Month: December 2014

Handoff erodes trust

When work is partitioned into intermediate results, results that may or may not lead to a desired outcome, responsibility fractures. In a chain of intermediate results, individuals do their part, like working an assembly line to produce a desired outcome. When the desired outcome involves the application of knowledge in a creative fashion, quality is no longer objective. The work…

Budgeting should follow, not lead

Most organizations are ensconced with the specious practice of budgeting. It works well as a means to estimate costs and allocate money to make sure costs are covered. In addition to estimating costs, budgeting is often the means by which capital is allocated for potential investments. Often, budgets are established on a yearly basis and capped. Individuals or groups within…

Coalesce Responsibility

One technique to establish an environment of direct responsibility is for an individual to absorb responsibility with a focus on absorbing responsibility that’s involved in establishing customer needs through to delivering customer results. But it’s not always possible for one individual to do all the work necessary. There often are many skills involved in doing the work to translate customer…

Absorb Responsibility

Direct responsibility affords effectiveness instead of the elusive efficiency gains supposed in slicing and dicing responsibility. But, when bureaucracy slices and dices responsibility into many intermediate pieces, it can be difficult for those at the bottom of the ranks to affect change. It would seem that changing the slicing and dicing would require buy in from the top. While establishing…

Direct Responsibility

Direct responsibility means an individual, or a team, is responsible for everything necessary to turn a customer need into results for the customer. Results should have a measurable impact on the customer. An impact that those that are responsible should be a part of measuring and understanding, such that they seek to achieve the impact. Direct responsibility avoids splitting up…

Passing the torch

There’s no better way to be successful than to hold yourself accountable to the results you’re a part of creating. And not to intermediate results, but the actual end product or service you provide to your customers. In fact, success often entails being responsible for your customer’s success as well as your own. Many organizations struggle to be successful simply…

The after, after action review

Defining when work is done is not always cut and dry. The definition of done is murky in many situations because responsibilities are often slice and diced among many individuals that work in succession to do their part and hand it off to someone else, much like factory work to assemble a car. Each person sees done as the point…

The most important problem software professionals face?

One of my favorite books, in the field of software development, opens with: The most important problem that we face as software professionals is this: If somebody thinks of a good idea, how do we deliver it to users as quickly as possible? This book shows how to solve this problem. Farley, David; Humble, Jez (2010-07-27). Continuous Delivery: Reliable Software…

Contemplating effectiveness

Efficiency is the easy route in business. It’s simple to discuss. It feels natural to talk about. It aligns with the fact that we usually pay people for their time, not their results. It seems logical that improving business would be about being more efficient. But efficiency only reduces the cost. It doesn’t increase the net value, in fact, it…

Use does not imply worth

It’s easy to conflate the use of something with the worthwhile use of something. In other words, using something in a valuable fashion. Just because somebody uses something, doesn’t mean it provides them with value, let alone more value than it costs. Because value is subjective, I’ll give an example of my own. Email. Something that can be both worthwhile…