Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Before doing anything else—think. Yes, this is old advice, but it still works.

Process, process, process. The world uses Agile processes now. (At least those people whose job it is to tell everyone else what their organization does tells the world that they are Agile. I tend to doubt that they actually are Agile, but that is me.) The world used to be Spiral process or was it Evolutionary process or something. It certainly wasn’t Waterfall process as we all know how stupid that was or at least how stupid it was to do things stupidly even though we weren’t following the Waterfall process.

Be all that as they were, we all use one process or another. Process is simply the things we do, and we all tend to do something.

So now I come to state the Zero-th step of any process:

Before doing anything, think about what you will do.

Not earth shattering; not unique, and sadly not practiced often enough.

A few years ago, I wrote a book about managing human endeavors. In that book, I framed endeavors using People, Process, and Product. The process an organization should use depends on the product that the people are trying to build. If the people are expert and experienced in the product, e.g., a word processor, they should use a simple and efficient process. If the people are smart but inexperienced in the product, they should use a process that allows for experiments and learning. Again, this isn’t earth shattering or unique, but then again it isn’t often practiced.

My view of managing human endeavors requires the zero-th step of any process. Someone must think about the current situation, i.e., the people and the product, before choosing a process.

One problem is that most of us like to start fast. Thinking prevents the fast start, but it usually helps with a successful end.

You choose. oooops, choosing requires some thought at the beginning and that…