Can a committee simplify anything?

Personally, I'm no great fan of committees.  Oh, they go by many names.  Virtual teams, cross functional teams, functional groups, even alliances.  At the end of the day, though, a group of people with no common management held together by someone's vision of a goal is still a committee.

In the world of IT Simplification, where you examine the portfolio of applications in an area and decide which ones will survive and which ones will be phased out, you need someone to own the decision rights for this process.  There will be hard choices to make.  Someone's favorite tool will die, and some tool that someone hates will become the corporate standard.

Traditionally, the area of simplification has been ad-hoc.  Teams have been created out of stakeholders in a specific area, and perhaps that is the only way that it works.  What I'm considering: how much of that team should be 'standing.'  In other words, should specific organizational roles be automatically identified to be part of a group of people responsible for Simplification in a specific area?

The problem with this is that applications skewer the organization in ways that no heirarchy can predict or defend against.  One app can have implications to marketing and sales, another to marketing and operations, another to R&D and support.  It is possible, nay LIKELY, that an application's reach will end up drawing two or more people into a committee to simplify, where both have the titular responsibility for Simplification.

And when you invite two chefs into the kitchen, an argument is inevitable. 

On the other hand, if you don't identify roles to automatically be part of the group, you run the risk that no one will actually own simplification for a heirarchy.

Perhaps Simplification should ONLY be owned at the CIO / Corporate IT level.  Heck, I don't know.  It's a puzzle at the moment.

If anyone has opinions, please share.

Comments

• Anonymous
  June 21, 2006
  Hello Nick,
  
  your ideas about committees rings true for many people, however it is the advantages of many minds problem solving that is the power of a committee.
  
  for example i have a System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException (0x80040154): Class not registered problem.
  and i may table this problem with a fellow member of the committee (say ...yourself), now I'm new to programming so have know idea why im getting this error except that i have maskedit objects on the form i'm trying to open.
  
  committee members may like to assist a fellow memeber by explaining how i can register this maskedit class on a  different machine.
• Anonymous
  June 22, 2006
  Hello Roland,
  
  A well formed committee either performs an analysis that an individual cannot, politically perform, or makes a decision that requires the buy-in from business leaders that have not been ordered to make it.  Examples include a committee to improve quality processes across teams, or a committee to investigate reports of fiduciary incompetence, or a committee to recommend which of a series of unrelated but conflicting business strategies should be pursued.  
  
  The scenario you present is a community, not a committee.  In MS IT, we have informal communities created by self-identification (subscription to mailing lists, mostly).  If I have a COM exception, I send an e-mail to one of the mailing lists, say C-sharp-talk, and somewhere around 500 C-sharp programmers get the message within a few minutes.  A few dozen will read it within the hour, and one or two may respond.
  
  That is the power of community.  It is important, valuable, even vital... but completely beside the point. :-)
• Anonymous
  August 14, 2006
  The comment has been removed
• Anonymous
  August 14, 2006
  The comment has been removed