IBM's "Provisioning Steering Committee"
/IBM's "Provisioning Steering Committee" .accelerates decision making and works out systemic inefficiencies in the organization.
provisioning host versus interrupting host
Interrupts from the host (i.e. the infrastructure outside and around the development team) cause delays to development teams resulting in tremendous inefficiencies.
Typically, these are the result of "control needs" by the management hierarchy. The team absorbs the cumulative impact of these interrupts.
At IBM we set up a committee of three key executives; marketing, engineering, and manufacturing. All three members were Vice Presidents with significant power and organizational span of control.
Example of typical host interrupts
The group met every Thursday at 11:00AM for less than 30 minutes. Program Managers would have 3 minutes each to present their most important "interrupts" and explain the root cause and impact they were having. We limited the running list of interrupts to 15 each week.
The goal was for no interrupt to show up the following week, which meant that it had to be resolved in less than seven days. The point of the meeting was to communicate the problems, but not solve them in the meeting. Separate meetings were set up to work on the details with those individuals affected.
The essential element of this was to understand the time impact to the team's schedule. Further, the executives would drill into detail to determine if the interrupt was systemicor situational.The systemic problems, if resolved, could have significant long term efficiency savings, so these received a lot of attention.
Example of one team’s interrupt matrix