Herding cats (managing software development)

Herding cats or you should
have majored in
psychology
Chris Fry

Agenda

 What is management, what is dev management?
Holistic management
 Technical Management
 Recruiting
 Process & Execution
 Feedback & Career development
 Finish up

I started on the API Team

 Dev Mgr for the API team in 2006
 Now run all of development for salesforce

Notes from my mom, Nancy

 “Put your family first and read a lot of Drucker”
 “I never wanted anyone working for me that I had to tell
what to do”
 Make a game of it
 Praise, Praise, Praise
 Stand up to bullies
 Build community
 Be genuinely interested in other people

The transition to management is hard

Working with people to do the right thing

 Productivity is its own reward
 Responsibility is power
 Focus on the outcome

Functional Management: focus on the whole team

 There is no such thing – no one function can ship
software
– Change task roles
– Don’t assign tasks to owners
– Be fair
– Highlight everyone’s accomplishments (focus on the team)
– Do everything cross-functionally
– Have cross functional one on ones
– Remove blockers

Manage your relationships

 Across, up and down
 Help people
 Meet regularly cross-functionally

Leadership is communication

 Over communicate
 Send a daily email
 Foster a culture of face 2 face communication
 Talk to people frequently
 Break down barriers

Herding cats (managing software development)

Notes from peopleware (1)

 People under time pressure don’t work better; they just
work faster
 Quality is free
 Parkinson’s Law almost certainly doesn’t apply to your
people

Seven false hopes of software management

1. There is some new trick you’ve missed that could send
productivity soaring
2. Other managers are getting 200% productivity gains
3. Technology is moving so swiftly you’re being passed by
4. Changing languages will give you huge gains
5. Because of the backlog, you need to double productivity
immediately
6. You automate everything else; isn’t it about time you
automated away your software development staff
7. Your people will work better if you put them under a lot of
pressure


 There are a million ways to lose a work day but not
even one to get one back
 There is a 10 to 1 productivity difference between the
best developers and everyone else
 There is a 10 to 1 productivity difference between the
best organizations and everyone else


 Quiet space is more productive
 FLOW – an endless state of no-flow?

In a knowledge economy everyone is an executive

Effective Executive

 Ask “What needs to be done?”
 Ask “What is right for the business”
 Develop action plans
 Take responsibility for your decisions
 Take responsibility for communicating
 Focus on opportunities rather than problems
 Run productive meetings
 Think and say “we” rather than “I”

Summary: Holistic Management

 Management is a challenging discipline: it’s
hard
 There are no silver bullets
 Everyone is an executive
 You don’t need to tell people what to do
 Manage the whole

Technical Management

 What are you responsible for as a dev manager?


 As a development manager you are responsible for the
design, quality and implementation of software.

Product

 KISS
 Dogfood the product
 Write and keep tech specs up to date
 Focus on quality
 Think through the end game of M&M and deployment

Decision making

 Who is making the decision?
 Force hard technical decisions early
 Leverage the virtual architecture team

Team Structure

 Partner with a great architect
 Embrace QE

Team practices

 Enforce good coding habits
 Review test plans and ftests
 Reinforce good code reviews
 Mentor junior developers
 Look for warning signs
 Fail Fast

Broken Windows

 Don’t break the build
 Don’t break the tests
 Write tests
 Integrate early and often
 Fix bugs right away

Summary: Technical Management

 KISS
 Use the product
 Promote healthy practices
 Broken Window Theory

Recruiting & Team
Structure

The best recruiting is building a great team

Get the right people!

 Get the right people
 Make them happy so they don’t want to leave
 Turn them loose

Keep the right people!

 Turnover costs you
 Voluminous documentation is part of the problem, not
part of the solution
 The whole is greater than the sum of its parts

What level should you stay informed?

OR

Ideal Team Structure – I hate sports metaphors
but…

Recruiting Phases

1. Sourcing
2. Screening
3. Interview
4. Post Interview

Jell the team

 Goal alignment
 Joint ownership of the product
 Obvious enjoyment
 Sense of eliteness

Chemistry for team Formation

 Make a cult of quality
 Provide lots of satisfying closure
 Build a sense of eliteness
 Allow and encourage heterogeneity
 Preserve and protect successful teams
 Provide strategic but not tactical direction

Summary: Recruiting and Team Structure

 Team building is recruiting
 Keep people happy
 Know the funnel (sourcing, screening,
interview, close)
 Jell teams
 Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing

Features * Quality = Resources * Time

Development as a Team

Design/Build/Test

Design -> Build -> Test

Basic Project Execution

1. Who owns the project
2. Create clear objectives
3. Get buy in on the objectives
4. Get what you need to be successful
5. Create the plan
6. Communicate the plan
7. Execute on the plan
8. Inspect
9. Adapt

Summary: Execution and Process

 FQ=RT
 Lower Risk, ship often
 Automate and integrate
 Reflect and Improve
 Run great projects

One Minute Praising

1. Tell people up front that you are going to let them know
how they are doing
2. Praise people immediately
3. Tell people what they did right – be specific
4. Tell people how good you feel about what they did right
and how it helps the organization and the other people who
work here
5. Stop for a moment of silence
6. Encourage more of the same
7. Shake hands and let people know that you support their
success in the organization

One Minute Reprimand

1. Tell people beforehand that you are going to let them know how they
are doing in no uncertain terms
2. Reprimand people immediately
3. Tell people what they did wrong – be specific
4. Tell people how you feel about what they did wrong – and in no
uncertain terms
5. Stop for a few seconds of uncomfortable silence to let them feel how
you feel
6. Shake hands and let them know you are honestly on their side
7. Remind them how much you value them
8. Reaffirm that you think well of them but not of their performance in
the situation
9. Realize that when the reprimand is over, it’s over

Summary: Feedback

 Make people safe (ask for permission)
 In the moment, direct and honest
 Positive feedback at a 10 to 1 ratio

Basics

 A manager is responsible for their employees’ careers. You are the primary responsible party until
they succeed you.
 Putting an employee where they can succeed is your responsibility. This does not mean you cover for
short comings, cheat so they win, or give them credit for others work. It means you have taken their
strengths and weaknesses, skills and motivations, method of working, and the work you have available
to appropriately marry them to a job they can succeed in.
 Taking an employee out of a position they can not succeed in is your responsibility.
 The failure of your subordinates is not your subordinates fault. It is yours. You failed to put that person
in the right position at the right time with the right skills or information. Or, you failed to remove a
person from a position that they could not be successful in. There is a difference between giving
someone a challenging role and a suicide mission. You must see the difference and act.
 Quality people respond to challenge and learning experiences. Challenge your employees. Foster
those who take the challenge and execute. Remove those who do not.
 People who are successful at their daily work succeed in their careers. They are always progressing
forward by taking more responsibility and accountability. Their reverence continually grows within the
organization.
 Not all people are career oriented. Some just like to work.

Have a vision of where people are going

How can we create successful employees that have
positive career development?

 Honest feedback on relationships that they need to build across the
organization.
 Immediate feedback when they’ve flipped another person’s dork bit.
 Remove non performers to open up opportunities for performers.
 Let performers decide their work in part or full time. Fulfill their
work passion.
 Give challenges outside of normal daily work that apply to their
personal goals.
 Honest feedback on the employee’s responsibility to make it to the
next technical rung, management rung, or career change.
 Taking employees out of positions they can not be successful in.
 Ensure the employee understands the importance of their work.

How do you understand what your employee’s goals
and motivations are?

 Talk to them candidly.
 Watch what they choose to work on when.
– Ask them: Why that then?
 Understand their personal goals.
– Ask them: What unfinished accomplishment would make you
happiest to achieve?
 Understand their personal motivations.
– Ask them: What makes you happy to be at work? In what
situations did you feel a true sense of accomplishment?

How do you track success at managing your
employees’ careers?

 Are they happy?
 Are they well received in the organization?
 Do they feel challenged?
 Do they understand the importance of their work?
 Are they actively working on making themselves better?
 Are they taking more responsibility and accountability over
time?
 Are they progressing through the organization from a
corporate structure or unwritten pecking order perspective?

Summary: Career Development

 Ask Questions
 Write a plan and commit to it
 Deliver on the plan

Overall Summary

Holistic Management
Recruiting and Team
Structure
Execution & Process
Feedback
Career development

Herding cats (managing software development)

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