[Sigia-l] "Team work" not what's cracked up to be?

[Ziya Oz]

Ockler, Sarah:

> I think it's structured to arrive at compromise, where "let's all be
> friends" is the favored goal over "let's come up with a really great
> solution, even if we all don't agree."

As a Doctor of Design and would-be forensic pathologist :-) I get to do a
lot interface/architecture surgery, after internal/external teams have
failed. When I start a project I am given a bunch of documents, usability
tests and what are essentially "consensus documents". My job is to slice
through those to find discrepancies between goals and results: what was the
goal, what went wrong, why and what can be done about it?

For anybody outside the "team," it's extremely difficult to deconstruct the
(consensus-making) process with fidelity. At most organizations, the urge to
arrive at that compromise you refer to pretty much overwhelms all other
considerations. Clues are scattered all over the place: emails, meeting
minutes, presentations, etc. What's missing is a formalized method to
preserve majority/minority or compromise/dissention opinions and arguments.
Surprise, surprise, a better solution can usually be found among the
arguments of the dissenters, if you can unearth them.

Unfortunately, people often don't want their dissenting opinion to be
formally preserved as a record against the "team." The political cost of
that in a "team-driven" organization is usually too high.

So you get white bread, Velveeta and near-beer.

----
Ziya

Usability >  Simplify the Solution
Design >  Simplify the Problem