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”…
Yeah
It's Always the Process, Stupid
81–90 of 123 posts
Re: It's Always the Process, Stupid
#82One 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’ll fix it as a separate step. Now isn’t the time to fix it, as much as it feels like a convenient time to.
Re: It's Always the Process, Stupid
#83This is terrible advice. Legibilizing everything illegible is a fast way to ruin everything, especially culture
Re: It's Always the Process, Stupid
#84I agree with the article’s core point that placement matters.
The useful framing is not “where can we bolt on AI” but “what does the system look like if AI is a first-class component.” That requires mapping the workflow, identifying the decision points, and separating deterministic steps from judgment calls.
Most teams try to apply AI inside existing org boundaries.
That assumes the current structure is optimal. The better approach is to model the business as a set of subsystems, pick the one with the highest operational cost or latency, and simulate what happens if that subsystem becomes an order of magnitude more efficient. The rest of the architecture tends to reconfigure from that starting point.
For example, in insurance (just an illustration, not a claim about any specific firm), underwriting, sales, and support dominate cost. If underwriting throughput improves by an order of magnitude, the downstream constraints shift: pricing cycles compress, risk models refresh faster, and the human-in-the-loop boundary moves. That’s the level where AI changes the system shape and acts beyond the local workflow.
This lens seems more productive than incremental insertion into existing silos.
Re: It's Always the Process, Stupid
#85One 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’…
Yeesh. I’ve never worked with a smart group of people who came to that conclusion. That sounds toxic. :(
Re: It's Always the Process, Stupid
#86I have done general process automation work (usually designing new web-based tools) for 20 years now. The underlying idea has always applied, even before AI: if your process is ill-defined and/or nonsensical, trying to "automate" it isn't going to work out. I have seen a smattering of instances along the way where the act of defining requirements forced companies to define processes better. Usually, though, companies…
I think this is what I’m
running into. Other teams want my team to make tooling to simplify some data processing workflow. Nice UIs and such. But they can’t and generally won’t show me the written-down process for how it’s actually done today. Or how they’re going to do it manually as they develop their side of things.
Which leads us to turning into a different team: we have to go figure out what the process engineering even is, which means becoming a bigger expert than they are at the process they want us to make tooling for.
Re: It's Always the Process, Stupid
#87One 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…
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 never wrote down their SOPs b/c the argument was that 'if you can't keep it in your head, you shouldn't be in the Regiment'. At Delta, we were going to write down our mission AND write down our SOPs."
Re: It's Always the Process, Stupid
#88One 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…
Writing is such a powerful and often underrated and underutilized tool; I don't think it's an overstatement to say that it's at par with fire and should be in the top 5 of all-time humanity inventions/discoveries.
Re: It's Always the Process, Stupid
#89I feel like this article hits the nail on the head.
I have learned to be careful of "too much process", but I find that the need for structure never disappears.
AI deals well with structure. You can adjust your structure to accept less-structured data, but you still need the structure, for after that.
Just maybe not too much structure[0].
Re: It's Always the Process, Stupid
#90"There is no such thing as an AI strategy.
There is only Business Process Optimization (BPO)."
Exactly, that's the fundamental truth. The shiny tool of the day doesn't change it at all