The Case for Biting
During the London Plague of 1665, some 100,000 people perished in and around the city.
[No need for us to imagine how that must have felt. We lived it.]
In that dark time, science wasn’t yet the source of hope or answers that it is today and some desperate, well-meaning folks noticed that areas of the city with the largest numbers of plague-related deaths also had the largest number of cats.
[You know where this is going.]
The Lord Mayor of London ordered them all destroyed– some 200,000 cats. And with their natural enemies decimated, London’s rat population– the real carriers of the plague fleas– bloomed, radically accelerating the spread of the disease.
[Don’t worry. This post isn’t about COVID.]
The Modern Parallel
There’s a growing school of thought within senior executive circles across banking that our industry’s best path to better-faster-cheaper engineering (and business outcomes) is to radically reduce the non-coding roles in technology: our business analysts and project managers, our designers and architects; our “administrative overhead.”
Our cats.
The irony of course is that these same non-coding roles in appdev were purposefully created to allow developers to spend more of their time developing. Because in the olden days, when developers were chasing the business for requirements or the business was chasing developers for updates, the actual development wasn’t getting done.
And before you raise your hand with some full-throated endorsement of Agile… I’ve been an app-dev person for 20 odd years now and my experience has taught me that the core problem— “developers not developing”— is never (ever!) because tech has too many non-developers.
The problem is, was and will remain one part bureaucracy– tied to poorly managing risk at scale in a deeply regulated business– and one part business (not tech) dysfunction. By design, those non-developers sit in tech– beating their heads against a wall– to actively compensate for 1) stupid risk-mitigating rules that we ourselves put in place and 2) the lack of a scalable, business-led operating model for business-imbedded product owners to collaborate *daily* with fingers-on-keyboards engineers.
Tech leadership— for its part— keeps trying to solve for that business dysfunction by driving Agile practices in the business… knowing full well that that change in the business needs to start in the business and be driven by the business… not by tech leadership.
So… if you’re in tech and your hand is still raised… waiting to answer “Agile! The answer is Agile!”… put your hand down. You shouldn’t even be in this class.
The Other Constant Heraclitus Missed
With or without the current economic climate, our plague across banking tech is– and will always be– framed as inefficiency. But it tends to come to a fever pitch during less profitable times.
You hear it in questions like — “Why does that huge, expensive project have so many BAs?”
“Why does that complex, seemingly endless program have a flock of PMs?”
[Yes, I used the f-word because of the obvious parallel to seagulls— the birds, not the 80s new wave band… although now that I think about it… the hairstyles…]
Anyhoo, part of the answer is “because those programs are huge and complex!” [See, I built those adjectives into the questions. Clever, right?]
The other part of the answer is that most of the businesses which tech support are simply not designed, funded or trained to be proper tech partners and consumers (with or without Agile practices).
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Quick side note. There’s a simple test to gauge the maturity of your business’s ability to deliver tech better-faster-cheaper: how frequently and for how long do your business leaders sit with fingers-on-keyboards engineers? Not “how long do they sit with BAs or PMs?”
With coders.
Even better question: how many of your business leaders code?
As long as the business’s answer to either question remains “um [uncomfortable pause],” they’ll need BAs and PMs. In other words, the cats don’t need to sit in tech but they *do* need to sit somewhere. Because they fill the giant gaping skills gap in your current operating model.
Note also that if the business is technically sophisticated, you might even want to move coders directly into the business… which would be super cool!
[I think Goldman does that or at least aspires to.]
The reality is that banking leaders aren’t exactly cool… much less “super cool.”
And… we’re heading into a recession… which means that it’s just a matter of time before some well-meaning seventeenth century executive inevitably calls for the wholesale slaughter of cats.
And… because banking’s tech leadership tends to be diligent, disagree-but-commit dogs, we’ll wag our tails like they’re doing us a favor.
And… each time we show a poor, innocent, hardworking cat the door, there’s a nest of rats with tiny, little party-hats and kazoos celebrating.
So… Let’s Review
The Plague: one part operating model problem and one part stupid policies and practices that literally plague large orgs. And it *is* about the size of the org because tiny companies— who aspire to be large companies one day— don’t go out of their way to protect themselves against their employees. They trust. They don’t “trust but verify” (which is doublespeak for “don’t trust”). Why? Because stupid is a luxury that small companies can’t afford. If they don’t run lean, they don’t run.
The population most at risk of dying from the plague: engineers— the life-blood of any good bank.
Rats: smart, empowered employees who use their specialized skills and narrow remits to tell others what they can’t do. And somehow, they get away with it. Oh, and for the ethnographers among us, rats consistently choose the letter of the law over the spirit of the law.
Cats: belligerent, disagreeable employees who can spot stupid a mile away. Somehow they’re never quite as empowered as the rats. Probably because they keep hearing rats throw around the names of the big dogs and bigger dog-owners as their justification for stupid.
Dogs: management. They bark at cats and are scared of rats. They’re unknowingly letting rats use their names in meetings that they failed to attend… because you know… there was a squirrel in the distance.
Dog Owners: business leaders. They love dogs… because who doesn’t love dogs? They regularly notice that areas of their city with the largest numbers of plague-related deaths also have the largest numbers of cats.
The Vaccine (If You Lead a Business)
Change how your business people interact with tech, not how your tech compensates for their absence.
Biting Criticism (If You Lead Tech)
Trust the business to fix their end of this (because *you* can’t fix their end of it).
In the meanwhile, focus on reducing the bureaucracy. Quarantine the stupid, because you can’t inoculate against it.
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Look… everyone’s goal in a large org is to end the stupid— to kill the rats… or put more humanely, to figure out how to clean them of plague fleas.
Whose job is that?
Mostly cats… with support from dogs.
But something gets lost in translation– in the day to day– in the culture we live… and all anyone ever hears from above is: “If cats aren’t barking— if they’re not checking in code— they’re the problem– the source of our inefficiency.”
And no one— not the rats, not the cats and definitely not the dogs— holds their owners accountable.
Because.. you know… why bite the hand that feeds you?
Easy answer on that: if you don’t bite them— if you don’t wake them up and have them change their practices— the plague ain’t goin’ away.
So…
Bite away!
LinkedIn Tease:
I wrote this unfiltered rant in one splendid, cathartic sitting. It’s not long but if you don’t have 2 minutes, here’s a sample from the piece– where I broaden the analogy that I use throughout the article:
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Rats: smart, empowered employees who use their specialized skills and narrow remits to tell others what they can’t do. And somehow, they get away with it. Oh, and for the ethnographers among us, rats consistently choose the letter of the law over the spirit of the law.
Cats: belligerent, disagreeable employees who can spot stupid a mile away. Somehow they’re never quite as empowered as the rats. Probably because they keep hearing rats throw around the names of the big dogs and bigger dog-owners as their justification for stupid.
Dogs: management. They bark at cats and are scared of rats. They’re unknowingly letting rats use their names in meetings that they failed to attend… because you know… there was a squirrel in the distance.
Dog Owners: business leaders. They love dogs… because… who doesn’t love dogs? They regularly notice that areas of their city with the largest numbers of plague-related deaths also have the largest number of cats.
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Just doing my part to encourage biting. (That’ll make more sense if you read the piece.)
#HappyDiwali
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