Constraints can spoil processes

Last week I wrote about one of the ways that process definition can go wrong: namely, when you layer one process atop another without rethinking the whole activity in an integrated way. But there are more ways besides that one.

Another common failure mode is when external constraints prevent you from working in a convenient way. In a sense it sounds too easy just to blame external constraints, because we'd like to think that if we were only clever enough we could overcome them. But that's not always easy to do.

Jury service procedure

The Los Angeles Federal Courthouse, by Daniel L. Lu
(user:dllu) Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, LINK.

A couple of months ago, I got a summons in the mail to appear for jury duty in Federal District Court in downtown Los Angeles. That's more than 90 miles from where I live. The summons included a phone number which I was to call the day before—any time after 2:00pm—to confirm whether I was really required to appear. And as a concession because I lived so far away, they were prepared to reimburse me for a hotel room.

Here's the procedure for securing reimbursement:

1. Call the day before (after 2:00pm) to confirm that I am required to report. (Assume "Yes.")
2. Call a nearby hotel to book a room. Ask for the "government rate." (The Court supplied a list of nearby hotels with government rates.)
3. Drive to the hotel.
4. On the morning of the first day of service, check out of my room and advise the hotel that I am on jury service so I might be back.
5. When I come back from the first day, ask for my room back again.
6. Repeat steps 4 and 5 every single day of jury service until I am released.
7. Pay the bill with my own funds, and then submit the defined paperwork to get reimbursed.

What's wrong with it?

I read this procedure, and right away I wondered, "Did the people who wrote this procedure ever actually try to book a hotel room in downtown Los Angeles?" As a procedure, it seems to reflect no awareness of the procedures of the hospitality industry. I see two critical gaps at the very least:*

• Hotels in prime locations often book far into the future, but I can't book my room until after 2:00pm on the day before my service starts—because the Court might not need me. And the letter was clear that the Court will not reimburse cancellation fees.
• If I check out of my room every single day, what is the likelihood that it—or any other room—will still be waiting for me when I get back at the end of the day? Probably greater than zero but less than certain. So I might find myself suddenly room-less. But if I keep my room and the contending parties come to an agreement in the hallway, the Court will dismiss me from jury service and won't pay for the following night. 

In the end it all worked out. I have family in the area, so my need for a hotel was not critical. And the Court dismissed me without asking me to appear. But the process issue stuck in my head.

Why is it like this?

When we run into difficult processes like this one, it's always tempting to blame the people who designed them. But in this case I think that the real blame has to lie with the external constraints that the system has to obey. And those constraints are not so easy to wave away.

• Most of the problem stems from the Court's unwillingness to plan more than a day ahead. But they can't. There is always the possibility that the litigating parties might come to a last-minute agreement, or that the case might be dismissed for some other reason. So the Court really doesn't know more than a day in advance whether a given pool of jurors will be needed.
• Of course it would be nice if the Court were willing to be a little flexible on this point, granting jurors a day's leeway before or after to allow them to make their plans in advance. But some jurors would be sure to abuse such leeway.
• In the same way it might be nice if the Court summoned only people who already live locally, so that the need for a hotel never arose. But that's hardly fair. Serving on juries is one of the basic duties of citizenship, along with voting. If only locals had to serve on juries, then people who happen to live near a Courthouse would carry an extra burden that never fell on those of us who live far away.
• Alternatively, we could multiply the Federal District Courts until everyone in the country lived near enough to one to count as "local." But that would mean a lot more courts! Do we need that many? Do we (as taxpayers) want to pay for that many? Maybe not.

Maybe there are clever solutions that I can't think of. But it's not an easy problem. The constraints are imposed by the unpredictability of the legal process, and by topics (like fairness and cost) governed by the political process. So changing the constraints means reworking one or both of those processes, neither of which is likely to be easy.** 

In developing your own procedures, try hard to avoid the situation where you are squeezed between such implacable constraints.

__________

* One additional topic is that if I call the Court at 2:00pm and only afterwards call a hotel, I'm likely to get on the road by about 3:00pm. This means arriving in Los Angeles at the peak of the afternoon traffic. That outcome may not—strictly speaking—count as a failure mode of the procedure. But it would certainly be a nuisance.

** As I have observed before, when the Quality process conflicts with the political process, the political process usually wins.