MORE ENTRIES
- Can virtualization resolve the IT/end-user disconnect?
- One more shot on CMMI
- Thoughts on a 4x10 schedule
- Models, methodologies, menus and recipies
- If this is maturity, count this person out
- Agreeing to disagree about Service Level Agreements
- More about balancing strategic and tactical improvements
- The experts' opinion of Carr's prediction (that means you)
- Appraise, then leave?
- Just how wrong is Nicholas Carr?
Advice Line | Bob Lewis »
February 2008
In this week's Keep the Joint Running ("The portal," 2/25/2008) I described the contrast between IT's view of the PC as a business computing device and the average end-user's perspective - that it's a portal to a universe of possibilities - I received this suggestion. I'll be interested in everyone's comments on this approach.
- Bob
Dear Bob ...
What if...
... each employee's PC had two virtual machines installed -- one the locked-down "business computer" with the standard productivity and security apps and conservative security settings (for doing "serious" work) and the other a "sandbox" with wide-open, go-to-whatever-web-site, minimal security settings and any cool app you wanted to install and try out.
Add a keystroke toggle (or even an extended desktop with both environments open) and a secure (but not impossibly hard) way to move truly useful information from the sandbox to serious side, and mix in some process for peer review of your downloaded app "finds" (that IT has to consider for installing on the serious side if enough users give it an "A").
Finally, give the users a button to click to "reset" the sandbox to pristine condition if (when) things get too crazy.
Could we make peace between the IT and user worlds?
- Will Pearce
Dear Will ...
Will …
Seems like a good start to me. As with so many ideas, the devil is in the details. Let's think what Advice Line's subscribers think about it.
- Bob
A comment in response to a comment in response to my recent KJR and Advice Line discussing Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI):
Stephen wrote:
"The problem is that "one size fits all" can easily turn into "one size fits none". Innovation is easily stifled when all changes have to go through layers of bureaucracy (which I presume CMMI imposes)."
Your statement above is ~85% right. The first 85%.
CMMI does *not* impose layers of bureaucracy. How exactly do layers of bureaucracy improve productivity and performance and reduce waste?
Granted, layers of bureaucracy are exactly how way too many organizations get to a CMMI rating, but that's not the model's fault. That's a fault of making the rating the goal (at any cost) instead of honest improvement the goal (to lower cost).
Bob's Last Word:
Oh, now hold on a minute, hoss. "... but that's not the model's fault. That's a fault of making the rating the goal (at any cost) instead of honest improvement the goal (to lower cost)."
You're forgetting the first rule of measurement: You always get what you measure. It's the risk you take.
That means:
If you measure the right things wrong, you get the wrong results.
If you measure the wrong things, right or wrong, you get the wrong results.
And anything you don't measure you don't get.
Once SEI established a maturity measure, it's a slam dunk organizations will go for the number. They'll only achieve the underlying goal (a) by accident, or (b) because the number is so well correlated with the goal that you can't achieve one without the other.
- Bob
Dear Bob ...
How do you feel about compressed work weeks? As an employee I love working 4x10s. But as an IT manager it's a real headache. I work as an IT supervisor for a large, 24x7 service organization. Its staff work compressed work weeks, 4x10s starting on various days of the week.
Most of my IT staff prefers to work 4x10s as well. This practice was well established before I got here and even though it's stressed that having an RDO (regular day off) during the week (Friday or Monday) is a privilege, not a right, it's become blasphemous for managers to expect them to come in on their RDO for whatever reason, even if it's just for a one hour meeting to tackle a problem.
So if I have a project team that needs to meet, I'm pretty much restricted to meeting only on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. I've seen time and again where we I've had to put off meeting with customers, or working an issue for up to 5 days until I have my entire IT staff available. On Fridays and Mondays I'm basically at half staff. We're swamped with work and with severe cash problems we can't get our open positions filled, let alone get new positions created.
I've been slowly pushing my own IT team to see the benefits (from the customer's perspective) of working 5x8s as opposed to 4x10s, but it's hard going. Especially when I get flak from other IT supervisors who think it's such a great perk for their folks that they'd never think of "doing that to them".
I'm retired military and I feel my perspective must be too jaded because I try to satisfy the needs of the department first, then the work units, then the individual. And that rubs some folks the wrong way.
What's your thought on something like this where budgets are getting very tight and we're constantly expected to "do more with less", yet folks aren't willing to give an inch?
- Frustrated
Dear Frustrated ...
It (of course!) depends on a number of specifics.
A point to get out first: Times are tight, which likely means everyone has more work without getting more pay or support. A minor perk like a 4x10 work week is worth preserving under these circumstances. You need everything you can get in the way of providing a great work environment in order to prevent defections.
Other thoughts:
One big advantage to the 4x10 work week is that employees get two hours a day when their ability to focus on a single task is much improved. This isn't an advantage to be sneezed at.
On the other hand, I'm not a big fan of having everyone scheduled either Monday through Thursday or Tuesday through Friday. As you point out, you end up staffed only 50% Mondays and Fridays.
While the employees wouldn't like this as much, a switch to weekends plus a rotating third day off would fix the coverage problem without causing undue hardship. Employees would get a three-day weekend two weeks out of five. The remaining weeks they'd be off Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday.
Employees on project teams would have identical rotations, so that while you couldn't get them all together on Friday (perhaps), you'd have four days a week when the whole team can meet.
That's one approach I'd think everyone could at least live with.
From your description, I don't think your issue is the 4x10 work week. It sounds to me that your IT organization suffers from CWS - Clock Watchers Syndrome. I am sympathetic to employees who would prefer to not drive in to work for a one-hour meeting. Teleconferencing in would seem to be an adequate solution to many of these situations. I'm less sympathetic to IT professionals who worry about getting paid for every minute of work, and who spend more time worrying about time off than about getting the job done.
CWS wouldn't go away if you switched everyone to 5x8 schedules. It would just look different: They'd be unwilling to work an extra half-hour if that's what it took to finish something.
So I'd say you should focus less on changing the work week and more on changing attitudes. To answer the question employees will likely ask you as you try to get some traction on this subject ("What's In It For Me?") the answer is, employees who do only their jobs and nothing more will get a paycheck and nothing more. Employees who go an extra mile or two - and only employees who go an extra mile or two - will get opportunities in the future.
- Bob
Dear Bob ...
In this week's Keep the Joint Running, "Capability Maturity Model revisited," (2/18/2008), I think the most thought-provoking point of the whole interview was the statement that "CMMI is a model, not a standard." I would really love to see you explore that thought a bit more, because I suspect it is very consistent with your view of the world (extrapolating what I think it means).
- Mature modeler
Dear Modeler ...
Credit where it's due: Hillel Glazer (my interviewee) discussed this as the difference between a menu and a recipe in an article he wrote for CrossTalk titled "Dispelling the Process Myth: Having a Process Does Not Mean Sacrificing Agility or Creativity," (November, 2001). Menus tell you what but not how; recipes prescribe exactly how.
Hillel likens CMMI to a menu as opposed to a recipe. I'm not sure I buy this entirely. I'd say CMMI is more like a restaurant reviewer than either a menu or a recipe. Good restaurant reviewers are open to whatever type of menu a restaurateur chooses to offer, and the recipes followed in the kitchen. What matters is how well each restaurant executes based on its particular model.
At least, that's what CMMI ought to be - a way of scoring application development in terms of how well it achieves what it sets out to achieve.
The menu/recipe metaphor is, however, worthwhile in the overall context of application development, and mirrors one leadership and one management principle that are worth exploring.
The leadership principle is the difference between delegating tasks (recipe) and goals (menu). This isn't a matter of the right way and wrong way so much as it is a matter of how mature the relationship is between delegater and delegatee (which, usefully enough, has a parallel with SEI's use of "maturity" in describing what it's modeling).
Immature delegater/delegatee relationships focus on tasks. As the two parties work together better, the delegater assigns goals instead of tasks, leaving it more to the delegatee's discretion to figure out how.
It's a move from recipe to menu.
The management principle is the difference between processes and practices. The best illustration of the contrast I know of is that bowling is a process; hitting a pitched baseball is a practice.
In the perfect bowling alley, all lanes and pins are identical in all respects. In the perfect bowling alley, throw the ball exactly the same way each time and you'll get exactly the same result every time. Quality comes from reducing variability.
If, in contrast, a batter was to swing a baseball bat the exact same way every time, he'd strike out every time, unless the pitcher was as big a schlemiel as he (or she) was. Batters have to outguess the pitcher, choosing from a "menu" of swing choices rooted in judgment and the ability to make split-second decisions , depending on what the ball looks like as the pitcher releases it.
The point of a process is to reduce variability so as to increase the consistency of results. Along the way, process aims to reduce the impact of individual differences - to make employees more interchangeable, just as cooks are more interchangeable than chefs. Recipes.
The point of a practice is to define a toolkit, and sometimes the basic steps a practitioner needs to use to achieve a successful result. Practices are the right solution in competitive situations where following the same steps over and over again just makes you predictable and easy to beat (hitting a baseball).
They are also the right solution for complex or chaotic situations, where analysis only gets you so far and judgment and experience have to carry you the rest of the way, which is why medicine is a practice rather than a process, at least thus far.
Practice and process are not, by the way, alternatives. They are endpoints on a spectrum of intermediate alternatives.
Or, really, I guess they're two of three vertices of a triangle; the third being making it up as you go along.
- Bob
Dear Bob ...
Responding to this week's Keep the Joint Running, "Capability Maturity Model revisited," 2/18/2008), perhaps I am being pessimistic. But when I start hearing things like "process acculturation" and "fundamental shift in expectation and experience", my BS alarm starts going off.
I do not know much about this CMMI entity, but based on your interview, I do not think that I want to know more.
- Skeptic
Dear Skeptic ...
I don't know for sure. I suspect that this, along with a lot of other areas of consulting practice, blows up simple ideas into seemingly complex challenges.
I just went through this with a client who had concerns about too intense a focus on process design, optimization and management. Once we agreed that "process" really didn't mean anything more than "how we get the work done," he relaxed and we were able to make progress.
CMMI, at its heart, seems to me to be little more than a way to focus everyone's attention on achieving consistency and working to constantly find and institutionalize improved ways of doing things.
Everything else is technique. I just don't know how complicated it has to be. I suspect the answer to that is, in small organizations it's too simple to require a methodology. In large organizations, on the other hand, it's terribly difficult.
- Bob
Dear Bob ...
You were quite critical of Service Level Agreements in your recent column, "Run, IT run ... but not as a business," (Keep the Joint Running, 1/28/2008), describing them as formal contracts between IT and the rest of the business.
My opinion is that the concept of a Service Level Agreement is very sound. The implementation has run amok. An SLA should not be treated like a legal contract but an agreement between business units of the same company.
Here is one definition I have seen that fits into what you are describing.
Service Level Agreement: An Agreement between an IT Service Provider and a Customer. The SLA describes the IT Service, documents Service Level Targets, and specifies the responsibilities of the IT Service Provider and the Customer. A single SLA may cover multiple IT Services or multiple Customers.
It is perhaps the result of IT's importance to the business and the increasing percentage of the overall budget that has given rise to the SLA. Rarely do you see Accounting or Human Resources (both "service" organizations) submit any statement of service levels. In some cases Human Resources can encumber business growth more than IT. Faulty and ineffective recruiting and employee retention policies cost real money. Have you ever heard of an HR department agree to a 10% or less turnover rate?
I have seen the level of complexity in SLA's increase in recent years. The main problem is that the business and IT need to effectively communicate to each other to make service level agreements work. IT needs to understand how the business uses their services and the business needs to understand, at a high level, what it takes to deliver those services.
The credibility of IT is still not strong with the business. In the eyes of the business leaders, IT projects and initiatives still do not deliver good value for the investment. C-level leaders are happy when a major project is completed and the business is still standing - e.g. SAP installations. Am I able to establish and maintain an agreement with someone whose competency I question?
Contracts are very different from agreements. In a legal sense, a contract must completely define a business or personal arrangement. If it isn't in the contract, it doesn't exist. The quality of the relationship between the business an IT required for success cannot be totally defined in a contract. The requirements change daily. It is almost like a marriage, once the "contract" is signed, the real work begins.
- Service leveler
Dear Leveler ...
I guess we'll have to disagree on this one. I certainly agree that monitoring performance is essential. I agree that understanding what the business requires in terms of ongoing service is as important as understanding what it requires of new software.
I've yet to see an SLA that wasn't the product of negotiation. That's what makes them contracts, and it's the first place SLAs break down: They put IT and the rest of the business on opposite sides of the table, when they need to be collaborators who sit on the same side.
You hit on another, also not covered in the column you referred to - that SLAs, are another step toward one of the great evils of the modern age - establishing a supplier/customer relationship between IT and the rest of the business.
That's how I've seen and heard of SLAs playing out in real companies that have put them into place, and it's rarely a positive step. As regular readers of Keep the Joint Running know, I'm not a big fan of the whole "internal customer" philosophy (for a white paper that covers this subject, click here).
If you've managed to implement SLAs as collaborative understandings with your peer collaborators throughout the business, more power to you. My unsolicited advice is to be very careful in keeping them at that level.
At the first sign of trouble they can easily deteriorate into tools to support mutual finger pointing.
On an entirely different subject, I do have to pick one nit in your letter. While HR is, in many organizations, guilty of a variety of sins, it rarely has much impact on employee retention. When turnover is high, the fault is almost always systemic, the result of pervasive bad management and poor leadership.
The head of Human Resources can only wish he or she had enough influence over management behavior to have an impact on employee retention.
- Bob
Comment on a previous Advice Line: "Balancing strategic and tactical improvements," 1/28/2008:
I like this analysis and have used a similar method to prioritize projects, but I have one problem with Bob's version - Cost and Risk are not always necessarily correlated, and this version suggests that they will always be in the same quadrant (i.e., if it's high cost it is also high risk, or if it's high risk it's also high cost.)
I can think of many examples that would be high risk but low cost, since the risk only becomes costly if the negative outcome is in fact realized.
Bob's Last Word:
The commenter is, of course, right. I also, by the way, generally schmush (to use the technical term) benefit and impact together on the other axis even though they are separate subjects.
I do this because the number of visualization tools available to display four-dimensional images are limited (to none, display technology being what it is).
I've found that the approximations I described are generally good enough to guide practical decision-making, even though that aren't precise and do merge distinct dimensions of value.
I need to be smarter about something. I'm electing you to help me. (Okay, really, I need to be smarter about everything. I have something specific in mind, though.)
I've written two Keep the Joint Runnings ("Carr-ied away," 2/4/2008, and "Carr-toonish engineering," 2/11/2008) and one Advice Line ("Just how wrong is Nicholas Carr?" 2/8/2008) about Nicholas Carr's "new" idea (in quotes because others have been writing about this subject for years) that utility computing and SaaS mean IT will wither away.
From the titles you've undoubtedly gathered that I don't think much of the prediction. On the other hand, it's been a long time since I've personally written code, integrated applications or administered servers. That means I'm working from theory and memory, not current practice.
Many of Advice Line's subscribers ... that means you ... are up to your elbows, right now, in the challenges associated with integrating SaaS solutions with your legacy environments; multiple SaaS solutions with each other; building grid-style virtualized production environments; and many of the other challenges that directly bear on the question of whether Carr's predicted future has a chance or not.
If you have current, relevant experience with these or other technologies that have a bearing on this subject, please post them here. There might be other forums where this is being discussed from an engineering perspective. I haven't found any.
So it's up to you. What do you think - is Carr's future realistic, base on a ground-level view and not just the hazy perspective you get at 100,000 feet?
- Bob
Dear Bob ...
I am a manager for an IT team for 17 years. I have just been given my separation notice and I am being asked to do performance reviews for my previous team. The team already knows I have been let go. I am struggling with whether I should be giving these reviews. Impacting this decision is that while I have already rated my staff my management (who just let me go) wants to change my ratings to something less that they feel is more appropriate.
Given such little information does this make sense to perform or should I just say “No” to the request?
- Reviewing and Departing
Dear R-and-D ...
So long as you're being paid by your soon-to-be-former employer, you have an obligation to accept whatever work assignments they give you, so long as they are within reasonable range of your job description. This assignment fits that description.
Except for one point: Accepting work direction does not extend to mis-stating your honest opinion regarding staff performance. Among the many reasons is this practical one: Legal liability. I don't think anyone would really take you to court. On the other hand, employee performance appraisals are legally discoverable documents, and one that was deliberately falsified to understate an employee's contributions, ability or character could, I imagine, could be construed as libel.
I'm not an attorney. I don't even recommend you consult one. Just inform those who are telling you to mis-state your opinion that if they want you to perform the appraisals, they will have to accept your honest opinion.
Before you go ahead with the assignment, you really should talk it over with your manager. It's entirely reasonable to ask him/her whether it makes sense for the company to have a lame-duck manager provide performance appraisals. It would be a reasonable question even if your manager would accept your assessments, because every one of your employees will ignore whatever you say.
After all, the most important part of any performance appraisal is setting goals for the upcoming appraisal period. You won't be there to monitor their progress or give them the support they need to achieve whatever goals you set, and their new manager will have entirely different ideas and establish a different set of goals.
My advice is to make the case that it makes more sense for you to provide whatever information you can to help make their appraisals meaningful, but that someone who will be around for awhile should deliver them, in order to make them credible with the employees who have to live with the results.
If they don't take your advice, do a professional job of it.
So long as they pay you to do it.
- Bob
I received this prediction in response to my recent Keep the Joint Running, "Carr-ied away," (2/4/2008). I won't tell you I agree with it. I will say I find it as provocative as Carr's prediction that the application side of IT will move into the business, and more plausible.
- Bob
Dear Bob ...
As always, I enjoyed your column today!
I do think Mr. Carr is a little more "exactly wrong" than you give him credit for.
Having worked for a series of financial services companies, I've noticed that more and more, the business is moving into the IT organization. I can't even begin to count how many times the business has come to me and asked how we did something (one example: how do we calculate interest rate swaps collateral movements again? - I have a Word doc on that and a Powerpoint I've explained it so many times).
I'm not alone spending time on such "2nd level support" in IT ... and I think Mr. Carr is on to something - he's just exactly wrong. The business folks are becoming replaceable units that don't add an advantage.
Look at call center outsourcing, the travel department or HR outsourcing. These are business functions that don't provide a unique advantage (unless you have scale). IT now decides how cargo, money, securities, etc. move from one place to another, not someone holding a meeting on the 14th floor that brings the really choice donuts.
Perhaps we should propose a theory of the "Utility Business Organization" where all of the management functions are outsourced except for IT (and maybe Marketing).
I'd be a lot more productive if a bunch of folks getting paid a quarter of my rate would attend a laundry list of meetings for me and then send me an e-mail of the minutes from the meeting. We could get some scale, too: One person could represent more than a single attendee.
An outsourced CEO? Seems like someone on Madison Avenue or in Hollywood ought to be able to create a "virtual utility CEO" played by an actor for a much better rate of compensation. My guess is that more people would recognize the "can you hear me now?" Verizon guy than the CEO ... why not make them one and the same?
It is all about pushing the brand to shareholders, right? Plus we could save on travel, and provide a customized look (different actor) for the different global locations that people could identify more clearly with, and we could reduce the possibility of scandalous behavior by strictly restricting behavior while "in costume."
Strategic management? When was the last time you were surprised by a good business decision that was based on actual data? Usually we know what management is going to have to decide to do before they can build the consensus for it (and the IT guys have spun the data before anyone sees it).
Why not go ahead and send that out to a contract firm, too? You could switch management companies in the event of trouble (much like switching advertising agencies). How am I not a billionaire with brilliant ideas like this? Now if I could just convince the CEO it’s a good idea ...
Oh, and this plays nicely with your idyllic future, too.
I've written code.
- Andrew
A comment on "How an Advice Line situation turned out," (1/21/2008), about an employee who learned he was on the chopping block, and instead left under his own steam:
Bob's last word:
I don't recommend Don-Quixote-ism. Mathematically speaking, in an infinite universe, everything that is physically possible has to exist somewhere, which means that somewhere there must be a company where honest exit interviews result in useful corporate changes.
I personally haven't experienced one nor have I ever heard of a case of it from anyone else.
Whistle-blowing isn't something you do in an exit interview. To be done effectively requires extensive planning and documentation, the ability to deliver the message in a way that can't be ignored, and a willingness for self-sacrifice that requires a possible result important enough to warrant the pain.
I'm grateful for those, over the years, who have taken this course of action. Other than possible book deals, it is usually career death, though, which means I can't recommend it except for extreme situations.
- Bob
Dear Bob ...
Through the grapevine, (actually my boss) I have heard that I am about to be let go. I say through the grapevine because apparently my boss was directed by the board to not inform me of my impending doom until later this year.
The back story is that two co-workers have been talking to the board about me, in less-than-glowing terms. I am surmising that the co-workers mentioned are threatened by me because they lack technical knowledge, something I have demonstrated to them multiple times in the past. Both co-workers have for a long time had the ears of the board.
I read your February 28, 2006 column "Dealing with a backstabber" and while your response makes sense, it didn't seem to apply. It looks as though keeping my nose down and producing results and keeping a good network did not help me this time, as no one seems motivated to defend me.
Anyway, it looks like I am being pushed aside to make room for a graduating relative of one of the co-workers or for a relative of a board member. My question is, how to I let the rest of the company know that this nonsense is going on without sinking to the level of the backstabbers. Or should I not even bother with it?
I don't want any ghosts to follow me.
-Knifed
Dear Knifed ...
I'm not sure there is a good answer. I presume your boss did his/her best to speak up for you to the board to no good effect. I also presume you have no personal contacts of your own on the board who you could approach in confidence to ask how it is that the board is rewarding backstabbing instead of performance.
That being the case, I don't personally know of any good way to recover the situation.
Here's what you do need to do: Prepare a written document that lists, in specific terms, your achievements over the past couple of years; also your work assignments and their results, and your day-to-day responsibilities and how you've carried them out, also in terms as specific and objective as possible.
You need this because if you are to be terminated, someone will have to sit down with you to explain that you're being terminated, the terms of your termination, and the reasons, if any.
Undoubtedly you are working for an "at will employer." That doesn't turn the situation into a free-for-all, and if the termination is for cause, you will have the documentation to challenge it. This would, at a minimum, be worthwhile for its amusement value.
I don't recommend taking legal action in this sort of situation, or even threatening it. Making it clear that whatever the reason for your termination, poor performance isn't part of the discussion is a good idea. Especially since (from your account I assume) you haven't been on the receiving end of any disciplinary procedures, this will improve your ability to negotiate a separation package.
Once you've created this documentation, do what you can to make sure you don't have to use it. Start your job hunt immediately and aggressively. Since your boss informed you in confidence of the situation, it probably makes sense to let him/her know, also in confidence, that you're doing so and expect some flexibility to allow you to exit gracefully.
I wish I knew of an effective way to deal with backstabbers. Other than establishing an independent perspective of your abilities with their audience, I don't, and apparently your personal network doesn't have any influence where it matters.
- Bob
February 29, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Can virtualization resolve the IT/end-user disconnect?
In this week's Keep the Joint Running ("The portal," 2/25/2008) I described the contrast between IT's view of the PC as a business computing device and the average end-user's perspective - that it's a portal to a universe of possibilities - I received this suggestion. I'll be interested in everyone's comments on this approach.
- Bob
Dear Bob ...
What if...
... each employee's PC had two virtual machines installed -- one the locked-down "business computer" with the standard productivity and security apps and conservative security settings (for doing "serious" work) and the other a "sandbox" with wide-open, go-to-whatever-web-site, minimal security settings and any cool app you wanted to install and try out.
Add a keystroke toggle (or even an extended desktop with both environments open) and a secure (but not impossibly hard) way to move truly useful information from the sandbox to serious side, and mix in some process for peer review of your downloaded app "finds" (that IT has to consider for installing on the serious side if enough users give it an "A").
Finally, give the users a button to click to "reset" the sandbox to pristine condition if (when) things get too crazy.
Could we make peace between the IT and user worlds?
- Will Pearce
Dear Will ...
Will …
Seems like a good start to me. As with so many ideas, the devil is in the details. Let's think what Advice Line's subscribers think about it.
- Bob
Posted by Bob Lewis on February 29, 2008 09:14 AM
February 26, 2008 | Comments: (0)
A comment in response to a comment in response to my recent KJR and Advice Line discussing Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI):
Stephen wrote:
"The problem is that "one size fits all" can easily turn into "one size fits none". Innovation is easily stifled when all changes have to go through layers of bureaucracy (which I presume CMMI imposes)."
Your statement above is ~85% right. The first 85%.
CMMI does *not* impose layers of bureaucracy. How exactly do layers of bureaucracy improve productivity and performance and reduce waste?
Granted, layers of bureaucracy are exactly how way too many organizations get to a CMMI rating, but that's not the model's fault. That's a fault of making the rating the goal (at any cost) instead of honest improvement the goal (to lower cost).
Bob's Last Word:
Oh, now hold on a minute, hoss. "... but that's not the model's fault. That's a fault of making the rating the goal (at any cost) instead of honest improvement the goal (to lower cost)."
You're forgetting the first rule of measurement: You always get what you measure. It's the risk you take.
That means:
If you measure the right things wrong, you get the wrong results.
If you measure the wrong things, right or wrong, you get the wrong results.
And anything you don't measure you don't get.
Once SEI established a maturity measure, it's a slam dunk organizations will go for the number. They'll only achieve the underlying goal (a) by accident, or (b) because the number is so well correlated with the goal that you can't achieve one without the other.
- Bob
Posted by Bob Lewis on February 26, 2008 08:19 PM
February 25, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Dear Bob ...
How do you feel about compressed work weeks? As an employee I love working 4x10s. But as an IT manager it's a real headache. I work as an IT supervisor for a large, 24x7 service organization. Its staff work compressed work weeks, 4x10s starting on various days of the week.
Most of my IT staff prefers to work 4x10s as well. This practice was well established before I got here and even though it's stressed that having an RDO (regular day off) during the week (Friday or Monday) is a privilege, not a right, it's become blasphemous for managers to expect them to come in on their RDO for whatever reason, even if it's just for a one hour meeting to tackle a problem.
So if I have a project team that needs to meet, I'm pretty much restricted to meeting only on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. I've seen time and again where we I've had to put off meeting with customers, or working an issue for up to 5 days until I have my entire IT staff available. On Fridays and Mondays I'm basically at half staff. We're swamped with work and with severe cash problems we can't get our open positions filled, let alone get new positions created.
I've been slowly pushing my own IT team to see the benefits (from the customer's perspective) of working 5x8s as opposed to 4x10s, but it's hard going. Especially when I get flak from other IT supervisors who think it's such a great perk for their folks that they'd never think of "doing that to them".
I'm retired military and I feel my perspective must be too jaded because I try to satisfy the needs of the department first, then the work units, then the individual. And that rubs some folks the wrong way.
What's your thought on something like this where budgets are getting very tight and we're constantly expected to "do more with less", yet folks aren't willing to give an inch?
- Frustrated
Dear Frustrated ...
It (of course!) depends on a number of specifics.
A point to get out first: Times are tight, which likely means everyone has more work without getting more pay or support. A minor perk like a 4x10 work week is worth preserving under these circumstances. You need everything you can get in the way of providing a great work environment in order to prevent defections.
Other thoughts:
One big advantage to the 4x10 work week is that employees get two hours a day when their ability to focus on a single task is much improved. This isn't an advantage to be sneezed at.
On the other hand, I'm not a big fan of having everyone scheduled either Monday through Thursday or Tuesday through Friday. As you point out, you end up staffed only 50% Mondays and Fridays.
While the employees wouldn't like this as much, a switch to weekends plus a rotating third day off would fix the coverage problem without causing undue hardship. Employees would get a three-day weekend two weeks out of five. The remaining weeks they'd be off Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday.
Employees on project teams would have identical rotations, so that while you couldn't get them all together on Friday (perhaps), you'd have four days a week when the whole team can meet.
That's one approach I'd think everyone could at least live with.
From your description, I don't think your issue is the 4x10 work week. It sounds to me that your IT organization suffers from CWS - Clock Watchers Syndrome. I am sympathetic to employees who would prefer to not drive in to work for a one-hour meeting. Teleconferencing in would seem to be an adequate solution to many of these situations. I'm less sympathetic to IT professionals who worry about getting paid for every minute of work, and who spend more time worrying about time off than about getting the job done.
CWS wouldn't go away if you switched everyone to 5x8 schedules. It would just look different: They'd be unwilling to work an extra half-hour if that's what it took to finish something.
So I'd say you should focus less on changing the work week and more on changing attitudes. To answer the question employees will likely ask you as you try to get some traction on this subject ("What's In It For Me?") the answer is, employees who do only their jobs and nothing more will get a paycheck and nothing more. Employees who go an extra mile or two - and only employees who go an extra mile or two - will get opportunities in the future.
- Bob
Posted by Bob Lewis on February 25, 2008 10:23 AM
February 23, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Models, methodologies, menus and recipies
Dear Bob ...
In this week's Keep the Joint Running, "Capability Maturity Model revisited," (2/18/2008), I think the most thought-provoking point of the whole interview was the statement that "CMMI is a model, not a standard." I would really love to see you explore that thought a bit more, because I suspect it is very consistent with your view of the world (extrapolating what I think it means).
- Mature modeler
Dear Modeler ...
Credit where it's due: Hillel Glazer (my interviewee) discussed this as the difference between a menu and a recipe in an article he wrote for CrossTalk titled "Dispelling the Process Myth: Having a Process Does Not Mean Sacrificing Agility or Creativity," (November, 2001). Menus tell you what but not how; recipes prescribe exactly how.
Hillel likens CMMI to a menu as opposed to a recipe. I'm not sure I buy this entirely. I'd say CMMI is more like a restaurant reviewer than either a menu or a recipe. Good restaurant reviewers are open to whatever type of menu a restaurateur chooses to offer, and the recipes followed in the kitchen. What matters is how well each restaurant executes based on its particular model.
At least, that's what CMMI ought to be - a way of scoring application development in terms of how well it achieves what it sets out to achieve.
The menu/recipe metaphor is, however, worthwhile in the overall context of application development, and mirrors one leadership and one management principle that are worth exploring.
The leadership principle is the difference between delegating tasks (recipe) and goals (menu). This isn't a matter of the right way and wrong way so much as it is a matter of how mature the relationship is between delegater and delegatee (which, usefully enough, has a parallel with SEI's use of "maturity" in describing what it's modeling).
Immature delegater/delegatee relationships focus on tasks. As the two parties work together better, the delegater assigns goals instead of tasks, leaving it more to the delegatee's discretion to figure out how.
It's a move from recipe to menu.
The management principle is the difference between processes and practices. The best illustration of the contrast I know of is that bowling is a process; hitting a pitched baseball is a practice.
In the perfect bowling alley, all lanes and pins are identical in all respects. In the perfect bowling alley, throw the ball exactly the same way each time and you'll get exactly the same result every time. Quality comes from reducing variability.
If, in contrast, a batter was to swing a baseball bat the exact same way every time, he'd strike out every time, unless the pitcher was as big a schlemiel as he (or she) was. Batters have to outguess the pitcher, choosing from a "menu" of swing choices rooted in judgment and the ability to make split-second decisions , depending on what the ball looks like as the pitcher releases it.
The point of a process is to reduce variability so as to increase the consistency of results. Along the way, process aims to reduce the impact of individual differences - to make employees more interchangeable, just as cooks are more interchangeable than chefs. Recipes.
The point of a practice is to define a toolkit, and sometimes the basic steps a practitioner needs to use to achieve a successful result. Practices are the right solution in competitive situations where following the same steps over and over again just makes you predictable and easy to beat (hitting a baseball).
They are also the right solution for complex or chaotic situations, where analysis only gets you so far and judgment and experience have to carry you the rest of the way, which is why medicine is a practice rather than a process, at least thus far.
Practice and process are not, by the way, alternatives. They are endpoints on a spectrum of intermediate alternatives.
Or, really, I guess they're two of three vertices of a triangle; the third being making it up as you go along.
- Bob
Posted by Bob Lewis on February 23, 2008 03:28 PM
February 19, 2008 | Comments: (0)
If this is maturity, count this person out
Dear Bob ...
Responding to this week's Keep the Joint Running, "Capability Maturity Model revisited," 2/18/2008), perhaps I am being pessimistic. But when I start hearing things like "process acculturation" and "fundamental shift in expectation and experience", my BS alarm starts going off.
I do not know much about this CMMI entity, but based on your interview, I do not think that I want to know more.
- Skeptic
Dear Skeptic ...
I don't know for sure. I suspect that this, along with a lot of other areas of consulting practice, blows up simple ideas into seemingly complex challenges.
I just went through this with a client who had concerns about too intense a focus on process design, optimization and management. Once we agreed that "process" really didn't mean anything more than "how we get the work done," he relaxed and we were able to make progress.
CMMI, at its heart, seems to me to be little more than a way to focus everyone's attention on achieving consistency and working to constantly find and institutionalize improved ways of doing things.
Everything else is technique. I just don't know how complicated it has to be. I suspect the answer to that is, in small organizations it's too simple to require a methodology. In large organizations, on the other hand, it's terribly difficult.
- Bob
Posted by Bob Lewis on February 19, 2008 06:39 AM
February 17, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Agreeing to disagree about Service Level Agreements
Dear Bob ...
You were quite critical of Service Level Agreements in your recent column, "Run, IT run ... but not as a business," (Keep the Joint Running, 1/28/2008), describing them as formal contracts between IT and the rest of the business.
My opinion is that the concept of a Service Level Agreement is very sound. The implementation has run amok. An SLA should not be treated like a legal contract but an agreement between business units of the same company.
Here is one definition I have seen that fits into what you are describing.
Service Level Agreement: An Agreement between an IT Service Provider and a Customer. The SLA describes the IT Service, documents Service Level Targets, and specifies the responsibilities of the IT Service Provider and the Customer. A single SLA may cover multiple IT Services or multiple Customers.
It is perhaps the result of IT's importance to the business and the increasing percentage of the overall budget that has given rise to the SLA. Rarely do you see Accounting or Human Resources (both "service" organizations) submit any statement of service levels. In some cases Human Resources can encumber business growth more than IT. Faulty and ineffective recruiting and employee retention policies cost real money. Have you ever heard of an HR department agree to a 10% or less turnover rate?
I have seen the level of complexity in SLA's increase in recent years. The main problem is that the business and IT need to effectively communicate to each other to make service level agreements work. IT needs to understand how the business uses their services and the business needs to understand, at a high level, what it takes to deliver those services.
The credibility of IT is still not strong with the business. In the eyes of the business leaders, IT projects and initiatives still do not deliver good value for the investment. C-level leaders are happy when a major project is completed and the business is still standing - e.g. SAP installations. Am I able to establish and maintain an agreement with someone whose competency I question?
Contracts are very different from agreements. In a legal sense, a contract must completely define a business or personal arrangement. If it isn't in the contract, it doesn't exist. The quality of the relationship between the business an IT required for success cannot be totally defined in a contract. The requirements change daily. It is almost like a marriage, once the "contract" is signed, the real work begins.
- Service leveler
Dear Leveler ...
I guess we'll have to disagree on this one. I certainly agree that monitoring performance is essential. I agree that understanding what the business requires in terms of ongoing service is as important as understanding what it requires of new software.
I've yet to see an SLA that wasn't the product of negotiation. That's what makes them contracts, and it's the first place SLAs break down: They put IT and the rest of the business on opposite sides of the table, when they need to be collaborators who sit on the same side.
You hit on another, also not covered in the column you referred to - that SLAs, are another step toward one of the great evils of the modern age - establishing a supplier/customer relationship between IT and the rest of the business.
That's how I've seen and heard of SLAs playing out in real companies that have put them into place, and it's rarely a positive step. As regular readers of Keep the Joint Running know, I'm not a big fan of the whole "internal customer" philosophy (for a white paper that covers this subject, click here).
If you've managed to implement SLAs as collaborative understandings with your peer collaborators throughout the business, more power to you. My unsolicited advice is to be very careful in keeping them at that level.
At the first sign of trouble they can easily deteriorate into tools to support mutual finger pointing.
On an entirely different subject, I do have to pick one nit in your letter. While HR is, in many organizations, guilty of a variety of sins, it rarely has much impact on employee retention. When turnover is high, the fault is almost always systemic, the result of pervasive bad management and poor leadership.
The head of Human Resources can only wish he or she had enough influence over management behavior to have an impact on employee retention.
- Bob
Posted by Bob Lewis on February 17, 2008 07:15 PM
February 16, 2008 | Comments: (0)
More about balancing strategic and tactical improvements
Comment on a previous Advice Line: "Balancing strategic and tactical improvements," 1/28/2008:
I like this analysis and have used a similar method to prioritize projects, but I have one problem with Bob's version - Cost and Risk are not always necessarily correlated, and this version suggests that they will always be in the same quadrant (i.e., if it's high cost it is also high risk, or if it's high risk it's also high cost.)
I can think of many examples that would be high risk but low cost, since the risk only becomes costly if the negative outcome is in fact realized.
Bob's Last Word:
The commenter is, of course, right. I also, by the way, generally schmush (to use the technical term) benefit and impact together on the other axis even though they are separate subjects.
I do this because the number of visualization tools available to display four-dimensional images are limited (to none, display technology being what it is).
I've found that the approximations I described are generally good enough to guide practical decision-making, even though that aren't precise and do merge distinct dimensions of value.
Posted by Bob Lewis on February 16, 2008 02:12 PM
February 13, 2008 | Comments: (0)
The experts' opinion of Carr's prediction (that means you)
I need to be smarter about something. I'm electing you to help me. (Okay, really, I need to be smarter about everything. I have something specific in mind, though.)
I've written two Keep the Joint Runnings ("Carr-ied away," 2/4/2008, and "Carr-toonish engineering," 2/11/2008) and one Advice Line ("Just how wrong is Nicholas Carr?" 2/8/2008) about Nicholas Carr's "new" idea (in quotes because others have been writing about this subject for years) that utility computing and SaaS mean IT will wither away.
From the titles you've undoubtedly gathered that I don't think much of the prediction. On the other hand, it's been a long time since I've personally written code, integrated applications or administered servers. That means I'm working from theory and memory, not current practice.
Many of Advice Line's subscribers ... that means you ... are up to your elbows, right now, in the challenges associated with integrating SaaS solutions with your legacy environments; multiple SaaS solutions with each other; building grid-style virtualized production environments; and many of the other challenges that directly bear on the question of whether Carr's predicted future has a chance or not.
If you have current, relevant experience with these or other technologies that have a bearing on this subject, please post them here. There might be other forums where this is being discussed from an engineering perspective. I haven't found any.
So it's up to you. What do you think - is Carr's future realistic, base on a ground-level view and not just the hazy perspective you get at 100,000 feet?
- Bob
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Posted by Bob Lewis on February 13, 2008 07:40 AM
February 12, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Dear Bob ...
I am a manager for an IT team for 17 years. I have just been given my separation notice and I am being asked to do performance reviews for my previous team. The team already knows I have been let go. I am struggling with whether I should be giving these reviews. Impacting this decision is that while I have already rated my staff my management (who just let me go) wants to change my ratings to something less that they feel is more appropriate.
Given such little information does this make sense to perform or should I just say “No” to the request?
- Reviewing and Departing
Dear R-and-D ...
So long as you're being paid by your soon-to-be-former employer, you have an obligation to accept whatever work assignments they give you, so long as they are within reasonable range of your job description. This assignment fits that description.
Except for one point: Accepting work direction does not extend to mis-stating your honest opinion regarding staff performance. Among the many reasons is this practical one: Legal liability. I don't think anyone would really take you to court. On the other hand, employee performance appraisals are legally discoverable documents, and one that was deliberately falsified to understate an employee's contributions, ability or character could, I imagine, could be construed as libel.
I'm not an attorney. I don't even recommend you consult one. Just inform those who are telling you to mis-state your opinion that if they want you to perform the appraisals, they will have to accept your honest opinion.
Before you go ahead with the assignment, you really should talk it over with your manager. It's entirely reasonable to ask him/her whether it makes sense for the company to have a lame-duck manager provide performance appraisals. It would be a reasonable question even if your manager would accept your assessments, because every one of your employees will ignore whatever you say.
After all, the most important part of any performance appraisal is setting goals for the upcoming appraisal period. You won't be there to monitor their progress or give them the support they need to achieve whatever goals you set, and their new manager will have entirely different ideas and establish a different set of goals.
My advice is to make the case that it makes more sense for you to provide whatever information you can to help make their appraisals meaningful, but that someone who will be around for awhile should deliver them, in order to make them credible with the employees who have to live with the results.
If they don't take your advice, do a professional job of it.
So long as they pay you to do it.
- Bob
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Posted by Bob Lewis on February 12, 2008 05:51 AM
February 08, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Just how wrong is Nicholas Carr?
I received this prediction in response to my recent Keep the Joint Running, "Carr-ied away," (2/4/2008). I won't tell you I agree with it. I will say I find it as provocative as Carr's prediction that the application side of IT will move into the business, and more plausible.
- Bob
Dear Bob ...
As always, I enjoyed your column today!
I do think Mr. Carr is a little more "exactly wrong" than you give him credit for.
Having worked for a series of financial services companies, I've noticed that more and more, the business is moving into the IT organization. I can't even begin to count how many times the business has come to me and asked how we did something (one example: how do we calculate interest rate swaps collateral movements again? - I have a Word doc on that and a Powerpoint I've explained it so many times).
I'm not alone spending time on such "2nd level support" in IT ... and I think Mr. Carr is on to something - he's just exactly wrong. The business folks are becoming replaceable units that don't add an advantage.
Look at call center outsourcing, the travel department or HR outsourcing. These are business functions that don't provide a unique advantage (unless you have scale). IT now decides how cargo, money, securities, etc. move from one place to another, not someone holding a meeting on the 14th floor that brings the really choice donuts.
Perhaps we should propose a theory of the "Utility Business Organization" where all of the management functions are outsourced except for IT (and maybe Marketing).
I'd be a lot more productive if a bunch of folks getting paid a quarter of my rate would attend a laundry list of meetings for me and then send me an e-mail of the minutes from the meeting. We could get some scale, too: One person could represent more than a single attendee.
An outsourced CEO? Seems like someone on Madison Avenue or in Hollywood ought to be able to create a "virtual utility CEO" played by an actor for a much better rate of compensation. My guess is that more people would recognize the "can you hear me now?" Verizon guy than the CEO ... why not make them one and the same?
It is all about pushing the brand to shareholders, right? Plus we could save on travel, and provide a customized look (different actor) for the different global locations that people could identify more clearly with, and we could reduce the possibility of scandalous behavior by strictly restricting behavior while "in costume."
Strategic management? When was the last time you were surprised by a good business decision that was based on actual data? Usually we know what management is going to have to decide to do before they can build the consensus for it (and the IT guys have spun the data before anyone sees it).
Why not go ahead and send that out to a contract firm, too? You could switch management companies in the event of trouble (much like switching advertising agencies). How am I not a billionaire with brilliant ideas like this? Now if I could just convince the CEO it’s a good idea ...
Oh, and this plays nicely with your idyllic future, too.
I've written code.
- Andrew
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Posted by Bob Lewis on February 8, 2008 04:59 PM
February 06, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Shouldn't whistleblowing be an option?
A comment on "How an Advice Line situation turned out," (1/21/2008), about an employee who learned he was on the chopping block, and instead left under his own steam:
Bob, while your advice has once again been proven right, I think you devalue the act of whistleblowing (assuming Venting was able to meet w/HR separately from his/her boss) when you say the only upside is "emotional gratification."
Taking a risk like this, foolish as it is, pretty much cuts to the essence of acting as a free person.
Whether saying the right thing to the wrong apparatchik gets you shipped to Siberia or gets you blacklisted, foreclosed, uninsured, and divorced, the act of saying it is 1) irrational (and some will opportunistically relish your irrationality) and 2) courageous.
"Emotional gratification" is high-fiving after your team scores the go-ahead touchdown. Or distributing a policy memo to subordinates and pompously starting one of the paragraphs with a word like "furthermore," just to show 'em who's boss.
Bob's last word:
I don't recommend Don-Quixote-ism. Mathematically speaking, in an infinite universe, everything that is physically possible has to exist somewhere, which means that somewhere there must be a company where honest exit interviews result in useful corporate changes.
I personally haven't experienced one nor have I ever heard of a case of it from anyone else.
Whistle-blowing isn't something you do in an exit interview. To be done effectively requires extensive planning and documentation, the ability to deliver the message in a way that can't be ignored, and a willingness for self-sacrifice that requires a possible result important enough to warrant the pain.
I'm grateful for those, over the years, who have taken this course of action. Other than possible book deals, it is usually career death, though, which means I can't recommend it except for extreme situations.
- Bob
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Posted by Bob Lewis on February 6, 2008 04:13 AM
February 03, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Dear Bob ...
Through the grapevine, (actually my boss) I have heard that I am about to be let go. I say through the grapevine because apparently my boss was directed by the board to not inform me of my impending doom until later this year.
The back story is that two co-workers have been talking to the board about me, in less-than-glowing terms. I am surmising that the co-workers mentioned are threatened by me because they lack technical knowledge, something I have demonstrated to them multiple times in the past. Both co-workers have for a long time had the ears of the board.
I read your February 28, 2006 column "Dealing with a backstabber" and while your response makes sense, it didn't seem to apply. It looks as though keeping my nose down and producing results and keeping a good network did not help me this time, as no one seems motivated to defend me.
Anyway, it looks like I am being pushed aside to make room for a graduating relative of one of the co-workers or for a relative of a board member. My question is, how to I let the rest of the company know that this nonsense is going on without sinking to the level of the backstabbers. Or should I not even bother with it?
I don't want any ghosts to follow me.
-Knifed
Dear Knifed ...
I'm not sure there is a good answer. I presume your boss did his/her best to speak up for you to the board to no good effect. I also presume you have no personal contacts of your own on the board who you could approach in confidence to ask how it is that the board is rewarding backstabbing instead of performance.
That being the case, I don't personally know of any good way to recover the situation.
Here's what you do need to do: Prepare a written document that lists, in specific terms, your achievements over the past couple of years; also your work assignments and their results, and your day-to-day responsibilities and how you've carried them out, also in terms as specific and objective as possible.
You need this because if you are to be terminated, someone will have to sit down with you to explain that you're being terminated, the terms of your termination, and the reasons, if any.
Undoubtedly you are working for an "at will employer." That doesn't turn the situation into a free-for-all, and if the termination is for cause, you will have the documentation to challenge it. This would, at a minimum, be worthwhile for its amusement value.
I don't recommend taking legal action in this sort of situation, or even threatening it. Making it clear that whatever the reason for your termination, poor performance isn't part of the discussion is a good idea. Especially since (from your account I assume) you haven't been on the receiving end of any disciplinary procedures, this will improve your ability to negotiate a separation package.
Once you've created this documentation, do what you can to make sure you don't have to use it. Start your job hunt immediately and aggressively. Since your boss informed you in confidence of the situation, it probably makes sense to let him/her know, also in confidence, that you're doing so and expect some flexibility to allow you to exit gracefully.
I wish I knew of an effective way to deal with backstabbers. Other than establishing an independent perspective of your abilities with their audience, I don't, and apparently your personal network doesn't have any influence where it matters.
- Bob
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Posted by Bob Lewis on February 3, 2008 04:12 AM
|
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