Community, Activity, Environment

The model “People Process Technology” has been a popular one for years. It gives a fine insight into where to set our priorities in any IT innovations such as new applications, new ways of working, or new technologies. I am unsure of its origins (and would love to hear from any reader who knows). It goes back more than a decade in the software engineering world. There have been several variants including my own, described in a previous column, People Practices Things.

It says that when we are planning or designing or doing anything, we should consider the people, the process and the technology. And (I like to add) in that order! This means roughly equal attention and effort, not passing lip service.

It is quite extraordinary how often this rule is honoured in the breach rather than the observance -– how it is ignored. Attune yourself to the model, and then apply it to everything you read: proposals, emails, memos, articles, websites, forums. You will be amazed how often IT people leap straight to the technology:

If we buy this it will fix that

The problem is that there is no monitoring tool

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I’ll code a fix

We need a form/database/spreadsheet to track it

We could build a system to do it

The errors are creeping in because the screen is designed wrong

That should be no surprise, I suppose, for a number of reasons. We are attracted to this industry because we like technology. It is easier to blame objects than people. We know more about how to fix technology than how to fix process. Technology is more tractable than culture.

If only we stuck a People Process Technology poster up in every office the problem would be solved. Having it on the wall would remind people to apply it, and if they see it every day eventually they will come to believe it. Maybe not (unless, of course, the poster has an animal on it -– apparently that makes posters work).

So how do we get IT people to grok this model? How do we make it second nature to apply the model generally?

Perhaps it is the wording of “People Process Technology”. “People” is a very vague word that does not invoke much association. “Process” is a big turn-off word for many in IT (and a source of fascination for a weirder minority including the author). And “Technology” is their loved one put last in the list, dismissed.

So we could try changing to words that convey the intent better and carry less baggage. I would like to expand the model to CAE: Community Activity Environment. These words generalise it more: they make it more widely applicable than just the IT world -- it applies to any innovation. I think it also makes it clearer what we are talking about. Finally, it avoids the PPT acronym, which causes confusion with one of Microsoft’s uglier contributions to society -- PowerPoint.

CAE: People acting on things

Get the right people with the right knowledge and skills and the right attitudes and morale. To do this, change the people through development (training, coaching, mentoring) and cultural change. Sometimes you have to resort to that other strategy: “If you can’t change the people, change the people”.

A good community copes with badly designed or documented processes. They stop bad practices. They know and seek out the right activity.

Get the processes matured (in the CMM sense) so that they are repeatable, documented, measured, managed and optimised. Get good practice generally. Make the activity sensible, efficient and effective, and in the best interests of the organisation.

Good community and/or activity will overcome the environment. They cope with bad facilities, tools and materials: they work around the deficiencies, exploit the strengths, and look for improvement.

Get the right environment to make the activity better and the staff happier. As the community and activity improve, needs are defined and opportunities identified to improve the environment: tools to make process more efficient, better raw materials, better facilities and documentation for staff....