What is the difference between a good manager and a bad manager?

Because a previous blog of mine asked about good and bad managers, the question naturally came up about what's the difference.

There are, of course, many ways to be a bad manager. Or a good manager. But if I’d been asked for a single difference (and you didn’t use the plural) I’d say that the First Law of Bad Management is this:

If what you’re doing isn’t working, do more of it, faster and louder.

For more on good vs. bad management, take a look at 

Do You Want To Be A (Better) Manager? 

Stumbles for New Leaders and Managers

We were asked, "What were your greatest stumbling blocks as a new manager?"

Paige’s article is a terrific introduction to this subject. 

<http://hiring.workopolis.com/article/4-rookie-manager-mistakes/>

These are the four rookie manager mistakes described in the article:

Rookie mistake #1: Creating a blanket policy for one bad apple

Rookie mistake #2: Embracing the mantra, “do as I say, not as I do”

Rookie mistake #3: Fixing things that aren’t really broken

Rookie mistake #4: Not taking an interest in your employees’ futures

In my career, I’ve made all four of those mistakes, and lots of others. But the one I most remember, and most regret, is micromanaging.

Somehow, I couldn’t believe that other people could solve problems as effectively as I (thought I) could. My mantra was something like “for your own good,” or “for the organization’s good.”

It took me far too long to learn that other people’s solutions were simply other solutions than mine. Some might be worse than mine. Some might even be better. But most of all, they usually solved whatever problems we were dealing with. There was no need for me to push in with my approach.

I’ve gradually learned to reduce this micromanaging behavior. (I’ve never learned to stop completely.) As I’ve succeeded, I’ve noticed:

* people learn faster when allowed to make their own mistakes

* people listen to me more attentively on those few occasions when I do intervene

* I have more time for doing my own job

I strongly suggest that you loosen your grip on your own ideas and allow your employees and co-workers to implement theirs.

Do You Want to Be a (better) Manager?

Terchnical Reviews and Organizational Renewal

We know that success can breed failured and doesn't automatically renew itself. I would like to offer some ideas on how this self-defeating tendency can be resisted.

One way toward renewal is through new perspectives gained from outside technical audits, but audits suffer from several serious disabilities. For one thing, audits are done intermittently. In between one audit and the next, the programmers don't stop programming, the analysts don't.stop analyzing, and the operators don't stop operating. Sometimes, though, the managers stop managing, And there's the rub.

A comparable situation exists when a firm has a system of personnel reviews mandated, say, every six months for each employee. Under such a system, managers tend to postpone difficult interactions with an employee until the next appraisal is forced upon them. A huge dossier may be accumulated, but then ignored in favor of the last, most conspicuous blunder or triumph. Good managers realize that the scheduled personnel review is, at best, a backup device—to catch those situations in which day-to-day management is breaking down.

In the same way, the outside technical audit merely backs up the day-to-day technical renewal processes within the shop. It may prevent utter disasters, but it's much better if we can establish technical renewal on a more continuous and continuing basis. One way to do this is through a technical team, such as an Agile team. For now, though, I want to introduce, or reintroduce, the concept of formal and informal technical reviews as tools for renewing the technical organization.

The Agile Manifesto requires "technical excellence" and "simplicity," and states: 

At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly. 

To achieve these and other goals, Agile teams conduct "walkthroughs" and "inspections," but these are only two very specific examples of technical review procedures used by Agile teams. In my reading and consulting, I've uncovered dozens of major variants of these two types of review, plus literally hundreds of minor variants that shops have introduced to make the review more suitable to their environments, whether or not they claim to be "Agile."

A more general definition of a technical review could be 

1. a review of technical material on the basis of content (this is what makes it a "technical" review, rather than, say, a financial or personnel review)

2. which is done openly by at least two persons (this is what distinguishes it from "desk checking")

3. who take lull responsibility for the quality of the review (not, please note, for the quality of the product)

Then we distinguish between the informal and formal review. A formal review produces a written report to management. That report is the formal part.

Informal reviews (that is, reviews which need not terminate with a written report to management) are also excellent devices for an organization's self-renewal. Informal reviews take all forms of technical reviews, and are practiced everywhere almost all the time. Indeed, they are an essential part  of the real world of programming work.

For instance, a team member passes a diagram to a teammate for an opinion on how to represent a particular design. Someone asks help from someone else in finding an error. A set of test cases is passed around to see if anyone can think of something that's been overlooked. One person reads another's user document to see if it's understandable.

Without a constant flow of such informal reviewing of one another's work, programming any meaningful project would be impossible. Formal reviewing, on the other hand, is not essential to programming. Many small projects are accomplished without formal reviewing, which is why some programmers don't appreciate the need for formal reviewing. 

As projects grow 'larger and more complex—as they are inclined to do in successful shops—the work of many people must be coordinated over a long period of

time. Such coordination requires management—though not necessarily managers—and such management requires reliable information. Formal reviews, essentially, are designed to provide reliable information about technical matters—particularly to non-technical people.

Clearly, a successful system of formal technical reviews—that is, a system that provides management with reliable information on technical matters—is essential to management participation in the organizational-renewal process. For the large shop, formal reviews provide information that the small shop manager gets "through the seat of the pants." Many, many failures of previously successful programming organizations an be traced directly to the breakdown of the earlier informal mechanisms for communicating reliable information about technical matters.

There may, of course, be other ways of getting this kind of information, and many smaller shops do an excellent job without any system of formal reviews. Even those shops, however, may benefit from an explicit system of reviews to supplement their implicit, or informal, existing system. 

Principally, the formal technical review provides reliable self-monitoring. An informal system may work just as well as a formal one, and if so, there are many reasons to prefer to keep the reviewing informal. In any case, there will always be an informal system at least supplementing the formal one, but we should really view the formal system as supplementing the informal. Its formality guards against creeping deterioration of the organization.

Regular reviews of specifications, designs, code, test plans, documentation, training materials, and other technical matter have many beneficial "side effects" on the health and success of an installation. Reviews have a very marked effect on maintenance—that quicksand in which a thousand successful shops have met an untimely end. A typical program that has been thoroughly reviewed during its development will

1. require less maintenance work per change

2. require fewer changes caused by poor specification, design, coding, or testing.

Instituting a program of technical reviews will not, of course, have any immediate effect on the existing burden of maintenance carried like an albatross from a sinful programming past. Indeed, when maintenance programmers participate in reviews of newer code, they may be further discouraged by the poor quality of the code with which they are burdened. But, the situation can improve rather quickly, for a variety of reasons:

1. Some new ideas can be applied even to patches to old programs, though naturally limited by poor existing structure and style.

2. Through mutual participation in reviews, the entire shop quickly obtains a realistic and sympathetic picture of the true dimensions of the maintenance situation.

3. The worst maintenance problems will, through frequent reviews, become exposed to fresh air and sunlight.

Quite frequently, installation of a review system is quickly followed by replacement of the most cantankerous old beasts left over from the Stone Age of Programming. The effect of even one such replacement on maintenance morale is a wonder to behold,

Other activities besides maintenance are similarly affected. In the long run, certainly, reviews have a remarkable effect on staff competence, perhaps the most important element in continuing success. We also see increased morale and professional attitude, reduced turnover, more reliable estimating and scheduling, and better appreciation of the management role in project success. (Usually, the technical staff has had no difficulty in appreciating the management role in project failure.)

At the same time, reviews provide management with a better appreciation for staff competence, both individually and collectively. The unsung hero who quietly saved a dozen shaky projects is now sung far and wide. The "genius programmer" who was always the darling of the executives has been exposed for the empty and obsolete shell the technical staff always knew, but couldn't expose to management.

No other factor is more depressing to a technical organization than misappraisal of technical competence by non-technical management. The openness of technical reviews marks an end to that misappraisal era. No longer will we all feel cheated by charlatans and incompetents.

As a consultant, I visited dozens of installations every year. The best way to summarize the effects of properly instituted reviews is to report that after five minutes in an installation, I can tell—without asking directly—to what extent there is an effective review-practice, formal or informal.

How do I tell? Metaphorically, I tell in the same way a government health inspector tells about a food processing plant—by the way it smells. It's hard to describe, but when you smell the difference, you-know it!

* * * * * *

Looking back over this essay, I sense its inadequacy to the task at hand. Those programmers and analysts who have experienced a shop with a properly functioning system of reviews will know all this without my giving any details. They've experienced it, and if they are professionals, they'll never agree to work in any other kind of environment.

But those who have never experienced such an environment of a self-renewing organization will not understand, or will misunderstand, what I've written. Some of them will have experienced a misguided attempt to institute reviews. Perhaps the attempt was in the form of a punitive management mandate. Perhaps it was merely a case of another programmer who read one article and blundered ahead with 99% enthusiasm and 1% information—and zero human feeling. To these people, the experience of "reviews" will have left a bitter taste, or a painful memory. They will not recognize their experience in what I've written.

In many ways, technical reviewing is like bicycling. Up until the time you first discover your balance in one miraculous instant, the whole idea seems impossible, contrary to nature, and a good way to break a leg. Indeed, if you'd never seen a cyclist before, and had the process described to you, you'd most certainly declare the whole procedure impossible. And, without instruction and encouragement from experienced cyclists, along with reliable "equipment," the most likely outcome would certainly be skinned knees, torn pants, and a few lumps on the head. And so it has been with technical reviews—until now—-so don't go off and try to learn the whole process on your own.

If you want to get started renewing the success of your own shop through a system of technical reviews, find an experienced shop, or a person from an experienced shop, to guide you. Listen to them, Read the literature. Then try a few simple reviews on an experimental basis, without much fanfare.

Adapt the "rules" to your own environment. Be forgiving and humane. Your rewards  will not be long in coming.

references: 

Handbook of Technical Reviews, 4th ed.

Do You Want To Be A (Better) Manager?

What's it like to rewrite a program from scratch?

This is an interesting question because so many programmers are so afraid of this task that they would never even ask it. Is this reluctance agile, or Agile?

But why would you want to do rewrite a program from scratch? The most important reason is to increase maintainability. In the initial writing, the focus is generally on merely getting the job done, without thinking of the program's future. Over their lifetime, many programs cost far more to maintain than to write originally, especially when the original program has become a thing of rags and patches.

A second, and often secondary reason to rewrite a program is efficiency. Newly constructed programs and highly patched old programs sometimes turn out to be slower than desired, but such inefficiency cannot erased by any amount of tweaking. Instead, increased efficiency requires a new approach, an approach that needs to be implemented from scratch.

But isn't rewriting expensive? Not usually. In fact, it’s generally far, far easier to rewrite a program from scratch than to write some brand-new program.

Why would a fresh start-over be cheaper than the original? Because in writing the original program, the original programmers answered so many difficult questions about what was really wanted. Requirements haven't changed, and most of the thought put into testing can be reused.

Those questions—requirements and test—usually make up more than half the total work put into a program. They have already been answered—but only if you resist the temptation to change those answers. If you don’t resist, then rewriting the program can be arbitrarily difficult.

I wish more programmers had to courage to rewrite some clumsy programs from scratch, rather than patch and patch and patch. And I wish their managers would encourage sensible rewriting, rather than force programmers to waste their skills, time, and energy keeping ancient programs on life support.

The Psychology of Computer Programming: Silver Anniversary eBook Edition 

Must There Always Be Inferior Code?

Some people claim that when you learn high software standards you will never again develop in inferior ways. Is this true?

I think you can arrive at a meaningful answer by using an analogy:

Some people claim that when you learn high medical standards, a doctor or nurse will never again treat a patient in inferior ways. Is that true?

Seen in this light, the answer is obvious. Most doctors and nurses will not treat patients in inferior ways—unless it's an emergency, like an explosion or a fire in which many people need saving in a hurry. If that happens, the doctor or nurse will return to those patients when the emergency has calmed down. Same in software.

But there do exist a few medical professionals who don’t live up to such high standards. They are, after all, human beings. Yet in spite of their inferior practices, some of their patients do get better. Why? Because humans have built-in healing mechanisms—but software does not.

Software with sick code doesn’t heal itself. Those programmers who develop in inferior ways will eventually produce troublesome code. But the key word is "eventually."

The inferior programmer may not be around any longer when the code's trouble makes itself known, so some inferior programmers can get away with hacky ways for an entire career.

It’s a good manager's job to recognize these inferior programmers and replace them and their code before the true costs of their inferior work become evident.

Some managers overuse the tactic of forcing programmers to code in a hurry, as if there's always an emergency. Just as in medicine, emergency treatment of code tends to produce inferior results. Managers who care only about the short-term will not do anything about their inferior programmers, but they, too, may move out before the consequences of their inferior management become apparent.

That’s why inferior programming practices persist. And, as long as programmers and managers are human, inferior practices will always persist. But they don't have to persist in your world. It's up to you. \

Code in haste, debug forever.

How Does One Manage an Incompetent Manager?

How Does One Manage an Incompetent Manager?

The questioner does not say whether the manager's is their boss or employee, but I'll answer assuming they're the employee. If they're the boss, they should manage the same way they would manage any of their employees who is not competent to do the job they're paid for.

This is not just one question because there are quite a few different breeds of incompetent managers. To take just two examples, some are incompetent because they don’t interact with their employees at all, while others micromanage with a vengeance. It seems clear that you’d want to handle each situation in its own unique way.

If your manager is invisible, leaving you alone, just be thankful and go about your business. Believe me, you’re lucky.

For me, the first step in managing a micro-manager is to leave. Find another job, with different manager. A better one.

As for other managerial symptoms of incompetence, you can try working with the manager as one person to another, but realize that this amounts to taking on a second job. If you’re not a a trained psychologist, you might be better just leaving this one alone.

But if you decide you have the skills to manage your manager, do it the way a competent manager would. That is, concentrate on the question, “How is this manager interfering with the work we are being paid to do?” If their incompetence isn’t interfering in a significant way, maybe offer a bit of feedback, but only once, and then get on with your paying job.

In many cases, someone you perceive as incompetent can be a lot easier to live with than to fix. They may not even be as incompetent as you believe.

But if you're seeking advice on a particular pattern of incompetence, write me a note or comment. I will try to help you with specific actions to take.

Oh, and by the way, if you’re neither this manager’s boss or employee, then it’s none of your business, so just leave it alone. There are more incompetent managers in the world than you can possibly cure.

Here's a couple of books you might find helpful:

Do You Want To Be A (Better) Manager?

What Did You Say?: The Art of Giving and Receiving Feedback

Should I apply for a great opportunity & leave my friends?

The questioner asked: "I found a great job opportunity but I'm currently managing a big project. If I leave now I will leave my colleagues in trouble. Should I apply?"

Here's my answer:

One of my sons was in a similar situation a few years ago. His current job was a dead-ender, but he did not want to leave his friends and co-workers in the lurch. To my amazement, he asked me for my opinion on what he should do.

I told him that the best thing he could do for his friends was model the behavior they might lack the courage to do for themselves—namely, leave.

I told him that once he was at this new, better, job, his former co-workers would start calling upon him, looking for jobs. They did exactly that, and he hired a number of them.

As for leaving trouble behind, first of all if you have been a good manager, then they will do just fine in your absence. (If you have not been a good manager, why would you want to stay there, anyway?)

If you have trouble visualizing how those colleagues will miss you, get yourself a bucket of water. Put you hand in the water. Then take out you hand and notice what happens to the hole you left.

for more information, see Do You Want To Be A (Better) Manager?

Preventing a Software Quality Crisis

Abstract

Many software development organizations today are so overloaded with quality problems that they are no longer coping with their business of developing software. They display all the classic symptoms of overloaded organizations—lack of problem awareness, lack of self-awareness, plus characteristic behavior patterns and feelings. Management may not recognize the relationship between this overload and quality problems stemming from larger, more complex systems. If not, their actions tend to be counterproductive. In order to cure or prevent such a crisis, management needs to understand the system dynamics of quality.

Symptoms of Overload Due to Poor Quality

In our consulting work, we are often called upon to rescue software development operations that have somehow gotten out of control. The organization seems to have slipped into a constant state of crisis, but management cannot seem to pin the symptoms down to one central cause. Quite often, that central cause turns out to be overload due to lack of software quality, and lack of software quality due to overload.

Our first job as consultants is to study symptoms. We classify symptoms of overload into four general categories—lack of problem awareness, lack of self-awareness, plus characteristic patterns of behavior and feelings. Before we  describe the dynamics underlying these symptoms, lets look at some of them as they my be manifest in a typical, composite organization, which we shall call the XYZ corporation.

Lack of Problem Awareness

All organizations have problems, but the overloaded organization doesn't have time to define those problems, and thus has little chance of solving them:

1. Nobody knows what's really happening to them.

2. Many people are not even aware that there is a system-wide problem.

3. Some people realize that there is a problem, but think it is confined to their operation.

4. Some people realize that there is a problem, but think it is confined to somebody else's operation.

5. Quality means meeting specifications. An organization that is experiencing serious quality problems may ignore those problems by a strategy of changing specifications to fit what they actually happen to produce. They can then believe that they are "meeting specifications." They may minimize parts of the specification, saying that it's not really important that they be done just that way. Carried to an extreme, this attitude leads to ignoring certain parts of the specification altogether. Where they can't be ignored, they are often simply

forgotten.

6. Another way of dealing with the overload is to ignore quality problems that arise, rather than handling them on the spot, or at least recording them so others will handle them. This attitude is symptomatic of an  organization that needs a top-to-bottom retraining in quality.

Lack of Self-Awareness

Even when an organization is submerged in problems, it can recover if the people in the organization are able to step back and get a look at themselves, In the chronically overloaded organization, people no longer have the means to do this. They are ignorant of their condition, and they have crippled their means of removing their ignorance:

7. Worse than not knowing what is going on is thinking you know, when you don't, and acting on it. Many managers at XYZ believe they have a grip on what's going on, but are too overloaded to actually check. When the reality is investigated, these managers often turn out to be wrongs For instance, when quizzed about testing methods used by their employees, most managers seriously overestimate the quality of testing, when compared with the programmers' and testers' reports.

8. In XYZ) as in all overloaded organizations, communication within and across levels is unreliable and slow. Requests for one kind of information produce something else, or nothing at all. In attempting to speed up the work, people fail to take time to listen to one another, to write things down, or to follow through on requested actions.

9. Many individuals at XYZ are trying to reduce their overload by isolating themselves from their co-workers, either physically or emotionally. Some managers have encouraged their workers to take this approach, instructing them to solve problems by themselves, so as not to bother other people.

10. Perhaps the most dangerous overload reaction we observed was the tendency of people at XYZ to cut themselves off from any source of information that might make them aware of how bad the overload really is. The instant reaction to any new piece of information is to deny it, saying there are no facts to substantiate it. But no facts can be produced because the management has studiously avoided building or maintaining information systems that could contradict their claims that "we.just know what's going on." They don't know, they don't know they don't know, and they don't want to know they don't know. They're simply too busy.

Typical Behavior Patterns

In order to recognize overload, managers don't have to read people's minds. They can simply observe certain characteristic things they do:

11 . The first clear fact that demonstrates overload is the poor quality of the products being developed. Although it's possible to deny this poor quality when no measurements are made of the quality of work in progress, products already delivered have shown this  poor quality in an undeniable way.

12. All over the organization, people are trying to save time by short-circuiting those procedures that do exist. 'This tactic may occasionally work in a normal organization faced with a short-term crisis, but in XYZ, it has been going on for so long it has become part of standard operating procedure.

13. Most people are juggling many things at one time, and thus adding coordination time to their overload. In the absence of clear directives on what must be done first, people are free to make their own choices. Since they are generally unaware of the overall goals of the organization, they tend to suboptimize, choosing whatever looks good to them at the moment.

14. In order to get some feeling of accomplishment, when people have a choice of tasks to do, they tend to choose the easiest task first, so as to "do something." This decision process gives a short-term feeling of relief, but in the long term results in an accumulation of harder and harder problems.

15. Another way an individual can relieve overload is by passing problems to other people. As a result, problems don't get solved, they merely circulate. Some have been circulating for many months.

16. Perhaps the easiest way to recognize an overloaded organization is by noticing how frequently you hear People say, in effect, that they recognize that the way they're working is wrong, but they "have no time to do it right." This seems almost to be the motto of the XYZ organization.

Typical Feelings

If you wait for measurable results of overload, it may be too late. But its possible to recognize an overloaded organization through various expressions of peoples' feelings:

17. An easy way to recognize an overloaded organization is by the general atmosphere in the workplace. In many areas at XYZ there was no enthusiasm, no commitment, and no intensity. People were going through the motions of working, with no hope of really accomplishing their tasks.

18. Another internal symptom of overload is the number of times people expressed the wish that somehow the problem would just go away. Maybe the big customer will cancel the contract. Maybe the management will Just slip the schedules by a year. Maybe the sales force will stop taking more orders. Maybe the company will fail and be purchased by a larger company.

19. One common way of wishing the problem would go away is to choose a scapegoat, who is the personified source of all the difficulties, and then wish that this person would get transferred, get fired, get sick, or quit. At XYZ, there are at least ten different scapegoats—some of whom have long gone, although the problems still remain.

20. Perhaps the ultimate emotional reaction to overload is the intense desire to run away. When there are easy alternatives for employees, overload is followed by people leaving the organization, which only increases the overload. The most perceptive ones usually leave first. When there are few attractive opportunities outside, as at XYZ, then people "run away" on the job. They fantasize about other jobs, other places, other activities, though they don't act on their fantasies. Their bodies remain, but their hearts do not.

The Software Dynamics of Overload

There are a number of reasons for the overload situation at organizations like XYZ, but underlying everything is the quality problem, which in turn arises from the changing size and complexity of the work. This means that simple-minded solutions like adding large numbers of people will merely make the problems worse. In order for management to create a manageable organization, they will have to understand the dynamics of quality. In particular, they will have to understand how quality deteriorates, and how it has deteriorated in their organization over the years. The XYZ company makes an excellent case study.

The quality deterioration at XYZ has been a gradual effect that has crept up unnoticed as the size and complexity of systems has increased. The major management mistake has been lack of awareness of software dynamics, and the need for measurement if such creeping deterioration is to be prevented.

The quality deterioration experienced at XYZ is quite a common phenomenon in the software industry today, because management seems to make the same mistakes everywhere—they assume that the processes that would produce quality small systems will also produce quality large systems. But the difficulty of producing quality systems is exponentially related to system size and complexity, so old solutions quickly become inadequate. These dynamics have been studied by a number of software researchers, but it is not necessary to go fully into them here. A few examples will suffice to illustrate specifically what has been happening at XYZ and the kind of actions that are needed to reverse the situation.

NOTE: The remaining two-thirds of this article describes these dynamics and corrective actions, and can be found as a new chapter in the book, 

Do You Want To Be A (Better) Manager?

The book also details a number of the most common and distressing management problems, along with dozens of positive responses available to competent managers.