Why you should not align

This week, I met with some companies in the embedded systems space that are looking to start A/B experimentation in their products. These products have safety-critical functions and subsystems and of course, it’s difficult to even imagine A/B tests that aren’t, in some way, touching safety-critical functionality. The proponents of experimentation at these companies outlined the challenges they were experiencing and interestingly, all challenges were internal to the organization. To transition from the traditional specification-based R&D to A/B testing requires changes to the way testing takes place, requires a significant reduction in system variants, needs support for deployment of new software versions (preferably over the air), changes the way safety certification takes place, the way we measure data from products in the field, and so on.

Although I believe the adoption of experimentation practices is critical for any company, my point here is to focus on the fact that in most companies I work with, to change anything requires changing everything. For the longest time, companies focused on optimizing the efficiency of their operations. As a result, every activity, every process was integrated into a larger whole, carefully aligned and then tuned to the point that the amount of slack in the system has been reduced to virtually zero.

This doesn’t just take place inside companies but across business ecosystems as well. Automotive companies are famous for demanding their suppliers to build factories next to theirs so that the OEM doesn’t need to run any inventory as it will see a constant flow of product coming in from their suppliers’ factories next door. Deeply integrated, highly aligned, very efficient.