Comments on: The Tyranny of Process Worship Within IT

By: Eric Egolf

Eric Egolf — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 22:20:04 +0000

I found a lot of value out of this article, thanks for writting it. In reading people’s responses an interesting pattern starts to emerge. In this article you are speaking about process in abstract terms adding some philosphical leasons/points. This forces the reader to rely on his or her own personal experiences to try and internalize your points. However readers have such diverse set of experiences, i.e. process in an 100,1000, 10000 organization differ dramatically. Your big picture point is simply “you should really question if your organization has too much proccess and if it does that will lead to lose of talent.” However people’s natural tendency is to either agree or debate some of the philosphies but that is impossible with out knowing the specifics of that reader’s organization.

I think everyone has been in situations where process adds to the final product and situations where it detracts and it is by no means a new problem. You article is meant to open our eyes to new ways of looking at that age old problem but not to solve it for us.

By: D Garbo

D Garbo — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 03:59:05 +0000

In my experience, the most process-laden organizations are the least innovative. Truly innovative companies encourage people to think outside the box, be critical thinkers, and tell the emperor he’s buck naked. It also seems to be the case that process worship occurs most in organizations that do not trust their employees and therefore would never contemplate anything as brave as the Netflix manifesto. Finally, process exists where mistakes are not tolerated or considered to be necessary learning opportunities on the path to something better (product, culture, whatever). I can’t recall who said it first (and it doesn’t matter anyway), but somebody once said the key to success (in business as well as in life) is to learn how to fail better. The whole point of process is to reduce if not eliminate mistakes.

By: ramki_b

ramki_b — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 17:06:57 +0000

Neat blog post based on recently made public Netflix culture PPT; very good points in here – http://bit.ly/ManTG

This comment was originally posted on Twitter

By: Terry Thorsen

Terry Thorsen — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 04:33:18 +0000

I had an Internet startup in the dot.com days. We grew very rapidly. We almost suffocated the company by applying too much process. When the crash came in 2000 we lost a big customer and had to cut our staff in half. I was crapping because I didn’t know how all the work would get done with half the people. Turns out though that not only were we able to get the work done but that things actually improved. We were forced to break down processes, if only because we couldn’t afford a person to make checkmarks or play middleman. Eventually we whittled the staff down from 50 to 20, while continuing to grow revenue and dramatically increasing our feature functionality.

What were we thinking when we implemented process after process? I think what drove us to rely on processes is likely the same thing that drives others down this path. It’s the loss of vision and touch. When you’re small you know everything that is going on. You pick it up on the “airwaves” in a small company because you sit in the same room for instance. Decisions come easy because information is at hand. Then when the company grows large enough that you *can’t know everything*, as a manager you feel a loss of control. You are floating untethered. Then you decide: Bam! Let’s put in some processes so I can be assured that I know how things are getting done. Processes which of course we know junk up the system if they don’t actually fail outright.

The philosophical lesson obviously is that you can’t control everything and that (of course) you weren’t really in control to begin with. A company runs on the myriad of microdecisions made by each employee each and every day. At some point you *must* trust the judgement of your people. Use the force.

So what can you do? The lesson I walked away with (after further employment working also for some big companies) is that there are only a few things that a manager can really do to make things go in the direction they want. The first is to hire good people. Duh right? But a lot of the time we hire people who are “good enough” because we’re thinking in terms of roles and not in terms of microdecisions. The second is that the largest influence, perhaps the only influence, that a manager has is in the establishment of “culture”. Companies are social systems. They are tribes (see Paul Graham on this). The leader sets the tone and (most times) creates the culture. Do as I do, not as I say. If you set the right culture then it affects trickles into all of those microdecisions in a way that no process can possibly achieve.

For middle managers this is not a great situation since, unfortunately, the culture of a company is typically set by the senior management. A middle manager cannot really swim against that tide because your job as a middle manager is not to set culture – it is to make sure that what the CEO has proscribed gets done. If as a middle manager you fit snugly into the culture set by the CEO then you’ll probably be happy. If not then you’re likely to be miserable (although possibly too well paid to leave, a trick large companies use to keep the best people employed This is my take at least and it depends of course on how much autonomy middle managers are given and perhaps the degree to which senior management is enlightened (Google?), or perhaps even pursuing goals other than money (for instance Steve Jobs’ pursuit of elegance and vainglory I think sends Apple off onto an atypical trajectory).

By: yarapavan

yarapavan — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 14:50:15 +0000

“The Tyranny of Process Worship Within IT?” Processes R seldom retired or removed from an org but R very easily added. http://bit.ly/yM2uL

This comment was originally posted on Twitter

By: wesgeorge

wesgeorge — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 12:54:30 +0000

RT @pmhesse A great read: The Tyranny of Process Worship within IT: http://bit.ly/eWc25 – not just within IT. Process strangles innovation!

This comment was originally posted on Twitter

By: blasdel

blasdel — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 09:29:50 +0000

I couldn't disagree more -- what could be more pro-family than being able to come in to the office for face time 10~3, and get shit done on your own schedule? What could be more pro-family than not having to count vacation days, being able to spend time with your kids instead of reading HN and 'looking busy' when you don't have a pile of work?

This comment was originally posted on Hacker News

By: daemin

daemin — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 03:22:00 +0000

Yes they do that. Additionally I think in a codified process it's probably more important to write down why the process is there and what problem it attempts to mitigate/solve. Then when the problem has been solved in some other way the process should be removed. (Written) Processes seem to be the same sort of thing as code commenting.

This comment was originally posted on Hacker News

By: Scott Booher

Scott Booher — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 01:57:44 +0000

Brian,

Thanks so much for your comments, I think you nailed it with your two points above (confidence level, and lack of focus on outcomes). The lack of organizational confidence especially, seems to be a driver for over-application of process, and once a team heads down that path, it is hard to pull back. More and more Powerpojnts are created, more ideas are tried, one after another, and more excuses are made for failure, when in many cases an effective application of direct leadership would straighten things out. I’ve seen the frustration with staff that are in this situation, and it leaves an impression – something for us all to be vigilant in if possible…

Scott

By: Scott Booher

Scott Booher — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 00:41:32 +0000

excellent t-shirt idea

This comment was originally posted on Hacker News