May 10, 2023 at 12:00 am
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Encouraging Innovation
May 10, 2023 at 12:41 pm
What does it say that everything needs to be changed to make it more "whatever"?
It means that everything you do today must be changed to be made better in the future, thereby making everything you do today immediately obsolete and passe.
May 10, 2023 at 3:01 pm
I think context and audience matter when you are talking about innovation. Sure, I don't think a customer or end-user cares about any fancy new changes made to the back end if they still end up with the same or similar outcome. If you make improvements and it ends up saving time and/or money they care. When I think about innovation I think of how to solve inefficiencies and pain points. I recently helped a person in HR save several hours of manual work every week. All it took was a little bit of coding and a report. "but wait, there's nothing special about that" you might say.
A quick search for the meaning of innovation: a new idea, method, or device; an introduction of something new
To me it's not anything innovative but is it not to that person in HR?
May 10, 2023 at 3:02 pm
I think the word "innovation" is a buzzword, the meaning of which has been bastardized just as the meaning of the title of "DBA" and the real "DevOps" has become.
What's really sad is that what most people call "innovation" is simply and finally learning how to do things the right way to begin with. A lot of managers say they want "innovation" but they don't actually give their people the time to be innovative. I'm not sure that most managers actually understand what "innovation" actually is.
I think it's actually gotten to the point where people are of the unstated ilk that they have to "do something", even if it's wrong. 😉
Then there's the fact that "Change is inevitable, change for the better is not".
If someone truly wanted to demonstrate a really good innovation, that innovation would be to how to overcome the draw of the most recent "too cool for school" and "Keep up with the Jones" and stop breaking things that have worked, still work, and will continue to work for a very long time to come. Another worthwhile "innovation" would be to release code that has a good design (Not things like PIVOT, the 2016 version of SPLIT_STRING(), etc, etc) and then release it with no bugs and no scalability issues.
Even then, that's not "innovation"... that just learning some common sense and doing things right to begin with.
And, supposed "innovations" can have a huge draw back. Not only is the "innovation" frequently not as good as what it's designed to replace or fails to sufficiently augment what it was designed to augment but it requires constant learning about (for most things with rare exceptions) that are going to be comparatively a "flash in the pan". I feel really bad for Developers (especially front-enders). There is no way they can keep up with the "latest" shiny new rock that "you've just gotta have".
And, to make matters worse in the work place, even is someone designs a great "innovation" with an actual high ROI, it may never see the light of day because of the "we've go bigger fish to fry" issues or, worse, a manager may claim all the glory for that (and I've seen that happen a whole lot).
And, yeah... I think Jason Fried's article is spot on. To add to that, if you want to "innovate", do it outside of work and make sure you protect yourself from companies that have "rules" where anything you create, even outside of work, is theirs. 🙁
--Jeff Moden
Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.
May 10, 2023 at 3:28 pm
My employer created an "Innovation Hub" on our Intranet where people could submit ideas, a committee would rank them for value and feasibility, and a small dedicated team would implement the best ideas. One involved creating an automated integration of two already existing processes (one used spreadsheets and the other a web application with a SQL database backing it), which saved over $1M in person-hours per year. A customer would never know or care about this, but it got a lot of people out of doing "monkey work" which is now just clicking a button, and they can do something they find more interesting with that time and presumably of more value to the company. It's "doing more with less" by empowering people to accomplish more with their time instead of just asking people to spend more work hours at their jobs. Everyone wins.
May 10, 2023 at 5:14 pm
I worked for a company where you could volunteer for a programme explicitly to drive through change. They put us through really useful training to determine
As the programme was sponsored by the CEO barriers to progress were dealt with swiftly. There was quite a bit of rigour in it. Some changes worked really well. Others were less successful.
The measure of success was the company being saved £x million over the year. I can't remember the precise target but do know it was smashed.
To give a specific example you will have heard the phrase that someone acquired something that "fell off the back of a lorry".
One innovation was to put shock sensors on goods with a high breakage rate. We found that the g force involved depended on how an item did fall. If it landed on a corner then the g force was a 4 figure number resulting in unrecoverable destruction. If it landed flat then the g force wasn't in 4 figures but highly likely to be severely damaged. In short, if stuff "falls off the back of a lorry" it will break or suffer enough damage to be useless.
We experimented with putting swimming pool covers in trucks to protect against shocks and breakages. Worked beautifully but we found that it reduced the carrying capacity of a lorry by more than it saved in breakages.
An additional benefit of this programme was that people who we would never normally have cause to meet or talk to became known to us. Simply opening up communication links across the business had benefits above the actual programme ideas.
The UK HMRC has a definition of innovation they use to give companies tax breaks to reward innovation. As long as you can comply with their definition there is a real fiscal benefit in supporting innovation.
May 10, 2023 at 5:52 pm
I think the word "innovation" is a buzzword, the meaning of which has been bastardized just as the meaning of the title of "DBA" and the real "DevOps" has become.
What's really sad is that what most people call "innovation" is simply and finally learning how to do things the right way to begin with. A lot of managers say they want "innovation" but they don't actually give their people the time to be innovative. I'm not sure that most managers actually understand what "innovation" actually is.
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Oh, Jeff, I totally agree with you!! I'm one of those who advocate for remote work. Several managers, including where I work, want people back in the office so they can "innovate", by that they mean collaborate. Sort of like taking a vitamin and POOF, instantly you're innovating/collaborating. (I guess that would be vitamin "I".) Most employees need time to focus, rather than to get together in meetings to innovate/collaborate. In my own team we work individually. However, I realize that other tech teams work differently. I'm just saying that you can't use a "one size fits all" type of mentality.
On a different topic, but related, I wonder why companies/agencies reduce spending during recessionary times, to save money, if innovation leads to either increasing money or saving money? I don't know the answer to my question, but I'd love to know what the answer is.
Kindest Regards, Rod Connect with me on LinkedIn.
May 10, 2023 at 6:03 pm
Recognizing that not all teams work the same is important. Easy for managers to try and manage in one way, because it's easier for them. I like that we have a lot of autonomy at Redgate, and we have teams that get together twice a week, some once a week, some less. No one is 100% remote, but we do have people and teams that are mostly remote.
Innovation, to me, is doing something new and different. Should be better, or we should go back, whether this is code or process. However, sometimes you do have to try things for a bit to determine if they are good or bad. Or maybe you try something and abandon it, but revisit it later. It's not simple to say we should or shouldn't change things, though nor should anything/nothing change.
Mostly it comes down to having good people that work as a team and drive us forward. With the same or new process.
Companies reduce expenditures since they hunker down to survive. It's what many of us do in lean times at home. However, that doesn't mean we give up on spending. We should continue to spend or try to spend more, in areas that might make us better. Hard to decide what that is, so often they ask people to do more with less, but don't give them freedom to try something new. Innovation doesn't mean spending more.
May 10, 2023 at 9:09 pm
"My employer created an "Innovation Hub" on our Intranet where people could submit ideas, a committee would rank them for value and feasibility, and a small dedicated team would implement the best ideas."
My company has done something similar. The "Innovation Hub" in our case is more of a web based suggestion box with a formalized review process to determine if the Innovation is feasible and cost effective. Very few of the suggestions are huge leaps forward. Most (especially on the IT side) are of the "this could save a few hours a week/month" variety that never would have made it from end users to those who could make it happen. At our production facilities the best ones are the quick and fairly cheap to implement ideas that improve safety and reliability.
May 11, 2023 at 2:42 pm
Thank you very much, Steve, for your reflections on what I brought up and answering my question as to why companies reduce spending at a time, I thought it would make more sense to at least leave the level of spending the same, if not increase it.
Kindest Regards, Rod Connect with me on LinkedIn.
May 11, 2023 at 2:57 pm
I wouldn't wholesale reduce, leave, or raise spending. I'd be more judicious about where I did any of those.
I also would look to incentivize others to find ways to save money/time, perhaps by spending money on them with a gift, bonus, etc. Ultimately, if I gave you a day off or a $200 GC for a dinner when you saved us 4 hours a week on some process, it would be highly worth it. Probably if you saved 1hr/week or even month.
May 11, 2023 at 4:04 pm
I wouldn't wholesale reduce, leave, or raise spending. I'd be more judicious about where I did any of those.
I also would look to incentivize others to find ways to save money/time, perhaps by spending money on them with a gift, bonus, etc. Ultimately, if I gave you a day off or a $200 GC for a dinner when you saved us 4 hours a week on some process, it would be highly worth it. Probably if you saved 1hr/week or even month.
That's nice but I can't help but think that's a part of the job and it's what you're being paid to do. Kudos? Sure. Special Rewards? Maybe a merit pay raise but, unless you made the improvement on your own time, this is "just" a part of the job you're being paid for, IMHO.
--Jeff Moden
Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.
May 11, 2023 at 9:06 pm
Jeff,
When a change is something you can carry out in your remit then absolutely it is part of the job.
When a change requires collaboration and co-ordination then the waters get murky. I had to fight tooth and nail to get some changes through and that was most definitely above and beyond what was considered my job. There is a joke about management applying Darwin's theory of survival of the fittest to staff projects
If after the staff innovation continues to thrive then it was meant to be and should be formally adopted.
May 12, 2023 at 4:10 am
David... I thought that fighting tooth'n'nail to get something done right was "normal", especially since it wasn't their idea. And, because it wasn't their idea, they might try to kill the idea to keep their bosses from asking the question, "Ya know... we're paying you a lot of money... why didn't you come up with the idea"?
If folks want "innovation", then they going to have to give people 2 things... 1) time to be innovative and 2) provide a schedule for projects that builds in such time. That normally doesn't happen... Instead, the poor Developers and others are busy rowing the boat to the cadence of the drum built by "Agile", etc. 😉
--Jeff Moden
Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.
May 12, 2023 at 1:55 pm
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