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It's Always the Process, Stupid

its.promp.td

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Re: It's Always the Process, Stupid

#101

Post by throaway54 »

tetha wrote: post #50
crims0n wrote: post #38

I have complicated feelings towards process, especially in large enterprises. In one hand, I know process is how you get good work out of average people - and that has a lot of value in big businesses because statistically, most people are going to be around average. On the other hand, I have seen process stifle above average people or so called “rockstars”. The thing is, the bigger your reliance on process, the more…

One thing process protects against is lazy people. Like, we recently had an incident where someone just pasted "401 - URL" into the description and sent it off. We recently asked someone to open the incident through the correct channels. We got a service request "Fix" with the mail thread attached to it in a format we couldn't open. We get incidents "System is slow, infrastructure is problem" from random "DevOps" peo…

The lazy are also most likely to push back against the process, even though they're the ones who can most benefit.

Re: It's Always the Process, Stupid

#102

Post by machomaster »

danaris wrote: post #97
gishh wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or getting something down now, as close as possible to what happened yesterday and the day before, to unblock the larger process—then refining it after the fires are out? In my experience, the refining never happens.

But at least, in that scenario, the process is unblocked . The other way, you've blocked the process until every subcommittee of the committee assigned to fix the process has delivered their Final Report Draft 8 FINAL (1) (13) (1).docx. And that could be preventing an entire department from working at all .

Sometimes blocking the process is the best way to do. Blocking gives leverage and allows to fix long-standing inbalances.

Imagine that you have been slaving for low salary with abusive boss, who constantly promises but never delivers. If shit hit the fan and you are desperately needed, this is the perfect time to talk and solidify improvements. Game does not run on gratitude.

The same rule unfortunately also applies to relationships.

Re: It's Always the Process, Stupid

#103

Post by Telaneo »

alexpotato wrote: post #87
Telaneo wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been in discussions about Step 7, and my god, the experience was soul crushing. Even more soul crushing was that the result of that discussion was to not document Step 7, because doing that might enforce the idea of what it should be for and why it should be done. Writing stuff down is great since it provides a baseline to agree upon, and later additions to the team will take it as given and not start to discuss…

> the result of that discussion was to not document Step 7, because doing that might enforce the idea of what it should be for and why it should be done. In Charlie Beckwith's book about Delta Force [0] there is a line where he says (paraphrasing): "The SAS never wanted to write down what their role was and what tasks they were trained for. Why? Because they didn't want to get pigeon holed into a role. ... They also…

For a force whose goals can change at any moment, this seems pretty reasonable. The SAS shouldn't be trained for anything in partucular, but rather for anything and everything. Not to mention that in the SAS you have a commanding offiser who can overrule if needed.

Step 7 in a process which already has defined end-goals though? The fact that there were disagreements in the first place baffled me. The fact that it was impossible to write anything down about it without invoking heaven's wrath made me quit.

Re: It's Always the Process, Stupid

#104

Post by nine_k »

wavemode wrote: post #10
chrisweekly wrote: post #5

> Let’s rip the Band-Aid off immediately: If your underlying business process is a mess, sprinkling "AI dust" on it won’t turn it into gold. It will just speed up the rate at which you generate garbage. In the world of Business IT, we get seduced by the shiny new toy. Right now, that toy is Artificial Intelligence. Boardrooms are buzzing with buzzwords like LLMs, agentic workflows, and generative reasoning. Executive…

A similar observation commonly comes up related to software development - "it's not tech debt, it's org debt" (or to put a different way, "trying to use a technical solution to solve a social problem").

Pedantically, true "tech debt" does exist. Usually it had resulted from "org debt", which since then mostly ceased to exist in its original form, but the tech debt remains.

Re: It's Always the Process, Stupid

#105

Post by nine_k »

vanschelven wrote: post #9
chrisweekly wrote: post #5

> Let’s rip the Band-Aid off immediately: If your underlying business process is a mess, sprinkling "AI dust" on it won’t turn it into gold. It will just speed up the rate at which you generate garbage. In the world of Business IT, we get seduced by the shiny new toy. Right now, that toy is Artificial Intelligence. Boardrooms are buzzing with buzzwords like LLMs, agentic workflows, and generative reasoning. Executive…

Although I very much agree with the sentiment "here's the hard truth" is LinkedIn speak/ LLM-tell to me

I think parodying the typical LLM style and mannerisms may have become a device (or even a genre) on its own.

Re: It's Always the Process, Stupid

#106

Post by grvdrm »

idopmstuff wrote: post #100

I have always found writing documentation to be incredibly helpful for clarifying my thinking. It prevents me from doing mental hand-waving around details, and often times writing down a process that I have done a thousand times is the thing that makes me realize how I can cut steps or improve it. I'm now in the process of trying to hand off chunks of the work I do to run my business to AI (both to save time but also…

Question: could you use something like (example) Selenium to perform some or all of those pre-LLM tasks?

Re: It's Always the Process, Stupid

#107

Post by subpixel »

crims0n wrote: post #38

I have complicated feelings towards process, especially in large enterprises. In one hand, I know process is how you get good work out of average people - and that has a lot of value in big businesses because statistically, most people are going to be around average. On the other hand, I have seen process stifle above average people or so called “rockstars”. The thing is, the bigger your reliance on process, the more…

“statistically, most people are going to be around average”

In big corporate environments, ‘around average’ process would be a radical improvement. We are stuck in the reality where standing up a Service Now form is considered great progress.

Re: It's Always the Process, Stupid

#108

Post by subpixel »

torben-friis wrote: post #48

I’m like 99% sure that text is llm-written. “Mess/gold” comparisons, meta paragraph expressions like “here is the truth”, “it’s not this, it’s that”…

It’s written in English by a German-speaking author. That could be the odd lilt you sense.

Re: It's Always the Process, Stupid

#109

Post by DenisM »

zbentley wrote: post #76
DenisM wrote: post #66

> There is no such thing as an AI strategy. There is only Business Process Optimization (BPO). Here’s your Ai strategy: every few months re-evaluate agent fitness and start switching over. Remember backstops and canaries. Details: Businesses usually assign responsibilities to somewhat flaky employees, with understanding there will be a percentage of errors. This works ok so long as errors don’t fluctuate wildly and d…

Bold presumption that businesses have any useful way to evaluate agent fitness. Hell, they struggle to evaluate human fitness and do basic things like plan and execute OKRs. What makes you think they’d be any good at continuous quality improvement on entities that can’t correctly explain their own reasoning?

Good point.

There will be a mixture of those who succeeded accidentally, or by taking calculated risks, Or by virtue of sill holding their shot together.

Drawin will chew up the rest, which might be the majority.

Re: It's Always the Process, Stupid

#110

Post by chanux »

Waterluvian wrote: post #82
alexpotato wrote: post #35

One of my favorite stories about processes and documentation: - Work at a hedge fund - Every evening, the whole firm "cycles" to start the next trading day - Step 7 of 18 fails - I document Step 7 and then show it to a bunch of folks - I end up having a meeting where I say: "Two things are true: 1. You all agree that Step 7 is incorrectly documented. 2. You all DISAGREE on what Step 7 should be doing" I love this sto…

What drives me nuts is how many people can’t separate those two tasks/projects. We’re going to write down what Step 7 currently is/does. No, now is not the time to start discussing what it ought to do. Please let us just get through sorting out what Step 7 currently is. Yes, some people do it differently. That’s why we hit a snag. Let’s just pick one of those wrong ways, document it, and do it all wrong together. We’…

What drives me nuts is how many people don't read!

With that out of the way, the original article and this comment thread really makes me feel good by giving a sense of being right.

> Let’s just pick one of those wrong ways, document it, and do it all wrong together.

This reminds me of my colleague who established the importance of consistency very early.

"If you need to be wrong to be consistent, be consistently wrong".

They say this sarcastically but.. if you are the only sane one among a group of insane, now you are the insane one.

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