3 ms·

I see this type of backlash against process a lot here. But I don't think 'just good people' is the answer. A lone hero can do a lot, maybe a band of them kick

by Lutger 3y ago

I see this type of backlash against process a lot here. But I don't think 'just good people' is the answer. A lone hero can do a lot, maybe a band of them kick real ass, but it doesn't really scale beyond that nor does it last. Furthermore, even the best make silly mistakes, you need to have a lot of mechanisms to both prevent and mitigate against the consequences of failure if that is important to your business. Just imagine operating a hospital on the maxim that you 'only' need good people and process is evil. I know this is a bit of a straw man, I just want to make it clear that eradicating all process in favor of 'good people' isn't the answer. So what is? A good process can really help a lot in working together. I've worked with a mix of medium to good people, who continuously adapted the process to make it work and it helped, a lot. Medium people can do good work. And good people don't have as many obstacles. It is essential that the people who are responsible for executing also have the mandate of adopting or at least adapting a process to their context. A good process can save a lot of brain cycles and prevent all kinds of organizational waste. Its like automating away a lot of the overhead of working together and achieving goals collectively. But if the script doesn't work for a use case or with certain parameters, you better change it or just not run it to a fault.

mewpmewp2 3y ago
I think everything just has to be a large arbitrary tree of branches, with tasks going into subtasks until they are small bites enough to be divided amongst teams. Then you measure how these tasks are going and if required you change the tasks or branches. Everyone can move around the tree to see which team is responsible for which task and how any task on the whole is progressing.
- Lutger 3y ago
  Well, that is quite top-down and organized. If it works, then great. But I wouldn't push everything into such a plan. On the other hand, I've worked in such a disconnected 'bottom-up' org that after about 8 years, finally the CEO told us he didn't like the business model we had been developing and specializing in. The end result was like 90% of senior devs resigned. We were clueless. Maybe a little goal setting would have helped?
  - mewpmewp2 3y ago
    I haven't ever seen anything like I described implemented the way I'd like to see if and the way I think it would work, so maybe it wouldn't work, but intuitively it would make most sense to me and I can personally imagine it working.
solatic 3y ago
I'm not trying to say all process is bad and I'm not sure where you got that from my comment. So to clarify: instituting process only makes sense when you have consensus across teams that need to collaborate with each other on what that collaboration is supposed to look like. In other words, process only makes sense when people agree on what needs to be done and what to do. In a hospital setting, processes can be tremendously helpful in ensuring that supplies are restocked, that someone is always on-shift, that patients can be transferred from one department to the next without needing to know who exactly is on-shift. There is consensus on which supplies are needed and that departments need to have people on-shift. Mission clarity is almost built-in: patients need to be treated, and that treatment needs to happen as quickly as possible after it is determined that the treatment is necessary. Performance evaluation, a lot of the time in corporate environments, but especially in engineering, has no such consensus. It is not even possible to achieve such consensus when people are not clear on what they are supposed to do, which is because the business is not clear on what it is supposed to do, which is actually a good thing because we learned, decades ago, that making year-long plans in an attempt to achieve that clarity ended up ossifying businesses instead of letting them be responsive to market conditions. So no, most businesses are not like hospitals, where the notion of "responsive to market conditions" is completely ludicrous when demand is inelastic, prices outpace inflation year-over-year, most customers are dissatisfied with value-for-cost, and there is almost no accountability to the customer with the rare exception of malpractice suits.
- mlrtime 3y ago
  I'm not sure your idea of "No Processes" works at significantly large orgs. Sure, hiring the best and filling gaps works on small/medium orgs, but once you get to 3k+ (Made up number) I find it hard that this will work. No matter how hard you try you will never get the best people, and may not even want that. Sometimes you just need soldiers and soldiers need process.

by Lutger 3y ago

mewpmewp2 3y ago

I think everything just has to be a large arbitrary tree of branches, with tasks going into subtasks until they are small bites enough to be divided amongst teams. Then you measure how these tasks are going and if required you change the tasks or branches. Everyone can move around the tree to see which team is responsible for which task and how any task on the whole is progressing.

Lutger 3y ago
Well, that is quite top-down and organized. If it works, then great. But I wouldn't push everything into such a plan. On the other hand, I've worked in such a disconnected 'bottom-up' org that after about 8 years, finally the CEO told us he didn't like the business model we had been developing and specializing in. The end result was like 90% of senior devs resigned. We were clueless. Maybe a little goal setting would have helped?
- mewpmewp2 3y ago
  I haven't ever seen anything like I described implemented the way I'd like to see if and the way I think it would work, so maybe it wouldn't work, but intuitively it would make most sense to me and I can personally imagine it working.

solatic 3y ago

I'm not trying to say all process is bad and I'm not sure where you got that from my comment. So to clarify: instituting process only makes sense when you have consensus across teams that need to collaborate with each other on what that collaboration is supposed to look like. In other words, process only makes sense when people agree on what needs to be done and what to do. In a hospital setting, processes can be tremendously helpful in ensuring that supplies are restocked, that someone is always on-shift, that patients can be transferred from one department to the next without needing to know who exactly is on-shift. There is consensus on which supplies are needed and that departments need to have people on-shift. Mission clarity is almost built-in: patients need to be treated, and that treatment needs to happen as quickly as possible after it is determined that the treatment is necessary. Performance evaluation, a lot of the time in corporate environments, but especially in engineering, has no such consensus. It is not even possible to achieve such consensus when people are not clear on what they are supposed to do, which is because the business is not clear on what it is supposed to do, which is actually a good thing because we learned, decades ago, that making year-long plans in an attempt to achieve that clarity ended up ossifying businesses instead of letting them be responsive to market conditions. So no, most businesses are not like hospitals, where the notion of "responsive to market conditions" is completely ludicrous when demand is inelastic, prices outpace inflation year-over-year, most customers are dissatisfied with value-for-cost, and there is almost no accountability to the customer with the rare exception of malpractice suits.

mlrtime 3y ago
I'm not sure your idea of "No Processes" works at significantly large orgs. Sure, hiring the best and filling gaps works on small/medium orgs, but once you get to 3k+ (Made up number) I find it hard that this will work. No matter how hard you try you will never get the best people, and may not even want that. Sometimes you just need soldiers and soldiers need process.