August 18, 2011 at 8:51 am
I can sum up that little parable by quoting Dr. Deming: "The present style of management is the biggest producer of waste, causing huge losses, whose magnitudes can not be evaluated, can not be measured”.
- “The New Economics” 1994 – Ch. 2 -The Heavy Losses-, page 22
August 18, 2011 at 8:56 am
Excellent analogy 🙂
August 18, 2011 at 9:40 am
I'm saving this one - it has soooo many uses. Like slapping onto the desk of the next person that says "I have just one little tweak..." (Full disclosure: this is just as likely to be an IT person with an "improvement" to the system being developed - like me!:pinch:)
We deal with these types of scope creep changes every day in the larger management of multiple projects (with limited resources). When the PM is at the bottom of the org chart, and the RVP is near the top, it's a tough battle to push back on the scope creep. Fortunately our CEO is enlightened, and can assist in either pushing back, or re-prioritizing. Now if we can just get the prioritizing in line with the available resources, we'll be golden! :hehe:
"Making progress, one creep at a time."
Steph Brown
August 18, 2011 at 10:04 am
My quote from Dr. Deming can apply to any person who tries to "manage" a project poorly-- that includes an IT person who has "just one (more) little tweak"...
August 18, 2011 at 10:14 am
Nice! Very entertaining and sadly, very relevant.
August 18, 2011 at 11:49 am
I liked the "smoke and mirrors" part best. Since those were the original "long-distance data communication technologies", it's really a well-picked concept. Not that your dad sees it that way, but ....
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August 18, 2011 at 12:04 pm
Excellent editorial. Food for thought and top-notch humor in one.
August 18, 2011 at 12:44 pm
I'll agree that it was a very fun story and quick read. I appreciate the effort.
I do have to say however, that my first thought was that the pencil maker failed to his job. It is well known that people are not able to articulate or even think about their needs for a software project. Knowing that people simply can not think about processes and all their needs, I consider it to be the maker's responsibility to find out what the real needs are before diving into a project.
I start all my projects with the assumption that my clients can articulate about 5% of what they really need, incorrectly articulate 10% of what they need, and leave the remaining 85% out of the story completely. It is my job to figure out which of the features and processes they tell me about are correct and to figure out what the other 85% is that they simply can't tell me about--until I bring it up. Then it's, "Oh, of course we need that." I also have no problems arguing with my clients when they get it wrong. This design work is done before I tell them what the project will cost and how long it will take. There are no major surprises. This approach works extremely well for me.
In the story of the pencil maker, it would be equivalent to the pencil maker taking the initiative to find out about the need for red pencils, etc. up-front so that the poor CEO never got fired. Instead, she gets a promotion for correctly over-seeing a complicated project. And everyone lived happily ever after.
I wonder what the overall success rate of IT projects would be if everyone took this approach?
August 18, 2011 at 12:48 pm
Nice analogy
Jason...AKA CirqueDeSQLeil
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August 18, 2011 at 1:37 pm
Koen Verbeeck (8/18/2011)
swellguy (8/18/2011)
Thanks for all the positive responses! I wanted to try a more humorous approach to the topic, and I'm glad some folks enjoyed it!Cheers,
Brad
I'm going to print it out on poster format and hang it all over the office 😎
Dangerous ....
I once had a boss who sent around a certain Dilbert cartoon during a project not going so well. He wasn't fired right afterwards, but it certainly didnt help and he was gone within a year. Not everyone finds funny what IT finds funny.
August 18, 2011 at 1:38 pm
Mattrick (8/18/2011)
Thanks for the story, I really enjoyed it. It hammers home the point that you must be careful what you ask for.
It hammers home the point that people don't know what their requirements are until you give them something that doesn't meet them.
August 18, 2011 at 1:39 pm
JJ B,
I think you're the close about getting my intent with the piece. As a metaphor, I hope that everyone can recognize at least a piece of themselves at all the levels: The Pencil Maker, the VP's, the CEO, and the (unfortunately absent until the end) board of directors. I am sure that most of us played different roles at different times, from stakeholder to implementor.
Along those lines, the intent was to hopefully illustrate how many actors-- all acting with the very best of intentions-- can fail to communicate their way to a disaster.
I think you articulate well a point I was trying to make. The poor pencil maker could have said 'no,' and explained the business reasons for his refusal, at any time.
Thanks for reading,
Brad
August 18, 2011 at 2:14 pm
**************************
I remember years ago when someone in management came to me and said that she wanted me to create a simple [her emphasis repeated several time] scheduling program for our staff. She wanted me to complete something in a about 3-4 months. Our agency had just paid good money to a third party to develop such a web program, and it was one of those complete failures. No one would use it. The theory from management was that no one was using the 3rd party application because it was too complicated. I have a reputation for building applications that are user-friendly and time-saving. Management thought that maybe I should take a crack at this business need.
Standing in the hallway getting the big picture, I only agreed to look into the idea. I did not agree to anything specific. I spent the next month talking to all the real users from low-level staff up through management, thinking hard about the data structures and the real needs not stated by staff, and designing screens on paper. I spent an additional two weeks putting together a prototype and refining my ideas. Then I requested the opportunity to meet with the entire management team to present the prototype.
The structure I put together was a desktop application and was so much more complicated than what anyone had imagined. And yet, by the end of the presentation, even with glazed eyes, the management team unanimously agreed that a) the prototype represented exactly what was needed and b) the application would both help staff save time AND improve our accuracy in data/dealing with clients.
I rolled the project out in 2 phases. It was 4 years later before the second phase was completed (not that I was working on it *all* the time those 4 years; sometimes other projects interfered). Despite the software's complexity, the software delivered 100% on it's promise of significant time savings and improved data accuracy. Everyone, from low down to up high, was thrilled. Even today, years later, I still hear staff saying how much they love the application and can not imagine having to work without it.
People can take whatever lessons from that story that they want.
**************************
Thanks again for the editorial. It has generated some interesting discussion.
August 18, 2011 at 2:35 pm
Another great story SSC Veteran.
It points out another thing to be wary of: the word "simple".
Anytime someone uses the word "simple" you have to assume that they haven't thought things through, they haven't gathered enough input and they haven't had a meaningful dialog with the user community.
9 times out of 10 it seems to be the case.
August 18, 2011 at 3:46 pm
Very nice.
Alas, the pencil maker needed to employ a good Business Analyst. Any BA worth their salt would have worked out the requirement for 4,392 pencils, 16 pens and a variety of coloured chalks - the project would have been scoped at 2 years and $15,359,104 and come in on time/budget. 🙂
And a truly good BA would have discovered the actual requirement to eliminate duplication of writing implements. 😉
The largest, and most successful, project I have ever worked on was when we doubled the time spent on the initial analysis and design phases. There was some scope creep, as always, but there were very few surprises and the downstream benefit to coding/testing/etc was well worth the effort.
Chris
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