As a development manager, I’d like the people working with me to be as productive as possible. If I understand how much time the team is spending in different areas, then I’ll have a better understanding of how we can improve. I need a way to track how much time we are spending in the following areas:

 

• New product development
• Defects
• Administrative tasks

Have you heard this line of reasoning before? Have you taken it yourself? Many of our new customers struggle with how to get this data. They basically have three options: track effort, estimate all defects, or ask your team.

 

Original goal of the development manager: “I’d like the people working with me to be as productive as possible.”

 

Everyone should agree that knowing how much time is being spent in each area could provide some evidence that a problem exists, but this knowledge definitely doesn’t help solve the problem. Knowing that your development team is spending too much time on defects is much less important than understanding why they are spending too much time on defects.

 

Original URL: http://www.agilechronicles.com/blog/2007/05/where_does_the_.html

 

Sendhil has invited me to take part of an architect interview in the evening. It is a very normal process between us. Whenever we interview a senior profile we try to do it together. I was very happy to join as i am always interested in knowing how people from different companies work.

I normally say HI with a smile whenever i meet people and this guy responded in a way which i could not digest.

 

I did not expect the following answer in an Architect Interview (may be working with sendhil and a high performing team has set my expectations very high)

 

Q: How will you handle whenever there is a change in the requirement. How do you make sure your code is extensible?
Answer: Its the Project manager's responsiblity and whenever there are any changes he will work with QA to do the regression, find the impact, estimate the cost.

 

After 30 minutes of discussion, we tried to close the interview by saying Thanks, but the guy turned away and started walking.

 

The current week is not very good for me in terms of interviews. I am loosing my temper very frequently after the interviews (i meet atleast 7 to 10 guys per week on an average).

 

 

Blog marking: Quality AJAX Resources and Tutorials

http://www.softwaredeveloper.com/features/quality-ajax-resources-tutorials-082107/ 

Interesting Post on why money is not the best motivator...

 

1. Industry Standard Salaries

Every so often, people look at the web sites that show the industry standard average salaries for their job. When you see that you are earning the average (or perhaps a little more), does this motivate you to work harder? The answer is probably not, but if you see that you are earning less than the average, this can be a real de-motivator.

2. Postponed or Cancelled Raises

Many employees scour their contract looking for the clause that indicates that they will get an annual pay review. If every year you get a raise then this is unlikely to motivate you when it arrives. However, on the odd occasion that the pay review does not provide a raise the motivation drops very quickly. This is especially the case when the biggest de-motivational force, fear, appears because the reason for the raise not being given is the under performance of the company.

3. Other Peoples' Salaries

Usually companies are very secretive about the amounts that people are paid. Your salary is based upon experience, length of time at the company, skill sets, personality and the supply and demand for your skills at the time of employment. All of this can lead to serious discrepancies between peoples salaries. When two similar posts have different salaries, this de-motivates the person with the lower salary but has no real positive benefit for the higher-paid employee.

4. Salary Grades

To avoid the problems of item 3, some companies will use salary grades. This means that everyone with the same job gets paid roughly the same. Again, welcome de-motivation for the person who works doubly-hard with no return for their efforts.

5. Somebody Else's Bonus

When bonuses are handed out to specific people in an organization; usually management or salespeople, does this motivate them to work harder? Probably not as they are generally working to a target and over-performing does not give any additional benefit. In fact, their over-performance could offset their next target and be a definite disadvantage. However, look to the people who feel they add as much to the business, if not more, and the bonuses of other people can soon kill their motivation.
6. Paid Overtime

Once in a while, paid overtime can be a good tool. It is a way for an employee to make a little extra and maybe buy that new TV they were hankering for. However, when paid overtime becomes a regular occurrence, it may as well be unpaid. The energy levels of people working too many hours drops, their concentration becomes poor, they make errors, lose contact with friends and family and become very unhappy. This really is not a motivational factor.

7. Performance Related Pay for Teams

There are many occasions where I have been involved in a project with a bonus to be given to the team on completion. This initially motivates people to work very hard indeed, usually hitting the same problems as with unpaid overtime. Once the bonuses are handed out though, the team may start to examine why they each received the same monetary amount when some worked harder than others and some 'did not pull their weight'. This can soon destroy motivation. As another by-product, the quickly-produced results may well be at the expense of quality.

Original URL : http://david-carr.blogspot.com/2007/09/7-reasons-why-money-is-not-best.html

 

SharepointBlog has an interesting post on how to use .NET custom attributes for Release Documentation. I was discussing with sendhil and sendhil shared the idea that whenever we have a TODO item in our code, we should actually use something like this and generate the backlog, so that we will always have an updated backlog.

Original URL: http://www.sharepointblogs.com/tmt/archive/2007/09/18/using-dot-net-custom-attributes-for-release-documentation.aspx

Pawel Brodzinski has an interesting post on Hiring Mistakes. He has categorized the mistakes into few categories

 

• Toxic. High skills connected with either toxic character or primaballerina habits. Those people look perfectly when you discuss merits during interview, but somehow they’re never team players after all. This is a tough one, because from one perspective the person is very valuable. On the other hand harming team work can never be justified by high skills.

• Theoretician. Read all the books on programming. Knows all the theory. Never written a bigger piece of code for a demanding customer. Quite often (but not always) these are people with university background. Very challenging in discussion but tendency to dig through all theoretically possible methods and lack of practical knowledge frustrates those who work close with him.

• Unable. No skill. No will to learn. No use for a team. Three times no. A dead end.

• No potential. You don’t always look for people with a complete skill set. Sometimes you look for one who will learn all things over time and then will become a fully-blown professional. And sometimes you end up with somebody who doesn’t have potential to achieve that. A dead end as above, but it takes more time to figure it out. Sometimes that’s just wrong career path set by a candidate and she can be moved to a position which would work better for both sides.

• Uncommitted. Good skill set. Good-natured personality. Yet somehow never committed or accountable driving team morale down every time people has to give a bit more from themselves. Can ruin team chemistry and atmosphere.

 

Original URL: http://blog.brodzinski.com/2007/09/hiring-mistakes.html

http://www.christopheravery.com/FAQ.htm 

 

“You can never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

—Buck Minster Fuller 

The Practice of Leadership blog has a post about Leadership Must Reads.

 

A Great List

·         Goals, Brian Tracy

·         Authentic Leadership, Bill George

·         Tough Choices, Carly Fiorina

·         Leadership Can Be Taught, Sharon Daloz Parks

·         Winning, Jack Welch & Suzy Welch

·         Courage: The Backbone of Leadership, Gus Lee & Diane Elliott-Lee

·         Leadership: The Inner Side of Greatness, Peter Koestenbaum

·         The 360° Leader, John Maxwell

·         Executive Intelligence, Justin Menkes

·         The Prepared Mind of a Leader, Bill Welter & Jean Egmon

·         Intuition at Work, Gary Klein

·         Resonant Leadership, Richard Boyatzis & Annie McKee

·         Great Leadership, Antony Bell

·         The Leadership Mystique, Manfred Kets De Vries

·         Leading in Black and White, Ancella B. Livers & Keith Caver

·         The One Thing You Need to Know, Marcus Buckingham

·         Launching a Leadership Revolution, Chris Brady & Orrin Woodward

·         Leaders: Strategies for Taking Charge (2nd ed.), Warren Bennis

·         Paths to Power, Anthony J. Mayo, Nitin Nohria, Laura G. Singleton

·         Enough, Juan Williams

·         The Leadership Gap, David S. Weiss & Vince Molinaro

·         Project Leadership, James P. Lewis

·         Leading Quietly, Joseph L. Bodarracco, Jr.

·         Ladder Shifts, Samuel Chand

·         Taking Advice, Dan Ciampa

·         Results, Gary Neilson & Bruce Pasternack      

·         Execution, Larry Bossidy & Ram Charan

·         Leadership Passages, David L. Dotlich, James L. Noel, Norman Walker

·         A Bias for Action, Heinke Bruch & Sumantra Ghoshal

·         The Highest Goal, Jim Collins

·         Primal Leadership, Daniel Goleman, Annie McKee & Richard E. Boyatzis

·         Flexible Leadership, Gary Yukl & Richard Lepsinger

·         The Ethical Challenge, Noel Tichy & Andrew R. McGill

·         Changing Minds, Howard Gardner

·         Driven: How Human Nature Shapes Our Choices, Paul Lawrence & Nitin Nohria

·         Culture Shift, Robert Lewis & Wayne Cordeiro

·         The Future of Leadership, Warren Bennis, Gretchen Spreitszer & Thomas Cummings

·         Silos, Politics & Turf Wars, Patrick Lencioni

·         Building the Bridge As You Walk on It, Robert E. Quinn

·         Leading the Way, Robert Gandossy & Mark Effron, Hewitt Associates

·         Value Leadership, Peter S. Cohan

·         Business Evolves, Leadership Endures, Andrea Redmond & Charles A. Tribbett, III

·         The Next Generation Leader, Andy Stanley

·         Grow Your Own Leaders, William C. Byhan, Sudrey B. Smith & Matthew J. Paese

·         The Go Point, Michael Useem

·         Competitive Strategy, Michael E. Porter

·         Integrity, Henry Cloud

·         Leadership on the Line, Martin Linsky & Ronald Heifetz

·         Nobody in Charge, Harlan Cleveland & Warren Bennis

 

http://www.thepracticeofleadership.net/2007/09/08/leadership-must-reads-from-bill-hybels/

http://spin.willowcreek.com/c/blogs/leadership/archive/2007/8/10/bill-hybles-leadership-must-reads.aspx