2 The paternalist syndrome

Have you ever had to request a service from another team that you’re perfectly capable of doing yourself—either because of policy or security concerns there’s this extra hurdle that you must clear for you to complete your task? The pain this causes is obvious when trying to estimate how long a task you’re responsible for will take. Every hand-off between teams is like a trip to a government agency. You might get lucky and have a smooth experience, but you’re always prepared for a long wait.

This process is sometimes necessary to keep the business safe, secure, and orderly. But sometimes the involvement of another team is about something else. It’s about a lack of trust between each other and a lack of safety inside your systems. Imagine I told you to eat soup, but I gave you no silverware to do it. My justification is that you might cut your mouth open when you try to eat your soup with a steak knife. It sounds insane, but that’s the metaphor for what many companies do and it’s lazy. The better option if I’m concerned about system safety would be to give you a spoon and only a spoon. The best tool you need for a specific task.

2.1           Introducing the gatekeepers

2.2           Examining the gatekeepers

2.3           Curing paternalism through automation

2.3.1   Capturing the purpose of the approval

2.4           Structuring code for automation

2.4.1   Approval process

Work is in the appropriate state

The necessary people are informed

There are no conflicting actions

The risk of change is acceptable to the organization

2.4.2   Automating approvals

2.4.3   Logging process

2.4.4   Notification process

2.4.5   Error Handling

2.5           Continuous improvement

2.6           Summary