Blogaria

L.S.,

Since 18:00 CEST the pages are finally live. I'm sorry for the delay. The delay was not due to technical reasons. Everybody was on their toes to get this done quickly however we got caught in the "change process" (again).

The "change proces" is better known as "THE process" to those who got caught but did manage to get out alive. Don't get me wrong: processes are good. Processes prevent us from falling into chaos and disorder. I do see the use and need of processes.

However "THE process" is not a regular business process. "THE process" is an autonomous organism. It takes your work (deliverables), chews on it and spits it right back at you. In your face.

Sometimes the deliverables will come out at the other end of its digestive system (in this case you are considered to be lucky). No matter what side your work leaves "THE process" you know one thing for sure: your deliverables are mutilated beyond recognition.

In some cases your binary files are transfered as text files, effectively stripping every last bit of each byte. Or linefeed characters are inserted into binary files. Bottom-line: "THE process" has no respect for your work whatsoever.

Mutilation is not the only malfunction in "THE process". Sometimes "THE process" manifests itself as a black-hole. At first you feel lucky that your deliverables are accepted so easily by "THE process". Unfortunately when this happens the deliverables are not "accepted" but "sucked into the black hole". Your deliverables (and the change to which they belong) are gone forever. No one knows where it is, nor where it went. "Was there a change?". "I don't see a change". "Where is the change?". "I don't think there was a change". "There is no change" "No change".

This is the right time to start calling people who are close to "THE process". You always feel some comfort when you get one on the phone. Later you'll realize that these people are actually the henchmen of "THE process". Sure they know that sometimes the change process doesn't work too well. They will even admit that "THE process" could be improved. However: every initiative to actually take on "THE process" is clubbed to death like a pack of cute little seal-pups looking for their Mommy. That's why they are called henchmen. "Sure it's a bad process, but it's OUR bad process and we will hang on to it like there is no tomorrow".

The henchmen try to tickle "THE process" in the hope that the black hole will release the deliverable in one way or the other. A curious pattern of redirecting you from one henchman to the other is often involved here.

You will always have to call at least five people before "THE process" is tickled. The outcome of this largely depends on who tickles "THE process" at what moment and in what area. Tickling is really the only way to get anything out of "THE process".

To get approvals out of "THE process" is as difficult as getting your deliverables out intact. "THE process" is basically a large black box (or black hole). Nobody really knows how this beast works. Why did the approval come out? Who did what to get it? Can we do this again? How do we get another approval? We did the same thing as before but this time we did not get an approval. How does this work?

And this is exactly what happened today. It's really absurd. On one side we have the company's business approval from Brian G. Meanwhile on the other side we have the techies at ITO lined up to actually perform the change. We gave them the deliverables and the instructions directly. Yes. We circumvented "THE process" for the deliverables. The deliverables are handed to ITO directly without allowing "THE process" to chew, eat and mutilate them.

When Brian gave the approval for the change the techies at ITO were ready for the change at hand. They only needed one thing: approval. So someone should say "well if business approves this change it's fine by me. I call the ITO guys and 5 minutes later the change is installed succesfully".

However doing so would circumvent "THE process". The henchmen are alert on this. No approvals without consulting "THE process". Believe me. I've called several people multiple times. Harry K. called several people multiple times. "THE process" must have had a tickling like never before however it held its ground. No approval came out of it. Sure there was some output of "THE process". Stuff like: "we disapprove this change because we never had to approve this change in the first place". But that's of no use to the ITO guys. We need more tickling. I called. Harry called. I called again. Harry called again. Tickle! Tickle it!! TICKLE!!!! TICKLE THE BEAST!!

No approval came out during the 3.5 to 4 hours of tickling. Harry finally had to take matters into his own hands and took full responsibility for any consequences of performing this change without approval from "THE process"... Harry is one brave man. We will always remember him as the brave manager who took responsibility. Who actually took a stand against "THE process". Brave enough to take matters into his own hands. Brave enough to face the consequences. "We can DO this if we bypass THE process" were his famous last words.

Run people... RUN!! "THE process" is coming for you next... He's coming for all of us... RUN!! RUN!!! And don't look back. Keep running!!

After this cynical rant I would like to wrap things up with some science. According to the first Theorem of Ludicrus this change process is a complete waste of time. It's not flexible. It can't cope with many kinds of changes. No one really knows how this process works. Who is supposed to do what to get the desired result? The amount of effort that this process requires to get anything done outweighs any possible positive side-effects by far. Applying the first theorem of Ludicrus to this process will proof its utter futility.

"First theorem of Ludicrus:
Any process that requires more effort then getting a woman to sleep with you will render itself useless over time."

This actually makes sense. Why waste so much effort on this process while less effort gets you way more satisfaction...

Kill "THE process" before it kills you.

Kind regards,
    Eddie.