How to Make Things Faster

Chapter 4. Nancy

I met Nancy (her real name) in 1994 in Denver, Colorado. Again, on a Wednesday. Like a lot of companies I visited back then, the company she worked for had bought a big Oracle Financials software license.

The engagement started off in the typical way. I flew Monday morning into Stapleton Airport, drove to the office, and as soon as I got there, we had a big meeting. A dozen or more people ate donuts and drank coffee in a conference room until the meeting was called to order. DBAs and various technical specialists all sat together on the lefthand side of a long conference table. Users and system owners all sat together on the righthand side. I, their guest, sat at the head.

I took notes as people took turns telling stories about the system. The users went first. Richard (not his real name) was having a problem with some report he was running. I didn’t recognize the name of the report; it was some kind of accounting thing. Julie (not her real name) was having a problem with some other application feature whose name I might have half-recognized. Nancy, who joined by speakerphone, explained her problems with some other thing. And on it went. I wrote down all the things that the users had told me they were having problems with.

When the DBAs and system administrators talked, it was the users’ turn to only half-recognize the words in the conversation. I was much more comfortable in this part of the meeting, because now we were using words from my vocabulary—things like ...