Management, Software Development, and Closing Knowledge Gaps
You know it’s bad when a consultant chucks in the towel! Pamela Slim, a consultant to enterprise-level management of 10 years� standing, is giving up because she’s tired of banging her head against the wall trying to creatively present stupid ideas to employees, that create an atmosphere of resentment and unwanted competition.
Pamela has penned an excellent 10-point open letter to CEOs, COOs, CIOs and CFOs, outlining a plan of action that centers heavily on dumping the PowerPoint and getting to know, and really value, employees. It also serves as a call to stop using buzzwords and meaningless jargon like “our employees are our most valuable asset.”
You can read the letter here, but Pamela raises some points that apply to the world of software development, and hit on some of the issues 6th Sense Analytics is trying to resolve.
1. Don’t spend millions of dollars to try and change your culture. Ok, we aren’t taking about the whole corporate culture here, but we are talking best practices and new software. Enterprise IT shops have, in the past, subscribed to externally developed “best practices” and development methodologies that are tied into expensive tools and must be customized using external consultants. That�s wrong. Companies waste billions ripping up their cultural infrastructure and forcing it down a new avenue that is considered appropriate. Often these “best practices” are wrapped in the language of serving “vertical markets” — great, but even companies occupying the same vertical have different ways of devising, developing and rolling out their new software. And if everybody used the same best practices, where would be the competitive differentiator? It would be better if there was a way for companies to harvest and harness best practices forged in the fire of their own working environments, to suit their own needs? Of course it would, and 6th Sense is the way to achieve that.
2. Spend time with your employees. At least get to know them– in the software world, management becomes removed from the day-to-day concerns and practical considerations of the developers. That’s a real problem when it comes to scoping out new projects because a gap exists between what management feels the team can achieve and what the team really can achieve. When that happens, you have a recepie for delay and cost over run. What�s missing, is a way to synch up management and the development team. Software from 6th Sense fills this gap.
3. Don’t ask for employees’ advice unless you are going to take it. Many companies collect input from employees, but do little with it. Why? Often, management acts best on fact-based data. If there was a way to capture feedback from employees in some kind of data-based format, that might get taken onboard and used by management. Guess, what: there is a way to capture fact-based information and feedback from employees: it’s called 6th Sense.
4. Don’t train people unless you know the problem you are solving. Hands up whose been sent for training that they didn’t request or use� to get around this, and match training to software developers’ actual needs, management needs to close the gap between its understanding of the skills developers maybe lacking and the skills they actually require. 6th Sense helps management identify areas for improvement, so developers get the training they need.
5. Focus on the work people do, not how - or when - they do it. Clock watching is a part of the DNA of most large businesses, meaning it’s not how you worked that’s important but the fact that you were seen to be at your desk at the right time. Guess what? People aren’t battery farm chickens, churning out work in the same regulated way hens pump out eggs. People are productive at different times of the day, and in different ways. Wouldn’t it be cool if there was a way for management to capture people’s productivity cycles in a reliable way, and plan project deliverables using that insight. Guess, what? There is a way: it’s called 6th Sense.
6. Watch the burn out. Development projects have a habit of pushing people too hard. Either things come too close to the wire meaning late nights, or — as we’ve frequently discovered — you’ll get one person doing all the work on one aspect of the project, while there can be several team members clustered on another area of the project, who are sharing the load. Again, management needs to close the gap between what it thinks it knows about the team and what’s actually happening. Again, 6th Sense can help
Pamela wraps up by saying management risks losing valuable employees if they don’t follow her recommendations. Same goes for software development, only the problem is compounded by fact managements� beloved software projects will hit delays and cost overruns.
6th Sense isn’t a silver bullet — we’ve been doing this job for long enough to be wary of any vendor who’d make such a claim. But the software we provide is a key component in helping management get back in touch with their development teams, and to help them steer software development projects towards success.
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