"The myth of Certainty - Is implementation a naughty word?" by Steve Bell

Copyright © Institut Lean France 2011

The Myth of Certainty
Is Implementation a naughty word?

Steve Bell

Copyright 2011 Steven C. Bell


2006 2010 2012

Steve Bell
SteveB@LeanITStrategies.com

2


“The Big Ball of Mud”

How to Untangle Enterprise IT?
The Myth of Certainty, Steve Bell 3


Detroit 1983
Auto executives visit Japan
on a “discovery tour”



“There were no inventories in any of the
plants. I’ve been in manufacturing
operations for almost thirty years and I
can tell you those were not real plants.
They had clearly been staged for our
tour.”

Detroit Auto Executive

Source: Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline 5


Mental Models

The problems with mental
models arise when they
become implicit – when
they exist below the level of
our awareness.

Source: Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline 6


Could we have a
dysfunctional mental
model of IT and we
don’t even know it?



Caption: “Shouldn’t we wait to see what the other team does?”
Source: Apriso Software, Inc. 8


The Challenge

Enterprise IT is:
Fast
Complex
Competitive
Disruptive

And the future of many companies and
industries is at stake


Enterprise IT Disruptors
• IT Consumerization - pace of expected change
• Smart, location/context aware, mobile devices
The security challenges they create
The useful information they produce
• Social networking – new relationships with our
customers – they’re informed and in charge
• The cloud and EaaS (Everything as a Service)



The future is already here — it's
just not very evenly distributed
William Gibson

Source: Kent Beck, Software G Forces 11


Can our traditional approach
to Enterprise IT survive?



Traditional IT

IT Related
product/service
development

CIO

Development Operations Support Advisory

Presentation title- Speaker Name 13


IT Management
Governance, Portfolio Management,
Enterprise-wide
Finance, Performance Dashboards, ,
Application Applications
Strategy Deployment, Knowledge
(ERP, CRM, SCM, etc)
What Management

Business Enterprise

is Business
Process
Management
Integration
and
Middleware
Intelligence

this Data and
Integration
Performance
Management
Lean Software
Development

thing (Agile and Scrum)

called DevOps

“IT”? Infrastructure
IT Operations (hosting, infrastructure,
security, telecom, etc)

IT Service Management

Business Facing IT Organization Facing
(outward) (inward)



Focus for IT
Expenditure and Investment
1. Run: Keeping the lights on, operations
2. Grow: Doing new stuff to grow revenue through
new customers, products, and markets
3. Transform: Doing radically new, disruptive stuff
that changes markets and creates competitive
advantage

Source: A Simple Framework to Translate IT Benefits into Business Value
15
Impact, R. Hunter et al, Gartner Research


Transformation

20%
Grow and Transform
Innovation 50%
Grow and Transform

80%
Keeping 50%
Lights Operational Keeping
On Excellence
Lights
On



Doing
new
things
is
RISKY



What do we want in a leader?



Incompetence irritates me

Overconfidence frightens me

Malcolm Gladwell
Expert Failure



What is the opposite
of overconfidence?

Humility is demonstrated by
a willingness to learn



•Standard formula is essential
•Strict adherence to formula produces quality
Simple results every time
Baking a cake
•No particular expertise required

•Standard formulae are necessary, clarity of
cause and effect
•Expertise also important since many variables Sending a rocket
Complicated and interdependencies to the moon
•High degree of outcome certainty, diagnosis and
prognosis are often accurate
•Systems have many variables and interactions
so expertise is necessary but not sufficient
•Multivariate causes, gradual onset of problems
over time, diagnosis and prognosis are often
Complex obscure
Raising a child
•Systems are adaptive, respond to change in
unpredictable ways, so rational assumptions do
not always apply

Source: Study by the Canadian Healthcare System
Brenda Zimmerman, York University
Sholom Glouberman, University of Toronto 22


•Standard formula is essential
•Strict adherence to formula produces quality
Simple results every time
Baking a cake
•No particular expertise required
Deterministic
•Standard formulae are necessary, clarity of
cause and effect (rules-based)
•Expertise also important since many variables Sending a rocket
Complicated and interdependencies to the moon
•High degree of outcome certainty, diagnosis and
prognosis are often accurate
•Systems have many variables and interactions
so expertise is necessary but not sufficient
•Multivariate causes, gradual onset of problems
Complex obscure
Behavioral
over time, diagnosis and prognosis are often
Raising a child
•Systems are adaptive, respond to change in
unpredictable ways, so rational assumptions do
not always apply

23


Implementation Thinking

Source: Mike Rother, Toyota Kata 24


"Having an implementation orientation actually impedes our
organization's progress and the development of people's
capabilities.
The way from where we are to where we want to be next is a gray
zone full of unforseeable obstacles, problems and issues that we
can only discover along the way. The best we can do is to know the
approach, the means, we can utilize for dealing with the unclear
path to a new desired condition [the lean problem solving approach]
not what the content and steps of our actions- the solutions - will be.
If someone claims certainty about the steps that will be
implemented to reach the desired destination,
that should be a red flag to us.“



Transformative Thinking



What obstacles are in our path
to Lean IT transformation?
20%
Grow and Transform
Innovation 50%
Grow and Transform

80%
Keeping 50%
Lights Operational Keeping
On Excellence
Lights
On



The “G Word”
Requiring an “accurate”
Governance estimate at the beginning of
a project can dramatically
increase project risk
instead of decrease it as
intended.
Scott Ambler and Per Kroll, IBM

By attempting to artificially create certainty we create more risk . . .
These projects that are “designed to fail”

Source: Dreamworks 28


What’s Wrong with
Traditional IT Governance?
• Slow and bureaucratic
• Disconnected from the dynamic world, resisting rapid change,
stifling creativity, innovation, and agility
• Forces change and decision making into slow periodic cycles, often
tied to the annual budget
• Emphasizes resource utilization and promotes large projects that
attract the most attention during the funding process
• It is often a “game” to be played, to advance special interests,
encouraging a project “black market”
• Tactical tradeoff decisions and short-term interventions increase
instability and variation in the long run



Agile and Lean
Drinking from the same source

• Iteration speed
• Small batch size
• Level schedule
• Quality: test early and often
• Engagement
• Adaptive learning



How can Lean Thinking add value?
“A Lean organization optimizes the whole value
stream, from the time it receives an order to
address a customer need until software is
deployed and the need is addressed. If an
organization focuses on optimizing something
less than the entire value stream, we can just
about guarantee that the overall value stream will
suffer.”
Mary and Tom Poppendieck
Implementing Lean Software Development



“Although Scrum may help teams isolate
themselves from dysfunction in the organization
(which can lead to limited improvement), it is
better for them to help the organization become
more functional.”

Shalloway, Beaver & Trott
Lean-Agile Software Development




The division between projects and operations
has become a serious constraint both on the
ability of businesses to get new functionality to
market faster and, ironically, on the ability of IT to
maintain stable, highly available, high-quality
systems and services.

Jez Humble and Joanne Molesky
Why Enterprises Must Adopt DevOps to Enable Continuous Delivery



Continuous Concept to Delivery Lifecycle
Pull and Flow
Continuous
Innovation

Continuous Improvement

The Myth of Certainty, Steve Bell

34


Thank you to the entire
Lean IT Community!

35

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