Module 1 · Lesson 1.1
Where work actually breaks
Why the quality of an organisation’s work is set by the quality of its interfaces.
Key idea
Work breaks at the interfaces between people and teams, not inside them. For the interfaces that are important and recurring, the fix is an explicit agreement about what passes across, and no more structure than that.
Work is produced between people, not just by them
A factory makes a product on a line you can walk along and look at. A service or knowledge-work organisation makes its product out of conversations, emails, tickets, meetings and handoffs. The work passes from one person to another, from one team to another, and often from one office to another, many times before a client ever sees the result.
Each of those passing points is an interface. An interface is any place where one person or team depends on another for something they need to do their own work.
The quality of an organisation’s work is set by the quality of its interfaces. Strong individuals working across weak interfaces produce weak results, and they get very tired doing it.
A Harbourline example
Harbourline Services · the fictional organisation used throughout the course
Harbourline Services is the demonstration organisation used in this course and in every Structured Collaboration tool. It is a fictional IT services firm of about 250 people, with offices in Cork, Kraków, Pune and Hartford.
Harbourline’s Salesforce practice in Kraków builds and releases changes for Northlight Financial, one of its largest clients. Harbourline’s Service Desk in Pune supports Northlight’s 3,000 service-desk users.
One Monday, a release goes out from Kraków. It changes a piece of configuration that Northlight’s users rely on. Within an hour, the Pune Service Desk is taking calls about a screen that no longer behaves the way the run-book says it should.
Nobody in Pune knows a release went out. The analysts follow the run-book, which is now wrong. They escalate to Application Support in Cork, who escalate to Kraków. Kraków explains the change, and the answer travels back the same way. The users wait most of a day.
Every person in that chain did their job. The developers in Kraków released working software. The analysts in Pune followed the run-book. The people in Cork passed the question on promptly. The work broke at the interface between Kraków and Pune, where release notes and configuration changes were supposed to travel and did not.
Try it
Follow the Monday release
Click each step in turn. Then decide where the work actually broke.
Why it keeps happening
When something like this goes wrong, the natural response is to look for someone who should have tried harder. That rarely helps, because the problem is not effort. The Service Desk team leader, Rohan Mehta, raised the issue months ago. The Salesforce practice was willing to help. What was missing was an agreement about what the Service Desk needs from each release, in what form, and by when.
Without that agreement, people do the only rational thing available: they work around the gap. They ring a contact they trust, keep a private list of who to ask, or chase the answer every time. The workaround succeeds often enough to look like a solution, so the interface never gets fixed. When the person with the contacts goes on leave or leaves the company, the workaround goes with them.
This is the pattern this course is about:
- The work breaks at an interface, not inside a team.
- Everyone involved is competent and willing.
- The missing piece is a shared, explicit agreement about what passes across the interface.
- Working around the gap is rational for each person, and expensive for the organisation.
Pause and think · your notes
Think of a workaround you rely on to get something you need from another person or team.
How Alex would answer
If the honest answer to question 3 is anything other than “very little”, the workaround is carrying an interface the organisation never agreed. That makes it a strong candidate for the interface you will work on in Module 6, so keep these notes.
Not every interface needs fixing
It would be easy to conclude that every interface should have a written agreement. It should not. A one-off question between two colleagues who understand each other well needs nothing more than a conversation. Formalising it would waste everyone’s time.
The interfaces that deserve attention are the ones that are important and recurring: they carry real weight, and they come up again and again. The release handoff from Kraków to Pune is one of them. It happens every time Northlight’s system changes, and every failure lands on Northlight’s 3,000 service-desk users.
Structured collaboration is the practice of finding those interfaces and giving each one the level of structure it needs: enough to make it reliable, and no more.
Try it
Which interfaces deserve structure?
For each Harbourline interface, choose an answer, then check.
Release notes from the Kraków Salesforce practice to the Pune Service Desk, before each Northlight release.
A one-off question to a colleague you have worked with for years about a client’s history.
The handover between shifts on the Pune Service Desk, every day.
Asking a colleague in another office to cover one meeting next week.
Milestone details sent by Account Management to Billing each month so Northlight can be invoiced.
What comes next
In the next lesson you will look at why this calls for updated management rather than less of it. In Module 6 you will build a canvas for one interface in your own work, so start noticing the handoffs that cost you time.
What to take away
- An interface is any place where one person or team depends on another for what they need to do their own work.
- When work breaks, look at the interface before you look for someone who should have tried harder.
- Give structure only to interfaces that are important and recurring; the rest need a conversation.
Your progress
Course contents · This is the open version of the course. Your notes, progress and check scores are saved on this device, and in your account when you are signed in.