4 ms·

It implies you think the person doing the task is delivering more slowly than they could/should be. Especially if you’re asking it in every interaction.

by cjrp 4y ago

fortydegrees 4y ago
You're assuming that the individual's labour is the only input into work completion. I think those questions are good. One benefit is that it can reveal potential organisation-wide blockers: *Getting design changes could be slow (and hence the design department may be understaffed, or inefficient communication channels) *Maybe some processes can be ran in parallel. Someone can build the login form while the other does the database. *They might require git access for another department that could take a while to come through. Considering engineers' time is often the greatest cost for a technology startup, you can bet they'd be incentivised to maximise the efficiency of it. Not only might they reveal potential blockers, but answering it also helps both parties understand they're on the same page regarding what the task entails. If the task is building a login form and the response is 'It will take two days to train the neural network', you can nip that in the bud.
ZephyrBlu 4y ago
I have never seen this framed as performing work too slowly. It's more about cutting scope, gathering context, asking for help, identifying dependencies, etc. It's often really helpful for someone to ask these questions, especially when they have higher level context you weren't aware of.
- hef19898 4y ago
  Speed is relative. What you want is the right speed of getting things done, not just being faster by default. It is as important to slow down in operations as it is to speed up as it is to just run things stable. The true art of good ops management is knowing to do those things, in parallel depending on the subject at hand, and to judge which approach to choose. The article didn't even hint at that.

It implies you think the person doing the task is delivering more slowly than they could/should be. Especially if you’re asking it in every interaction.

by cjrp 4y ago

It implies you think the person doing the task is delivering more slowly than they could/should be. Especially if you’re asking it in every interaction.

fortydegrees 4y ago

You're assuming that the individual's labour is the only input into work completion. I think those questions are good. One benefit is that it can reveal potential organisation-wide blockers: *Getting design changes could be slow (and hence the design department may be understaffed, or inefficient communication channels) *Maybe some processes can be ran in parallel. Someone can build the login form while the other does the database. *They might require git access for another department that could take a while to come through. Considering engineers' time is often the greatest cost for a technology startup, you can bet they'd be incentivised to maximise the efficiency of it. Not only might they reveal potential blockers, but answering it also helps both parties understand they're on the same page regarding what the task entails. If the task is building a login form and the response is 'It will take two days to train the neural network', you can nip that in the bud.

ZephyrBlu 4y ago

I have never seen this framed as performing work too slowly. It's more about cutting scope, gathering context, asking for help, identifying dependencies, etc. It's often really helpful for someone to ask these questions, especially when they have higher level context you weren't aware of.

hef19898 4y ago
Speed is relative. What you want is the right speed of getting things done, not just being faster by default. It is as important to slow down in operations as it is to speed up as it is to just run things stable. The true art of good ops management is knowing to do those things, in parallel depending on the subject at hand, and to judge which approach to choose. The article didn't even hint at that.