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|In: Leadership|Last Updated:

I wonder if any skill remains relevant by the time we’ve mastered it.

Take prototyping as an example. The idea has been around as long as engineers have been designing gadgets, but we in IT resisted the notion for decades, even though business users clearly would have preferred it to the “waterfall” methodologies we insisted on, secure in our conviction that the prophets of methodology knew whereof they spoke.

If it isn’t justice it’s at least a delicious irony: Just as the apostasy of prototyping — built into the heart of such disciplines as Extreme Programming (XP) and the Rational Unified Process (RUP) — has replaced our faith in waterfall methodologies, events have overtaken us.

In the old world of information technology we automated previously manual processes. Prototyping worked fine for the business because the work being performed didn’t change in any fundamental way.

There is, however, no longer any such thing as an IT project. Every project we’re involved in is about business change. We’re redesigning the business — processes, the roles employees play in the business, the skills they need, and probably reporting relationships and a bunch of other aspects of the business besides.

What good is a software prototype when it will only make sense in the context of a different way of doing business? Sure, we can produce one and give it to end-users to play with, but what will we learn by doing so? Nothing. The end-users won’t have the faintest idea as to whether the software is doing anything useful until they’re performing business the new way.

Don’t give up. The logic in favor of prototyping is even more valid when dealing with serious business change, because the cost of a business design being wrong is far higher than the cost of a software design being wrong.

Which is why it’s so important to build a pilot implementation — in effect, a prototype of the new way of doing business — into any software project. A business prototype has to be small enough to be controllable and “tweakable,” while also being both real and complete enough to provide a useful test of the new way of doing business. Satisfying these criteria is far from easy. That, however, isn’t what concerns me about the discipline.

What concerns me is what we’ll have to become good at once we’ve mastered this!

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|In: Business Ethics|Last Updated:

According to our national philosophy, we have a government “… of the people, by the people and for the people.”

People, in other words, precede government, which is why people have inalienable rights. Corporations, in contrast, are legal fictions. They exist only within the framework of government and have whatever rights and privileges we give them. Government can revoke or extend any or all of those rights at any time without raising constitutional issues.

I mention this because of how frequently people talk about corporations as if they were people, only bigger. “Our budget is like your household budget,” is a favorite example, used by executives to explain why the company can’t afford something important.

The company budget, though, has little in common with my household budget. I subscribe to cable television, go to the movies, buy new clothes even when the old ones haven’t worn out, and enjoy a bunch of other stuff for which there’s no return on investment of any kind. Unlike most corporations, I spend a significant chunk of my budget on fun stuff.

Also, I’ve never downsized either of my children, no matter how tight the budget or how annoyed I am that one or the other left dirty socks on the couch.

Here’s another: “We do the right thing.” I don’t even know what that means, especially since the company also maximizes shareholder value. In biological terms, morality is a species-specific trait of Homo sapiens. John Wayne Gacy’s behavior was immoral (and nauseating). In contrast, when a seagull eats a chick in the next nest, it isn’t acting immorally at all. Morality applies only to human beings.

Corporations, not being big Homo sapiens, aren’t moral entities. (For more on this subject, check out Carlton Vogt’s excellent “Ethics Matters” column on Infoworld.com.) They are, however, supposed to obey the laws and regulations that define the acceptable boundaries of corporate behavior. It’s because corporations aren’t moral entities that we need extensive laws and regulations — they have no internal restraints.

Which creates a dilemma. You are a moral entity, and confine your actions to what’s allowed by your moral code. But you’re employed by a corporation, which isn’t one, and you’re supposed to act in that corporation’s best interests. I’ve even been told that this is a moral obligation.

Which is nonsense. “Maximizing shareholder value” is a financial proposition, not a moral one.

Which is why, if you want your company to behave morally, you’ll have to bring the morality there yourself.

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