Delivery Methodologies are like Dangerous Dogs
The people holding the reigns are all too often the real problem
I don’t normally open these newsletters with an introduction to the reading matter, but I felt like it might be useful for people who don’t know me, or are new here. Contained within this week’s edition is an association between a conversation and an encounter over the weekend. I tend to write these newsletters with a bit of humour, even if there is always a degree of seriousness about them.
Matt Ballantine, often talks about serious = sombre. That’s never my style. Gallows humour and self-deprecation are my tools of trade. However, I did see some parallels in the idea that we all too often blame the delivery methodology of projects as being the issue with their outcome. In the way people will, by default, see a dog or breed of dog as the problem – without challenging why they exist within our society.
As a dog owner myself, this gives me no authority over whether a dog is dangerous by default. I’ll leave that to the specialists. As a person who has picked up the pieces of failed projects or been asked to carry on with a failing project – “because it has to happen” – this is the “authority” I have when stating that it is never the methodology’s fault. You need to look elsewhere for the problem. Societal or otherwise.
I encountered one of those XL Bully dogs when out walking our Bitzer on Saturday morning. It was a unit. As if it had spent every day in the gym focussing on their core, and nothing else.
It was placid. That gruff exterior acting as deterrent rather than a warning of an imminent attack. Our dog, a nervous rescue who finds it hard to socialise with other dogs, was the closest of the two to raising hell; but then she clearly thought better of the situation.
One thing to note from the whole exchange, was that the slender, shortish owner dangling on the end of the lead – had not muzzled the dog. That, or should I say he, was the only problem I had with that brief encounter.
There will continue to be a great number of takes over the next couple of months on the Horizon/Post Office scandal. They are not going to go away.
On a Signal group I am member of – People who do IT, Digital and limited edition jackets – the question was asked as to whether the big bang, waterfall approach adopted was part of the problem/a contributing factor to the issues they have faced.
It is true that there is, all too often, a reluctance to put the brakes on once you have fully built something in a waterfall fashion (it was just called a project, back then). There was a pilot, problems were surfaced, but at that point you have millions of pounds (and lines of code?) committed to a project that has to be rolled out.
Good luck being the person who says no, in that situation.
I am not being glib or trying to find humour by comparing death by dogs or by IT platforms. Let me be crystal clear on that. The way I see it, and how I expressed it in the group, is that no delivery methodology is ever at fault, nor, in a lot of cases where the dog is well trained or part of a call, loving environment, are dogs overtly dangerous. They are called “dangerous” because of the reputation built around them, stemming from the stupidity of others. Waterfall is seen as problematic because of the reputation it has for going over time, budget and scope. Too much blind faith put in the approach, without exercising the required controls.
The issue, therefore, has to be in how both are handled or abused by the people around them.
The XL Bully I saw out on my walk was of no apparent threat to anyone at that moment in time, but if there is something innate within the behaviours of that breed of dog, not muzzling as per the law, is a massive risk.
Chris Weston, who I should thank for the inspiration on giving this newsletter a crumb of something to build on, suggested that “… if you are trying to persuade a subset of dog owners to act rationally, you may as well talk to the dog.”
Which is, I guess, the key difference.
In delivery we often use the term “talk to the plan”. A Senior Responsible Officer (SRO), Stakeholder or, even, a Delivery Manager who knows what they are doing – will bring up the plan/roadmap and ask people to explain why they believe things will be delivered in the way we have documented.
In the case of Horizon, we’re informed that there were bugs, issues, defects and changes needed. That these were “managed”, and the product was rolled out. Managing a project in hindsight is very easy, but in the now – what you’d expect is someone to look at the numbers involved – bugs, days, hours, people – and say, “that’s just not possible”.
By talking to the plan you do have the chance to challenge everyone and mitigate when issues occur. Acting appropriately, to prevent the disaster we see in the media on a daily basis. By talking to a dog you are, at best, likely to find out if they are hungry or need to go to the toilet. You’re not going to find out whether my dog – loud, skittish, masking the fact she is petrified with bravado – is going to be attacked or not. A trigger may or may not happen, but the owner can do things to prevent it happening. They can manage the risks by validating the assumptions.
It's hard to say for certain whether using agile (or a precursor to agile) would have made a difference. But then again, the methodology should never be the thing that creates the risk. It is the people who apply it – dogmatically in some agile cases, or lazily in other waterfall examples – that will always be the problem.
The danger in both examples is when the lead becomes ineffective. Once that happens, the only people you can blame are those without a tight enough grip on the potential outcome.
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