This is the final article in a three-part series exploring the relative project value of people, process and tools. The first instalment, ‘The People Premium,’ discussed the attributes of people that make them indispensable to project work, but can also cause problems. The second article, ‘Processes for People,’ looked at the role of processes in compensating for human shortcomings. This final installment explores the role of tools in making people and the processes that support them more efficient.
Processes help people a project’s most precious resource work their magic by mitigating their human shortcomings. However, while people can sometimes efficiently execute processes, this is not always the case. Many processes can have a negative impact on individual effectiveness, and some processes are so tedious as to become a source of new problems, even as they solve others. In these cases, tools are the key to making our people more efficient and effective at executing the processes that support them.
Tools have two primary functions, to leverage or magnify people’s effort, making them more efficient, and to replace human effort when a tool can do the job more effectively. Some tools have as their focus one of these things, but most tools combine elements of both.
A compiler is a good example of a tool that primarily leverages human effort. Decades ago, people wrote the actual code that ran on the computer’s processor. This was an incredibly time-consuming proposition, as the programmer conceived of the actions the computer needed to take, and decomposed them down into the individual 1′s and 0′s that were required to make it happen.
Compilers magnify the amount of work programmers can do by allowing them to work at a higher level of abstraction, spending more of their time analyzing the problem at hand and applying their intellect to solving it, while the compiler translates each line of high-level code into dozens (or hundreds) of commands to the computer.
The Internet provides a good example of a tool that actually replaces human effort. When you want to view a certain website, all you need to know is its address (its URL Universal Resource Locator). There is no need to think about how to get from wherever you are on the Internet to the location of the website you want to visit. After you provide the URL, the computers of the Internet work together to figure out where the pages for that site reside, and how to route your request to that location and its responses back to you.
Eliminating the need for people to understand the details of the Internet, has opened the World Wide Web to use by average people around the world. This is only possible because the Internet does that work invisibly, without any input from the user, other than the URL.
When Do We Need Tools?
Contrary to what many toolmakers would have us believe, we do not need a tool for every job. Many of the tasks we do on a daily basis yield very nicely to people’s capabilities and effective processes. But at the same time, we should always be on the lookout for cases where a tool could make people or their processes more efficient. We can leverage our understanding of the two primary functions of tools to help us to identify cases where a tool may be helpful.
Are there time-sinks in our processes? Look carefully at the specific steps and tasks that your people spend their time on. Peoples’ strengths revolve around exercising their creativity and intellect. Do your people spend the bulk of their time on creative aspects of the work? Or are there more mundane activities that drain their effort?
When a process demands that people spend significant time on non-creative steps, it is a candidate for a tool. Look for a tool that will magnify people’s effort on the mundane activities, allowing them to spend less time on them, and more time on the more challenging aspects of their work. Not only will such a tool make people more efficient, but it will also improve the quality of their work-life, as they spend their efforts on more interesting and challenging work.
Are there processes that don’t need human intervention at all? The analysis described above can sometimes yield an important discovery; that there is no aspect of the work that requires a person’s unique abilities. In that case, the entire job becomes a candidate for automation. If the appropriate tool can be found, our people’s time can be redirected to more important in interesting work.
Tools and Processes
Any time a tool is adopted, it will necessitate process changes. For example, adoption of a code control tool will require that developers check code out of the repository to work on it, and check it in when they are done. This example is of a relatively minor process change; one that is clearly warranted by the significant benefits that the tool provides.
But the process changes that are required by any specific tool is an important consideration. If a tool requires that we make significant changes to our processes, then we need to pause to consider if we should adopt that tool and its required process changes. How will those changes affect our people? Will the new process support the people’s work (the key function of a process)? Will the people be able to perform the new process? Do they have the time? Do they possess the requisite skills and knowledge? Does the process support the organization’s objectives?
We must always remember that the role of tools is to support people and their processes, making them efficient and effective. Any tool that reduces effectiveness or efficiency is not worth adopting, and should be rejected.
Conclusion
Our projects depend on a triad of things in order to run well. We depend on our People (who provide the creativity and intellect), our processes (that compensate for people’s weaknesses), and our tools (that make our people and their processes efficient). There is a definite hierarchy in that triad, with people being supreme, and tools in a supporting role for both people and processes.
We need people, processes and tools (just as a three-legged stool needs all three of its legs). Ensuring the success of our projects requires that we always keep these three elements properly balanced.
