Communication Skills Are Essential

When recruiting personnel for your project, don't underestimate the importance of teamwork and communication. The best software architect becomes a poor asset if he or she is unable to communicate, convince, listen, and compromise.

Communication breakdowns can occur at any process level. The effects of these problems are not independent. For instance, fluctuating requirements increase a development team's need for communication both with customers and with the project's other teams.

Exceptional architects are skilled at communicating their technical vision to other project members. They usually possess exceptional communication skills and often spend much of their time educating others about the application domain and its mapping into computational structures. In fact, much of their design work is accomplished while interacting with others. The integrative role of an exceptional designer compounds itself. This happens because those perceived as most knowledgeable will become communication focal points, providing them more knowledge about the system to integrate into a more comprehensive model.


Reference:
Curtis, B., Krasner, H., and Iscoe, N., "A Field Study of the Software Design Process for Large Systems," Communications of the ACM, November 1988.

Expect Excellence

Your employees will do much better if you have high expectations of them. Studies by Warren Bennis prove conclusively that, the more you expect, the more results will be achieved (obviously with some limit). In many experiments, heterogeneous groups were divided into two subgroups with identical goals. One subgroup was treated as if excellence was expected. The other subgroup was treated as if mediocrity was expected. In every experiment, the group for whom excellence was expected outperformed the other group.

You can show in many ways that you expect excellence: Be an example (work hard, be proud of your efforts well done, don't play computer games on the job). Provide educational benefits to your employees to help them achieve their best. Reward excellent behavior.* Coach, tutor, cajole, and attempt to inspire your poorer performers toward better work products and habits. If you (or they) fail, find more suitable opportunities for them within your organization or your company. If all else fails, help them find a job outside. You cannot allow them to stay in an inappropriate job, but you must also show compassion. If you leave them where they are, your product will be of lower quality and your other employees will assume that poor performance is acceptable.


Reference:
Bennis, W., The Unconscious Conspiracy: Why Leaders Can't Lead, New York: AMA-COM, 1976.

Trust Your People

In general, if you trust people, they will be trustworthy. If you treat people as if you don't trust them, they will give you reason not to trust them. When you trust others and give them no reason not to trust you, they will trust you. Mutual trust is essential for successful management.

When one of your employees says, "Can I take off today at 2:00 PM? I'll work a few hours extra later in the week," you should say, "Yes." You lose nothing, and you gain the loyalty and respect of your employee. There are many more opportunities to be the bad guy than the good guy. Take every chance you can get to be the good guy. Who knows, maybe in a few weeks you'll need to ask the employee to work a few extra hours for a job you need to have done.


Reference:
McGregor, D., The Human Side of Enterprise, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1960.

Listen To Your People

The people who work for you must be trusted. If they're not trustworthy (or if you don't trust them), your project will fail. If they don't trust you, your project will also fail. Your people can tell as quickly that you don't trust them as you can when your boss doesn't trust you.

The first rule of trust is listening. There are many opportunities to listen to your people: when they visit your office to tell you about a problem they are having, when you need an estimate from them for a software development, when you are managing by walking around (MBWA), among others. Whenever your people are talking to you, listen and hear. They consider what they are saying to be important or they wouldn't be telling you. There are many ways to let them know you are listening: eye contact, appropriate body language, "playing back" what you think you heard them say, asking appropriate questions to solicit more information, and so on.


Reference:
Francis, P., Principles of R&D Management, New York: AMACOM, 1997.

A Few Good People Are Better Than Many Less Skilled People

This follows immediately from the idea that People Are The Key To Success, which says that you should always hire the best engineers. This principle says that you are better off allocating just a few good, experienced engineers on a critical task than to put many inexperienced engineers on it. This is Don Reifer's "Management Principle #6." On the other hand, Manny Lehman warns that you can't rely too much on "a few good people"; what if they quit? The best advice is to have the right mix of people on a project and take care not to gravitate towards either extreme. Those people with the most experience are probably closest to retirement. Keep them working with people with less experience so their knowledge isn't lost in the future.


Reference:
Reifer, D., "The Nature of Software Management: A Primer," Tutorial: Software Management, Washington, DC: IEEE Computer Society Press, 1986.

People Are The Key To Success

Highly skilled people with appropriate experience, talent, and training are key to producing software that satisfies user needs on time and within the budget. The right people with insufficient tools, languages, and process will succeed. The wrong people (those with insufficient training, experience, or work ethic) with appropriate tools, languages, and process will probably fail. According to the Constructive Cost Model (COCOMO), the best people are 4 times more productive than others. If the best people cost 4 times the salary, you break even and probably end up with a better product (Great Designs Come From Great Designers). If they cost less, you reduce costs and have a better product. That's a win-win.

When interviewing prospective employees, remember that there is no substitute for quality. Companies often say, after interviewing two people, "Person x is better than person y, but person y is good enough and less expensive." You can't have an organization of all superstars, but, unless you have an overabundance of them now, hire them!


References:
Boehm, B., Software Engineering Economics, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1984.
Weinberg, G., The Psychology of Computer Programming, New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1971.

Understand The Customers' Priorities

It is quite possible that the customers would rather have 90 percent of the system's functionality late if they could just have 10 percent of it on time. The corollary of the principle of communicate with customers/users is quite a bit more shocking, but it could very well be the case. Find out!

If you are communicating with your customers, you should be sure you know their priorities. These can easily be recorded in the requirements specification, but the real challenge is to understand the possibly ever shifting priorities. In addition, you must understand the customers' interpretation of "essential," "desirable," and "optional" and prioritize the requirements accordingly. Will they really be happy with a system that satisfies none of the desirable and optional requirements?


Reference:
Gilb, T., "Deadline Pressure: How to Cope with Short Deadlines, Low Budgets, and Insufficient Staffing Levels," Information Processing, Amsterdam: Elsevier Publishers, 1986.

Don't Believe Everything You Read

As a general rule, people who believe in a particular philosophy search for data that supports that philosophy and discard data that does not. Someone who wants to convince others of a position obviously uses supportive, not unsupportive, data. When you read, "Use method X. You too can achieve up to 93 percent increases in productivity (or quality)," the method may really have achieved such results. But it was probably the exceptional case. In all likelihood, most projects experience far less dramatic results. And some projects may even experience decreased productivity using method X.


Reference:
Fenton, N., "How Effective Are Software Engineering Methods?" Journal of Systems and Software, August 1993.

Good Management Is More Important Than Good Technology

Good management motivates people to do their best. Poor management demotivates people. All the great technology in the world will not compensate for poor management. And good management can actually produce great results even with meager resources. Successful software startups do not become successful because they have great process or great tools (or great products for that matter!). Most have been successful because of great management and great marketing.

As a manager, you have a responsibility to do your best. There are no universally "right" styles of management. Management style must be adapted to the situation. It is not uncommon for a successful leader to be an autocrat in one situation and a consensus-based leader in another, just a few minutes later. Some styles are innate. Others can be learned. If necessary, read books and take short courses on management style.


Reference:
Fenton, N., "How Effective Are Software Engineering Methods?" Journal of Systems and Software, August 1993.

How To Have A Successful Off-Site

Off-site meetings are a great way to break free from the tunnel vision that can develop in the workplace. They can inspire your team to think big and in creative, new directions. Off-sites can resonate for years.

Before

Set realistic goals. The senior person at the off-site should determine what the off-site is meant to accomplish then create an agenda that guides everyone toward that goal. To ensure that everyone can make an intelligent contribution you must make sure that everyone attending has the relevant data ahead of time.

During

Set ground rules. Consider setting specific times where phones and laptops are not allowed. Any topics that are raised that take away from the off-site goal should be written down - "parked" for later discussion. If questions are asked of your attendees then make them open-ended questions to encourage more participation.

After

End with a plan of action. One way of doing this is to assign a champion to each action item that comes out of the off-site. The champion doesn't have to do the work but they are responsible for getting the right people started on it.

Four Points For a Better Team

1. Promote The Team
• Teamwork is powerful. Reward it. Also, make the effort to stop selfish and egocentric behavior.
2. Get Visual
• Everyone understands a good image. Instead of a paragraph that starts with tl;dr make a graphic that captures the point.
3. Tell The Company Story
• A company story enables deeper understanding than a vision statement. This understanding will help your employees focus on the company mission.
4. Be Present
• Get out and mingle with your employees and coworkers. Your team is watching you so strike up conversations and inspire unity and foster some goodwill.