About two weeks ago, I noticed that my solar and backup powerplant stopped reporting data. It doesn't show how much power I'm generating, sending back to the grid, etc. Two weeks ago I called Tesla, the vendor, and they've yet to respond in any way. I had a similar problem a few years ago, and given the fix then, I know what's probably broken. But this is how terrible they are. When I had the solar installed, the order generated a bunch of tickets to a half-dozen departments (permitting, scheduling, procurement and such), but no one is actually focused on the outcome. It took weeks before I could actually use the energy being generated, and only because I was advocating for the outcome.
This is unfortunately a common pattern in tech companies. People get so focused on processes that they don't focus on the outcomes. They often don't check to see how the process affects the outcomes. Everyone has been there... where the answer to a problem tends to be another meeting (or Slack channel).
It got me to thinking about musical theater. I'm a fan. It's a brutal business to be in, sure, given the low pay and auditioning and such. Hard as it is, most people I know working in it love it. What's neat about it is that it doesn't suffer from over-process. Maybe it's because creatives tend to less frequently be box-checkers and rigid in thinking. The outcome that they're after is a good show, and everything is done in service to that.
"But Jeff," you might be thinking, "Scripts and lighting sequences and even the sheet music are a process." Sure, but these are constructs that don't have a lot of variability. A script is always a series of words (and stage direction) that have to be spoken. Light cues are just an ordered list. And written music structure hasn't changed in centuries, as best I can tell. No one ever hires a consultant to see if they can give the company a better way to read a script. You empower and trust the actors to figure it out.
When it comes to writing code, we know that most of the hard problems have already been solved, but we try to come up with our own clever way instead. Dudes (and it was all dudes) wrote The Agile Manifesto over two decades ago, but we still put "processes and tools" ahead of "individuals and interactions," the opposite of what it prescribes. The principles they describe have a theme of empowerment and focus on outcomes.
Again, this is how a musical works. The stage manager can't be everywhere at once, so they have to trust that every person does their part to make the show happen. It's not that they don't gather the company and course correct when things aren't going well, but you're never going to have the sound operator give a status report about missed cues. Everyone does what they have to in service of the outcome: A good show.
We could learn from this, and get back to outcome-driven process. Does the thing we're doing serve the outcome, shipping quality software, or does it check a box? You'll probably get two different views on this. People who "own" process, a weird thing since they're not the people who have to follow it, will insist that it serves the outcome. But the makers on the ground will likely tell you that the process that they had no part in creating probably just gets in the way. Who is right?
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