Last Responsible Moment

Probably the least understood (or most misunderstood) lean principle is "decide as late as possible". I have seen it used to justify all sorts of weird decision-making policies that generally involve never making decisions, because surely as late as possible means leaving it until the absolute last possible moment, or even later. I have seldom, if ever, seen it applied correctly. So let's take a look at this principle and see what it really means.

The other way to express this principle is "defer decisions until the last responsible moment". There are two points of confusion here. The first is what is the last responsible moment? The other is what exactly do we mean by deferring decisions? Let's look at the last responsible moment. What is the last responsible moment? Does it mean the absolute last minute? Do we leave all decisions until we are absolutely forced to make one because otherwise the whole endeavour will fall flat? No. That makes no sense at all. Leaving decisions until they are forced upon you is hardly being responsible. Does it mean making decisions early because that's the responsible thing to do? Again, no. Making decisions early isn't using the last responsible moment. The last responsible moment is a really hard thing to define, so let's not try. Let's re-word it instead. The intent of the last responsible moment is to make decisions with the maximum possible information.

Agility, Organisational ChangeDave Martin4 September 2018decision makingComment

Rigidity = Fragility

"We need to harden this process...make it more robust. Too many things are slipping through the cracks". How many times have you heard statements like that? Things that don't fit the process take extra time to resolve, so we make sure that the process covers as much as possible. As issues arise, we tighten the process still further. Spell out the entry criteria. Map the process steps in great detail. The problem is, of course, that no matter how much detail we have in the process, things still don't always fit so we document and harden even more.

We create processes and because we are humans working with incomplete information, there are gaps. Our natural instinct then is to fill in the gaps. Tighten the process. Specify, document, enforce. The problem is that this simply doesn't work. The real world conspires against us. Customers don't always want the standard product. You may have a carefully documented 30 day SLA but that doesn't help a bit when a key customer rings up and says "We know it's usually 30 days but we really need it in 10, can you please help? If not, your competitor has said they can do it in 10 days." You may only sell in lots of 100 but what happens if a good customer rings up and asks for an extra 35 because they have had a spike in sales but don't have the space to store another full hundred? The more rigid we make our processes the more often they break down.

How Is A Coach Like A Vampire?

Vampires are lame. There it is, standing at your front door, cape, fangs, the full works. You have opened the door, it's looking at you, getting hungrier and hungrier. It's starting to drool. You are looking at it from inside. Giving it the finger. Perfectly safe. Why? Because according to the stories, vampires need permission to enter. You are perfectly safe as long as you don't say "please come in". Of course if they catch you out in the open later without a front door to give you protection, you might just regret giving them that finger.

So why am I telling you this? Because coaches have something in common with vampires. Capes? No. Because we descend on organisations and suck them dry? No. It's because we also need permission before we can do what we are there to do. We need permission to coach. But surely, I hear you say, you have permission. After all, you have been hired to coach, therefore you have permission to do so. Sadly, it's not that simple. What we usually have is permission to be there, not permission to coach.

LeadershipDave Martin7 August 2018coachingComment

The Boy Scout Principle

Last time we looked at refactoring. How real refactoring isn't re-writing big chunks of legacy code, it's cleaning as you go. Making sure the code you write now is clean. But what do you do about those big lumps of legacy? They weren't written with "clean" in mind, they were written with "hack it together to meet the date" in mind instead. It's messy and it's slowing you down. What do we do about it?

Well, we need to refactor it. But how, if we can't spend the whole sprint rewriting a big chunk of it? We need to stop thinking big - think small instead. Use the Boy Scout Principle - leave the camp ground cleaner than when you found it. When scouts leave a camp ground, they spend a few minutes cleaning up. Not just their rubbish but anything else they can find left by previous campers. And crucially, they don't try to clean up the whole forest, or even the whole camp-site - that would take weeks - they just clean up the area they were using.

Organisational ChangeDave Martin24 July 2018refactoring, efficiencyComment

Clean = Fast

Whenever I mention refactoring in an organisation, I usually get the same response - "Yes, we know it's important, but we don't have time. We need to move fast. We can't afford to go back and keep tweaking things, we have to keep moving forwards". On the surface that's a reasonable sounding argument. It doesn't matter whether your organisation is big or small, established or startup, the imperative is to move fast. Get things done. Those customers won't wait, you either give them what they want now or someone else will. In an environment like that, who has time for refactoring?

I'd like to challenge that thinking. Not the bit about having to move fast, that's a given these days. No, the bit I want to challenge is the bit about refactoring being incompatible with being fast. To me, refactoring is not an impediment to being fast, it's an enabler. I think the view that refactoring slows you down stems from a serious misinterpretation of what refactoring is.

Organisational ChangeDave Martin10 July 2018refactoring, efficiencyComment

TL:DR - Information Smoothies

I have had quite a few comments over the years that I have been running this blog along the lines of - "OMG! Wall of text" or "What's the takeout here?" or "Why don't you make this an easy to read list? " or "Can you summarise into a few bullet points? " or just the basic "TL:DR". This worries me a bit. Not just because people aren't reading my stuff, but because I think this points to a much deeper problem. I think this points to the reason people and organisations find it so hard to change.

My posts are always between 800 and 1200 words. That's not exactly a wall of text. If you print it out, it's about a page and a half. The reading time is about 5-10 minutes. Maybe 15 if I really make you think. That's not a large amount of time. But yet many of us feel unable to invest that amount of time to read something. If it's hard to find time to read a short blog post, what about longer format work? An essay? A book? 200 pages? 50,000 words? I know a lot of people who tell me that they barely have time to read tweets these days. What does this say about our capacity to absorb and process new information?

Organisational Change, LeadershipDave Martin26 June 2018information, organisational changeComment

The Cost Trap

Time to close out our series on common traps with a look at probably the most common trap organisations fall into. I don't think I have ever worked for an organisation that wasn't caught to some extent in this trap. What I'm talking about today is the cost trap. You get into this trap by having the wrong sort of conversations - conversations about cost. "How much will this cost?" That question has lead most organisations astray. Why is that? Surely how much it costs is an important question. And indeed it is. The problem occurs when that's the only question you ask. Cost is important, but there is something else you need in order to make a good decision. There is half the information missing. That other half is value. "What will I get in return?"

Let me put it this way, if I were to ask you "would you rather I took $10 from you or $50?" I suspect most of you would chose $10 (and for those who wouldn't, you are very generous, please leave your name in the comments below...). If, on the other hand, I asked "Would you rather I took $10 and gave you back $50 or took $50 and gave you back $500?" I'm guessing most of you would pick the $50. Just focusing on the cost would drastically lower your return. But this is what most organisations do. To be fair, most organisations do consider value, particularly at the top levels of the organisation. Every idea starts with a cost/value decision. ROI is a key consideration. But as work moves down the organisation, the discussion starts to become less and less about value and more and more about cost. The point at which the organisation falls into the cost trap is the point where the value part of the discussion vanishes and the discussion becomes entirely about cost. Often, this is where an idea becomes a project and is handed over for delivery.

LeadershipDave Martin12 June 2018leadership, anti patternsComment

The Urgency Trap

Continuing on with our series on common traps that organisations can fall into, it's time to look at the Urgency Trap. What's that? It's a particularly common trap and unlike most of the other traps where agile techniques tend to help avoid them, the urgency trap is one that agile teams can fall into even more easily than traditional teams. It's also a particularly dangerous trap because it can lead otherwise great teams into other traps, like the rebuild trap we looked at last time.

But what is it? Take a look at your current backlog. Now take a look at your team's long term goal. How much stuff at the top of the backlog is stuff that is strategic and aligned to your long term goal. How much is stuff that's short term, tactical and is at the top of the backlog, not because it gets you closer to your goal but because it's urgent? That bug fix. That urgent tweak to a feature that someone demanded. That urgent update to the terms and conditions because someone in legal found a problem. What's the ratio? More than 50% long term and strategic? Trend is steady? You are probably OK. Less than 50%? Percentage of urgent work is creeping up and displacing more and more strategic work? Welcome to the urgency trap.

LeadershipDave Martin29 May 2018leadership, anti patternsComment

The Rebuild Trap

Another post in my series about common traps that organisations can get themselves into. This week we will look at a really common one. I think I have seen this in one form or another at every organisation I have ever worked for. It's really easy to get into. Once you are in it, it's really hard to get out of. But fortunately, once you know what you are looking for it is really easy to avoid. It's the rebuild trap.

It works this way - the product or process you are working in is becoming old and inefficient. The code base is old and riddled with tech debt. Technologies have gone out of date. It's becoming slower and slower (and more and more expensive) to add new features or other changes. Finally the organisation throws up its hands and announces that the system will be re-built. Everyone cheers. Out with the old, in with the new. A team is stood up. Everyone fights to be on the sexy new rebuild team rather than the boring old legacy maintenance team. Work begins and...never ends. The new system never gets delivered. The old one never gets replaced. Large amounts of money are spent with no result. The other possible outcome is that the new system eventually gets delivered, very late and with vastly less functionality than the one it replaces. What went wrong?

LeadershipDave Martin15 May 2018leadership, anti patternsComment