Legoland Windsor – great place with friendly staff. At a food stand ordered chicken pieces with chips and a chicken sandwich. Could we have the sandwich without fries and a drink? No we couldn’t. Was this because the assistant is unable to not put fries in a box or not fill a drinks carton? I think she could manage that. Or was it that the training is to sell only what is on the order pad (electronic)? Was it that the process is so inlexible it cannot cope? Was it that customer demand falls behind the process? Was it that Lego think that the service is all in the smile of the attendant and not the product? I think perhaps it was all a combination of these. Service implies delivery of a product. Friendly service adds to the product experience it is not the product. It is also further evidence of process design being outward and not flowing from the customer.
If we look at the costs here. The chips will cost nothing and the drink will be negligible. However by always serving them when the customer may not want them the risk is that the demand for fries and cola is incorrectly inflated.
Let’s design from the customer’s views. Let’s record what they actually ask for and develop our process from there.

Come on people, Agile and processes do not really mix.  The rules and “dos and don’ts” just seem to be more and more reasons for those that love rules and processes to push them into what was an exciting chance to do things differently.

Echoing my own earlier post on a related subject, no process has ever produced anything.  To produce something in a project you need PEOPLE!  I can only hope that the next craze will be one about how we manage people to do what’s needed. 

See the people arguing about the pros and cons of this or that process do so not because of the process but what they have personally invested.  It could be that you run a training seminar on how to do Agile (how crazy is that, that people need to be trained how to do their job, which is deliver!) or a seminar in some other methodology, and therefore money and or pride muddy the water.  It could be that you are an advocate of Agile, and you do so for a whole host of reasons but none to do with the Agile process.  Similarly you could be the manager or customer pressing for delivery, but the issue here is nothing to do with Agile but rather the series of disappointments that people have caused you or one of a hundred other reasons.  The key though is to understand the people.

Too often  the drawback to successful change to one or the other is therefore in the minds of the people and the security of the blankets they hold.  Therefore to comfort themselves coming from a rigid waterfall regime they bring as many rules and processes they come.  We the become less and less agile and still nothing gets delivered.

If a leopard can’t change its spots, change the animal

All it needs is for them to take a step back, look at the whole thing as a system and start seeing how this big organisation looks like from the customer perspective.  Let’s then see what adds value…you know, might even offer my services to Mr C!

To understand Six Sigma you need to go on weeks and weeks of training (away from the customer) and become accredited by the Six Sigma providers.  So Six Sigma certifies Six Sigma.  Nice and cosey.  It’s even better when they then give themselve karate sounding levels of attainment.  Customers pay companies to do this! “Hey” say the customers “I’m here, come and see what we want!”

I’m going to bow down to the super John Seddon here.  As he says, Six Sigma is all about training managers and trained managers interviewing managers about what they see.  Not actually looking at the work that is done.  So Six Sigma starts from managers looking down at their system.  Six Sigma does not it seem  do anything to actually challenge the managers point of view.

Furthermore it’s seen as focusing on costs, elitism, and measures it’s effectiveness through the amount of training they receive and an endless ream of statistical output.  Six Sigma provides grand training, wonderful reporting and elaborate terms. 

And companies want to pay people to do all this?  It truly is a mad mad mad world. 

I’m going to d

There is one big factor which gets in the way of control: us, people, managers, call ‘em what you will.  Those wildly unpredictable elements that we know and love as people will always be the wrench in the machine.  Prince 2 fails to address people management.

Second, it assumes that the project manager is in control.  This is very rarely the case.  Most PMs will work for a manager who often wants to stick their oar in.  Again, bang goes the control.

I’ve read that it’s particularly suited to IT projects.   Is it implicit then that in an IT project there is no such thing as people?  If it is then this may explain why it’s suitable for IT work.

Developed by the Civil Service?  Ummm, need I say anymore?  How many times have the press been filled with stories of government projects going wrong?

One size fits all: so many books and articles on how to make it work for that project or this area.  What is it with us that we always want to find a set of rules and beureaucratic regulations to make us work?  I run the risk of sounding like some lone gunmen in the woods but we really must question why the commercial world is so ready to follow this set of rules when it seems to balk against all others? 

To quote hraconsulting ltd:

But public sector managers are not bred to change things by being innovative and decisive. They are bred to ensure existing processes are properly administered.

Therefore Prince 2 asks us to follow a process  and blindly hope that the objective is achieved.  And notice the word “administer”; that’s right, not “manage”

Get a life and get away from theory – manage!

In a wider scale we can see the evidence of this approach in the fiasco of involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.  The removal of the government head did nothing to change the lot of the people below and it’s been argued elsewhere that it actually got worse for the people in those countries.  For the role of chief executive Khasi fits the bill in that for a good few years he convinced the west that things were OK, when of course they weren’t.  We now see efforts to win “hearts and minds”.

Moving back to financial services : for the customer the experience will change in that they will now experience a schizophrenic delivery: a bit of the old and a bit of the new (which is resented by those who deliver the service)

Change must be from all levels – up and down

It is a bizarre systems that could only work properly if there was a) never a cap on how many people could be ranked in each category and b) everyone had clearly defined signposts as to how they could get better.

Secondly it relies on the premise that we are all motivated in the same way.  An understanding of Maslow will show this to be false.

Third, a robust mechanism to deal with those who don’t get rewarded must be in place but companies are loath to dismiss on performance issues where these are not water tight for fear of a) turnover costs and b) legal action

What then happens is we end up with a system that promotes mediocrity (don’t sail too high or too low) for the majority but those in favour at the top of any food chain can get more and more.

We know that the gap between poor and rich is growing, pay for performance delivers the same in the workplace.  What is worse for any company there is a high cost of maintaining this system.