Roger E. Bohn
The University of California, San Diego
Ramchandran Jaikumar
Formerly at the Harvard Business School
Click here for the abstract
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Report 2000-03 March, 2000
The Information Storage Industry Center
Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies
University of California
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Copyright © 2000
University of California, San Diego
Funding for the Information Storage Industry Center is provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. To receive hard copy of a document, send an e-mail with your address to the Publications Coordinator at isic@ucsd.edu.
Roger E. Bohn and Ramchandran Jaikumar
Abstract
This paper examines what happens when engineers and other problem solvers try to do too much. We define a firefighting syndrome, which includes frequent task switching, superficial problem solving, and recurrent problems. We show that this syndrome can be explained as a reaction to managerial pressure caused by a backlog of work, and it is self-amplifying. Although firefighting cannot be completely avoided in most organizations, it can be controlled and prevented from getting worse by a number of methods, some of them counterintuitive. Keywords: firefighting, problem solving, product development.
A version of this paper appeared in Harvard Business Review, June/July 2000. Reprint available.
Click here to download the paper (PDF format)
