Time for 2 big decisions Monday night
(4/11/09, by Dave Emerson) I’m not sure who decided to place Los Al’s City Hall sundial in the shade, but it’s a pretty good metaphor for trying to figure out what’s going on with the City Council right now.
The good news is, things should be clearer by the end of Monday’s night’s special Council meeting, where two major decisions could be made:
- Who will be our next City Manager
- Who will fill Dean Grose’s City Council seat
This may be the most important Council meeting in several years, and I’d encourage you to be there to politely make your thoughts known to our Council.
The Council majority has an interesting choice before them in both appointments: Consolidate their power but increase the schism that has haunted Los Al for the past decade, or reach out and try to bring our community together while relaxing their control.
It’s a historic opportunity that could be a major step towards uniting our community, or another step to dividing us even further.
I hope to go into more detail on this later this evening, but family Easter weekend activities beckon right now.
It’s more important for you, the interested community member, to share your opinion, which is why we have open posting here. Try to be respectful–to disagree agreeably. Like the Council, you can be part of the problem, or part of the solution.
Advertisement:
Related posts:
To date we have seen potentially three candidates that I believe offer a path forward.
Sheridan: Pluses Good community involvement. Has run for the seat in the past. Good experience leading the Traffic Commission. Can come up to speed quickly. Minuses He has been a vocal opponent on the issue of changing the commissions. Proponent on the Edgar Recall. Marilyn and Troy both will vote against him creating a 2/2 split.
Carvajal: Pluses Good community involvement. Good experience on City Commissions including chairing the commission. Can come up to speed quickly. Minuses No visible support from the “majority”. AYSO involvement echos back to Freeman.
Yee Pluses Leadership positions in personal history. Potentially understands the business of management. Minuses No experience in involvement with city business. Will require a greater learning curve to come up to speed.
So, what is the final outcome? One of these three offers the best opportunity for Los Al on the path forward. The first two will be effective almost immediately. Since both the first two were offered by the minority, both would be acceptable to the minority, but would they be acceptable to the majority, or does the fact that they were offered by the minority make them automatically objectionable? The third is an unknown and how she would answer direct questions would be important to understanding how she thinks. The one question I would ask Ms. Yee would be, “Six Sigma is about following process models. New methods like Pragmatic and Extreme Programming break most current process models. How do you believe one integrates new process models into old forms and methods?”
So, be there Monday night to see if anyone asks that question, and see if the railroad is still running and rolling over the minority.
Dave, the fact that we even have a sundial on the lawn speaks volumes about city hall and the community.
Am I the only one who sees the irony in that?
One step forward and 100 steps back!
I love the sundial. I had the pleasure of explaining how it worked to my daughter and my son (both when they were about 7). It was great to have a working example of antiquity right here in our own town.
But I do agree that it is a great metaphor for the Bates years and before (and now the Edgar years, I guess.).
JM–
I’m thinking it would be easier to explain how a sundial works if it wasn’t in the shade most of the day?
Just like it might be easier to figure out what’s going on in the City Council if they shed more light on their thinking, and met in closed sessions a lot less.
For example, two weeks ago I asked the Council Members to forward me information on their Council nominees and why they had chosen them. I gave them my e-mail, and was heartened to see several of them actually write it down. I told them I wanted to let the people know why they had made their choices.
After me, Chuck Sylvia spoke, saying it was a bad idea to release information about Council nominees in advance, and the Council should decide based on their impressions after interviewing the candidates.
The only Council member I heard from was Gerri Mejia.
A little more light could go a long way.
If you are still and quiet, you can hear the train coming. The fix is on, and no one, can stop it. Get ready for “POTTERVILLE’.
Has anyone heard from our self proclaimed “Community Leader”? It seems fairly obvious that the majority, is all on the same page, as none of them can be reached to give info on their selections. I guess none of them have any walnuts.
You know what? I can hear the train coming, I can also smell a recall picking up some steam…
I can not wait to hear the excuse Troy has for overlooking Nita for City Manager. How about the most trusted voice or the community leader? What will they have to say…
“It’s A Wonderful Life”, we better make sure we are at the council meeting to support our city since it does not seem like the majority has its’ best interest at heart.
JM–
I e-mailed your sigma 6 question to Anne Yee, and she e-mailed back a detailed answer. I was impressed both with her rapid response and the time she devoted to it.
Her technical expertise is obvious. Here’s her response to your question:
Hi Dave:
It’s nice to hear from you again.
Your blogger is certainly well informed about software process. The question is pretty technical but I will try to stay concise and avoid too much jargon so that my answer will be useful to the greatest number of people.
First, let me provide some background information about my experience with six sigma and extreme programming as context.
I agree that six sigma is about following process, but it does (at least not in my experience) espouse any particular process model. Six sigma can be used to study any process. It has been most commonly used for processes with a high rate of repetition such as manufacturing because it is easier to collect enough data on repetitive processes and hence draw statistically valid conclusions. However, at Northrop Grumman where I was certified, the desire was to fully embrace the six sigma model so we were allowed to apply the methodology to any process as long as we were careful in our use of statistics. When I was acting as a black belt at Northrop Grumman, I was able to study a wide variety of processes such as: hardware repair, warranty response, procurement approval, software patching, and low rate production processes.
I have been exposed to quite a few process models during my professional life, such as TQM (Total Quality Management) and CMMI (Capability Maturity Model Integrated). What I like about six sigma is its emphasis on using a business case to define the level of quality a process should provide. Other models seem to imply that higher quality is always better but in the real world, that is not necessarily true. Not all processes need to be at the same high level of quality (yield); they only need to deliver the level of quality needed to meet customer requirements or to fit the business model of the company using them. If the cost of improvement exceeds the benefit of the improvement, then the project should not proceed. For example, at TruePoint systems, we deliver a system that can enhance logistics efficiency. But if the cost of our system exceeded the bottom line benefits we could deliver, no one would buy our product. At Northrop Grumman we were encouraged to find a minimum of $150,000 ROI within a two year period before embarking on an improvement project to help us to focus our resources on the right things.
I am quite familiar with extreme programming and in fact have applied aspects of it in some of the commercial engineering organizations I have led. Extreme programming focuses on “test first” and on small cycles of development with lots of team coordination. I have found it very useful for incremental releases of existing products or for small iterative development towards total capability after the architecture is fairly well understood. The lead programmer at TruePoint systems is an extreme programming advocate and has been actively working to bring some its best aspects into our culture.
Now, to the real meat of the question is: How do you believe one integrates new process models into old forms and methods.
In six sigma, we do not assume old forms and methods are necessarily wrong. If they are delivering the desired or required customer satisfaction, then they are working. Changes tend to be focused on either really strategic processes in order to gain a competitive edge or those processes that have been failing to meet customer satisfaction goals. That being said, if a process needs to change, there are two types of six sigma methods to apply, DMAIC and DMADV. DMAIC stands for Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control. It is a method for studying an existing process and making incremental improvements that will help it achieve its quality goals. The assumption is that the existing process is pretty close to meeting the quality goals and it just needs some tweaking to help it get there. But sometimes the existing process is fundamentally limited in its ability to ever achieve the desired quality level. For example if you measured a process and its yield was 3 sigma, and you needed it to achieve 6 sigma, it is unlikely that incremental improvements will get you there. It is possible that you have built your process on assumptions or methods that are just the wrong fit for the situation at hand. For example, perhaps when you designed your processes they were state of the art, but you have allowed them to become stale and now your competition is beating you with modern methods. In those cases, it is recommended that you start over from scratch. DMADV stands for Define, Measure, Analyze, Design, Verify and is the approach for figuring out what process is best to meet the true requirements. On closer look, it is basically a Systems Engineering process which I like because I am by practice a Systems Engineer.
In your bloggers example, it is unlikely that incrementally improving on an old standard (e.g. a waterfall process) would lead to something as different as extreme programming. However, if you were using the old standard and it was clearly incapable of meeting certain goals (like 1 month release turn around time), DMADV might cause you to select extreme programming as the best process for your organizational need.
There is of course the next challenge you face once you have decided to make a major process change which how to get your team, which is used to the old methods, to transition over to the new methods and how do you make the change orderly such that your customers do not experience it negatively. That is a whole other email, and perhaps best left to another day.
I hope this response adequately answers your blogger’s information needs. Feel free to get back to me if more information is needed.
Best Regards,
Anne K. Yee | TruePoint Systems | V.P. Engineering