind that I sell a lot of VPN
How wonderful communication is, while you're in control'