Tuesday nights were one of Eric’s few chances to relax. For years now, he and his work friends had been meeting up one night a week to play board games, chat, and generally focus on something different than the ordinary stresses of life, and for Eric, these were the stresses of implementing process improvement initiatives at work. Exactly which night they meet up might change, and which games they played varied depending on their mood and what new game someone had picked up most recently, but it was always a bit of a break from the rest of the stuff that piled up at work and home and so on. This particular Tuesday night, however, Eric was finding it hard to relax.
“I mean, it’s not as if I mind,” he said, opening the box for the game they were playing that night – something about building settlements on a weird hexagonal island. “It was my idea in the first place, right? So, of course, I’m glad it’s going to get a trial. It’s just that… well, where does it end, you know?”
“Oh, I know,” Aria agreed. She was sorting all the resource cards into piles, but nodding as Eric described his situation at work. “You want the project to succeed, so you need to show value to your boss who is paying for the project, which means you have to fix everything, everywhere, for everyone. But you also need to show results quickly, so you have to focus your efforts on one bit of the business. Common problem.”
Blair frowned in confusion. “Hang on a second,” he said, brow wrinkling in confusion. “I think I missed something. What’s going on, Eric?”
Eric sighed and shook his head, getting the terrain tiles out of the box. “Oh, it’s work stuff,” he explained. “I’m one of the team leaders at Sugarcube Software – because we make pretty sweet stuff, heh heh – and there’s this new development tool we’re going to be rolling out across all the teams. I’m the one who found this tool and suggested it, so I’m in charge of the rollout. The idea was to just do one team first, see how it went, and then do the rest, but it turns out that deciding what bits of the business the tool gets used in first isn’t easy to figure out.”
“Does it really matter?” Charlie suggested. “You could just pick whatever team you like, couldn’t you? I mean…” She gestured at the hexagonal map Eric was placing the terrain tiles in. “…like that. An arbitrary border of inclusion, but it works.” But Aria was shaking her head.
“Not really, Charlie,” Aria said. “Eric needs this project to show that the tool is valuable, so there’s pressure to include all the teams involved in one of their major products in this first phase. But if it does, then he’s going to struggle to get support from all the different team leaders, and the project won’t show results quickly.” Aria picked up the dice from the box and rolled them, making a face at the result. “3… I guess I won’t be getting the first turn. Anyway, if Eric focuses the project more tightly to show results sooner, it might only affect one team. And if it only affects one team, and doesn’t help the business as a whole, it’s going to look like the tool has weak value. Like I said, this comes up pretty often.”
Eric nodded, picking up the dice and rolling them. “7. See if you can beat that, Blair. Yeah, Aria’s right. I need to get results quickly, but I also need to show the value this tool adds when it is integrated across the teams, so where do I draw the boundary for the first phase? I mean, the business analysts provide input to the development teams, so should they be part of this project? And the output from the dev teams goes through QA, so should they be included?”
“Ahhh… I see.” Blair rolled the dice. “Another 7. Your turn, Charlie. So… it’s figuring out the scope of this project that’s giving you trouble, is that right?”
“That’s right,” Eric agreed. “If you’ve got any ideas, I’d love to hear them.”
“Well, my idea is that I rolled an 11, so I’m going to take the first turn,” Charlie grinned and placed her first two game pieces on the map. “After that… hmm. ‘Follow the money’ is my advice. Who’s paying for this project, and what do they care about? Fit the project around that, and only that, and there’s your boundary.”
Blair shook his head. “I think that might be too simple, Charlie. I mean, you’re not wrong, but there’s going to be things that affect the performance of that… system, I suppose we can call it a system. Yeah, they affect it, but they’re also not part of it. And there’s also going to be things that your boss, who’s paying for all this, cares about which are affected by this project, but aren’t direct outputs of the system.”
“Then they should be part of the system!” Charlie replied. “Eric can put his system boundary wherever he wants, right? C’mon, Blair, put your pieces down.”
“Yeeeaaahhh…” Eric grimaced. “I sort of can, but there are limits to what I can control, and if I put the system boundary outside of them, I’m just setting myself up for failure. Blair, did you have to put them there? That’s where I was going to go!” Eric turned to Aria. “OK, Aria, place your pieces, then we can start.”
“You can’t rush genius,” Aria said, frowning at the map. “With how you guys are placed, I’m gonna have to… actually, that might work…” She placed her pieces and turned to Eric again. “Sorry, I haven’t been following. Too busy figuring out my inevitable victory. So, what are you going to do about your system boundary?”
Eric shrugged. “The way I see it, there’s three things I need to do. First is to set the system boundary around the areas that Dave – my boss, and the one paying for this – cares about. Second, make sure the system boundaries include any other Sugarcube Software teams that directly limit performance in those areas and any third-party teams whose output Dave is particularly focused on, and which are affected by those areas. And third, make sure it’s all things which I can actually affect or control.”
Blair looked over the top of the rulebook at Eric. “And what do you expect to see when you do that?”
“There’s several likely benefits,” Eric explained. “I am pretty confident that the individual teams will go faster, and if we can include all the teams in the product line, then there’d be a big jump in performance that will show in Dave’s board reports.”
“Cool.” Blair nodded and went back to reading the rulebook. “Sounds like you’ve got it sorted out, then.”
“I wish, but no, I am worried about having to make compromises,” Eric said as stared at the game board. “The thing is that I need all the departments to play ball so that the wins will be recognised as real, but Dave is in charge of the dev side of things, not the business analysts. And without them playing ball, we won’t be able to fully realise the improvements. I’ve spoken to Fran, the business manager, and let’s just say ‘she doesn’t see things the same way’ and wants to modify the trial. I need to measure the touch time on the jobs to prove that this tool is actually making a speed difference, but Fran says that the margin of each job completed is what’s important, and there’s no way she’s going to get her business analysts to reduce their billable times.”
“Ugh,” Charlie groaned. “Can you just leave them out of the system for this trial? Don’t you have a stockpile of jobs that you can work from without needing the business analysts to do anything different? Seriously, Eric, this is a trial… you need to be able to run it without it falling over because someone in a different department won’t cooperate.”
Aria shrugged. “That might work for a trial, but it still leaves the issue unresolved – different departments prioritising different things. Your boss, Dave, might have to go up to the CEO to get a metric change agreed upon. Maybe you can maintain a small inventory of the analyst’s finished inputs so you can decouple from them. Still, I agree that for purposes of the trial, make it so you do not need to worry about that particular assortment of problems.”
“Thanks, guys, I appreciate you talking it over with me. This has been a tremendous help.”
“Feel better about this system boundary of yours now, Eric?” queried Charlie.
“I think I do!” Eric grinned.
Charlie waved her hand dismissively. “It’s no problem. We’re always happy to help out. Right? That’s what friends are for! Besides, it distracted you while we were setting up our pieces!”
Eric’s eyes went wide, and he stared in earnest at the game map. Blair had control of most of the hills and mountains, Charlie had several good forest and field combos, and although Aria didn’t have a lot of land, she did have a lock on two of the ports, as well as being in an advantageous position to take another couple. Despite all that, though, Eric didn’t feel too bad about the situation. He now had a plan for his system boundary problem, and he was feeling more relaxed than he had since… well, since this time last week, actually. Eric grinned and reached for his pieces. Maybe it was time to try to put a boundary around Aria and her board game shenanigans!