My Experience Sorting Out the “DG Triangle” Mess
Alright, let me walk you through this thing we ended up calling the “DG Triangle” situation. It wasn’t about romance or anything, just a nickname for a real headache of a project I had to deal with some time back. It popped up unexpectedly, really.
The Beginning of the Trouble
It all started when I noticed three key parts of a workflow were completely out of sync. Think of it like three people trying to drive the same car, each grabbing the wheel and pedals at random. That was our situation. One system inputting data, another processing it, a third trying to use the output, and none of them talking the same language or agreeing on timing. We slapped the “DG Triangle” label on it because it felt just that complicated and tangled.
Diving In Headfirst
So, I got tasked with untangling it. The first thing I did was block out time to just observe. I sat down and watched the data flow, step by step. Where did it start? Where did it bottleneck? Where did it just completely fall apart? I talked to the folks directly involved in each step. Not their managers, the actual people doing the work.
- Listened to their frustrations.
- Asked them what they thought the problem was.
- Mapped out the process as they saw it, not how the manuals said it should be.
Finding the Real Issues
Turns out, like usual, the documentation was way off from reality. Each point of the ‘triangle’ had developed its own workarounds and assumptions because the original process was flawed. They weren’t trying to cause problems, they were just trying to get their own piece done. Communication was basically zero between the three points.
Making the Changes
Okay, so mapping it out was one thing, fixing it was another. I didn’t have authority over all the teams, so I couldn’t just dictate changes. My approach was more about getting everyone in the same room, literally and figuratively.
Steps Taken:
- Scheduled short, regular check-ins with key people from all three areas. No managers allowed initially, just the doers.
- We put the process map I’d made up on a whiteboard. Pointed out the breaks and contradictions.
- Focused on one broken link at a time. What’s the simplest thing we can do right now to fix this one specific handover?
- We agreed on small, testable changes. Try something for a week, see if it helps or hurts.
- Got folks to agree on common definitions and formats. Simple stuff, but it wasn’t happening before.
The Outcome
It wasn’t instant magic. There was grumbling. Some things we tried didn’t work and we had to backtrack. But slowly, painfully, we started untangling the “DG Triangle”. The key was breaking down the big mess into small, manageable problems and getting the actual people involved to talk directly to each other. We eventually got the workflow smoothed out. It wasn’t perfect, but it was functional and the constant emergencies stopped.
Looking back, that whole experience hammered home how crucial it is to understand the real process on the ground, not just the official one. And you gotta get people talking. Simple as that, but hard to do sometimes.
