A recipe for disaster

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I have worked at several companies throughout my career, which wanted to move from a waterfall methodology to agile methodology, and each has had its own unique set of problems. Even though they are different, I have notice similarities as company have tried to move in the direction of agile and the best way to describe them is by using the analogy of remodeling a house. It seems to be a best fit when describing the situation in software development.

In this analogy our faithful customer has a conversation with the architect who writes downs the customer’s ideas and formulates a plan to create a thing of beauty for the customer. When presented to the customer there is the normal back and forth discussion until there is agreement that what the architect has come up with matches the ideas of the customer. The architect takes the customer’s requests to a meeting with the drafters, the construction team, and the inspector and presents his vision of the additions and enhancement the customer is expecting in the near future.

The drafters and the inspectors take time to go over the ideas to achieve clarity on what is really needed to meet the customer’s desires. As the construction team begins this process the superintendant of construction says to the team we don’t have time to go over the architect’s proposal because we have too many other projects that need to be completed, first. So months goes by with no input from the construction team, until one day the architect inquires as to the progress being made on the customer’s request. The superintendant replies since the proposed project has not gone through the proper vetting process that the construction team had not even looked at the request and had no idea as to how long it would take to complete the additions and enhancements.

So after having the new process explained, the architect reworks the customer’s request and submits it into the process expecting a reply in a couple of weeks since that is how long the process is suppose to take. Two months later the architect is given a draft schedule and an indication of how long it would take to deliver the entire project. The end date is unacceptable to the customer, so negotiations on the scope of the project begin with an end date in mind the project’s scope is cut in half, though the architect is not happy, the architect needs to get something completed by the end date, and reluctantly accept the new plan.

The plan is put into action but to ensure the schedule is met, decisions that the team of drafters, construction workers, and inspector usually make on the fly for quick turn around, is now delayed as each decision must be estimated by the construction workers and than vetted by a committee superintendants in a weekly meeting, and can takes weeks to decide if a change can be made and its effect on the schedule.

When the end date arrives, there is much bickering, finger pointing, and blame being tossed around as the incomplete project is delivered to the customer. A root cause analysis is conduct to find out why the project failed, but it is not done using the 5 why of root cause analysis and blame is fixed on individual department and the results of the analysis is never seen by the parties involved. As a result of a superintendant wanting to make a point to another superintendant, the delay in beginning of the original project created a crisis at the end of the project.

The moral to this story is for superintendants to get out of the way and let the work progress, because everyone loses, when superintendants think more of their egos than they did of the project at hand. In an agile environment, egos have no place that the table and when the egos appear a recipe for disaster is beginning to cook.
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