From Jabba to Brad

When El Jefe first began championing lean, his enthusiasm conjured images of a miracle weight loss diet whose results would be nothing short of incredi-bull:

Model: actual project efficiency gained will be less. Sorry!

The more internal discussion I heard, the more apparent it was that we had the process equivalent of Shimmer, that is, everyone had a different idea what lean was. To deal with this, Cliff spent $6k on consultants to interview key stakeholders within the company and make a proposal for what would work with the company dynamics.

Princess said the presentation to the worker bees was a template assembled for children. (This was a relief because I refused to take a red-eye flight back up the coast just for the sake of sitting in on this.) It didnt’ surprise me that the scrum consultants recommend we implement scrum. (Not olean!?!)

The summary they wrote for Cliff was slightly more interesting in that they put a cover sheet on the same old shit we’ve been telling him for years:

• Stop meddling - I’ve said a lot about this already. It cleared itself up with with El Jefe leaving
• Don’t yank people on and off projects — getting time with the quality inspectors was always difficult, but compounded by their manager moving them around like little pawns on the great chess board. Instead of having the quality inspectors sit down with the plumbing, framing, and electrical foremen, the work was done and tossed over a rebar wall. If the framer forgot to write down that he ran out of 2×4″ boards, and instead was using 4×6″s, they’d flip out and kick the job back. In the meantime, their manager would assign the QIs to electrical. The master plumber would wait until they got freed up again. Later. Rinse. Repeat.
• Let them state their commitments — El Jefe spurred on an unconscious tendency to concoct complex formulas representing things. For example, instead of just asking Trevor how long it’s going to put in a cast iron bathtub in the second floor of the O’Malley place, El Jefe would pull a number out of his ass, then apply a complex formula whose twelve inputs were only known to a black-cloaked cabal of disenfranchised fast food cooks.

A key part of scrum is the “scrum master,” who facilitates meetings, holds people to their commitments (done largely by tracking the commitments in a public and accessible place — fancy that!) and follows up on loose ends. It’s a nice thing to have… someone else do. Indeed, most people declined the invitation of fulfilling this role full time. Thankfully for my team, Grace graciously offered to get us started. She’s done a fantastic job at this.

After nearly four weeks of rapid-fire, I don’t think scrum is a miracle elixir (see above), but it provided us with an organizational excuse to address the above issues. For that, I am happy with the results.

The workers have a daily stand-up meeting. Unfortunately for me, they decided that the previous time had “baggage” (read: El Jefe set it in stone), so it’s earlier than I can usually come in this time of year, but I am “optional.” Except for the junior contracts person, group dynamics are working well.

Having the quality inspectors sit down with the plumbing, roofing and electrical folk as they’re scoping out work has been a boon. They work well together, eliciting excellent discussion about qualifying what I want them to build, what they should test and trade offs I would have never, ever considered because I am neither an expert plumber nor a roofer nor an electrical person like they are.
The two week sprints help me by giving me an opportunity to reevaluate market requirements without causing major disruptions. Also, too often, Chief Sales Critter comes to me asking for Corinthian Leather flanges because, by golly, that’s what his last customer mentioned, so We Must Drop Everything. By forcing a cool down period of a few days, the idea often goes away of its own accord.