Operational Excellence; what's a 'CoE'?
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Depending on which side of the pond you worked- and by "pond" I'm pseudo-referring to Lake Washington- you'll have a very different reaction when you hear the acronym CoE.
Most people, including those at Microsoft, commonly understand CoE as the "Center of Excellence". It's defined as;
a shared facility or an entity that provides leadership, best practices, research, support or training for a focus area.
Around the Microsoft campus, the term CoE was frequently mentioned;
"We should have a CoE for...
The work the Quantum Computing team are doing
The logistics around Supply Chain operations
Complexities of air-gapped facilities
As a former Amazonian, hearing that acronym triggered a visceral, PTSD-like reaction for me. In Amazon's lexicon, CoE stands for 'Correction of Errors'.
While a Center of Excellence emphasizes knowledge sharing, training and development, collaboration and innovation, there are notable synergies between the two concerning operational excellence.
What is a CoE?
A CoE, or "Correction of Errors," is an internal methodology designed to systematically address and rectify mistakes, inefficiencies, or issues that arise within operations. It offers post-event analysis designed to mitigate the root cause of and issue to prevent its recurrence.
Amazon may not have invented the term, but it would seem to be popularized there. Rooted in the company's leadership principles (Leadership Principles (amazon.jobs)), a CoE fosters a continuous improvement culture, facilitates scaling, instills strong feedback loops, and strengthens operational efficiency.
What a CoE is not?
Critically, the purpose of a CoE is not to assign blame. However, in some instances, the process can be misused;
"My team has taken a dependency on your team's software. If you team doesn't fix this bug, I'll COE you"
Though an incredibly effective accountability tool, providing transparent disclosure of incidents, it can sometimes come with unintended consequences.
How does it work?
A reporting portal is established, essentially a templated form, and a CoE is assigned to a team. Over a 1-2 week period, a post-incident analysis is conducted, detailing the impact, timeline, incident detection, the "5 Why's", and action items.
5 Why's example
This is taken from Amazon again;
The problem is X. #1 Why did X happen? X happened because this action took place. #2 Why did that action take place? That action took place because there was a typo. #3 Why was a typo allowed? The typo was allowed because there was no validation. #4 Why was there no validation of the code? The current process does not validate code. #5 Why doesn’t the current process validate code? The shell used to input the code does not have that feature.
At Amazon, a CoE could be team-specific or public. Generally, if there was customer impact, it was public. An email distribution, which every hire was auto-added to, would announce every occurrence of a public CoE, from creation to ultimate closure, and had company-wide visibility including Jeff Bezos who might send a famous "?" response if the quality of the CoE was poor, the 5 Why's weren't clear, or there was any ambiguity in the outcome.
Bezos Explains His Dreaded One-Character Emails (businessinsider.com)
Same-Same, but different
Whilst the specific goals and methods of Amazon's and Microsoft's CoEs might differ significantly, their underlying principles share a commitment to excellence, continuous improvement, collaboration, incorporating feedback, being data-driven, and customer-centric.
Call to Action
Do you recognize any of these challenges?
Inconsistent processes leading to operational inefficiencies?
A lack of centralized expertise causing missed opportunities?
The desire to innovate but uncertain where to start?
If you're technology executive is not obsessed with doing more with less, and laser focused on efficiency (like implementing a CoE process), I'd be more than happy to help.
Perhaps Microsoft should have an Amazon CoE for naming their products!
https://www.howtogeek.com/338120/microsoft-sucks-at-naming-products/