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.The joy of always learning, of a nonrepeating task5.The delight of working in a medium so tractable pure thought-stuff which nevertheless exists,moves, and works in a way that word-objects do notThese joys attract the kind of people you manage, and understanding what motivates them (and you) can be atremendous aid to your leadership role.Cat Fight! A Hissing and Scratching ContestJohn and Kevin were constantly at odds during the design meeting.We had begun to discuss howthe user would log into the system, and they were arguing about low-level details of constructiontechniques.The meeting was not progressing and there were many more features to be designed,or at least everyone thought so in spite of the lack of a clear agenda for the meeting.John and Kevinalways fought because John, who was a consultant, and Kevin, who was a longtime employee and avery creative programmer, had very different motives and plans for the meeting.They were moreinterested in proving who was the smartest than designing a system, even though John had beendesignated as the development leader, a job Kevin desperately wanted.It didn t help that the bosswasn t in the meeting; there was no one to act as a negotiator.A day went by, and the other programmers grew more silent as John and Kevin fought over eachpiece of the design.By the end of the second day, very few whiteboard printouts had been producedand what had been done came at the cost of long hours of tedious battling between the twoscrapping cats, John and Kevin.The rest of the team became so discouraged that they began todoubt whether the system would ever be built.To compound matters, the team had been tasked toget this new system created as soon as possible because the legacy system was hurting thecompany in the marketplace.This short story illustrates some of the difficulties with consultants and employees working on thesame team, especially when the boss isn t in the room.You might question the choice of aconsultant as the development leader, too.You also can see that a design meeting without a carefulplan, an agenda, and a method for resolving differences can waste time and place the whole idea of design before coding in jeopardy.The dynamics of interpersonal relationships on the developmentteam also illustrate the need to know your people before you create team leadership roles.The end result of this particular story was that the project was canceled and a competing team inanother division designed and built the software.The absent manager also had some dreary anddifficult days explaining to his boss why they didn t step up to the plate and hit a home run after manypromises and reassurances were given prior to project commencement.[3]Ellen Ullman, Close to the Machine (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1997), p.20.[4]I m using the term architect here in the sense of a programmer, not a full-fledged software architect.See Chapter 6for a discussion about the importance of architecture in the grand scheme of development.[5]This concept is important because one authority estimates that at least 70 percent of software cost is related tomaintenance.See William H.Brown et al, AntiPatterns: Refactoring Software, Architectures, and Projects in Crisis(New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1998), p.121. [6]Some may prefer the term guru or wizard. I like magic. [7]Don t you hate users? What fun we could have if we only wrote software for programmers.[8]I prefer the term program anomaly or undocumented feature offering (UFO) over bug. [9]Frederick P.Brooks, The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering, Anniversary Edition (New York:Addison-Wesley, 1995), p.230.This is a timeless classic very few books in our field are reissued after 25 years, andthis one is truly worthy.Glory, Honor, and GreenbacksEveryone with a job wants to be appreciated and to feel his or her contributions are meaningful.Even incompetentworkers want to feel appreciated, in spite of the fact that they make negative contributions to the company [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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.The joy of always learning, of a nonrepeating task5.The delight of working in a medium so tractable pure thought-stuff which nevertheless exists,moves, and works in a way that word-objects do notThese joys attract the kind of people you manage, and understanding what motivates them (and you) can be atremendous aid to your leadership role.Cat Fight! A Hissing and Scratching ContestJohn and Kevin were constantly at odds during the design meeting.We had begun to discuss howthe user would log into the system, and they were arguing about low-level details of constructiontechniques.The meeting was not progressing and there were many more features to be designed,or at least everyone thought so in spite of the lack of a clear agenda for the meeting.John and Kevinalways fought because John, who was a consultant, and Kevin, who was a longtime employee and avery creative programmer, had very different motives and plans for the meeting.They were moreinterested in proving who was the smartest than designing a system, even though John had beendesignated as the development leader, a job Kevin desperately wanted.It didn t help that the bosswasn t in the meeting; there was no one to act as a negotiator.A day went by, and the other programmers grew more silent as John and Kevin fought over eachpiece of the design.By the end of the second day, very few whiteboard printouts had been producedand what had been done came at the cost of long hours of tedious battling between the twoscrapping cats, John and Kevin.The rest of the team became so discouraged that they began todoubt whether the system would ever be built.To compound matters, the team had been tasked toget this new system created as soon as possible because the legacy system was hurting thecompany in the marketplace.This short story illustrates some of the difficulties with consultants and employees working on thesame team, especially when the boss isn t in the room.You might question the choice of aconsultant as the development leader, too.You also can see that a design meeting without a carefulplan, an agenda, and a method for resolving differences can waste time and place the whole idea of design before coding in jeopardy.The dynamics of interpersonal relationships on the developmentteam also illustrate the need to know your people before you create team leadership roles.The end result of this particular story was that the project was canceled and a competing team inanother division designed and built the software.The absent manager also had some dreary anddifficult days explaining to his boss why they didn t step up to the plate and hit a home run after manypromises and reassurances were given prior to project commencement.[3]Ellen Ullman, Close to the Machine (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1997), p.20.[4]I m using the term architect here in the sense of a programmer, not a full-fledged software architect.See Chapter 6for a discussion about the importance of architecture in the grand scheme of development.[5]This concept is important because one authority estimates that at least 70 percent of software cost is related tomaintenance.See William H.Brown et al, AntiPatterns: Refactoring Software, Architectures, and Projects in Crisis(New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1998), p.121. [6]Some may prefer the term guru or wizard. I like magic. [7]Don t you hate users? What fun we could have if we only wrote software for programmers.[8]I prefer the term program anomaly or undocumented feature offering (UFO) over bug. [9]Frederick P.Brooks, The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering, Anniversary Edition (New York:Addison-Wesley, 1995), p.230.This is a timeless classic very few books in our field are reissued after 25 years, andthis one is truly worthy.Glory, Honor, and GreenbacksEveryone with a job wants to be appreciated and to feel his or her contributions are meaningful.Even incompetentworkers want to feel appreciated, in spite of the fact that they make negative contributions to the company [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]