This is a Request For Comments about how to structure doctrine in terms of microdoctrine (a pattern language for implementing and learning doctrine)
Phase: Stop Self Harm
Category: Communication
Principle: Challenge Assumptions
Practice: Spend Control Introduction
Motivation:
There is little point of doctrine in the organization if no one is willing to challenge it.
Consider these first:
Use A Common Language
Illustrative description:
Spend Control does not control the budgets. The purpose of Spend Control is to challenge what we’re doing.
Detailed description:
Spend Control does not control the budgets. Spend Control reviews and challenges spend greater than some budget threshold. Spend Control functions as an organizational keeper of doctrine.
To start with, Spend Control should ask who are the users? What are the user needs? What metric we use to measure those needs?
For an example, assume £25K spend threshold. A project owner has a budget of £100K to spend on a project. They present the project to Spend Control. Spend Control asks who are the users, what are their needs, and how we will measure this. The response is, in this example, “I don’t know, it’s only £100K”.
Spend Control’s role is to ask the project owner to find out. The project owner is the budget holder and they can ignore Spend Control. For this example, assume the project owner ignores Spend Control and does the project. They may succeed. If something goes wrong, there is documentation of challenge and refusal to answer. Spend Control records the advice they give. In this way, Spend Control functions as an audit trail of what happened.
Spend Control builds up a picture of what the organization is doing. It builds up a picture of who are the users, what are their needs, and how we measure success. Spend Control also builds up a picture of project owners. There is data on who listens, accepts challenge, succeeds, and understands their users.
STOP READING, TAKE ACTION
Consider next:
Spend Control Awareness or Remove Bias And Duplication
Reproduced and adapted from writings by Simon Wardley under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.