Thursday, March 30, 2006

RULE 32 - Don’t try justifying stupid systems

“Forcing a given team to adopt an approach that they don’t believe in, either in their development process or in the language they’re using to create the system, is a certain recipe for failure.”

Luke Hohmann, Beyond Software Architecture

I was traveling on the railway the other day (yes, there are still some of us who so) when we encountered a problem. It was fairly simple. Someone had messed with a security door at the buffet and triggered an alarm – or something. This brought the train to a standstill, probably quite rightly. But it did this in a very long tunnel. The train couldn’t move until the fault had been rectified, which involved finding the train manager (they used to be called guards, remember?) and getting him to reset the triggered alarm. All fairly simple.

I was running very late for a meeting, so asked if there wasn’t a better system – i.e. letting the buffet staff reset the alarm. The train manager spent about 20 minutes justifying why this system was the best for everyone concerned, him, the buffet staff, the train authorities, everyone that is except me, the poor passenger. Much better if he’d just said, ‘Yes, it’s a useless system and I shall recommend we change it, thank you for your concern’.

And I bet you have a dozen useless system within your organization – we all do. Best not try to justify them. If you can’t change them, put up with it, get on with it, but don’t try hoodwinking the staff into thinking it’s all fab. It isn’t, and you lose respect and trust if you try convincing people that it’s fine when they know it’s not.

I’m not saying you should go round lamenting loudly everything that is bad about your company – far from it., that road only leads to ruin. Remember, if you can’t say something nice, best not to say anything at all. Just don’t try justifying something, you know is stupid, especially to your team.

“Don’t try hoodwinking the staff into thinking it’s all fab.”

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