4 ms·

>implementing a new backoffice suite by a consulting company is one third or less technical / IT project; and two thirds or more business process / transformati

>implementing a new backoffice suite by a consulting company is one third or less technical / IT project; and two thirds or more business process / transformation project. And the actual success / failure of these projects is almost entirely guided by the business transformation part. This 1000%. There's so much institutional friction with these projects for so many reasons; some of them political, some of them interpersonal, some of them just because someone doesn't want to. So many of these projects fail because people just don't want to work towards the goal, or simply do as little as possible and things move slower than molasses. People don't want or care to change their processes. They do things that way because they've always done things that way. They see tools not as a way to get more done or be efficient, but as something that's "moving their cheese" and they don't like it. It doesn't matter how overworked they are by remedial tasks that could be automated, until you show them everything finished, end-to-end, working flawlessly, they won't be interested in the slightest. The sad thing is that if there were some strong executive leadership behind these projects and they saw it as a positive thing, there could be better traction and better results. Instead, most execs look at these projects as mundane details and hand them off to whatever sad middle manager is going to take the heat for the project going south. The result is no teeth behind the initiative which even further exacerbates the issue of people not caring or lifting a finger.

JohnFen 7y ago
> They see tools not as a way to get more done or be efficient, but as something that's "moving their cheese" and they don't like it. In all fairness, this perception of tools is often entirely rational. Changing workflows incurs a high cost, and any new tool must supply a benefit in excess of that cost. If it doesn't, then opposing the new tool can be the correct stance. And in my experience, at least half of the time, the new tools do not provide sufficient benefit.
- IggleSniggle 7y ago
  Exactly. There's endless tooling out there, and you can contort software to whatever process. Some of tools make claims that, if trivial to implement, would provide huge huge benefits. Unfortunately, there's a cost to learning a new tool, and then to implementing its use. Since you don't know the tool yet, you can only make educated guesses as to whether it will be easy or hard to learn, easy or hard to implement, make your process better or worse, help sell your product or make you more efficient, etc. You can't know for sure (unless it seems so much like something you already DO understand, and in that case, why would you use someone else's tool)? And that's only for yourself. I'm not saying you shouldn't try new tools. To the contrary. It's just hard to know which ones are the right ones for your organization. Hence cargo-culting of tools that may or may not be a step backwards for your organization, or have all kinds of hidden-costs that are difficult or even impossible to foresee.
zorpner 7y ago
They see tools not as a way to get more done or be efficient, but as something that's "moving their cheese" and they don't like it. It doesn't matter how overworked they are by remedial tasks that could be automated, until you show them everything finished, end-to-end, working flawlessly, they won't be interested in the slightest. Will they be paid more for the increase in productivity?
- 6510 7y ago
  I looked into content rating systems one time. Specifically PICS[1] As it gained some attention in some big media outlets where authoritative sounding journalists full on attacked it. Some attempted to portray it as a filter. At first I didn't understand why the persistent negativity but eventually I got it when one of them wrote how he acquired his skills though years of article writing and that the public scrutiny was an insult to his profession. I then began to notice this pattern in other people. If you give them efficient software they wont be able to bullshit their way out of any argument. Productivity is the enemy. Everything possible must be done to prevent the people above from figuring out what is really going on. One very simple example I ran into recently. A new and improved app was made but it had exactly the same flaws as the previous one. An amount of time is assigned to tasks but if you add up the tasks for a day they greatly exceed the real world number of minutes worked. Then when complaints come in they simply assign extra minutes to the task pushing the total amount of work further over 8 hours. The number of characters for feedback was also reduced. When I jokingly asked about it (knowing how their game works) they pretended it was to hard to divide the work over the day. You cant just say a 70 min task must be done in 50! All hell would break loose! It is then left up to the assignee to figure out how to cut the corners. The managers carefully monitor the feedback, if anyone finds out corners are cut the employee is called in to explain for it. Eventually the smart ones figure out how to cut corners without anyone noticing it. The entire show depends on the clients inability to add up all the minutes. [1] - https://www.w3.org/PICS/services-960303.html https://www.w3.org/PICS/services-960303.html

JohnFen 7y ago

> They see tools not as a way to get more done or be efficient, but as something that's "moving their cheese" and they don't like it. In all fairness, this perception of tools is often entirely rational. Changing workflows incurs a high cost, and any new tool must supply a benefit in excess of that cost. If it doesn't, then opposing the new tool can be the correct stance. And in my experience, at least half of the time, the new tools do not provide sufficient benefit.

IggleSniggle 7y ago
Exactly. There's endless tooling out there, and you can contort software to whatever process. Some of tools make claims that, if trivial to implement, would provide huge huge benefits. Unfortunately, there's a cost to learning a new tool, and then to implementing its use. Since you don't know the tool yet, you can only make educated guesses as to whether it will be easy or hard to learn, easy or hard to implement, make your process better or worse, help sell your product or make you more efficient, etc. You can't know for sure (unless it seems so much like something you already DO understand, and in that case, why would you use someone else's tool)? And that's only for yourself. I'm not saying you shouldn't try new tools. To the contrary. It's just hard to know which ones are the right ones for your organization. Hence cargo-culting of tools that may or may not be a step backwards for your organization, or have all kinds of hidden-costs that are difficult or even impossible to foresee.

zorpner 7y ago

They see tools not as a way to get more done or be efficient, but as something that's "moving their cheese" and they don't like it. It doesn't matter how overworked they are by remedial tasks that could be automated, until you show them everything finished, end-to-end, working flawlessly, they won't be interested in the slightest. Will they be paid more for the increase in productivity?

6510 7y ago
I looked into content rating systems one time. Specifically PICS[1] As it gained some attention in some big media outlets where authoritative sounding journalists full on attacked it. Some attempted to portray it as a filter. At first I didn't understand why the persistent negativity but eventually I got it when one of them wrote how he acquired his skills though years of article writing and that the public scrutiny was an insult to his profession. I then began to notice this pattern in other people. If you give them efficient software they wont be able to bullshit their way out of any argument. Productivity is the enemy. Everything possible must be done to prevent the people above from figuring out what is really going on. One very simple example I ran into recently. A new and improved app was made but it had exactly the same flaws as the previous one. An amount of time is assigned to tasks but if you add up the tasks for a day they greatly exceed the real world number of minutes worked. Then when complaints come in they simply assign extra minutes to the task pushing the total amount of work further over 8 hours. The number of characters for feedback was also reduced. When I jokingly asked about it (knowing how their game works) they pretended it was to hard to divide the work over the day. You cant just say a 70 min task must be done in 50! All hell would break loose! It is then left up to the assignee to figure out how to cut the corners. The managers carefully monitor the feedback, if anyone finds out corners are cut the employee is called in to explain for it. Eventually the smart ones figure out how to cut corners without anyone noticing it. The entire show depends on the clients inability to add up all the minutes. [1] - https://www.w3.org/PICS/services-960303.html https://www.w3.org/PICS/services-960303.html