In software engineering, an anti-pattern is a design pattern that appears to be a good idea but is ineffective or far from optimal in practice, taking you from a problem to a bad solution. Some educators claim that we learn more from errors than from successes, hence the value of identifying anti-patterns. The powerful combination of buzz and herd behavior has led companies in traditional industries to invest in blogs, wikis, social networking and other Web 2.0 tools and services, to foster collaboration and knowledge sharing and to reach out to clients and business partners. However, for many of them results have been lukewarm at best. This session will explore some of the common anti-patterns he observed in global enterprises that may explain why some of the benefits of Web 2.0 are not materializing fast enough, and will provide recommendations on how your organization can avoid common pitfalls. Update: This blog post explains what I mean by "the joke, the circus, and the soap-opera": http://aaronkim.wordpress.com/2009/12/14/the-joke-the-circus-and-the-soap-opera/

1. Enterprise Web 2.0 Anti-Patterns
technology • business • people
Aaron Kim
Senior Managing Consultant, Emerging Technologies Evangelist - IBM Canada
© 2009 IBM Corporation Photo by Flickr user and IBMer shawdm,
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Not for further distribution used with author permission
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2. About Me
• Senior Managing Consultant, Emerging Technologies & Web 2.0 Evangelist
with IBM Global Business Services – Application Services
• 17 years of experience in IT Services
• 3 years as a Basel II consultant
Aaron Kim
akim@ca.ibm.com • Biology degree from Universidade de São Paulo (Brazil)
• MBA from University of Toronto
• Co-chairs the Web 2.0 for Business IBM Community
• Web 2.0 Consulting services to IBM clients and client teams from Canada,
France, US, UK, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland and Turkey
• Web 2.0 & Social Computing speaker at several conferences in Canada and
the US
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3. About Me
Aaron Kim
akim@ca.ibm.com
Tag cloud generated by Wordle, a masterpiece app by IBMer Jonathan Feinberg
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4. In software engineering, an anti-pattern is a design
pattern that appears obvious but is ineffective or
far from optimal in practice.
It’s a pattern that tells you how to go from a
problem to a bad solution.
It’s something that looks like a good idea, but
which backfires badly when applied.
Sources: Wikipedia (as of 12/Sep/2008)
http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?AntiPattern
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5. Antipattern:
<pattern name>
Why the bad solution looks attractive
• It becomes a pattern because somehow it looks like the right thing to do
Why it turns out to be bad
• Common pitfalls
What positive patterns are applicable instead
• Best (Good?) Practices
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6. Antipattern:
Fear 2.0 Photo by Flickr user Violator3, licensed under Creative Commons, Attribution 2.0 Generic
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7. • Fear is not a bad thing, but action paralysis is
• Failure comes with a name tag
• Innovating is risky, not innovating may be riskier
• Full control is no longer in your hands
• Fail often, fail quickly, fail gracefully
and learn from it *
Antipattern:
Fear 2.0 * Partially based on a presentation by Mike Moran
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8. Antipattern:
Hype 2.0
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9. • “I want it because it’s cool”
• “I want it because
Gartner | Forrester | McKinsey | IBM |
the CIO magazine | my boss | my friend
told me I need it”
• The lack of a business case
will come back to haunt you
Antipattern:
Hype 2.0
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10. Photo: Leopard EM
Antipattern:
New World, Old Habits
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11. Photo by Flickr user dcjohn, licensed under Creative Commons, Attribution 2.0 Generic
Antipattern:
New World, Old Habits
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12. Photo: StockExchange
Antipattern:
New World, Old Habits
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13. People as your competitive advantage
Frequent e-mails
Infrequent e-mails
Web 2.0 Collaboration
You
Jim Susan Chris
Mary
Roberto
Friends
Jim’s manager
Your manager
Co-Workers Helen
John
Other employees in your company Akira
Your business partners
Peter
Your clients
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14. • “It’s just like phone and email”
• A fool with a tool is still a fool
• “Web 2.0 is an attitude, not a technology” (Ian Davis)
• It’s about culture transformation, not a toolset
• “Ultimately, taking full advantage of Web 2.0
may require Management 2.0” (Business Week, June 5, 2006)
Antipattern:
New World, Old Habits
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15. Antipattern:
Build it, and they will come
Photo by Flickr user Sister72, licensed under Creative Commons, Attribution 2.0 Generic
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16. Antipattern:
Build it, and they will come
• “If Wikipedia works, my wiki will too”
• People have limited bandwidth 2.0
• The joke, the circus and the soap-opera
• Clay Shirky’s
plausible promise, effective tool and
acceptable bargain (HCE)
• User Adoption Plan + Balanced Incentives
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17. Motivations and Rewards
Maslow’s Pyramid of Needs 2.0
Accomplishment: pursuit of personal satisfaction
Wikis, Ratings
Esteem: pursuit of consideration, prestige
Blogs, Twitter, User Reviews
Socialization: pursuit of love and belonging
Instant Messaging, Facebook, MySpace
Security: pursuit of moral and physical protection
Anti-virus, Firewalls, Authentication
Survival: pursuit of basic needs
Google, Web Mail, Skype
Source: C’est la maturité, stupide! Maslow s’invite à la table du 2.0
http://mediapedia.wordpress.com/2006/07/30/c%E2%80%99est-la-maturite-stupide-maslow-s%E2%80%99invite-a-la-table-du-20/
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18. Photo by Flickr user pipeapple, licensed under Creative Commons, Attribution 2.0 Generic
Antipattern:
Geekness 2.0
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19. • “For it to work, you just need to use Firefox,
download and install Greasemonkey, edit a
Userscript and install it. Anybody can do it.”
• Second law of thermodynamics:
Energy and Entropy
• Laziness 2.0
• Nudge and KISS
Antipattern:
Geekness 2.0
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20. Photo by Flickr user aturkus, licensed under Creative Commons, Attribution 2.0 Generic
Antipattern:
Best of Breed
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21. • “Proven solutions”, but in isolation
• Golden hammer
• To a worm in horseradish,
the whole world is horseradish (Word vs Excel)
• Integration becomes a nightmare
• Adopt an integrated solution that:
✓ meets your core needs from the outset
✓ can be augmented by adding best of breed
✓ has enterprise grade support
Antipattern:
Best of Breed
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22. Integration as your competitive advantage
• Processes
• Products
• Services
Photo by Flickr user TimWilson, licensed under Creative Commons, Attribution 2.0 Generic
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23. Photo: Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain
Antipattern:
Search, and thou should not find
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24. • Your users embraced Web 2.0
and are creating plenty of content
• Most of it is likely to be, err, not very good
• Information overload will quickly
overwhelm your users
• UGC needs to be indexed by the main search facility
• Not all UGC is created equal,
so make the good float to the top
Antipattern:
Search, and thou should not find
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25. Data as your competitive advantage
‣ Data discovery
Text search is just the beginning
‣ Data visualization
Make it easily consummable
‣ Data filtering
Make the good float to the top
‣ Data augmentation
Information provenance and correlation
‣ Data sharing
Allow others to mix and match
‣ Data integration
Make difficult for others to copy you
Photo by Flickr user KentBye, licensed under Creative Commons, Attribution 2.0 Generic
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26. Photo by Flickr user Memotions, licensed under Creative Commons, Attribution 2.0 Generic
Antipattern:
Intangible means unmeasurable
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27. • “Nobody asks
what’s the ROI for phone and email”
• Business value must discount costs
• Value creation vs. value capture
• Easy to understand business case
• Easy to calculate ROI models
Antipattern:
Intangible means unmeasurable
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28. Antipattern:
Measuring supply, not demand
Photo by Flickr user Memotions, licensed under Creative Commons, Attribution 2.0 Generic
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29. Antipattern:
Measuring supply, not demand
• Number of bloggers, posts, wiki spaces,
wiki authors are measures of supply
• Not all UGC has business value
• Not all UGC has business value
proportional to its volume
• Find which demand metrics
can be associated to business value
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30. Closing Thoughts
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31. Control in Social Media is like grabbing water: the
stronger you grab, the less you hold. There's a right
way to retain water, but not by being forceful.
Pauline Ores, IBM
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32. In the Social Media world,
the most powerful person
is the one who shares the most.
Pauline Ores, IBM
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33. In a socially connected world,
you only know what you share.
Aaron Kim, IBM
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34. Thank You
Twitter: @aaronjuliuskim
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