Effective
Engineering
e-Newsletter
– 11/1/2007
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eN-071101:
Be Careful What You Wish For!
By Tom
Dennis – President, Effective Engineering [tdennis@effectiveeng.com]
We’ve all heard the fairy tales where a person finds a
magic lantern, rubs it, and a magic genie comes out and grants that person
three wishes. Sometimes they work, and sometimes they come out horribly
wrong. In the movie Bedazzled, starring Brendon Frasier and
Elizabeth Hurley, Brendan is offered seven wishes by the Devil (Hurley) in
exchange for his soul. This was a classic and hilarious example of how
one’s wishes can come true, but in horribly wrong ways. When Brendan wishes
to be rich and powerful, he wakes up a Columbian drug lord beset by troubles
on every side. When he wishes to be sympathetic and sensitive, he wakes up
a sniveling, spineless wimp. And so it continues through all of his
wishes. As the saying goes, be careful what you
wish for!
Life in the corporate world can operate in a similar fashion where
unintended consequences of getting what you wish for frequently occur,
despite or as a result of the good intentions you may have had. The road to
hell is paved with good intentions (and the unintended consequences
of those good intentions)!
Long ago, during my days at Bell Labs, I was once involved in a project that
was in deep trouble (I know – Tom, say it wasn’t so!). My
management, trying to help, decided to add a lot more people to the
project. This was their wish, not mine, and was meant to “help” me.
My plaintive wail to them at the time was that I felt like a drowning man
who had just been thrown … an anchor! All of those new people had to be
educated on the product and project and brought up to speed and had to
communicate frequently with those already on the project. The people who
had to provide the education and communicate frequently with them were the
people currently involved in developing the product, preventing them from
effectively continuing the development. The natural, but unintended,
consequence was that the project was delayed significantly further than it
would have been if we had not received the added “help”. It fit
perfectly into Brooks Law [from The Mythical Man-Month: Essays
on Software Engineering, by Frederick P. Brooks, Jr., © 1975 by
Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Inc., page 25], which states, “Adding
manpower to a late software project will make it later.”]
Ultimately the product we released (late) was a strong success, but this
experience was a great illustration of the unintended consequences of
good intentions! [See also
eN-021219 – Too Many Cooks Spoil The Broth!].
How else can wishing for something “good” become your worst
nightmare?
You may wish for more time to complete a complex product development and
even convince your boss to give you that time only to find that by missing a
critical launch date you have lost significant market share to your
competition. It may be that fewer features but an on-time market launch
with feature enhancements over time would have been a far more successful
approach. Be careful what you wish for!
You may be frustrated that the product development process in your
organization is too “loosey-goosey” and crave a more structured
process to bring some sanity into the process. Conversely, you may be
frustrated that there is far too much process and that you spend most of
your time satisfying the process rather than getting the product developed.
[see also
eN-030731 – Development Methodology: Too Little, Too Much, or “Just Right”?]
Embarking on changes to the development methodology to make things “just
right” for your organization may be noble and necessary and just what
your organization needs, but you need to go into this effort with your eyes
wide open. Don’t think that this will be a simple or painless process. You
will uncover all kinds of surprises along the way that will require a lot
more work to correct or incorporate into your new process. And once the
Pandora’s Box of changing the development methodology process is opened, it
is often difficult or impossible to close it.
Be careful what you wish for!
You may wish for more data in order to make well-informed decisions rather
than taking a shot in the dark based on less data and instinct. However, if
you are granted your wish to get more data you may learn that it will take
significant time to gather that data, and that you will end up overwhelmed
with data so that you end up having an even harder time making an informed
decision. Conversely, you may feel you’re drowning in data and unable to
make a decision due to “analysis paralysis”, and wish to simply
decide on something or anything, only to find that deciding
too early leads to the wrong decisions. Be
careful what you wish for!
You may wish to bring in another organization with some specific expertise
to help with the decision making process only to find that once they get
involved they effectively take over (the proverbial camel’s nose under the
tent). Conversely, you may wish to block another organization from getting
involved because you want to protect your turf, only to learn that this
other organization had precisely the expertise you needed and that you
missed your commitments due to their lack of involvement.
Be careful what you wish for!
You may believe that if only you had more or better equipment or software,
your group’s productivity would soar. However, if you are granted your wish
you may find that you and others must now spend a lot of your time learning
how to use that new equipment or software. This can take precious time away
from actually doing the work necessary to get the job done. New equipment
or software may be great to have over the long run, but we all live in the
here and now. The best time to get new equipment or software is when you
have the time to learn how to use it without impacting the project you are
currently on, not during crunch time. Be
careful what you wish for!
I’m sure you can come up with any number of further examples where getting
your wishes can and often does backfire (see also
eN-060706 – If You Want It Bad, You’ll Get It … Bad!). This is
not to say that you should not desire things you don’t have or not express
your desires. However, it does say that you need to carefully think through
not only the intended consequences of getting these wishes, but also the
unintended consequences. The unintended consequences can often be far worse
than the intended consequences are better.
Be careful what you wish for!
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Effective Engineering Consulting Services, All Rights Reserved
