6 ms·

Maybe you shouldn't focus on getting 'the best person' on the correct place, but try to make 'the best process' for evaluating and improving UI/UX and mandate i

by bzzzt 6y ago

Maybe you shouldn't focus on getting 'the best person' on the correct place, but try to make 'the best process' for evaluating and improving UI/UX and mandate it's followed everywhere. One of the projects at my workplace decided to document every design decision from all viewpoints including the final decision made. Seemed to help a lot against people arguing in circles and/or bikeshedding.

blowski 6y ago
And that way lies large corporate Agile. All work becomes crap, because you can no longer tell the difference between good people encumbered by bureacracy and crap people using the bureaucracy as an excuse. My experience is to manage people effectively, and apply just enough process for each person and job.
- ryandrake 6y ago
  Process works though, because not everyone on your team is going to be an "A" student, and if you have 500 employees, you simply don't have the time and bandwidth to make a custom process for each person. There's wide ranges of ability at every company, even prestigious FAANGs and investment banks and pretty much everywhere. The great benefit of layering on heavy process and bureaucracy is that you can get homogenized, reliable, reasonable-quality, but not consistently outstanding, output from the A, B, C, and D players, without terrible risk that someone who doesn't know what they are doing (who every company has) fucks everything up. As the saying goes, every process you encounter is scar tissue from a past fuck-up. What you sacrifice with all this bureaucracy is the absolutely brilliant output you could be getting from the A players, but the cost is usually worth mitigating the risk of disaster.
  - blowski 6y ago
    You're absolutely right, and that's the reason large companies end up being so inefficient. Eventually, some nimble whippersnapping startup who only hires "A players" eats the large enterprise's breakfast. But to satisfy the shareholders, the startup takes on more work and to cope with that work, they start hiring B players... and so it goes on the enterprise merrygoround. There's no real solution, just different ways of playing the game.
- nubero 6y ago
  You’re absolutely right. Steve Jobs warned about process and process people as well and it’s not surprising.
  - KajMagnus 6y ago
    Intereting talk :- ) "Steve Jobs: Content vs Process", https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4dCJJFuMsE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4dCJJFuMsE 3 minutes. I'd guess that it'd work better with a better-than-good-enough Benevolent Dictator who gets to improve the user interface however s/he wants, than to go looking for the "magic" UX improvement process
    - nubero 6y ago
      That’s the SJ interview I was thinking about…
  - brokenmachine 6y ago
    Jeff Bezos as well: >As companies get larger and more complex, there’s a tendency to manage to proxies. This comes in many shapes and sizes, and it’s dangerous, subtle, and very Day 2. A common example is process as proxy. Good process serves you so you can serve customers. But if you’re not watchful, the process can become the thing. This can happen very easily in large organizations. The process becomes the proxy for the result you want. You stop looking at outcomes and just make sure you’re doing the process right. Gulp. It’s not that rare to hear a junior leader defend a bad outcome with something like, “Well, we followed the process.” A more experienced leader will use it as an opportunity to investigate and improve the process. The process is not the thing. https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/company-news/2016-letter-to-shareholders https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/company-news/2016-letter-to...
- webmaven 6y ago
  > My experience is to manage people effectively, and apply just enough process for each person and job. Sounds like you have a decent lightweight process-making-and-revising process. Most organizations don't. Instead, most organizations create processes mostly ad-hoc in reaction to some trauma, and then never remove them. It accumulates, like scar tissue that only ever gets thicker unless it is ripped away, which just causes different scars.
afarrell 6y ago
“The best process” makes it sound more mechanical than you probably intend. I think you mean: “focus on propagating tools and habits which raise the quality of design conversations” > mandate The problem with mandatory processes is that people don’t take responsibility for the outcome of a process over which they have no power. Processes should be tools people can pick up to improve clarity.

by bzzzt 6y ago

blowski 6y ago

And that way lies large corporate Agile. All work becomes crap, because you can no longer tell the difference between good people encumbered by bureacracy and crap people using the bureaucracy as an excuse. My experience is to manage people effectively, and apply just enough process for each person and job.

ryandrake 6y ago
Process works though, because not everyone on your team is going to be an "A" student, and if you have 500 employees, you simply don't have the time and bandwidth to make a custom process for each person. There's wide ranges of ability at every company, even prestigious FAANGs and investment banks and pretty much everywhere. The great benefit of layering on heavy process and bureaucracy is that you can get homogenized, reliable, reasonable-quality, but not consistently outstanding, output from the A, B, C, and D players, without terrible risk that someone who doesn't know what they are doing (who every company has) fucks everything up. As the saying goes, every process you encounter is scar tissue from a past fuck-up. What you sacrifice with all this bureaucracy is the absolutely brilliant output you could be getting from the A players, but the cost is usually worth mitigating the risk of disaster.
- blowski 6y ago
  You're absolutely right, and that's the reason large companies end up being so inefficient. Eventually, some nimble whippersnapping startup who only hires "A players" eats the large enterprise's breakfast. But to satisfy the shareholders, the startup takes on more work and to cope with that work, they start hiring B players... and so it goes on the enterprise merrygoround. There's no real solution, just different ways of playing the game.
nubero 6y ago
You’re absolutely right. Steve Jobs warned about process and process people as well and it’s not surprising.
- KajMagnus 6y ago
  Intereting talk :- ) "Steve Jobs: Content vs Process", https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4dCJJFuMsE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4dCJJFuMsE 3 minutes. I'd guess that it'd work better with a better-than-good-enough Benevolent Dictator who gets to improve the user interface however s/he wants, than to go looking for the "magic" UX improvement process
  - nubero 6y ago
    That’s the SJ interview I was thinking about…
- brokenmachine 6y ago
  Jeff Bezos as well: >As companies get larger and more complex, there’s a tendency to manage to proxies. This comes in many shapes and sizes, and it’s dangerous, subtle, and very Day 2. A common example is process as proxy. Good process serves you so you can serve customers. But if you’re not watchful, the process can become the thing. This can happen very easily in large organizations. The process becomes the proxy for the result you want. You stop looking at outcomes and just make sure you’re doing the process right. Gulp. It’s not that rare to hear a junior leader defend a bad outcome with something like, “Well, we followed the process.” A more experienced leader will use it as an opportunity to investigate and improve the process. The process is not the thing. https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/company-news/2016-letter-to-shareholders https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/company-news/2016-letter-to...
webmaven 6y ago
> My experience is to manage people effectively, and apply just enough process for each person and job. Sounds like you have a decent lightweight process-making-and-revising process. Most organizations don't. Instead, most organizations create processes mostly ad-hoc in reaction to some trauma, and then never remove them. It accumulates, like scar tissue that only ever gets thicker unless it is ripped away, which just causes different scars.

afarrell 6y ago

“The best process” makes it sound more mechanical than you probably intend. I think you mean: “focus on propagating tools and habits which raise the quality of design conversations” > mandate The problem with mandatory processes is that people don’t take responsibility for the outcome of a process over which they have no power. Processes should be tools people can pick up to improve clarity.