Completing an OSS design, going inside, going outside, going Navy SEAL

Our most recent post last week discussed the research organisations like DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) and Google are investing into group flow for the purpose of group effectiveness. It cites the cost of training ($4.25m) each elite Navy SEAL and their ability to operate as if choreographed in high pressure / noise environments.

We contrasted this with the mechanisms used in most OSS that actually prevent flow-state from occurring. Today I’m going to dive into the work that goes into creating a new design (to activate a customer), and how our current OSS designs / processes inhibit flow.

Completely independently of our post, BBC released an article last week discussing how deep focus needs to become a central pillar of our future workplace culture.

To quote,

“Being switched on at all times and expected to pick things up immediately makes us miserable, says [Cal] Newport. “It mismatches with the social circuits in our brain. It makes us feel bad that someone is waiting for us to reply to them. It makes us anxious.”

Because it is so easy to dash off a quick reply on email, Slack or other messaging apps, we feel guilty for not doing so, and there is an expectation that we will do it. This, says Newport, has greatly increased the number of things on people’s plates. “The average knowledge worker is responsible for more things than they were before email. This makes us frenetic. We should be thinking about how to remove the things on their plate, not giving people more to do…

Going cold turkey on email or Slack will only work if there is an alternative in place. Newport suggests, as many others now do, that physical communication is more effective. But the important thing is to encourage a culture where clear communication is the norm.

Newport is advocating for a more linear approach to workflows. People need to completely stop one task in order to fully transition their thought processes to the next one. However, this is hard when we are constantly seeing emails or being reminded about previous tasks. Some of our thoughts are still on the previous work – an effect called attention residue.”

That resonates completely with me. So let’s consider that and look into the collaboration process of a stylised order activation:

1. Customer places an order via an order-entry portal
2. Perform SQ (Service Qualification) and Credit Checks, automated processes
3. Order is broken into work order activities (automated process)
4. Designer1 picks up design work order activity from activity list and commences outside plant design (cables, pits, pipes). Her design pack includes:
   1. Updating AutoCAD / GIS drawings to show outside plant (new cable in existing pit/pipe, plus lead-in cable)
   2. Updating OSS to show splicing / patching changes
   3. Creates project BoQ (bill of quantities) in a spreadsheet
5. Designer2 picks up next work order activity from activity list and commences active network design. His design pack includes:
   1. Allocation of CPE (Customer Premises Equipment) from warehouse
   2. Allocation of IP address from ranges available in IPAM (IP address manager)
   3. Configuration plan for CPE and network edge devices
6. FieldWorkTeamLeader reviews inside plant and outside plant designs and allocates to FieldWorker1. FieldWorker1 is also issued with a printed design pack and the required materials
7. FieldWorker1 commences build activities and finds out there’s a problem with the design. It indicates splicing the customer lead-in to fibres 1/2, but they appear to already be in use

So, what does FieldWorker1 do next?

The activity list / queue process has worked reasonably well up until this step in the process. It allowed each person to work autonomously, stay in deep focus and in the sequence of their own choosing. But now, FieldWorker1 needs her issue resolved within only a few minutes or must move on to her next job (and next site). That would mean an additional truck-roll, but also annoying the customer who now has to re-schedule and take an additional day off work to open their house for the installer.

FieldWorker1 now needs to collaborate quickly with Designer1, Designer2 and FieldWorkTeamLeader. But most OSS simply don’t provide the tools to do so. The go-forward decision in our example draws upon information from multiple sources (ie AutoCAD drawing, GIS, spreadsheet, design document, IPAM and the OSS). Not only that, but the print-outs given to the field worker don’t reflect real-time changes in data. Nor do they give any up-stream context that might help her resolve this issue.

So FieldWorker1 contacts the designers directly (and separately) via phone.

Designer1 and Designer2 have to leave deep-think mode to respond urgently to the notification from FieldWorker1 and then take minutes to pull up the data. Designer1 and Designer2 have to contact each other about conflicting data sets. Too much time passes. FieldWorker1 moves to her next job.

Our challenge as OSS designers is to create a collaborative workspace that has real-time access to all data (not just the local context as the issue probably lies in data that’s upstream of what’s shown in the design pack). Our workspace must also provide all participants with the tools to engage visually and aurally – to choreograph head-office and on-site resources into “group flow” to resolve the issue.

Even if such tools existed today, the question I still have is how we ensure our designers aren’t interrupted from their all-important deep-think mode. How do we prevent them from having to drop everything multiple times a day/hour? Perhaps the answer is in an organisational structure – where all designers have to cycle through the Design Support function (eg 1 day in a fortnight), to take support calls from field workers and help them resolve issues. It will give designers a greater appreciation for problems occurring in the field and also help them avoid responding to emails, slack messages, etc when in design mode.