People Management

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People Management
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Overview

• To frame our discussion, consider
• How do we organize people for a project?
• What are the strengths and weaknesses of teams?
• How should teams be organized?
• What tasks define the skills needed by software
  developers?

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Outline

• People
• Team Organization
• Culture
• Organizational Learning

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People (1)

• "The central question in how to improve the
  software art centers, as it always has, on
  people." (Brooks, 1987)
• "Personnel attributes and human resource
  activities provide by far the largest source of
  opportunity for improving software development
  productivity." (Boehm, 1981)

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People (2)

• Knowledge is the raw material of software
  development. Software engineers transform
  knowledge into software products. The level of
  talent on a software project is often the
  strongest predictor of results, and personnel
  shortfalls are one of the most severe project
  risks.

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So?

• What are the skills required for software
  development?
• Software engineering is simply the application
  of software science to development of software.

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People (3)

• Employers indicate that new graduates do no lack
  technical skills and scientific preparation.
  Rather, they lack people and process skills. New
  hires do not know how to communicate effectively,
  they have insufficient experience and preparation
  for working as part of a team, they lack the
  ability to manage their individual work
  efficiently and productively, and they do not
  understand or appreciate organizational
  structures or business practices.
• Hilburn, 1997

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Activities

• Writing Programs
• Reading Programs and Manuals
• Job Communications
• Personal
• Miscellaneous
• Training
• Mail

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What Developers Do (2)
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How Developers Work

• IBM

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Staffing Strategy

• Use better and fewer people.
• Fit the tasks to the skills and motivation of the
  people available.
• Help the staff self-actualize.

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Teams

• The project manager is charged with assembling a
  group that must function to complete the project.
  Part of the managers task is to facilitate the
  groups efforts.

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Team Organization (1)

• Democratic Decentralized
• Consists of task coordinators appointed for short
  duration.
• Decisions on problems and issues are made by
  group consensus.

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Communication
Total Communications paths
n 2
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Analysis

• PROS
• 1) team members contribution to project decisions
  
• 2) learning from each other
• 3) increased job satisfaction (increase in
  morale)
• CONS
• 1) communication overhead to reach decisions
• 2) requires team work well together
• 3) weakening of individual responsibility and
  authority

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Team Organization (2)

• Controlled Decentralized
• Team has a defined leader who coordinates
  specific tasks and secondary leaders responsible
  for those tasks.

Project Manager
Senior Engineers
Junior Engineers
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Communication
Project Manager
Senior Engineers
Junior Engineers
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Team Organization (3)

• Controlled Centralize
• Top-level problem solving and team coordination
  are the responsibility of a team leader.
• PROS
• 1) centralized decision making
• 2) reduced communication overhead
• CONS
• 1) sensitive to the nature of the chief
  programmer
• 2) low morale

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Chief Programmer Team
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Comparison of Teams

• Factor Chief Programmer Democratic
• Difficulty of Problem simple complex
• Size of Program large small
• Creativity Required Low High
• Reliability Requirement low high
• Modularity Requirements high low
• Schedule tight relaxed
• Duration of Project Short long
• Team Morale low high
• Risk Taking low high

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Factors Influencing Team Structure

• Difficulty of problem
• Size of program
• Team lifetime
• Degree of problem modularity
• Required quality and reliability
• Tightness of schedule
• Degree of communication required

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Teams

• Select people who will complement and harmonize
  with one another.
• Keeping a misfit on the team benefits no one.

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Brooks Law

• Adding manpower to a late software project makes
  it later.

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Analysis
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Problem

• Getting cross-functional project teams to work
  well together is difficult. The members bring
  their functional groups perspective into the
  project. As a consequence, the group members have
  difficulty communicating with each other,
  reaching consensus, and implementing decisions in
  an effective manner. The difficulty of
  communication across these boundaries arise not
  only from the fact that the functional groups
  have different goals, but from the more
  fundamental issue that the very meaning of the
  words they use will differ..

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Notion of Culture

• Culture is sometimes defined as a system of
  shared values (understood as what is important)
  and beliefs (how things work), and control
  systems to produce behavioral norms (the way
  things are done around here). This can be viewed
  as the group's problem solving paradigm.

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Management Cultures

• Operator Culture
• Engineering Culture
• Executive Culture

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Operator Culture

• The success of the enterprise depends on people's
  knowledge, skill, learning ability, and
  commitment.
• The knowledge and skill required are "local" and
  are based on the organization.
• No matter how carefully engineered the production
  process is or how carefully rules and routines
  are specified, operators will have to deal with
  unpredictable contingencies.
• Most operations involve inter-dependencies
  between separate elements of the process hence
  operators must be able to work as a collaborative
  team in which communication, openness, mutual
  trust and commitment are highly valued.

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Engineering Culture

• Pro-actively optimistic, nature can and should be
  mastered "that which is Possible should be
  done."
• Pragmatic, oriented toward useful products and
  outcomes.
• Perfectionistic, oriented toward elegance,
  simplicity, precision "keep it neat and simple."
• Preference for "people free" solutions, for
  working with "things."
• The ideal world is one of elegant machines and
  processes working in perfect precision and
  harmony without human intervention.

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Taylorism

• Objectification of Work
• Standardization of tools
• Standardization of work methods
• External authority specifies procedures
• Reductionism
• Monetary Incentives
• Frederick Winslow Taylor (1911) The Principles of
  Scientific Management

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Understanding Work

• Process versus Practice
• S. Zuboff (1989) In the Age of the Smart
  Machine
• J. S. Brown P. Duguid (2000) The Social Life
  of Information

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Executive Culture

• Absolute focus on finances--without financial
  survival and growth there are no returns.
• One cannot get reliable data from below because
  subordinates will tell one what they think one
  wants to hear therefore one must trust one's own
  judgment.
• Organization and management are hierarchical the
  hierarchy Is the measure of status and success,
  and a means of maintaining control.
• People have to be empowered, one must delegate,
  and one must trust people. Because control is
  paramount, empowerment must be tempered and
  limited.
• The organization is depersonalized and abstract,
  thus run by rules, routines (systems), and
  rituals ("machine bureaucracy").
• People are a resource like other resources to be
  acquired and managed.

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Organizational Learning

• Shared Vision
• Team Learning
• Emergent Behavior