Your Project Does Have A Goal
Jurgen Appelo wrote a post a couple of days ago, Your Software Project Has No Goal. His argument was summed up in the first sentence:
Human beings, organizations and software projects share one important thing: they have no intrinsic goals.
Um… no. That’s wrong. And the reason why it’s wrong is in the very next sentence:
The goal of something that emerges from interacting parts is not determined by the goals of those parts.
The key point here is Jurgen is talking about something that emerges from interacting parts, an emergent phenomenon. But an organisation or a project isn’t an emergent phenomenon – they are created, and created with a purpose, a goal.
There are plenty of emergent phenomena all around – the flocking of birds, the building of termite mounds, convection cells in heated fluids, and so on. What all these examples have in common is that they display behaviour at the macro level – that of the flock, colony, or convection cell – which emerges from much simpler behaviour at the micro level – the individual birds, termites, or convection particle.
So, for example, in flocking a bird may only be obeying three simple rules – keep in touch with the flock, travel in the same average direction, but don’t get too close to any individuals. From these three simple rules, we start to get the typical complex flocking behaviour we all recognise, despite none of the individuals trying to behave in that manner.
In other words, the flock doesn’t have an intrinsic goal – it only happens because of interactions between participants having an emergent effect, not because they decide to form and behave as a flock.
Perhaps the strangest example of an emergent phenomenon is intelligence. Billions of neurons are connecting to each other, each individual cell following simple chemical prompts. But out of all of this, we get thought, memory – consciousness.
But the important thing to remember about all of these phenomena is that they emerged not because they were what the individual participants were aiming for, but as an unexpected outcome of it. You can readily see, however, where this breaks down for organisations and for projects.
You see, organisations, at least business organisations, don’t typically start because there happened to be a few people hanging around. They don’t emerge because separate individuals are trying to have a job.
No, organisations start because some individual, or group of individuals, decide to begin an organisation. And this is the crucial difference – an organisation is the intended outcome. To this end, a group of people are employed to be part of that organisation. An organisation is not an emergent phenomenon, it is an intended one.
And because there is a conscious effort to make an organisation, because it is an intended outcome, there is a purpose behind it. The decision to start an organisation is made because it is thought to be the best way to achieve what the creator is after. An organisation starts with a goal, otherwise it wouldn’t start at all.
Sure, once the organisation exists the interactions of the people in it may lead to an unexpected culture. There may indeed be emergent phenomena within the organisation caused by the interactions of the individuals inside it. But that doesn’t mean the organisation has no goal, only that the individuals in it have many goals, some helpful to the organisation, some not.
But because the organisation is a conscious creation, the creators of it harness these interactions, or stop them. For a business as a form of organisation, the simplest generalisation of a goal is to make money for the creators, or the owners. So those efforts of the individuals that help this goal are rewarded – by decree of those on high. Those efforts which damage this goal are punished – by decree of those on high.
And this goal, to make money, is an intrinsic one – it is the very reason the business exists. The reason an organisation can have this intrinsic goal is because it is created – it is not the product of interacting elements.
The same argument follows for projects. Projects don’t (or at the very least, really shouldn’t) start because there are some developers sitting around twiddling their thumbs, time on their hands, nothing to do. No, a project starts because some conscious agency, a creator, decrees that there is a problem to be solved, an aim to be met, a goal to be achieved.
That act of creation means the project starts with an intrinsic goal – again, because a project does not emerge out of the interactions of those within it. It is created, and then people are brought into it.
Of course, the intrinsic goal may be a bad one, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have an intrinsic goal. As a starting point, it is probably fair to assume the intrinsic goal of all projects in a business is to make, or save, the business some money. Why? Because then the intrinsic goals of the project and the organisation are aligned – meaning the project is far more likely to have been given the go ahead to begin.
It is the fact that an organisation and a project both have a conscious act of creation, an act with a defined purpose, that means they both have intrinsic goals. Religious arguments aside, there was no conscious decision made to create a race of hairless apes who run around asking questions, which is why humans don’t have intrinsic goals.
Human beings: no intrinsic goals. Organisations: intrinsic goals. And, sorry Jurgen, but yes, your software project does have an intrinsic goal.
project management, project management blog | Trevor Roberts | March 20, 2009
Sorry, but I believe your reasoning is flawed.
True, an organization is initiated because one stakeholder starts with a goal. But apparently he cannot achieve that goal by himself. So he needs to build *trade* relationships with other people, who have other goals. Those other people are employees, suppliers and customers.
All those parties have their own goals. And they all think they benefit from trading with each other. Some stakeholders invest money (customers), other stakeholders (employees) invest time.
The result is a very complex web of relationships and dependencies, the result of which is much, much more than what the first stakeholder started out with. A lot of those relationships have absolutely *nothing* to do with the goal of the first stakeholder.
Note: I have even seen *intimate* relationships being built between some stakeholders (between employees, and between employees and customers). If you think those relationships, and all other emergent properties of the organization, are all part of the goal and design of the original stakeholder, then I’m afraid you’re completely out of touch with reality.
The original stakeholder has a goal. But the organization is NOT owned by the stakeholder. Only its ASSETS are owned by the first stakeholder. Therefore only the dead assets of an organization may have the same goal. But the other (living) emergent properties are beyond his reach.
May I suggest that you read The Living Company, by Arie de Geus? A very interesting and famous book that also suggests that a company is a living system, something that emerges from its parts.
Jurgen,
The water in a saucepan on a heated stove will develop convection cells as it warms, an emergent phenomenon. But the emergent phenomenon of convection cells hasn’t created the saucepan, it is just contained within it.
Similarly, emergent phenomena may arise within an organisation, in terms of the cultures that arise across the organisation, departments and teams. But they have not caused the creation of the organisation, it was already in place.
Given the organisation is not an emergent phenomenon, then there are two possibilities: either it just exists, like a rock, or it was created, like a watch. It is fairly obvious that organisations don’t just randomly appear, which leads to the conclusion they must be created.
If they are created, then they are created with a purpose, a goal. And as this goal is the very reason for the organisation existing, that means it is intrinsic to the organisation. You appear to be suggesting that you accept this, but that because an organisation pulls in people other than the creator, the intrinsic goal is quickly removed because the new individuals all have separate and different goals. This means, you appear to argue, that any intrinsic goals are dropped, and only extrinsic goals (meaning either applied from outside the organisation, or not an inherent part of the organisation) apply.
But this isn’t the case. The creator of the organisation does pull in new people, but he ensures that the activities they perform help the organisation achieve its goal – the goal it began with. While it is true that the new individuals will not share the goal (let’s call it “make the company money”), it is possible to harness the different goals they do have. In essence, every employee shares one goal, because otherwise they wouldn’t be an employee: they want to get paid at the end of the month.
This means that the creator of the organisation can use the ‘dead’ asset he owns, that being capital, money, to incentivise the individuals to work towards a goal he has defined – the goal of the organisation. Because the employee has a goal of getting paid, he does the activities set out to him. If he does not, he doesn’t get paid, he ceases to be an employee.
Does this mean that there are no interactions within an organisation which give rise to unforeseen outcomes, to emergent phenomena? It absolutely doesn’t. Human beings are not automata. Does it mean that the aggregate of the activities in the organisation is aimed at achieving the original intrinsic goal of the organisation? It absolutely does.
Note that this isn’t arguing the organisation is only its ‘dead’ assets. But it also isn’t true to say the organisation is only the people within it, and their interactions. An organisation requires both – but the ‘dead’ assets are more important. The goal of gaining some of these assets, of getting paid, is what drives the employees – without the assets available, there would be no employees.
Yes, there will be emergent phenomena in an organisation. These will be under the original creator’s control only in a limited way (he can provide incentives to try and move behaviour into certain patterns). But these phenomena are in general irrelevant to the goals of the organisation. As long as the employees are carrying out activities to meet the goals set for them by the creator – set to help the organisation meet its goals – anything else is relatively unimportant to him.
These arguments are even more tightly focused when it comes to projects, because by definition projects are time-limited and goal-driven. A project is begun, employees are assigned, and they work towards the goal – because otherwise they don’t get paid. Their interactions may lead to a unique culture developing, an emergent phenomenon, but that doesn’t effect the goal. It may very well be irrelevant. At worst, it becomes an issue of managing the team. But the one thing it doesn’t do is lead to the project losing its original goal.