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It's Always the Process, Stupid

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Re: It's Always the Process, Stupid

#91

Post by alwa »

gishh wrote: post #85
Waterluvian wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. :(

Which way sounds toxic—wanting to get it right now that they’ve become aware it’s a problem? 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?

Seems like horses for courses to me: I can imagine my very happy healthy teams needing to operate in either mode, depending on the specific problem. I also can imagine us needing the person closest to the problem to tell us which direction applies.

(To your point though, I also can imagine that any type of pressures like these would really bring out the dysfunction in “toxic” teams.)

Re: It's Always the Process, Stupid

#92

Post by gishh »

alwa wrote: post #91
gishh wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeesh. I’ve never worked with a smart group of people who came to that conclusion. That sounds toxic. :(

Which way sounds toxic—wanting to get it right now that they’ve become aware it’s a problem? 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? Seems like horses for courses to me: I can imagine my very happy healthy teams needing to operate in either mode, depending on the specific problem. I also…

> 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.

Re: It's Always the Process, Stupid

#93

Post by wallfacer »

One core assertion seems less true every day:

> The intelligence (knowing what a "risk" actually means) still requires human governance.

Less and less. Why do you trust a human who’s considered 5000 assessments to better understand “risks” and process the next 50 better than the LLM who has internalized untold millions of assessments?

Re: It's Always the Process, Stupid

#94

Post by jmye »

1970-01-01 wrote: post #14
notpachet wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is what you linked a business process? Cancer identification is a step in a larger process, specifically the "analyze unstructured data" part that the author alludes to. AI won't take a shoddy process (say, your process for reviewing and accepting forms from patients) and magically make it better if you don't have an idea of what "better" actually entails. "Improving a system requires knowing what you would do if…

Hi Russ, Did you read the example? The business process of human bias is gone in the cancer detective phase. AI eliminated it.

Did you read it? Their process is highlighting “interesting” cells, per the article. Human process simply isn’t gone, nor is the “AI” resolving anything beyond “these cells look like other bad cells”.

Do you understand the treatment process, here? I don’t ask that to be shitty, but I feel like you’re hand-waving away the entirety of the process because image detection is interesting.

It smells like a “disrupt healthcare” statement, of which there are many and of which none have any basis or value.

Re: It's Always the Process, Stupid

#95

Post by hammock »

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…

Your story and the article’s thesis that AI is for acceleration and automation (not other things like design/intelligence) remind me of one particular CEO’s five step product process:

1) design smart(er) requirements- I.e beat up the ask and rewrite the problem statement correctly. 1B is every requirement has a persons name attached who is traceable/responsible for its inclusion- not a department.

2) delete features you don’t need or which are hedges (if you aren’t adding back 10% of the time, then you aren’t deleting enough)

3) simplify or optimize. This step must come after 1 and 2 so you aren’t wasting effort optimizing the wrong thing

4) accelerate

5) automate

This way is very clear where AI plugs in- and more importantly, WHEN it plugs in.

Also, plenty of times people try to run this process backwards, with poor outcomes.

Re: It's Always the Process, Stupid

#96

Post by scrubs »

Totally agree with this post. I've had many hour convos with a program manager on his project (an enterprise security master for trading) where AI has been misapplied to make the mess a bigger mess as just one current example in my own backyard.

Re: It's Always the Process, Stupid

#97

Post by danaris »

gishh wrote: post #92
alwa wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which way sounds toxic—wanting to get it right now that they’ve become aware it’s a problem? 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? Seems like horses for courses to me: I can imagine my very happy healthy teams needing to operate in either mode, depending on the specific problem. I also…

> 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.

Re: It's Always the Process, Stupid

#98

Post by gishh »

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 .

I think you identified the problem.

> subcommittee of the committee assigned to fix the process

That bit, is the problem.

Re: It's Always the Process, Stupid

#99

Post by hashstring »

gishh wrote: post #85
Waterluvian wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. :(

What do you mean exactly?

Re: It's Always the Process, Stupid

#100

Post by idopmstuff »

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 just as my very broad, practical eval). It really is all about documentation. I buy small e-commerce brands, and they're simple enough that current SOTA models have more than enough intelligence to take a first pass at listings + financials to determine whether I should take a call with the seller. To make that work, though, I've got a prompt that's currently at six pages that is just every single thing I look when evaluating a business codified.

Using that has really convinced me that people are overrating the importance of intelligence in LLMs in terms of driving real economic value. Most work is like my evaluations - it requires intelligence, but there's a ceiling to how much you need. Someone with 150 IQ points wouldn't do any better at this task than someone with 100 IQ points.

Instead, I think what's going to drive actual change is the scaffolding that lets LLMs take on increasing numbers of tasks. My big issue right now is that I have to go to the listing page for a business that's for sale, screenshot the page, download the files, upload that all to ChatGPT and then give it the prompt. I'm still waiting for a web browsing agent that can handle all of that for me, so I can automate the full flow and just get an analysis of each listing sent to me without having to do anything.

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