Friday, March 28, 2008

 

Enterprise Scheduling Antipatterns

In a global economy where teams are distributed across multiple geographic regions and companies, activities such as scheduling a meeting are no longer simple...



I remember the early days when scheduling a meeting was simple. You would simply walk down the hallway and ask a person when they were available. Nowadays, if you outsource your data center to Vendor X, your software development to vendor Y and require procuring the latest technology from Vendor Z, this simple act now takes several hours if not days to coordinate. No wonder CIOs are always complaining that lack of communication is their biggest problem. The key question is whether they recognize that they actually created it.

More importantly, the notion of having buy-in has grown even stronger where accountability is distributed and some will even say non-existent. Regardless of opinion, it has the side effect of confusing who is responsible for what and sometimes schedules are determined based on the availability of the masses instead of being determined based on the availability of those accountable.

I wonder what would happen if my significant other and I wanted to get married but otherwise wasn't available. Today's mantra would say that others should have the ceremony without us and we will come up to speed on what others agreed later. At some level, the ceremony happening on time is more important than the folks who actually should be married.

Of course, every participant on a project is important. The real question is which folks are more important! Maybe we should stop, think and adjust accordingly? After all, isn't this a tenet of those claiming agility...






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