Re: The non-learning organization?

Subject: Re: The non-learning organization?
From: John Garison <john -at- garisons -dot- com>
Date: Fri, 13 Jan 2006 09:28:27 -0500

Hi Rebecca,

I call it "par for the course."

It happens. Usually it's because some customer (usually a major one) said that if Feature X isn't in the release, then they're canceling their orders, they'll stop paying support, and they're changing to a competitor's product, and oh, by the way, they'll be doing a press release to all the major trade magazines highlighting their switch to Company Z. Often the root cause of this is something someone promised them to get the order in the first place. If the company is on particularly shaky financial footing, it could be a case of literally do or die. What would you do if you were the CEO in that position?

Bottom line: It's not a good situation, but you do have options.
1) Deal with it as best you can, after all, it's not something you did and all you can do is try and apply the best band-aid you can to a spurting artery. And if you keep at it, eventually you'll staunch the bleeding.
2) Find a new gig to keep the next year or so of your work life from becoming torture.

I usually go for option 1 until I absolutely can't take it any more. And it's better to be working and looking for work than to be just looking for work.

My 2¢,

John


Rebecca Stevenson wrote:

How do you cope when you see your organization making very, very, basic errors?
Like adding a major feature to a release halfway through development, without changing the schedule or personnel, with the entirely predictable result that everyone works like crazy for six months, some people quit (schedule still doesn't change), and the product as released is barely stable enough to call a beta?
Or having *no* requirements defined for a project and no one in charge, so that the design phase fiddles on for an extra two months while everyone and their brother chimes in with what they consider to be an important capability, all of which get in because no one has the authority to say "no"?
It seems to me that the software industry, and many individual companies, have now been around long enough that there's no excuse for this. There are entire libraries of books written about how to plan a software project. Companies hold project post mortems and "lessons learned" sessions all the time. And still the same mistakes....

I find this very frustrating, even when it's not a project that I'm on. I don't like the waste of time and energy, or the half-baked products, that inevitably seem to result from poor planning. What do you do to combat the problem, or the frustration?

It's been a long week, I'm sick, and it's Friday....


Rebecca Stevenson
Technical Writer
508-725-0937 AIM: RJSWriter
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References:
The non-learning organization?: From: Rebecca Stevenson

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