Engineering Effectiveness

A value-centric approach and a product of wisdom

Until recently, technology was seen as a cost centre. Software was built and operated throughout different silos, with different people, culture, tools and reward systems. The result is a neglected software lifecycle that has created a legacy of fragile applications.

The world has changed. We are now living in a software-driven economy, which is enabling a level of customer-centricity never seen before.

Every day, different organisations in different industries are using technology to solve customer problems, exploiting the customer experience in a way that every day a new customer expectation baseline is set for everyone to catch-up. That is disrupting traditional businesses and changing the world’s capitalism as we have known it for centuries.

In today’s economy, engineering effectiveness is imperative to enable organisations to respond rapidly and safely to this fast-changing market conditions, prevent business atrophy and death.

This is the first in a series of four articles designed to explore the concept of engineering effectiveness and its impact on our software-driven economy, where every company is a technology company.

Each article should explore engineering effectiveness from a different perspective:

Part 1 — Epistemology
Part 2 — Organisation design & culture
Part 3 — Jobs to be done and Business Outcomes
Part 4 — Engineering principles & practices

In this first part, I wanted to explore the rationality of our beliefs, and for that, I’m bringing a condensed wisdom from one of the greatest systems thinkers of all times, Dr Russell Ackoff.

Disclaimer: If you are more a practical type of person and get bored discussing mindsets, you better stop here and jump to one of the three other articles. Just be conscious though, businesses are not transformed only with tools and automation.

The word I want to highlight here is effectiveness. The reason is the meaning of effectiveness is often misinterpreted and only recently we’ve come to understand the difference between efficiency and effectiveness. We used to use it synonymously.

The best distinction I’m aware of is one made by Peter Drucker in his book “The Effective Executive” where he said:

“There is a difference between doing things right and doing the right thing”.

Dr Russell Ackoff commented this historic line saying:

“See, doing the right thing is wisdom, effectiveness. Doing things right is efficiency. The curious thing is that the righter you do the wrong thing, the wronger you become. If you’re doing the wrong thing and you make a mistake and correct it you become wronger. So it’s better to do the right thing wrong, than the wrong thing right.”

And he continues:

“Every major social problem that confronts us today is a consequence of trying to do the wrong things righter. So instead of looking at the efficiency with which we are pursuing our objectives, we need to re-examine the objectives.”

In another example, in the paper “A systemic view of transformational leadership” (1998) Dr Ackoff compares growth and development as another way of exploring effectiveness. He writes:

“Growth is an increase in size or number; development is an increase in competence. Standard of living is an index of growth, but the quality of life is an index of development. Either growth or development can occur without the other.

Rubbish heaps grow but do not develop. Professors can develop without growing. Growth does not necessarily involve an increase in value; development does. A company can grow without increasing its value, but it cannot develop without doing so.

Values are the concern of ethics and aesthetics. Therefore, they are necessarily involved in the conversion of efficiency into effectiveness. The production of data, information, knowledge, and understanding are primarily functions of science. The production of wisdom, which presupposes all four, is primarily a function of ethics and aesthetics because it involves the conscious insertion of values into human decision making and evaluation of its outcomes.

Effectiveness is a product of wisdom which enlarges both the range of consequences considered in making a decision and the length of time over which the decision is believed to have possible consequences. By taking the ‘long run’ consequences into account, wisdom prevents sacrificing the future for the present.”

In the same paper, he puts value at the core of effectiveness when he says:

“Efficiency is a measure of how well resources are used to achieve ends; it is value-free. Effectiveness is efficiency weighted by the values of the ends achieved; it is value-full. For example, a men’s’ clothing manufacturer may efficiently turn out suits that do not fit well. Another less efficient manufacturer may turn out suits that do fit well. Because “fit” is a value to customers, the second manufacturer would be considered to be the more effective even though less efficient than the first.”

In another opportunity, this time in an interview in 2001, admired by such wisdom and clarity, producer Phyllis Haynes asked:

Phyllis Haynes: “I wasn’t planning on asking a philosophical question, but given the power of your first answer, I need to ask you this question. Since you have this wisdom and this insight, that strikes me as quite powerful, what is the reason that effectiveness isn’t the predominant force? Will this kind of thinking be the predominant force?”

Dr Ackoff: “It goes back to something very simple, which becomes complex quickly. You never learn by doing something right, because you’re already doing it right. You only learn from mistakes. There are two kinds of mistakes: One is when you do something you shouldn’t have done. A company bought another company and shouldn’t have bought. Eastman Kodak bought Sterling Drug, it turned out to be a serious mistake and they had to get rid of it for example. That’s called an error of commission. There is other type of error when you didn’t do something you should have done. Eastman Kodak didn’t buy Xerox when they could have, that would turn out to be a serious mistake.”

Dr Ackoff: “Now it turns out that errors of omission are much more important than errors of commission. If you look at companies, organisations, countries that fail, it’s because what they didn’t do, not because of what they did. But now, if you look at the accounting system we use, public and private, they only record the cost of an error of commission. When you don’t do something, it never appears in the books. So, if you try to find out what cost Eastman Kodak not to buy Xerox you can’t find out. If you try to find what’s the cost for buying Sterling Drug, which they bought, you can find out.”

Dr Ackoff: “All right, now you’re in an organisation that says making a mistake is a bad thing, and you’re a manager, so you want to keep your job and maintain stability. You don’t want to make a mistake. But what kind of mistake? The only kind they record: doing something you shouldn’t have done. Now, how do you minimise the chance at doing something you shouldn’t have done?”

Phyllis Haynes: “By doing nothing?”

Dr Ackoff: “You got it! That’s the answer to your question! It’s our treatment of error that leads to a stability, which prevents significant change. We have to start to recognise the importance of errors of omission, record and correct those errors. That requires a whole new way of thinking.”

I have decided to highlight those snippets because although incredibly dense, they carry so much wisdom and clarity, far more than I could achieve myself.

All this, along with our beliefs and approach, gives me the foundation to conceptualise Engineering Effectiveness.

I’d put that:

Engineering Effectiveness is a value-centric approach and a product of wisdom. It’s about catalysing evolutionary changes, helping teams move towards becoming autonomous and able to promote small and frequent changes, aligned to their unique context, objectives and concerns, strengths and weaknesses.

Value-Centric

Any initiative to evolve engineering effectiveness needs to be value-full. It has to be a noble cause and be connected to a macro effort to help the business win in the software-driven economy.

We are tired of seeing enormous investments in capability uplift, tools and automation that doesn’t revert to the business, done just for the sake of IT.

Anything we do should serve the purpose of increasing capacity, speed to value, predictability, stability, resilience as well as reducing IT costs and guaranteeing security, governance and compliance.

Product of Wisdom

Wisdom is the ability to use knowledge and experience to make right decisions and choices. It has values and beliefs embedded into it.

Wisdom is required to enlarge both the range of consequences considered in making a decision and the length of time over which the decision is believed to have possible consequences. By taking the ‘long run’ consequences into account, wisdom allows you to collect anticipated value and prevents sacrificing the future for the present.

Evolutionary Changes

Sweeping changes generally encounter increased resistance. We’ve learned that complex domain problems require an evolutionary approach and that promoting small, incremental and evolutionary changes continuously is more appropriate and more likely to succeed.

Autonomous Teams

The ‘Conway’s Law’ (1967) states that:

“Organisations which design systems are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organisations.”

We value loosely coupled, cross-functional, mission-driven teams, which are genuinely self-sufficient on building and operating well-crafted software.

To be better explored in part 2 - Organisation design & culture.

Small & Frequent Changes

We believe that large organisations can be as nimble and effective as many disruptive startups. We think the secret for that lies in the ability to promote small and frequent changes continuously.

That creates a learning organisation. If you are releasing quarterly, you have four opportunities to learn in a year. Those releasing monthly, have 12 learning opportunities. Releasing weekly, makes that number jump to about 50, whereas releasing on demand might give you over a thousand learning cycles every year.

We’ve observed that organisations who have gone down this path, achieving the ability to promote small and frequent changes are increasing: throughput, predictability, visibility, stability, quality, business responsiveness, happiness, sense of purpose and professional pride. At the same time, they are decreasing: the cost of maintenance, the amount of disruptive variability, failure rate, time to recovery, lead time, queue time, time to learn, burnout, turnover and rework.

To be explored in part 3 - Jobs to be done and Business Outcomes.

Unique Context

We understand that every team is a distinct complex and adaptive system. They have their unique context, objectives and concerns, hopes and fears. They operate in different business domains and within specific industries with its norms and regulations. Each team has their size, structure and set of values. They operate under different organisational cultures and technology stacks.

High-Performing teams are applying good, emergent and novel practices. There’s no such thing as best practices. What has worked for a team/organisation is likely not to work for another.

I hope this article gave you some insights and helped you to understand the rationality of our beliefs and approach around Engineering Effectiveness.

Check out the other articles, which explores the concept from different angles:
Part 2 — Organisation design & culture
Part 3 — Jobs to be done and Business outcomes
Part 4 — Engineering principles & practices

I’d love to hear from you! Your feedback and incentive are essential to keep the ball rolling.

Bye!

Marcio Sete