Ideas on Enterprise Information Systems Development

This blog is devoted to ideas on Enterprise Information Systems (EIS) development. It focuses on Lean Thinking, Agile Methods, and Free/Open Source Software, as means of improving EIS development and evolution, under a more practical than academical view. You may find here a lot of "thinking aloud" material, sometimes without scientific treatment... don't worry, this is a blog!
Every post is marked with at least one of Product or Process labels, meaning that they are related to execution techniques (programming and testing) or management techniques (planning and monitoring), respectively.

Sunday, September 26, 2010

On Certifications and Tribal Culture - Part II

Now it is time to tell a tale, which I heard from an associated who in turn read it from somewhere I can't remember, so sorry for not referencing the original and for changing its last 20%.

Once upon a time an isolated tribe that lived in an island and loved pork, although they had it raw, since they were a bit primitive regarding the cooking process in general. One day, during a storm, a lightning struck a tree and started a fire in the forest where the pigs lived. After the fire, they found a lot of burned pigs. Since they were hungry, they decided to have the pigs anyway, and realized how good was roasted pork!

Realizing that the next storm would take too long to come, they decided to reproduce the roasted pork process, by setting fire to the forest. Their first tentative wasn't successful, because the wind was blowing in another direction. The chief, with all his wisdom, decided to appoint a very intelligent man to study the winds and determine when the wind would change to the necessary direction. After months of careful observation and data analysis, this man determined the best moment to set fire. And he was right!

All adults in the tribe stopped what they were doing and ran to the forest to set fire to it. They got some pigs, however in a smaller quantity than expected. They needed to improve their productivity in fire setting! The chief than appointed a commission to discover what was happening and they, after doing a lot of data analysis and long meetings, realized that grass was easier to set fire than trees, and, even better, grew faster!

The next step was to put the trees down and let the grass grow. However, putting trees down is a hard task, therefore, the chief decided to appoint a team for doing that, and, of course, a sub-chief to coordinate the team. After putting a lot of tress down, they realized that the grass didn't grew as expected. Again, the chief then appointed some specialist who created a system for wetting the grass, and, of course, allocated people to his team.

Now their process was really beautiful and well organized: they had a council in forest firing (not in pork roasting, but firing the forest, which in turn would give them roasted pork!), specialists in wind direction, and specialists, workers, and managers for putting trees down, moving the logs, wetting the grass etc, etc!

One day a castaway arrived at the island. The chief, with all his wisdom, realized that the man was good and invited him to check his marvelous process on obtaining roasted pork, with many specialized teams and a nice management, based on scientific methods. Aiming to show a different way of doing things, the man asked their best hunter to accompany him, and although the hunter was a bit out of shape (he was now working on log transportation - a vital activity to the process!), he followed the man to the jungle. After some time, they arrived with a dead pig. The man chopped some log, set fire to it, and in one hour they had roasted pork!

The man told the chief that they didn't need to have all that people and all that resource expenditure involved to have roasted pork!

Suspicious, the chief summoned the council, formed by a set of specialists in fire setting, log transportation and such, to ask what they think. They presented a lot of good reasons to not trust the man:
-He has no experience in burning forests!
-It works for one pig, I would like to see this working with a lot of pigs!
-We don't have enough skilled hunters! (they were doing other stuff right now)
-Our process is mature and works, in the end we do have roasted pigs!
-And our scientific methods, they are not lying!
-Why going after pigs when we can set fire to the jungle and kill them without running?
-Can you imagine a bunch of hunters running in the middle of the forest without us to guide them?

The chief then decided to put that crazy man in a canoe and send him back to where he came. Peace was back to the tribe, and all people were guaranteed in their roles, in special, the many managers and specialists.

But a serious problem was happening... since they devastated their environment, the roasted pork production wasn't supplying the demand, because pigs were not reproducing in the same pace anymore. Moreover, with all men involved in the fire setting process, huts were going down even with small rains.
Many adults were dedicated to the process and couldn't do other stuff, so their hut were destroyed by a storm.

When elders, women and children started to complain, the "process people" said: "can't you understand? that's the best way of having roasted pork, we evolved this process during years!"

However, after some time, finally the pigs disappeared, and even the "process teams" started to starve - and sleep outdoors. The chief then summoned the council and they said:
-Fire setting is like this, we cannot change its nature. Now we have to move to another island!

The chief, happy for having such a team of specialists at his side, appointed a new council, formed by the same people - after all, they had shown their great management skills in making such a complex process (the fire setting) work!

But a serious problem was happening... since they devastated their environment, the roasted pork production wasn't supplying the demand, because pigs were not reproducing in the same pace anymore. Moreover, with all men involved in the fire setting process, huts were going down even with small rains.

Many adults were dedicated to the process and couldn't do other stuff, so their hut were destroyed by a storm.

When elders, women and children started to complain, the "process people" said: "can't you understand? that's the best way of having roasted pork, we evolved this process during years!"

However, after some time, finally the pigs disappeared, and even the "process teams" started to starve - and sleep outdoors. The chief then summoned the council and they said:
-Fire setting is like this, we cannot change its nature. Now we have to move to another island!

The chief, happy for having such a team of specialists at his side, appointed a new council, formed by the same people - after all, they had shown their great management skills in making such a complex process (the fire setting) work!


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What's the moral behind this tale?


The moral is that after some time, you loose the focus on the user demands and in the value chain. You start to follow the process, even when it is becoming expensive, complicated, and slow, mesmerized by its apparent perfection.

I call it the "The Beauty of the Beast Phenomenon in Project Management".

After lapidating your process you think it is beautiful and perfect. The problem is not in trying to improve your process, the problem is (i) not identifying waste
and (ii) not mapping activities to the value chain - things that aggregate value to the user.

A process that works doesn't mean it is a good process. IT cannot be a burden to Production, doesn't matter the certification. As Goldratt would say, the Goal is to make money - not getting certified... No problem if you think that certification is in the path for making money, but beware the beauty of slow and heavy processes.

5 comments:

  1. This was TOP!!!!
    rsrsrsrsrsrs.
    Go Horse is the life! \o/
    Joke, rs.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Don't get confused: not following traditional and bureaucratic methods is not the same of "going horse"

    ReplyDelete
  3. I know :)
    It was only a joke ;^)
    Congratulations for posts. They're very good!

    P.S.: Sorry my "embromation" English.

    A hug.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Outstanding! But the last 5 paragraphs are repetead! Of course you know industry and business, but this loooks like a lot a certain university I know...

    ReplyDelete
  5. Extreme Go Horse:

    http://gohorseprocess.wordpress.com/extreme-go-horse-xgh/

    ReplyDelete