Recently I was talking to the VP of Engineering of a 5-yr old "start-up" where nothing seems to go well. Even relatively simple projects have failed, and the prdictability is at all time low. After understanding the overall picture, I came to the conclusion that it all had to do with the integrity - integrity of the whole system that he is managing or trying to manage.
First, there is product integrity. This includes both technical integrity of the product as well as functional integrity. The product is very poorly designed, reusability is low, and has too many critical design flaws to enumerate. If complexity to functionality is a metric for software, this product would rank at the bottom 10%. In software, a design flaw could mean 50% more work just to circumvent it. Imagine driving a car where you hear parts rattling, wheels don't cleanly align with the road, and the steering is shaky.
Second, there is process integrity. The development process itself depends on the product being developed. Throw in a badly designed product and a bad architecture to work with, the process will be much more complex than is usually necessary. Make the process complex, and the managing that process becomes a huge overhead. As a result of increased complexity, the likelihood of process failure increases. All of a sudden, it turns into a situation where no one knows what to do next, they blame one another, and eventually leads to complete failure of the project.
Third, there is organizational integrity. In this specific case, managers weren't well aligned to the same organizational goals, which created conflict, and the engineers working for them couldn't work together. The organization had very good talent, but the talent was underutilized by inappropriate assignment of roles and responsibilities. In my view, a well designed organization is probably more important than everything else.
There is nothing new here, but losing integrity is completely antithetical to lean thinking. If you want to remain lean (and profitable), never lose sight of managing integrity, even if that means short-term pain.
