As the madman throws the switch on the wall, the room is flooded with light. Your senses are assaulted with the gruesome display laid on the slab before you. Try as you might, you can’t make sense of it. The madman darts between arcane charts, graphs, and measurements, excitedly explaining the unexplainable. The thing before you is stitched together from pieces of things that may once have lived, but separated from their whole, are now just grisly remnants.
“What have you done?” You ask, unable to mask the horror in your voice.
As if in reply, the creature twitches and begins to move. The wrongness of it is evident in every jerky clumsy action.
“It’s alive! ALIVE!” The madman screams, elated.
“But, at what cost?” You whisper.
They’re All Monsters
In the last of my series on spooky stuff at work, I bring you Frankenstein’s Project. This is the system that is pieced together by disembodied pieces of frameworks that have been cherry picked to create an abomination that is just barely alive enough to mimic a functioning project, kind of.
It’s important to be clear that almost no good implementation of any framework or process is going to be completely whole. Tailored implementations and works in progress are not only an essential part of our industry, but I would say they are the best implementations. Many people see a framework like Scrum as being all or nothing. This perspective fails in two major ways. Firstly, it fails to account for the unique characteristics of our clients. No two organizations are the same, so it is unlikely that any framework is going to fit perfectly, even if we try for something lightweight. Secondly, it fails to account for the fact that something like Scrum is not a starting point, but a destination. Most organizations will not be prepared to get there overnight. It takes a deep knowledge of these practices, and a wealth of experience to know how to stitch together a working system.
It Takes a Doctor
The problem is, most of these monstrosities are not pieced together carefully with an eye for what works together and how to achieve the best results. Mostly, they are constructed by well-meaning people who fear change, desire what they have seen as successful elsewhere, or wish to preserve something they see as valuable. Whatever the reason, it’s important to remember that while some value may be gained by any disciplined practice, it takes a practiced and careful hand to really breathe life into a system.
There is another way, but most do not have the courage or the patience. That way is experimentation. Trying out small changes, and seeing how they impact the overall product. Keep what works, and cast aside what does not. Even this takes some amount of skill, in that someone needs to decide how and when to make the call if something works or does not. This is not always straight forward, especially with the “when.”
How to Defeat the Monster
So, if we have a Frankenstein’s Project shambling around, what do we do? Aside from hiring a professional that can help fix it, I would start by talking to the teams and stakeholders. Find out where the pain points are, and start experimenting. The good thing about this world is that few things are truly unique. Chances are the problems you are facing have been faced by someone smarter than you before. Stand on the shoulders of giants. Steal those resolutions. Internet searches are great, but what’s even better are local communities. It’s a closely guarded secret that my kind would gladly give away for free what they are typically paid good money for. We love untangling organizational knots. present someone like me a problem you have been facing in a panel discussion, Q&A, AMA, or even at a party, and the only thing you’ll have to do from there is take notes.
After figuring out the next experiment, be ruthless. If you aren’t seeing results, cut it out. Don’t see these lessons as failures. See them as lessons learned. Try again. What’s important is to avoid random adjustments to fit a practice to the dysfunctional environment. Most of the time, best practices or industry standards are deceptively simple. This kind of makes them fragile. If there are only 2 or 3 behaviors in a thing, changing any one is likely to have a huge impact. If you aren’t sure the changes will not strip it of value or generate dysfunction, it’s best to simply go back to the drawing board and seek out more expert advice. If the experiment turns out to be a success, then foster discipline in the practice. Today’s good behavior can be tomorrow’s dysfunction for the same reason we should avoid small adjustments. Often it’s a short step from an excellent solution to a terrible mistake.
Most implementations are some kind of stitched together thing, but be careful that the hand that created them were as careful and skilled as Dr. Frankenstein, otherwise, you may have something that looks alive, but is really just a shambling monstrosity.