I Think R&D Does It Wrong (Sometimes)

Tags

agile, idea, process, R&D, scrum

Current R&D practice based on agile way of doing things is that R&D accepts the project and passes it through various departments, such as Systems Analysis, Test, Release Management, Licensing, etc. At the end of that process there is a hand out of a seemingly ready project, which should involve a license (where and if needed), set of documents (such as manuals) and a training session for requester. During that process though, since obviously it takes time, the requester is not really involved, or at least her involvement is limited to planned reviews of various milestone related meetings. The more the project is complicated, the longer it takes to complete it and the wider spaced are the milestone meetings. If R&D is quick with delivery, then the requester is busy checking (working with) new releases and is kept happy with some tangible progress. But if not, or if the project is truly complicated, requester (or customer) is forced to make adjustments in the original request, in order to adapt it to needs evolving from passing time. This is a fact of life: things change when time passes and original ideas seldom fit new reality. It needs to be continuously adapted, leading sometimes to great changes which often make idea from the start of work completely irrelevant and different to what comes out at the end.

This leads to following issues, just to name the few:

• Projects are never finished. If they take long, they always are being adapted or adjusted. This adaptation and adjustment takes life on its own.
• Projects are abandoned after a lot of work was put into them. This because passing time made them obsolete. Here some organisations pursue those dead horses anyway, just because.
• Projects are way out of the budget. Time is money.
• Ready projects are never truly being handed over. Because of the time spent on the project the only people who really have an idea about the product are the ones who developed it, meaning the same people are the best suited to support it. Proper training session would have to be very long to make any sense, practically for a long time product is in fact supported by R&D, draining resources needed for other projects.

So what can be done? I think that R&D does it wrong and the whole project management needs to be rethought. I am sure that involvement of requester needs to be much greater than it is now. I would envision a project team where a representative(s) of technical support and/or sales are involved as of certain development stages in order to:

• Ensure a smooth hand out. Since technical support is involved in development, they are already trained and know the product.
• Ensure ease of licensing. Sales would know, that what they are getting is what they needed.
• Usability would be ensured. Sales would get not only what they want, but also how they want it. What developer considers to be good enough, market or users often find very difficult to use or at the extreme, completely useless.
• Involving requester in development work could also result in more understanding as per what development means and maybe result in less adaptations or better specifications in the future projects, saving time in the process.

I know that this is not yet mature. But it is a start and I am sure that the idea is worth pursuing further. If it hasn’t already been – I am not so sure that I am the first who thought of it… 🙂

Decisions, Decisions, Decisions…

Tags

decision making, decision process, decisions, Harvard Business Review, HBR, process, thinking

If you are a busy executive or a middle level manager, you are, first and foremost, a human being (even if you would rather have all your workers think differently). As a consequence, you are susceptible to human weaknesses or simply to all human limitations, despite all years of training. One of those limitations is ability to stay concentrated, to be analytical, logical and fair throughout the working day. All of those are features you need when making decisions – stuff you will most probably be paid for, as long as those decisions prove to be correct, long and short-term.

As mentioned in current (September) issue of Harvard Business Review on page 72 (article by G. Sargut and R. G. McGrath) “most executives think they can take in more information than research suggest they actually can” (see article here) – a limitation which applies to everyone, not only executives. We all think that we are masters of our own lives, that we can juggle all events around us and stay on top of everything. In truth, we have only very limited time during the day to really think through a few decisions or analyse few events, the more complicated, the fewer. After that, we are tired and we resolve to cognitive short-cuts – without consciously realising that we did so. Thinking about thinking requires energy as well, where supply of that energy is limited.

It is therefore important for any one of us to use that energy correctly. Use it only with the most important issues which really require deeper thought. Sounds easy, but how to do it when you are being bombarded by issues which are important to all except you? Workers coming in with their problems, politics, broken coffee machine, your spouse complaining about you not being there… you get the picture. Your private life, your health issues take a big chunk of your “thinking” energy. The next chunk is taken by surprise events as those occur – crisis management or such. The rest remains for what you have planned or for the rest of unplanned issued that day.

I am not discovering anything unknown here. After all, this is the reason why executives have assistants, why organisations have various levels of management or why there are different responsibility areas, or why there are committees (as in more people can have more energy for thought). Many executives though do not like to use assistants as they cannot force themselves to trust them or they cannot accept the simple fact that there are many ways of taking care of various tasks in addition to “my way”. Many executives choose their managers not because they think differently and bring new angle at looking at things (which requires more thinking when considering them), but because they think the same (which eases the burden). Many also treat committees as political arena to show off their force, not as a chance to analyse issue at hand. Multiply that by the fact that today’s managers and executives are most likely responsible for more decision areas due to layoffs and de-layering.

Those are all dangerous signs – if you have such an executive, I will bet you that he/she is sliding in his correct decision factor (good ones divided by bad ones). He makes less and less of good ones, replacing cognitive process with short cuts. We all use them – we use our experience to help us out in those turbulent times in our daily decisions. We mostly buy the same milk, the same cheese, the same wine – not because we like them so much, but because considering any other choices is tiring, especially after a long day at work. The same short cuts or templates are used by executives, this is also the reason why the ones with more experience used to be correct more often.

And here I have finally arrived at my point – short cuts based on past experiences are not enough in today’s environment. The old templates are not worth a damn right now, especially when it comes to corporate decisions (people relations luckily stay pretty much the same). We need to demand from executives to consider and ponder their decisions more, to get deeper in analysis of the consequences of those decisions. They need to act consciously to accept different points of views or opinions of experts.  They need to do it quicker as well, which also means that their time needs to be freed from other, less important tasks. Using old templates in order to make decisions and being at the same time convinced that we are in control got us to where we are now. Staying with that mode of taking care of business will never get us out.