Joy, Inc. by Richard Sheridan

Author:Richard Sheridan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2015-01-19T16:00:00+00:00

Experiment: Planning Origami

During the Java Factory days at Interface Systems, we made a lot of improvements in overall productivity, quality, and speed, yet we were still not able to constrain the requirements in a tangible way that allowed us to hit our budget and time frames. I started paying more attention to the product manager who worked with us every other week to set priorities, and I noticed something subtle. He was always requesting an excess of forty hours of estimated work per resource on my team. I knew this wasn’t sustainable.

“Oh, it’s just one more little thing,” he would say, in a slightly high-pitched, whiny way. I told him I would be happy to tell my team they were now on fifty-hour workweeks, but he assured me he didn’t want my team working more. He just wanted them to get more done.

In many projects, one of the deadliest challenges is scope creep. The easiest way to describe scope creep is that it’s the infamous addition of “It’s just one more little thing,” often brought up in hallway conversations by people who don’t have to do the work. Add in enough “just one more thing’s” and voilà! The deadline is missed and the project is over budget. Most Dilbert comics emanate from scope creep, typically initiated by the pointy-haired boss.

James suggested we run an experiment to combat this particular product manager’s scope creep and plan how we would use our forty hours each week. He recommended folding photocopies of the task cards to the size of the estimate for that task. A 5½-by-8½-inch copy would mean that that task card would require sixteen hours of work. That same card folded in half would mean eight hours would be needed for that task. This card folded in half again would indicate four hours, and one more fold, two hours. A thirty-two-hour card would be taped to a full-size sheet of paper, making it twice as big as a sixteen-hour card. Easy to create, easy to understand.

We then created tabloid-size planning sheets with an inscribed box that could hold forty hours’ worth of folded cards. Our product manager picked up the folded cards and placed them inside the inscribed box. He could place up to forty hours of task card time on the sheet—but no more. This puzzle was simple enough that the product manager, after using the system for just a few weeks, seldom asked for “just one more thing.” When he did, we asked him what he would like to remove to make enough room for the new card. He didn’t necessarily like it, but this experiment stopped scope creep in its tracks.

Most of our experiments at Menlo look something like this project planning origami experiment: simple, inexpensive, and fast. Many experiments don’t survive for very long because they don’t solve the problem. Some are only needed temporarily; others start as temporary and become permanent. We think many are amazing solutions to long-standing problems when, in reality, they last for a little while and then change or go away.

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