How to Make Things Faster

Chapter 105. Face

“I just made the TPS report 10,0000 times faster!” You’re ecstatic, and for good reason. You can’t wait to tell somebody. You run to your client’s department director’s office, and you tell her exactly what you did: “I just made the TPS report 10,0000 times faster!”

“That’s great,” she tells you. But she doesn’t seem as happy as you thought she’d be. And then she asks who wrote that code. Still jubilant, you tell her. Your enthusiasm now begins to evaporate as it dawns on you what’s going on. Next thing you know, she’s on the phone with that developer’s manager, telling him she wants him in her @#$%&! office. Now.

You didn’t realize you were starting an avalanche, but you’re in it up to your ears now, because you didn’t think just one move ahead. Now all you can think is how much you wish you could rewind ten minutes and play this hand a little differently.

Here’s an alternate story. Your first meeting wasn’t the department director; it was the developer who wrote the TPS report program. You show him how you found the 10,000× improvement opportunity. He gets it. You learn that he and his colleagues had also made the same mistake in three other reports, so, wow, the success story is going to be four times better than you originally thought.

You go to the department manager’s office together. The message is that you and the developer have found a way to make four reports, including TPS, 10,000 times faster. You’ve already scheduled a brown-bag lunch meeting for ...