InfoQ

News

Without a Defined Process, How Will We Know Who To Blame?

Posted by Deborah Hartmann on Sep 28, 2007 04:03 AM

Community
Agile
Topics
Leadership,
Change
Tags
Management,
Criticism,
Toyota Production System,
Continuous Improvement,
Lean,
Value & Metrics
"A fundamental premise of the 'train-wreck' approach to management is that the primary cause of problems is 'dereliction of duty'" said Peter Scholtes in The Leader's Handbook. Under this "management by results" approach, fear of blame drives compliance and performance. Prompted by a discussion on the LeanDevelopment discussion group,  Mary Poppendieck posted a short article, Train-Wreck Management, on process, people and systems. In it she looked at Sholtes' book, Deming, the Toyota Production System (TPS) and how Lean provides an alternative to the culture of blame.

It's tempting to think that formalised collaborative approaches represent a change from "how things have always been done," but the predominant paradigm may not be as old as we think. From the beginning of Poppendieck's article:
As business grew and became geographically disperse in the 1800's, a way to run these businesses had to be found. But there were no models outside the church and the military, so investigators into the train-wreck disaster [of 1841, in New York state] looked to the Prussian army for a model. And there they found the classic organization chart - the one we know so well today. Scholtes calls it the "train-wreck" chart. It was revolutionary at the time.
So, is a heirarchical organisational structure the root of all evil? The article also included an interesting quote from Scholtes:
All of the empowered, motivated, teamed-up, self-directed, incentivized, accountable, reengineered, and reinvented people you can muster cannot compensate for a dysfunctional system.... A well-run organization with well-functioning systems allows people from top to bottom do work of which they can be proud.
Poppendieck's question: "So where does this leave us? Which is more important - process or people?" It looks like the answer might be "both." She concluded:
People like to use effective processes, and they also like to have control over their own environment. The Toyota Production System provides for both. [Taiichi] Ohno made it clear that people must be at the center of improving their own processes.
Apparently, while simply "empowering teams" doesn't seem to be the solution, neither does a focus on pure process, divorced from the people-driven "continuous learning" cycle. Scholtes suggested that corporate attempts to impose certified process improvement programs like ISO 9000 across large organisations may be missing the point. What's missing? Those "home grown," self-organizing aspects that would allow these approaches to evolve and improve teams in different and appropriate ways. From Scholtes' critique:
  • Assessment has a tone of paternalism and mistrust - it replaces internal motivation with external motivation.
  • [Process] certification is not equal to satisfied customers - you can do the wrong thing as long as you do it consistently.
  • A certified process is difficult to change - Ohno would be appalled.
Poppendieck's article is worth reading, particularly for those readers currently contemplating creation of a Lean or Agile Certification program or Agile PMO (Project Management Office).

Related Sponsor

VersionOne is recognized by Agile practitioners as the leader in Agile project management tools. Companies such as Adobe, BBC, CNN, Dow, HP, IBM, Sony and 3M have turned to VersionOne to help deliver greater value to their customers.

2 comments

Reply

Non-co-located teams by Deborah Hartmann Posted Sep 27, 2007 8:04 AM
Carnival of Blame by Deborah Hartmann Posted Oct 28, 2007 10:17 AM
  1. Back to top

    Non-co-located teams

    Sep 27, 2007 8:04 AM by Deborah Hartmann

    I call them "dis-located" teams, sometimes :-) Isn't it interesting that this org-chart driven pattern came about in answer to: "business grew and became geographically dispersed..." ?

  2. Back to top

    Carnival of Blame

    Oct 28, 2007 10:17 AM by Deborah Hartmann

    I just came across this roundup on Kevin Rutherford's "silk and spinach" blog.

Exclusive Content

Tapestry for Nonbelievers

A new article by I. Drobiazko and R. Zubairov introduces v. 5 of the Apache Tapestry component-oriented web framework. The tutorial shows how to create a component and covers IoC in Tapestry and Ajax.

Pete Lacey on REST and Web Services

In this interview, Burton Group consultant Pete Lacey talks to Stefan Tilkov about his disillusionment with SOAP, his opinion on REST, and addresses some of the perceived shortcomings REST vs. WS-*.

Business Natural Languages Development in Ruby

Jay Fields presents his concept of Business Natural Languages - a type of Domain Specific Languages geared towards being readable by domain experts.

Distributed Version Control Systems: A Not-So-Quick Guide Through

Adoption and interest for Distributed Version Control Systems is constantly rising. We will introduce the concept of DVCS and have a look at 3 actors in the area: git, Mercurial and Bazaar.

Segundo Velasquez and Agile as Seen Through the Customer's Eyes

Deborah Hartmann interviewed Segundo Velasquez about his experience as customer with an Agile team during the initial phase of software design of a product.

Fine Grained Versioning with ClickOnce

David Cooksey shows how to fine grained versioning to a ClickOnce deployment using an HttpHandler written with ASP.NET, making partial rollouts to a test audience much easier.

Implementing Manual Activities in Windows Workflow

Windows workflow (WF) is an excellent framework for implementing business processes, but lacks support for human activities. This article describes a completely generic approach for changing this.

Markus Voelter about Software Architecture Documentation

In this interview taken during OOPSLA 2007, Markus Voelter talks about the importance of documenting the software architecture, and gives some good and also bad examples on how it could be done.