Archive for the ‘Management’ Category
Visitor’s observation
Enjoying the warm weather and the great autumn we traveled yesterday along the hudson river and stop in several places. One of our stop was in the first American winery - Brotherhood - hopping to catch the last tour at 4 PM and maybe to enjoy tasting of few of the wines. The place itself is very nice and worth a visit, we also enjoyed the brotherhood riesling before and liked it so we had somewhat high expectations from the visit.
Arriving at about 3:00 PM we assumed that we have plenty of time, but we were wrong. We discovered that the lines for wine purchasing, and people obviously bought many bottles of wine, and for the winery tour are same lines. Additionally some computer problems caused the payment process to slow down even more than normally. So after standing in line for about 45 minutes we start to express our displeasure from the service and from the fact that we are going to miss the tour due to unreasonably bad service.
Quickly we were pulled out of the line and registered to tour and while waiting to the tour - and to the tour guide to pull everybody that still waiting in line - One of the owners came to apologize. He expressed his frustration with the new process that was initiated by consultants that the winery hired to improved its processes. One of the things he repeatedly said was that the visiting process was working well for years and that he doesn’t understand why they had to change it.
The fault of the messy inefficient process is, obviously, the owner’s and not the consultant’s. He hired them to recommend changes - and he is the one that should make the decision if he is going to institute them completely, partially, or as sane company owner should do - ignore them. The fact is that hiring consultants to improve the processes in your own company is a bad decision - nobody should know better than you where are your weak points, nor do they have the knowledge about your priorities, vision and the way your company should do better. Most of the time the visiting consultant experience is limited to consulting and they tries to force general solutions on specific problems.
I don’t remember where did I heard the expression “outsourcing the brain” before but the person that coined it was painfully accurate. I do remember, however, this wonderful post that concluded:
The whole fraud is only possible because performance metrics in knowledge organizations are completely trivial to game. The best part is that most management consultants, the stunningly good-looking, bright, earnest chipmunks with 4.0s in Russian Lit from Harvard who work for these companies, have absolutely no way of knowing this, so they can go through this whole exercise without even knowing that they’re doing it! They get all the way through the 2-year associate program on their way to MBA school without even realizing that they haven’t done a goddamn thing about productivity, all they’ve done is caused a fairly pointless transfer of wealth from ExxonMobilConoco to BainMcKinseyGartner’s senior partners. And it’s a lot of fun! First class flights to Houston and Oslo! Helping the world be more productive! Rock on, young stunningly-good-looking Management Consultant.
The tour, by the way, was very nice and so were some of the wines we tasted.
Still here
The last few days were pretty hectic, and it is going to be somewhat crazier in the days to come. An important project, with crazy deadline, requires most of my attention for the next few days. Not surprisingly, more than I’m missing updating this blog I’m missing reading others. The reading backlog is simply unbelievable…
And, by the way before I’m disappearing to do what I’m paid to do, go and help Ron Paul’s efforts to complete a $500,000 by the end of the quarter. It is a good cause.
It is not a waste if you are using the correct buzzword
Thank for the detailed response Mark. The discussion that can develop around my orignal post and your response deserve a post of its own
I agree with you that you shouldn’t trust the newspapers. However from your own description of the project I’m afraid that the news report missed the main point. Yes, obviously the black tape is what caught my, and I guess many other’s, attention - but the issue isn’t the black tape at whole.
The problem is that we are trying to apply performance metrics where they cannot be applied, and as a side effect damaging the productivity of the organization that suffered the attack of the well meaning consultants. The problem with performance metrics for knowledge workers is that they would simply don’t work .
And although it is very sexy to chant "lean" and "agile", and I’m sure its help getting contracts, Applying manufacturing methods, that simplify and optimized the manufacturing and inventory process, to different type of processes is bound to fail as well. Telling people how to arrange their desk, either by putting black tapes or by:
Lean isn’t about tidy desks but the mindset that goes behind them. Everyone is familiar with mechanics putting tools back on a peg board.
They do that so they don’t waste time hunting for the tool the next time they need it. The lean principle about being tidy and ready for work is simply applied commonsense and no, Unipart never recommended putting tape round items on desks.
Keeping work stations business-like is especially relevant in hot desking or shift-working but applies anywhere. But that’s just a tiny part of thinking lean.
The organization methods, skills, and expected results that applies to a worker in a Toyota’s assembly line are completely different than knowledge worker. The last thing I want is to tell my programmers how to set their desks, because this will be the first step to kill their productivity and creativity.
I would assume that "Lean" in the governmental bureaucracy context should involve the use of words like "cutting down", "reduction", "lay offs" and all sort of things that make government smaller (and leaner). However I’m sure that such terms doesn’t help winning contracts that will make at least some of the taxpayer happy (at least the one that win the contract :)). So we are keeping positive term as "lean" and "agile" and telling everybody about the Toyota example and start telling how to arrange their desks. And when it will fail, as it bound to happened, it will be the fault of these workers that didn’t adopt the new lean religious:
It works extremely well if the complete set of tools and techniques is rigorously applied and the culture is prepared for some genuine workforce involvement.
And one last remark. When you call management consultant an "expert practitioner" he (or she) remain management consultant. The different between calling things in different names or doing things differently is a major difference.
Technorati Tags: Consulting Firms - Government Waste - Lean Production - Agile - Performance Metrics - Taxes - Small Government - Unipart
Let me arrange your desk
Isn’t this story just perfect? the combination of wasting the tax payer money for some comlitly idiotic project together with a consulting firm that its main expert is to milk more money from the client. What else can generate a project that intend to increase the productivity by better organization of their desk space?
Civil servants are used to dealing with red tape - but a group are now having to adjust to black tape to show them where to put things on their desks.
National Insurance staff in Longbenton, North Tyneside, are taking part in a pilot scheme on desk management.
It is part of the Lean programme brought in by consultants Unipart, which has already seen public sector workers told to clear their desks of personal items.
It is all about increase productivity obviously; and the better desk organization, or what ever name the consulting company gave it when they sold the idea, is:
Lean is all about how we can work more efficiently to deliver an even better service to our customers, providing support and appropriate levels of management too busy staff whilst providing real value for money to the taxpayer.
I only wonder if this spokeswomen know how stupid she sound or is she in the same situation as:
The whole fraud is only possible because performance metrics in knowledge organizations are completely trivial to game. The best part is that most management consultants, the stunningly good-looking, bright, earnest chipmunks with 4.0s in Russian Lit from Harvard who work for these companies, have absolutely no way of knowing this, so they can go through this whole exercise without even knowing that they’re doing it! They get all the way through the 2-year associate program on their way to MBA school without even realizing that they haven’t done a goddamn thing about productivity, all they’ve done is caused a fairly pointless transfer of wealth from ExxonMobilConoco to BainMcKinseyGartner’s senior partners. And it’s a lot of fun! First class flights to Houston and Oslo! Helping the world be more productive! Rock on, young stunningly-good-looking Management Consultant.
Technorati Tags: Performance Metrics - Knowledge Workers - Consulting Firms - Taxes - Government Waste
Live warning
If you ever wondered what happen when the process takes first priority and the organization become purpose for itself, instead of what it produce - go and read this:
So that nets us a conservative estimate of 24 people involved in this feature. Also each team of 8 was separated by 6 layers of management from the leads, so let’s add them in too, giving us 24 + (6 * 3) + 1 (the shared manager) 43 total people with a voice in this feature. Twenty-four of them were connected sorta closely to the code, and of those twenty four there were exactly zero with final say in how the feature worked. Somewhere in those other 17 was somebody who did have final say but who that was I have no idea since when I left the team — after a year — there was still no decision about exactly how this feature would work.
By the way “feature” is much too strong a word; a better description would be “menu”. Really. By the time I left the team the total code that I’d written for this “feature” was a couple hundred lines, tops.
Technorati Tags: Feature Creep - Program Management - Bureaucracy - Process - Agility
Management Consultants and more
Go read the entire post, it is really good:
The whole fraud is only possible because performance metrics in knowledge organizations are completely trivial to game. The best part is that most management consultants, the stunningly good-looking, bright, earnest chipmunks with 4.0s in Russian Lit from Harvard who work for these companies, have absolutely no way of knowing this, so they can go through this whole exercise without even knowing that they’re doing it! They get all the way through the 2-year associate program on their way to MBA school without even realizing that they haven’t done a goddamn thing about productivity, all they’ve done is caused a fairly pointless transfer of wealth from ExxonMobilConoco to BainMcKinseyGartner’s senior partners. And it’s a lot of fun! First class flights to Houston and Oslo! Helping the world be more productive! Rock on, young stunningly-good-looking Management Consultant.
And don’t miss the link to the post about performance metrics, it is even better.
Technorati Tags: Performance Metrics - Knowledge Workers - Management Consultants
Quote of the day
Although I have strong reservations from a methodology suggested in this post, suggesting to give the developer the work and to get the results when they are done - when ever this lucky day arrives, I just love this quote:
if you start with an Agile Methodology, and you add enough hard work, you get a bunch of work done. Go figure.
Technorati Tags: Agile software development - Project Management - The Silver Bullet
Different approach to Agile programming
The rest of us have all known that Agile Methodologies are stupid, by application of any of the following well-known laws of marketing:
- anything that calls itself a “Methodology” is stupid, on general principle.
- anything that requires “evangelists” and offers seminars, exists soley for the purpose of making money.
- anything that never mentions any competition or alternatives is dubiously self-serving.
- anything that does diagrams with hand-wavy math is stupid, on general principle.
And by “stupid”, I mean it’s “incredibly brilliant marketing targeted at stupid people.”
Agile programming , with its many different flavors, become more than just a buzz word. As many positive solutions Agile development has its advantages when applied in the right environment and when solving specific projects. However as many “silver bullets” it has its problems.
Steve Yegge’s witty and thought provoking post discussing some of these weaknesses. But it does more than just that, it suggesting an alternative: its current work environment at Google. It isn’t short post, and with the discussion that follows the post it is actually very long - but it is worth the time.
Technorati Tags: Agile software development - Project Management - Google
In my inbox
Working in he same company since it was a start-up, with mainly the same team of developer bound to produce e-mails like this:
Incoming:
Today I discovered a new Parkinson law:
The bigger company is, the more percentage of idiots it can afford.
Outgoing:
I’m going to publish it!
Incoming:
Be my guest. We can use it as a slogan on the company’s logo
Technorati Tags: management - Humor - corporate_culture
Wrong assumptions
I discovered recently another great programing blog. Each of the post is a good source of knowledge and experience and require active thinking of the reader. Here for example a post about Distributed Information Systems:
- People tell the truth.
- Content is independent of presentation.
- Syntax doesn’t matter.
- Identifiers are reliable.
- Metadata and data are consistent.
- Schema ensure interoperation.
- All the data must be available.
- Canonical models can be determined.
- Index latency is zero.
Developing applications for a corporation I made, and so other make, each one of these fallacies. I wonder if I understood the list the same way before seeing all of this mistakes and their result happening…