[HN Gopher] High Performance Organizations Reading List ___________________________________________________________________ High Performance Organizations Reading List Author : bfoks Score : 61 points Date : 2021-09-13 19:20 UTC (3 hours ago) (HTM) web link (github.com) (TXT) w3m dump (github.com) | aluciani wrote: | Great resource thanks for sharing. Lots of titles and resources | that I have never considered. Super useful :) | mu_killnine wrote: | As someone who is literally starting an IT department from | scratch, this is a really exciting list for me to dig into. There | are old favorites like 'mythical man month' that I'm generally | aware of, though never actually read personally, and whole new | blogs and videos to sift through. Thanks for this. | sodality2 wrote: | How would you even _begin to begin_ with that task? What | resources would you consult? | mwint wrote: | How'd you get the opportunity to start an IT department from | scratch? Small growing company? | harshreality wrote: | Everyday Astronaut's walk and talk with Elon Musk where he | attempts to explain his management process, starts at 13:30 of | part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t705r8ICkRw&t=13m30s | | Here's a rough summary: | | 1. Make requirements less dumb. | | 2. Delete part or process steps. If you're not occasionally | adding things back (he says 10%) (ideally in improved versions), | you're not removing things often enough. | | 3. Simplify, optimize, solve. Everyone's trained to jump to this | because the educational process requires you to answer a question | as posed, when often the question is dumb and shouldn't be dealt | with as-stated. | | 4. Accelerate process | | 5. Automate | | These aren't really distinct, they tend to all merge together. | I'm sure if he formalized this and wrote it down for mass | consumption it'd be presented differently, but he's clearly using | this 5-step model to frame how he thinks about the process. | | Process testing - remove unnecessary in-process testing after | production line debugging is done. Obviously there are nuances, | he's not saying to do no in-process testing, but more to remove | testing that's designed to reveal information that's already been | collected and addressed. Cautions about false positives from in- | process testing, and notes most testing can probably be tested | end of line with acceptable results. | | (He's clearly talking about a rapidly-evolving production | process, not a mature production process where stability and | predictability are more important than new features or improved | performance or cost efficiency.) | adolph wrote: | That was so good I transcribed/transliterated it for my team: | | Elon Musk's Five Steps to Optimize: | | - Question the Requirements - Delete Parts or Processes - | Simplify - Accelerate - Automate | | Quotes: | | You want everyone to be a chief engineer. So, "everyone is a | chief engineer" means that people need to understand the system | at a high level to know when they are making a bad | optimization. Like when we put immense effort into reducing | engine mass but hardly any effort into reducing propellant | residuals. | | All designs are wrong, it's just a matter of how wrong. | | Transcript of Five Steps description: | | What I'm trying to have us all implement rigorously is the five | step process. | | First, make your requirements less dumb. Your requirements are | definitely dumb. It does not matter who gave them to you. It's | particularly dangerous if a smart person gave you the | requirements because you might not question them enough. | | Then, try very hard to delete a part or process. This is | actually very important. If you're not occasionally adding | things back in, you're not deleting enough. The bias tends to | be very strongly towards "Let's add this part or process step | in case we need it." But you can basically make "in case" | arguments for so many things. And for a rocket that's trying to | achieve, trying to be the first fully reusable rocket...you | have to run at tight margins because if you don't run tight | margins you get nothing to orbit. | | Whatever requirement or constraint you have must come with a | name, not a department. Because you can't ask the department, | you have to ask a person. And that person who it putting | forward the requirement or constraint must take responsibility | for that requirement. Otherwise you can have a requirement that | basically an intern two years ago randomly came up with off the | cuff and they aren't even at the company any more . . . these | things are way more silly than you'd think. | | If you're not adding things back in at least ten percent of the | time you're clearly not deleting enough. | | Only at the third step you simplify or optimize. The third | step, not the first step. The reason it's the third step is | because its very common, its possibly the most common error of | a smart engineer is to optimize something that should not | exist. And you say why would people do that? Well, everyone's | been trained in high school and college that you've got to | answer the question, convergent logic. So you can't tell a | professor "your question is dumb." You will get a bad grade. | You have to answer the question. So everyones basically without | knowing it they've got a mental straightjacket on. They will | work on optimizing the thing that should simply not exist. | | Finally you get to step four which is accelerate cycle time. | You are moving too slowly, go faster. But don't go faster until | you've worked on the other three things first. If you're | digging your grave, don't dig it faster, stop digging your | grave. | | The final step is automate. | question002 wrote: | Oh self-help books written by corporations?! Surely this can help | me. I really need the Internet to point me to this. HN is such a | not dead site. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-09-13 23:00 UTC)