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Comment by jbob2000 | Hacker News Reader

jbob2000·

I really like that!

One of the problems I see in my company is the "hero" vs. "process" mentality. We don't setup processes that any employee can handle, we just have a few "heroes" who rush in to save the day any time there is an issue. This leads to huge problems when the heroes want time off because we have no idea how they do what they do.

A sabbatical program like this would force a shift towards processes. At least I hope...

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Every place I've ever worked relied on heroics to some degree. Some more so than others. Project is way behind schedule? CRUNCH TIME! Only one person knows the code base? Give him all the work! Critical bugs found close to release? All nighters until they're fixed! In all cases, what was needed was more discipline and process. But if you ask people, they'll often tell you "process is bad and project managers should go off and make their spreadsheets and let me write my code in peace!"

The other reasons why processes are not adopted is that most employees are not thinking in terms of 'processes'. Secondly typical process/BPM tools are geared towards I.T. rather than regular workers.

Both problems can be solved by gearing tools towards end-users rather than I.T. and allowing processes to emerge from lower-level constructs like (say) discussion threads that workers normally participate in. This would gently steer workers towards a process mindset.

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