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7.9 At GEAR, “No One Has a Hammer”
When I explained to people at GEAR my recommendations for process asset
guidance including keeping the “what you must do” separate from the “how
you do it,” I motivated this process packaging through a specific weakness I
had identified during the gap analysis.
This weakness can best be expressed by a phrase used by one of the people I
interviewed: “No one has a hammer.” This relates to a culture at GEAR not
uncommon in R&D environments. GEAR was driven by its exceptionally
gifted engineering organization, which included brilliant engineers who
were motivated to build the best product possible.
When project pressures mount, I find each organization tends to have a
unique survival response. At NANO, Senior Management would take
charge and drive a solution from the management side. At GEAR, the engi-
neering side of the organization most often rose to meet a challenge and
drove the solution from the technical side. This had proven effective in the
past and was a large part of why they had achieved such technical success.
However, it had also contributed to their past cost and schedule overrun
problems.
GEAR had no quality organization, and effectively no checks and balances.
Part of my rationale for driving a clearly defined process asset structure with
rules and templates was to force clear criteria for product reviews, and com-
pliance checks. I knew they needed a quality group, but there was no sense
starting quality checks until we could give the quality organization clear
rules to check on. I explained to Senior Management at the gap analysis out-
brief that one of the top priorities in my recommendations was to establish a
clear minimum criterion to check against so everyone would know when it
was time to say:
NO, YOU ARE NOT READY TO PROCEED.
7.10 Another Advantage to Keeping the “How-to”
Guidance Separate
GEAR liked the approach of separating “how-to” guidance, pointing out an
advantage I hadn't previously considered. Because there were many highly
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