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PPPP Invention
In “Engineering A Safer World“, Nancy Leveson uses the autopilot example below to illustrate the extra step of complexity that was introduced into the product development process with the integration of computers and software into electro-mechanical system designs.
In the worst case, as illustrated below, the inter-role communication problem can be exacerbated. Although the “gap of misunderstanding” from language mismatch is always greatest between the Domain Expert and the Software Architect, as more roles get added to the project, more errors/defects are injected into the process.
But wait! It can get worse, or should I say, “more challenging“. Each person in the chain of cacophony can be a member of a potentially different group with conflicting goals.
But wait, it can get worser! By consciously or unconsciously adding multiple managers and executives to the mix, you can put the finishing touch on your very own Proprietary Poop Producing Process (PPPP).
So, how can you try to inhibit inventing your very own PPPP? Two techniques come to mind:
- Frequent, sustained, proactive, inter-language education (to close the gaps of misunderstanding).
- Minimization of the number of meddling managers (and especially, pseudo-manager wannabes) allowed anywhere near the project.
Got any other ideas?
Have Uh Morrie Xmas!
From my best buddy, Morrie, to you:
If you come back here tomorrie, you’ll find another holiday treat waiting for you.
Fish On Fridays
Note: Today, on 12/23/11, I’m delighted to present to you the first guest blog entry ever posted on bulldozer00.com. Woot! The following delicious blarticle comes to you from a frequent BD00 blog commenter who logs on using a myriad of creative names with the word “fish” in them. Could it be Abe Vigoda in disguise?
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Seasons Greetings to the followers of BD00’s blog—Welcome to a not-so-periodic, occasional feature we’re going to call “Fish on Fridays“.
Everyone knows the Bulldozer here puts in a great deal of effort spinning his wheels and blogging about the world as he sees it. And like everyone, he deserves a break–a vacation if you will. So here I am pinch-hitting every once in a while so BD00 can enjoy that extra dirty martini over the holidays.
Yesterday’s blog about glorifying the Salesmen and the Accountants spelling the demise of a company got me thinking about the perceptions of the people that “Do” versus the people that “Don’t“.
I’m a creative–not a code jockey like the ‘dozer. I take blank sheets of paper (white-screen on a monitor these days) and I draw up conceptual design solutions to merchandise consumer products in appealing ways and dress up retail environments that will convince consumers to part with their hard-earned cash for that next great thing in the store.
This time of year, there’s always a huge battle that goes on at just about every company, where the people that “Do” decide to take time off from their work and take a well-deserved vacation; a break from the daily grind. This leaves the people who “Don’t” holding the reigns while those that “Do” are away. In my company, two things happen. The people that “Do” (salesmen) all rush in with a whole list of new projects that require the people that “Don’t” to generate a great deal of output while those that “Do” are away. Generally, this output has a well-defined deadline–the “First of the Year” or “Right after the Holiday“, or “As soon as we get back“. This allows them to set up a huge flurry of new customer visits and get a ‘fresh start‘ on the year, while they take their break and kick up their feet in the sand with a cooler of Corona’s beside them.
As a result, the people that “Do” go away for a week or two, and the people that “Don’t” have a mad rush of activity that must all be completed right at the time when EVERYONE wants to take a break and enjoy the season. Usually, this also means short-time frames as there are at least 2 and sometimes 3 or 4 workdays that have been turned into corporate days off, so the actual work-week is truncated and those that “Don’t” actually have much less time to complete their tasks than they normally would. This is compounded by the fact that at least a portion of the people that “Don’t” are also taking time off, leaving a skeleton crew around to cover and handle the work that comes in.
Quite often, particularly when your business activities rely on the support of other businesses (suppliers, contractors, agencies, etc), everything at this time of year slows down or becomes impossible because everyone is short-handed. You can’t get answers from your customer, the salesperson is unavailable to help, you can’t find stuff, and the outside groups you depend on are unable to respond in the same timely manner as you are used to. As a result, the things you need to do can’t get finished until everyone else gets back and you get to start the year with a whole bunch of extra time in the office, sweating out the details while those who “Do” are off relaxing.
The perception is that there is this great holiday season and everyone should enjoy it, but in the great corporate world of BOZOs the reality is that there is usually one class of workers where the holiday time is one of the busiest and most stressful times of the year. I found this quote from an Apple employee that just about sums it all up…
You can expect that your needs will always come second to “the needs of the business”. In fact, anytime you hear that phrase, be prepared for the next sentence to describe how you’re going to be screwed. For example, “I’m sorry, Joe, but the needs of the business dictate that you can’t take a vacation between October and February, or June through September”.
I am reminded of the movie Ants, where the worker Ants–those that ‘Don’t‘ bust their little exoskeletons to feed the Grasshoppers who ‘Do‘. There is a quote in this blog attributed to Tom Sutcliffe where he is looking at the recent uprisings in Egypt and comparing them to business. Sutcliffe mentions that:
It seems odd that people will endure, within the framework of a firm or an institution, a degree of subjection and speechlessness that would strike them as insufferable at the level of citizenship and that “office tyrannies” might end up becoming the target of mass uprisings not unlike those that we have been witnessing in the Middle East.
At a forward thinking company, the entire place shuts down for the holidays–no one is left holding the bag. But with the glorification of those that ‘Do‘ as BD00 discussed, we are creating an internal separation between groups, which is part of the process of demise. Look at your company and the people around you. Are you someone that “does” or someone that “doesn’t“? What are you doing for the people on the other side of that equation?
Happy Holidays?
Salesmen And Accountants
No one has ever failed to find the facts they are looking for. – Peter Drucker
Mr. Drucker may have gotten it wrong, at least in BD00’s case. It seems like the “facts” that I desperately need to continuously confirm my distorted world view come right up to me out of hiding and bite me in the bumpkiss. (If they don’t, I simply make some pseudo-facts up to feed the need).
Here’s one of the latest confirmations, and it’s in the form of another quote:
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” – Upton Sinclair
Say what, you ask? That quote deftly closes this Forbes article written by “radical” Steve Denning: “Why Big Companies Die”.
Quoting Steve Jobs on where salesmen come into play, and adding his own two cents on where accountants come into play, “rad” Steve describes an oft repeated pattern of corpo demise:
“The company does a great job, innovates and becomes a monopoly or close to it in some field, and then the quality of the product becomes less important. The company starts valuing the great salesman, because they’re the ones who can move the needle on revenues. So salesmen are put in charge, and product engineers and designers feel demoted: Their efforts are no longer at the white-hot center of the company’s daily life. They “turn off.”” – Steve Jobs
“The activities of these people (the accountants) further dispirit the creators, the product engineers and designers, and also crimp the firm’s ability to add value to its customers. But because the accountants appear to be adding to the firm’s short-term profitability, as a class they are also celebrated and well-rewarded, even as their activities systematically kill the firm’s future.” – Steve Denning
The dorky BD00 graph below attempts to map the above words onto an unscaled timeline.
Or, if you prefer, here’s an alternative view of this unconscious pattern of demise:
The Weltanschauung Filter
I love the word “weltanschauung“. Alas, there are two reasons why I don’t use it more often: 1) I can’t freakin’ pronounce it; 2) I have to freakin’ look up its spelling every time.
Useless Code
The BD00 Process
I believe that human beings love personal stories and direct experiential reports. Thus, even though it’s highly proprietary and super secret, I’m going to expose the somewhat repeatable “process” that I use for whipping up dumbass blog posts.
Here’s how BD00 does the dirty deed…
- Every morning, after going to bed between 8-9 PM, I wake up between 4-5 AM.
- I fire up a pot of coffee and then sit down at the computer.
- I navigate to the wordpress.com BD00 dashboard.
- I mine “fieldstone” writing ideas from: my “gym notes“, my quotes pages, an interesting interaction or tainted observation at work, random web surfing, my kindle highlights, a twitter post.
- I wait…..
- A freakin’ miracle occurs!
- I start writing words or drawing a picture, or both.
- I chaotically jump back and forth ‘tween writing and drawing – iteration city.
- Sometimes, I write some words, draw a picture, and then finish the words.
- Sometimes, I write all the words first and then re-scan them for drawing ideas.
- Sometimes, I draw a partial picture, write some words, and then I finish the pic.
- Sometimes, I draw a complete picture first and then I write the words that go with it.
- I iterate over the words + picture combo multiple times until…. I say “WTF, I’m done!“
Of course, even though the BD00 process is expressed as a nice and tidy bulleted list above, it’s not a procedure. To highlight the non-sequential nature of the process, here’s the UML state machine diagram model:
Note the numerous initial entry points and that every state has an iterative transition “to self“. That’s because I Am A Strange Loop.
Conscious Degradation Of Style
One (of many) of my pet peeves can be called “Conscious Degradation Of Style” (CDOS). CDOS is what happens when a programmer purposely disregards the style in an existing code base while making changes/additions to it. It’s even more annoying when the style mismatch is pointed out to the perpetrator and he/she continues to pee all over the code to mark his/her territory. Sheesh.
When I have to make “local” changes to an existing code base, if I can discern some kind of consistent style within the code (which may be a challenge in itself!), I consciously and mightily try to preserve that style when I make the changes – no matter how much my ego may “disagree” with the naming, formatting, idiomatic, and implementation patterns in the code. That freakin’ makes (dollars and) sense, no?
What about you, what do you do?
Baggage From The Past
BD00, the wise ass, oops, I mean the wise child that he is, maintains that it’s much more challenging to restore a fallen org to success than it is to bootstrap a startup org to success.
Unlike established orgs, startups are populated by a small group of highly enthused people with a common bond and they don’t have a history of under performance to contend with (yet) as they move forward.
It’s BD00’s belief that leadership teams who turn around fallen stars are more deserving of kudos than heroic startup teams.
Attack And Advance
Check out this recent Grady Booch tweet on the topic of “why” he, James Rumbaugh, and Ivar Jacobson syntegrated their individual modeling technologies into what became the UML standard:
Over 20+ years ago, when the rate of global change was just a mere inkling of what it is today, my friend Bill Livingston stated in HFAW that: “complexity has a bright future“. He was right on the money and I admire people like Bill and the three UML amigos for attacking complexity (a.k.a ambiguity) head-on – especially when lots of people seem to love doing the exact opposite – piling complexity on top of complexity.
Extreme complexity may not be vanquishable, but (I think) it can be made manageable with the application of abstract “systems thinking” styles and concrete tools/techniques/processes created by smart and passionate people, no?
Why am I here?
WTF?
Meh!
D'oh!
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