Change Artist Challenge #10: Learning from History

The liberation of a tree is not the freedom from its roots.- Rabindranath Tagore
The Grand Tour shows you what's going on now, but perhaps more interesting to a change artist is how things got the way they are.

The Challenge
Your challenge is to discover the history of some practice that you consider non-productive.

Experience#1
1. Darn you! This assignment almost got me fired. I started questioning why we chose our LAN software and then it came out that my boss was the one who made the study that led to the decision. We got into a BIG argument over what I considered a dumb choice that was really hurting communication around here. He gave me a copy of his original study (actually, he practically shoved it down my throat) and I grudgingly read it. I was halfway into it when I realized that they really had chosen the best that was available at that time. The system I was favoring didn't even exist then. I don't think the company that makes it even existed then. I didn't know that; I didn't even think of that. Well, I learned a couple of things:

• Don't argue with the boss until you have all your facts straight. (I suppose I knew this, but needed reinforcing.)

• Everybody really is doing the best they can, with what they have, at the time they do it.

• I'm likely to make the same mistake (if it really is a mistake) of not seeing far enough into the future.

• An apology actually works with my boss, and doesn't kill me (though it embarrasses me).

Experience#2
While studying how we used consultants in the past, I learned that we have a pattern of paying them a lot, putting in a lot of work with them, and then putting their reports on the shelf. I don't know what I'm going to do about this, but obviously something has to change. Perhaps we won't hire consultants any more, or we'll hire different ones, or we'll work with them differently. Maybe we're expecting too much from a report.

Experience#3
I found out why we put quarters in the bowl at meetings when somebody interrupts someone else. That started before I came to this group. Now we give that money to charity, but originally it was used for beer after the meeting. I've re-instituted the beer-sharing—we really needed some kind of team-building, or team-repairing like that. Don't worry, though. We still give the quarters to charity, and just take turns buying the beer.

Experience#4
I wanted to find out what really happened to the previous two process groups. I did. I'm going to make a few changes, right away.

Experience#5
Well, I couldn't do this assignment. I wanted to study the history of our weekly status meetings, but I couldn't find anyone who remembered how they got started. I couldn't find anyone who remembered why they got started. I couldn't even find anybody who knew why we were still doing them. So we're not doing them any more. But I didn't do the assignment.

Reference

This post is part of the series, adapted from the book, Becoming a Change Artist.

Disposable Programs (Part 2)

There are many reasons why a program brought out of hibernation could incur costs:

1. The hardware environment has changed.

2. The system software environment has changed.

3. The size or format of the data has changed.

4. The human environment has changed.

5. Some part of the program or its supporting material has been lost or damaged.

So it does cost to rerun an "unchanged" program, and the longer the period of hibernation, the greater the cost. But you already knew this—we all know this. Then why, oh why, do we keep tumbling into the same trap?

Part 2
I believe the answer lies in our unwillingness or inability to feed-back the true costs of programming and program maintenance to our users. Among our service bureau clients, the problem seems to have been brought to manageable proportions by the following steps:

1. When a program is commissioned, the lifespan and the number of executions must be specified.

2. If there is uncertainty about either of these figures, contingent prices are given, reflecting the differing costs.

3. The contract is written stating that the program will be destroyed after a certain time and/or number of runs, whichever comes first.

4. The program remains the property of the service bureau, unless the customer takes ownership—in which case a much higher cost is placed on the job, in order to pay for preparing the program to be taken over by other than the original programmers.

5. The customer is notified when the program is about to be destroyed, and is given the option (at a substantial and realistic price) of having the program rebuilt for further use.

6. If the program is a "one-time" program, no notification is given, but the program is destroyed—literally—as soon as the customer agrees to accept the results.

When working with inexperienced users, it is not difficult to get these terms accepted. Neither is it difficult with very experienced users, who know quite well the realities of "one-time" programs that turn out to be "N-time" programs. Only the in between users have difficulty accepting these conditions, for they believe they understand about programming, but actually have no solid basis for understanding.

After a few costly lessons, they are more than willing to sit down in advance and decide whether they want to invest in an N-time program or merely in a disposable program that will actually be disposed of.

In internal data processing situations, especially where there is no true chargeback for programming or program maintenance, these lessons are difficult to teach. There is no cost to the users of specifying a one-time program and then asking that it be run N times. Without cost, there is no motivation to learn.

Where there is chargeback, it is possible to do what good, professional service bureaus do. Without chargeback, you can sometimes achieve some relief by manipulating the one parameter you have available—time. You request the user to specify a one-time or N-time program and then give different time estimates for each. The one-time estimate is shorter, but carefully spells out the procedure that will be followed in destroying the program after its first use.

At first, users will not believe this procedure will be enforced. After a few lessons, they will begin to understand and devote some energy to the decision. Of course, some users will simply attack the computing center manager, or the programmer, with an axe, literal or figurative. Such are the perils of our profession. Besides, even an axe in the forehead is better than the pain in some lower anatomy caused by an immortal one-time program.