7 Deadly Sins of Process Improvement (or Change Management)

No-one ever said that Process Improvement was easy but there’s no reason why we have to make quite so hard. By understanding some basic principles it is possible to give ourselves a fighting chance of success. Gerald Weinberg famously said: “No matter what the problem is, it's always a people problem”, so it might make a bit of sense to start looking at some fundamental people problems which are often responsible for thwarting process improvement initiatives or indeed any other kind of organisational change programme.

Typically, when we look at do’s and don’t of Process Improvement or Change Management we focus on tasks, activities and actions which are recognised as good practice. “Run the initiative as a project”, “Obtain visible and effective sponsorship”, and “Communicate, communicate ,communicate” are some of the more popular concepts. But as Peter Leeson suggested at last year’s SEPG conference in Prague, despite understanding what good practices and techniques we should be using, we are still largely failing in our Process Improvement programmes even after 15 or more years.

One of the key issues is that while Process Improvement experts understand the problems, most of the people that they have to deal with don’t, so we need to step back and understand what makes these people tick, and how we need to approach them to help to better understand their roles and to adapt their behaviours to enable change to occur more smoothly.

This posting takes a different approach to the traditional Do’s and Don’ts by looking at key behaviours of people which are often the real reasons why improvement and change programme fails. If we can understand what dysfunctional behaviours to look for, how to spot them in ourselves and others and how to take steps to prevent them from interfering in our process improvement efforts we may be able to eliminate some of the problems which continue to plague us.

The 7 Deadly Sins described here are not the original Biblical sins which don’t translate too well in an SPI context, but are useful monikers to help describe the dysfunctional behaviour we are trying to eliminate. It’s important to appreciate that these terms, which could be considered somewhat emotive, are associated with behaviours, not individuals, although I’m sure we would all be able to recognise these traits in some of the people we have to deal with.

1. Arrogance - typified by Ivory Tower and Not Invented Here Syndromes, but also failure to use data rather than perceptions and refusing to take internal or external advice. Most likely to affect change agents and teams
2. Inertia - lack of momentum, analysis paralysis, fear of the unknown. Often associated with weak or ineffective leadership
3. Ineptitude - using the wrong people with the wrong skills. May be as simple as not defining roles and responsibilities carefully enough, but sometimes due to leadership appointing the wrong people
4. Impatience - dealing with unrealistic expectations. Specifically associated with executives who want instant results, but can affect all areas of the organisation
5. Carelessness - failing to focus on the details. Poor planning and poor implementation are often to blame, the devil is in the details
6. Ignorance - understanding what you don’t know, aligned to the attributes associated with arrogance, but often a common cause of resistance in the end user community
7. Extravagance - getting carried away. Process Experts, especially from a technical background are just as likely as programmers to gold plate solutions. Senior Management may also play a part in demanding more than the organisation can absorb

We'll examine these sins in more detail in future postings.

SEPG Conference - Multi-model Synergies

Over the past few years there's been a growing recognition that the use of multiple reference models provides organisations with a much broader perspective than using a single model such as CMMI-Dev. In Europe this started in the early days of SW-CMM as a result of many European organisations already working to the then ISO 9000-1994 Quality standard. The synergies between ISO 9000 and SW-CMM / CMMI have been extensively documented, as have synergies between Six Sigma and CMMI, especially with regard to higher maturity. As the costs of formal CMMI accreditation continue to rise, there is an even greater opportunity for organisations to mix and match their models to obtain better results in their improvement efforts and translate these into genuine benefits for their operational activities. At this year's conference sessions around this topic looked at mixing CMMI-Dev and CMMI-Acq; CMMI for Services and ITIL; CMMI, People CMM, and EFQM; as well as CMMI-Dev and Agile. In future I'd like to see this extended to areas like SPICE, ISO 15504, and BPM. I'm also a firm believer in looking for models taken from outside of the IT industry. The richness of all these models, including the usual subjects mentioned above, enables us to focus on areas and disciplines previously considered out of scope of the improvement domain. This can only be a good thing.

SEPG Europe 2009 - Themes

Most conferences have a theme which provides a focus for the proceedings, and prospective presenters are invited to submit proposals aligned to that theme. This year the SEPG Europe 2009 theme was "The Next Generation of Process". My initial reaction to this was one of some surprise: many commentators and practitioners would argue that we've still not mastered the first generation of process so perhaps this would be a case of running before walking (but more on that another time!). I wasn't entirely surprised to see that there were only a few sessions which were really aligned to the focus theme. However, my experience is that conferences tend to generate their own sub-themes as presenters independently or collaboratively hone in on certain common topics. This year was no exception, and in my opinion there were several predominate sub-themes in evidence.

• People and culture
• Multi-model synergies
• CMMI and Agility
• CMMI for Services

Of course some of these themes are recurrent at conference, but this year I felt that there was an energy pertaining to the first two items on my list in particular. CMMI for Services was clearly on the agenda as the latest offering from the CMMI product team and the SEI was on a hard sell mission. The debate about CMMI and Agility will no doubt continue ad nauseam, primarily because so many of the arguments are generated by people who nothing about either subject or who cannot understand their counterpart's viewpoint. I'd rather not get involved in the discussion - life's too short! So the key sub-themes are around People and Multiple models, both of which are concepts I've been advocating for the past few years. Next blog entries will speak to these in more detail...

SEPG Europe 2009 - Initial Reflections

I spent last week in Prague, attending the 14th European SEPG Conference. These conferences are an excellent opportunity for IT process people at all levels of competancy to be able to share ideas and concepts, find out what's going on in the world of process improvement, and do all the other fun things that people do at conferences. My primary purpose for attending was as a speaker at the event, to look for consulting opportunities, and to raise the profile of both myself and my business. As a bonus, there were a number of exceptional speakers due to attend, and I was looking forward to a learning experience. I've been associated with the SEPG conferences in Europe for the past seven years as a reviewer for submitted abstracts and I attended the 2005 event in London so I had some notions of what to expect. However, as the start of the conference drew closer I was beginning to have some doubts about this year. The early bird registration was extended right up until the conference start, and various incentives were being offered, clearly in an attemp to try and boost numbers. Previously the conference has attracted 500 or more delegates. The financial crisis certainly seems to have had an impact on the SPI community. My guess is that this years' total attendence was around 200 over 4 days, but probably peaking much lower than that. Given the overall cost of attendence, I have to sadly reflect that this year's conference was not a good investment, at least for me, and I know this view is shared by some of my colleagues in similar positions. It's not helped by the fact the presenters have to pay (albeit at reduced rates) to attend the conference. To put the boot in further, the conference rate for the hotel was almost twice what I could have obtained if I'd booked on-line independently. More fool me for not checking this first, but I'll know better next time - if there is a next time! More to follow on conference specifics...