Presenter : Khizra Samad 1

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Parts

Book is divided in following parts

• “Managing the human resource”

• “The office environment”

• “The right people”

• “Growing productive teams”

• Team Formation

• “Son of peopleware”

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Part 1: Managing Human Resource

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oBoth Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister say that:• The major problems of our work are not so much technological as

sociological in nature

oWhy do managers manage as though technology were their principal concern?• Because it is easy

o Other reasons:

• Little management experience

• Schooled in how the job is done rather than how to manage the job

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• Managing people as though they were modular components

• Where does it come from?

• Promoted to manager because we were good doers.

• Design into components with standard interface

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Managing People – Survey

Results• Survey results from 500 projects:

• 15% of the projects were cancelled, postponed or delivered

something that was never used

• 25% of the projects failed to complete

• No technological issue was found to explain the failure

• The reason for the failure:

• Politics

• The term “Politics” is often loosely used to mean people related

problems or social problems

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Project failure

• Politics as a cause of failure

• Communication problems

• Staffing

• Motivation

• High turn over

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Many of the issues were not technological but sociological

• Managers agree that they have more people issues then technology issues, but they do not manage that way.

• Interested more in the technical issues then the people issues

• Results from the training and education that the manager had in his technical background.

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The high tech illusion

• Are we in the high tech world?

• Concentrating on technical is easier then concentrating on people

• Human interactions are complicated.

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Fast food business model

• Remove the errors, make the machines (or people) run as smooth as possible.

• Do not allow goofing off on the job

• Treat the people as interchangeable parts

• Optimize the steady state

• Standardize everything

• Don’t think, do everything by the book

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Imagine!! You are a manager of fast food franchise

Make machines (human) work as smoothly as possible!

Imagine!! You are a manager of fast food franchise

Take hard line about people goofing off on the job!

Imagine!! You are a manager of fast food franchise

Treat workers as interchangeable pieces of the machine!

Imagine!! You are a manager of fast food franchise

Optimize the steady-state!

Imagine!! You are a manager of fast food franchise

Standardize Procedure and Eliminate Experimentation

– Do everything by the book!!!!

But…You are not

A Quote for Errors

• Making mistake is natural and healthy.

• Learn to throw away.

• Atmosphere that doesn’t allow error makes people defensive.

• Encourage people to make some error, that helps in learning process.

• Congratulate people on completing of tasks.

Management: The bozo definition• Wrong Definition

• “Management is kicking ass”.

• Manager provide thinking, people underneath just carry them out.

• Correct Version

• Boost people, make them active but let people be creative, inventive, and thoughtful.

• Don’t be a Dracula to keep people working, most of them love their work. Let them do it.

The People Store

• Don’t think people as parts of machine (a part wear out you get a new one).

• Make sure work goes on whether the individual stays or not.

• Every worker is unique, accept it.

• Uniqueness is what makes project chemistry vital and effective.

• Don’t be threatened by individuality of people.

Example…

• One of my clients bought a splendid employee into a salary review and was just amazed that the fellow wanted something more then money. He wanted a stable internet connection at home.

• The company did!!

• In subsequent years it even built and furnished a small home office for the fellow.

• Its unusual, a less perceptive manager would never do something like that. They are threatened by individuality.

A project in steady state is dead• Project will not work for ever. Its

suppose to end.

• Do not judge resources quantitatively.

• Understand the role of catalyst. A person who can help a project to jell is worth two people who just do work.

Example

• “After watching her in class for a week and talking to some of her co-workers, I came to the conclusion that she was a superb catalyst. Teams naturally jelled better when she was there. She helped people communicate with each other and get along. Project was more fun when she was part of them. When I tried to explain this idea to the manager, I was stuck out. He just didn’t recognize the role of catalyst as essential to a project.”

Give time to think!!

• Give time for brainstorming, investigating new methods, reading, training, and just goofing off.

• Ask questions like “Ought this thing to be done at all?”

• We are so busy Doing Something, Anything that we spend ONLY 5% of our time on the combined actives of planning, investigating, reading, training, estimating, budgeting, scheduling, allocating personnel.

Horrifying but true

•An average developer doesn’t own a single book on the subject of this or her work. And hasn’t ever read one.

• What could be the after effects ofworking as an IT Professionalovertime and overnight ???

• Divorces

• Addition to Drugs

• Suicides

Theories of Value• The Spanish Theory, for one, held that only a fix of Value existed

on earth, and therefore the path to the accumulation of wealthwas to learn to extract it more efficiently from the soil or frompeople's backs.

• The English Theory that the Value could be created throughingenuity and technology.

• The Indians Theory that moved huge quantities of gold acrossthe ocean and all they got for their effort was enormousinflation.

• “ Working Smarter ” and “Working Hard” stands for “ Employee should WORK HARDER and LONGER at the expense of their lives

• You may please your manager by working HARD but your home is telling a different story

• “But you know when the truth is told, that you can get what you want or you can just get old. You’re going to kick off before you even halfway through. When you realize … Vienna waits for you ?

___”The stranger,” Billy Joel

There are No such Thing as Overtime

• Undertime cancel out Overtime

• Overtime , working on Saturdays is not much beneficial

• Unpaid overtime is invisible in Manager list as Undertime isinvisible in employee timesheet

Workaholics• Workaholics are those who will put in uncompensated

overtime and work extravagant hours under pressure andother hand they are actually spoiling their personal lives

• Slow down, you’re doing fine, you can’t beeverything you want to be before your time.Although it’s so romantic on the borderline tonight.But when you realize… Vienna waits for you ?

• Reaction to above saying

Workaholic seek revenge and

just Quit without saying anything

• Workholism is an illness ; if you exploit them to thehilt you will lose them

Productivity : Wining battles and LosingWars • Organization tactics to improve Productivity :

- Pressurize people to put in more hours

- Mechanize the process of product development

- Compromise the quality of product

- Standardize procedures

• Excessive use of any of these measure can make work lessenjoyable and less satisfying and increase Turnover

• Organizations don’t keep statistics on turnover and non cantell you what replacement of an experienced worker costs.

• Turnover is not nonexistent

or cost free

Reprise

• “During the past year, I did some consulting for a project thatwas proceeding so smoothly that the project manager knewshe would deliver the product on schedule. She wassummoned in front of the management committee andasked for a progress report. She said she could guaranteethat her product would be ready by the deadline of March 1,exactly on time according to the original estimate. The uppermanagers chewed over that piece of unexpected good newsand then called her in again the next day. Since she was ontime for March 1, they explained, they deadline had beenmoved up to January 15. “

• Manager prefers to hopelessly impossible schedule to extractmore labor from workers

• People under time pressure don’t work better; they justwork faster and sacrifice product quality and their own jobsatisfaction.

What is management’s

true role?

• A manager’s function is not to make people

work, but to make it possible for people to

work

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Quality (if time permits)

• People have emotional binds to their products

• Managers risk product quality by setting unreasonable deadlines.

• Is it a challenge?

• When time is running out, there will not be more resources, more people, more tools, but the thing that will be reduced will be quality.

• Problems will be pushed under the rug or put a side for later fix

Quality (if time permits)

• How does the reduced quality affect the team members?

• Managers treat quality as another attribute of the product.

• The builders have the point of view that the outmost quality is needed for their product.

• “The market doesn’t give a damn about that much quality”

• Quality increase productivity

• “Quality is free but only to those who are willing to pay heavily for it”

Parkinson’s law Work will expand to fill the time allocated for it.

Will setting impossible dates force the people to work harder?

Does Parkinson’s Law apply to your people?

• People that enjoy their work do not loaf around wasting the time

• If you run into this issue, perhaps you should look into reassigning people to different tasks (or different companies)

• Organizational “busy work” tends to expand to fill the working day

• Forms

• Unneeded reports

• Etc…

There is no Silver bullet Fred Brooks – The mythical Man Month

• Pressure to improve productivity pushes managers to look for a silver bullet, a magic solution that will increase productivity and solve all of the problems.

The seven false hopes of software management

• There is some new trick you’ve missed that could send productivity soaring

• Other managers are getting gains of 100%, 200% or more• Technology is moving so swiftly that you’re being passed by• Changing languages will give you a huge gain• Because of backlog you need to increase productivity immediately.• You automate everything else, isn’t it time you automate away your

software development staff• Your people will work better if you put them under a lot of pressure

“You never get anything done here between 9 & 5”• I come early to accomplish more then when people show up

• In one late evening I can accomplish more then 2 regular days

• Too many meetings to get anything done

Part 2 : The office environment

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Open Office Environment

• A policy of total default:

• Failure to address the issue by saying that the solution is

beyond human capability

• IBM Survey results for Ideal office configuration:

• 100 sq.ft. of dedicated space per worker

• 30 sq.ft. of work surface per worker

• Noise protection in the form of enclosed offices or six foot

high partitions

Office arrangement

• Windows

• Who sits next to the windows ?

• Offices

• Open space

•Bringing back the door• Creative space

Part 3 : The right people

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The Right People

• Get the right people

• Make them happy so they don’t want to leave

• Turn them loose

Finding the right people

• But what do you really know about the candidate?

• Have him bring examples

• Holding an audition – have the candidate prepare a presentation about his prior projects.

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Hire Right People

• Jim Collins: “Good to Great”

• Get the right people on the bus and the wrong people off

the bus

• Good-to-great companies built a consistent system … They

hired self-disciplined people who didn’t need to be

managed, and then managed the system, not the people

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Hiring Process

• While hiring:

• Portfolios

• Aptitude test

• Holding an auditorium

• Don’t let human resources organization

dominate

Replacing people

• Hidden costs of turnover

• Short term view of employees

• Employee moral

• Structure is top heavy due to fast promotion

Keep employees happy

• What is the annual employee turnover in the organization over the past few years?

• How much does it cost to replace a person?

Part 4 : Growing productive Teams

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Productivity Factors

• Productivity factors were observed by conducting

coding war game with 600 developers from 92

companies

• Top performers were about 10 times faster the worst

performers

• Top performers were about 2.5 times faster than median

performers

• Best organizations worked 11.1 times faster than the worst

organization

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Productivity Factors [continued]

• Productivity non-factors:

• Language, years of experience, and salary

• Productivity factors:

• Work space, noise, privacy and interruptions

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Productivity Factors [continued]

• Coding war game performance results:

Environment of the Best and Worst Performers

In the Coding War Games

Environmental Factors

Those Who

Performed in

1st Quartile

Those Who

Performed in

4th Quartile

1. How much dedicated work

space do you have? 78 sq.ft. 48 sq.ft.

2. Is it acceptably quiet? 57 % yes 29 % yes

3. Is it acceptably private? 62 % yes 19 % yes

4. Can you silence your phone? 52% yes 10 % yes

5. Can you divert your calls? 76 % yes 19 % yes

6. Do people often interrupt you

needlessly? 38 % yes 76 % yes

How to kill a team

• Defensive management

• Bureaucracy

• Physical Separation

• Fragmentation of people’s time

• Quality reduction of the product

• Phony deadlines

• Clique control

“Most organizations don’t plan on killing a team, they just do so”

Replacing people

• Obvious costs?

• 1 – 2 month salary to find a replacement (agency or in house hiring team)

• Training

• Time period to make the employee productive

Open Management

• Let people do their job

• Give people the freedom to perform their job

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Brain Time Versus Body Time

• Typical developer work mode:

• Working alone: 30%

• Working with one other person: 50%

• Working with two or more people: 20%

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Brain Time Versus Body Time [continued]

• Flow:

• Takes around 15 minutes to enter

• Time passes without much notice

• Extremely productive

• Environment Factor = uninterrupted hours / body -

present hours

Part 4 : Team Formation

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Workspace Patterns

• The first pattern: Tailored workspace from a kit

• The second pattern: Windows

• The third pattern: Indoor and outdoor space

• The fourth pattern: Public space

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Objectives of Team Formation

• Team formation contributes towards:

• Goal alignment

• Diversity of skills, knowledge, abilities and experience

• Positive aspects of group dynamics

e.g. Increased creative flow

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Team Formation Stages

• Forming: Team members define goals, roles,

and direction of the team

• Storming: Team sets rules and decision-

making processes, often renegotiates

(argues) over team roles and responsibilities

• Norming: Procedures, standards, and criteria

are agreed upon

• Performing: The team begins to function as a

system

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Jelled Teams

• What is a jelled team?

• Group of people so closely knit that the whole is greater

than the sum of the parts

• Why do we want a jelled team?

• Once a team jells, the probability of success goes up

dramatically!

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Signs of a Jelled Team

• Work is fun

• Self-motivated

• Low-turnover

• Sense of pride

• High morale

• Sense of eliteness

• Sense of identity

• Joint ownership of the product

• Loyalty to the team and the team

environment

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Teamicide

• Defensive management - not trusting the team

• Bureaucracy - too much paperwork

• Physical separation of team members

• Fragmentation of people’s time – assign multiple

projects

• Quality reduction of the product

• Phony deadlines

• Clique control - splitting up teams

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Teamicide [continued]

• Most organizations don’t set out consciously to kill

teams … they just act that way

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Chemistry Building Strategy

• Make a cult of quality

• Provide lots of satisfying closure

• Build a sense of eliteness

• Allow and encourage heterogeneity

• Preserve and protect the successful

teams

• Provide strategic but not tactical

direction

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Presentation Topics

• Managing People

• Managing Thinking Workers

• Quality – If Time Permits

• Office Environment

• Hiring Right People

• Growing Productive Teams

• Jelled Teams

• Teamicide

• Chemistry for Team Formation

• Motivating People

• Quiz

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Motivating People

• Salary

• Performance reviews

• Job rotation

• Training

• Miscellaneous ideas

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Motivating People - Salary

• A 10% salary increase

• Stock options and other long-term benefits

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Motivating People - Performance

Reviews• Performance reviews are generally useful, if handled

objectively

• Performance reviews are often spaced too far apart

• New approach: “360” day reviews to assess employee’s

interactions with peers, customers, everyone around

him/her

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Motivating People - Rotation

• Eliminates unique roles where one person is a sole

living expert

• Works fine if turnover rate is low

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Motivating People - Training

• Offer training 1-2 days/year

• Best organizations offer 5-10 days/year

• Customize training to the real needs of the

job

• Suggestions:

• Accrue education days

• Give software professionals their own individual

“training budgets” at the beginning of each year,

and let them decide how, when, and where it will

be spent.

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Motivating People – Creative Ways

• Pilot projects

• War games

• Brainstorming sessions

• Trips, conferences, and retreats

• Study groups: Weekly meetings of

60-90 minutes to discuss technology

issues

• Tuition reimbursement plans

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Conclusion

• Managing people

• Manager’s role should be to make it possible for people to work

• Quality if time permits

• Management should incorporate quality in every phase of delivery

• Office environment

• Management should ensure that the work environment is conducive

enough to focus while working

• Hiring right people

• Management should ensure that the right people are hired through

proper interview methods

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Conclusion [continued]

• Growing productive teams

• Management should preserve and protect jelled teams

• Management should avoid teamicide

• Motivating people

• Management should take creative steps to keep people motivated

and a few things to consider are:

• Provide “360” day performance reviews

• Increase the pay scale and give promotions

• Encourage fun filled trips, retreats and conferences

• Provide training

• Provide job rotation

Reference

• Peopleware 3rd Edition

• http://www.techpresentations.com/2007/01/08/the-return-

of-peopleware/

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