Recently, I stumbled across an online discussion that got me thinking about pull vs push in lean and how this applies to bringing value to teams with tooling and how we discover and prioritise work on tooling. This thought is something that I understood internally but have rarely seen discussed explicitly.

To summarise the initial question from the discussion:

An Automation Engineer finds themselves building tools they believe offer value to teams. They present their new ideas on how to improve to key members of management, who appear very interested. They build the tools, share their knowledge and in the end, no one uses them.

They repeat this process, increasingly becoming frustrated with this null effect and begin to wonder if their ideas are not grand enough to bring real change.

The big issue with this Automation Engineer’s methods is not that their ideas are not grand enough. It’s about Pull vs Push1. They are trying to push tools by predicting what teams need. Instead, they should pull tools from those groups by finding out what they need.

You must listen to your developers, understand their pain points, document them, and target them. By doing this, you will give them ownership and deliver what they genuinely need.

Ask teams questions like:

  • What are your pain points?
  • What are some things you do each week that you don’t like to do?
  • Tell me the things you have to do multiple times per week?
  • What are the most complicated, most error-prone jobs?

This way, they tell you what they need, and if it’s needed, they will use it.

Meet with each team, and gather the ‘it would be nice if…’ items. Those things outside of someone’s skill set, knowledge, or permission set - but things that you can bridge the gap.

Conclusion

When wondering what tools to build and offer your teams, first ask them the right questions; what is the right question may differ, but triage their problems and target the most problematic. When you walk into a doctor’s office, they don’t assume what’s wrong with you; they ask you questions and then evaluate your need; You should do the same for your teams!

  1. Pull vs Push in lean is an important concept here. In short, push production is about producing stock to meet predicted future demands. Pull production is about delivering a product to customers when they want it, a “just in time” method, a product is delivered to meet actual customer demand, not future forecast demand. This method results in less waste and shorter lead times. ↩︎