Redirect: www.leanpizza.net

I have just realised that I still have this blog under my name...

My last post was in 2008, nothing since. I recently started blogging at www.leanpizza.net, and will not be using glogger anymore.

I could delete the entire blog' but there are some posts that I like, so I decided to keep it alive and just provide the link to my new digital den.

So, in case there is any doubt, You can find me at:

Www.leanpizza.net

Hope to see you there!! Ciao!

Oli

Woohooo! I am back!!

I haven't posted anything for ages on this blog!

Not because I had nothing I wanted to share, it is just because:

1. I have been really busy over the last year and a bit
2. Speaking definitely works better than writing for this kind of things (and I spoke to more people in one year than the number of people that have visited this blog so far!!)

So, why am I writing again?

First, I am not sure how often I will post. I guess I will do this when I really feel the need to, as opposed to my initial stated objective to follow a certain Iteration and Relase cycle for entries.

Back to the why: not sure, but as I was reviewing my browser favorites tonight, I saw with nostalgy the link to blogspot... followed it and saw that my latest entry was in 2006!

Things have changed since then, so I thought I should at least put things right and update my current situation.

I now work for Exoftware, Irish Company, where I look after the fulfilment part of the business, which is Agile Enablement. And I am getting closer and closer to achieving what I set off to do with "the agile company"...

"the agile company" is no more. Long live the Agile Company!

More On Agile Analysis

After more than 2 years of developing and using the Agile Analysis concepts myself, I have reached the point where I have a pretty solid offer on that subject for companies that are actually looking at doing their analysis for agile projects better.

the agile company is therefore now promoting this as one of its main offer. The first course in the series is Agile Analysis essentials: more details can be found here.

Any other questions, send them my way. Any comment, feel free to leave on blog.

The Agile Magic pill... it's here!

Just a bit of fun... If this pill existed, would you buy it?

Ryanair... again!

Sorry to keep posting on this subject, but I am spending too much time "waiting" to travel as opposed to actually travelling...

In my last post, I told the story of the outbound journey to my current work place... Today's post is about the inbound journey.

I am lucky enough to be able to come back home every week end and see my family. I use the airline mentioned in the title, as they are cheap and they have planes...!

Anyway, at about the same time they changed the time for the outcbound flights, they also changed the time for the inbound flights: this is now scheduled 2 hours before the previous time (i.e. it was flying at 14:30 and is now at 12:30).

With the old schedule, I could leave work at 12:30 and be there on time to catch my plane. That left me with plenty of time on the Friday to do what I have to do.

But now, I have to leave work at 10:30 on the Friday in order to go back home! There is no other flight until the next day if I miss this one!

Needless to say, this new schedule does not work really well with my co-workers and client(!), and I can feel that people are looking at me in a strange way when I tell them that my day finishes so early.

My problem however does not reside in how to deal with this. My problem lies in the fact that since Ryanair have changed the schedule for this flight, they have not ONCE been on time when I used the service. The best they did was last week where it was only 30 mns late. But on average it has been 60 to 75 minutes delayed....

You know what it feels like? It feels like the time Ryanair give to their passengers for departure are systematically false. Is this another way to ensure that people booked on the plane will be there and ready for when the plane really lands so that your plane can be even more in the air than they are today?

If this is the case, good thinking Batman, 'cause I do my best to be there at the time that is communicated to me when I book, so it works.

However, here is another bit of thinking Mr O'Leary: I travel every week, back and forth. Thats 2 flights a week, so I pay for 2 seats per week on one of your planes. I will project my usage for the last 4 months and say that I will be doing this for 1 year. That's 52 weeks, to which I will substract 8 weeks for holiday. You can therefore assume that I will be commuting 44 weeks per year. At 2 seats per week, that's 88 seats per year that I use and pay on your planes...

I fly on Boeing 737-800, capacity 189 people. The number of sits I will use and pay for per year is about 46% of a full plane.

My point is that I am not satisfied with the service I am getting. I f I could, I would actually use another airline. And it is not just the price: my customer actually pays for these, so I don't really care how much the flights cost to be honest (although I hate to waste, and I don't see why a free drink oin board should cost £200 on the ticket.).

Anyway, when I stop using Ryanair, you will loose nearly 1/2 a plane for 1 of its rotation. Not much I hear you say.

Let's just imagine that 1 more person has the same usage patern than me and decides to ditch it at the same time. That would be 1 of your planes grounded due to no passengers for 1 of its rotation.

Still not too impressive I hear you say, because you have 90 of these planes, and because each of your planes can do up to, say, 5 rotations. per day.

Some more opinions on Ryanair can be found here. I have not counted exactly how many dissatisfied people expressed themselves there, but there areroughly 100 of them. And that's only 1 site...

So now, lets imagine that all these 100 people have the same usage pattern than me and also decide to not use your company. That would be a loss equivalent of more than HALF OF ALL your planes not to take off for one of their rotations.

For an equivalent of ALL your planes not to take off for one rotation, we need 200 people being really unhappy with the service they receive. And, still in equivalence, for all your planes to be grounded for a full day, we only need 5 times this number.

To conclude, it does not look like a complete impossibility that this happends one day. How much would this hurt your company?

Looking at this from an opportunity angle, how could listening to your customers contribute to your growth strategy? Probably more than you can imagine right now.

Dear Michael O'Leary,

I am not happy!

I have to fly from the UK to Ireland every week at the moment. In order to minimise the cost of this inconvenience, I am using a well know Irish low fare company: it is cheap, and they have planes.

I have been flying back and forth between the UK and Ireland for the last 3 months or so, and for the major part of using this company, I have been satisfied (ok, they are late from time to time, but hey, even if you pay more with another company, they also are late from time to time).

Because I have been flying the same regular flights for so long, I did not notice 2 weeks ago that the departure time from the UK had been brought forwards by 30 minutes: on that day, I ended up missing the chek in and therefore missing my flight (they would not let me on board with 2 bags...). The nice lady at the desk told me that I had missed the check in by 6 minutes, and I could take the next flight (the next day!!) or fly somewhere else to Ireland and then drive (there was a flight 2 hours later to this destination). I chose the second option 'cause I had to be at work the next morning: that costed me 4 times more than the cost of a typical one way ticket. I ended up having to pay £165 for 6 minutes >> That's crap.

Yesterday, I am on my weekly commute, and arrive well in advance so as not to miss the check in by 6 minutes again. All seems ok, we get on the plane on time and I get ready to doze off for a little hour before touch down. I wake up in a start about 45 minutes later at the sound of the captain explaining why we have not moved.

"There is a problem on the aircraft and the engineer has been notified. He will be here blabla..." Another 45 minutes later, they make us disembark the plane and go back in the airport: the engineer says we need a spare part: somebody will have to go get it and it will take blabla...

Two things here that really pissed me off:

• what pissed me off - 1: we were on the plane for about 2 hours. Personally I was fine, I had some water and a good book (and I slept for half of that time anyway). But there were babies and young children stuck in there with their parents not really having planned for more than 1 hour flight in terms of drinks and food. Do you know what the crew did for these people and children? NOTHING. They did nothing at all: they retracted behind their blue curtain on the plane and waited for the captain to talk to us.
• what pissed me off - 2: we ended up taking off at 10:30 pm (the original time was 3:20 pm). That's nearly 7 hours delay!!! I had a chat with a group of 4 people who were taking 3 days to visit Ireland and they were going to loose the end of an afternoon there, an evening there, and an early morning there.

What will this company offer to these people in return for that? Nothing.

Michael, your company charged me £165 for 6 minutes delay, I now expect £11550.00 compensation from you... or just a free drink on board when that happens again.

Welcome XP Day France!!

Just a quick post to announce that France now has its XP Day.

The organisers want to make this first in the series a success, so if you fancy a little trip to Paris at the end of March, be their guest ;-).

More info such as programme, location and accomodation information can be found here.