Better Software - March 2008 - (Page 20)

Management Chronicles Make Your Mission Possible by Johanna Rothman Janice strode down the hall and made a sharp right at a cubicle decorated with dragons. “Hey, Steve, got a minute? I need your help with a problem.” “Janice, the last time you asked me for my help, I got stuck in that installation mess. I appreciate being one of your team leads, but I get worried when you ask for help with problems. What’s going on now?” “We have a problem with customizations for Big Customer2. The good news is that we do these customizations, right? But the bad news is that we have to port them from release to release.” “We did that last month.” “Well, you did. Then tech support decided to add the extra piece of the reports we discussed last month.” “What? Why did they do that? Not to this product—they can’t.” “Well, Big Customer2 paid us a pile of money for not too much work. And that’s where you come in. I need you to add that new report to the point release you’re working on now.” “How much money? I bet tech support has no idea how much this piece of the report will cost us to support or how much time it will take away from our next release. We can’t just think of this report as a pile of money; it’s a headache. We were never going to put that functionality into the product. We were going to put it in the new reporting system, remember? Now we’re going to have to support that report forever. Big Customer2 is never going to want to change.” Steve put his head in his hands. Finally, he raised his head and said, “OK. I’ll do it. But on one condition.” “We decide what we’re doing as a development group once and for all. You asked me to be a team lead, right? Well, I don’t know what I’m leading. Let’s decide what our mission is—whether it’s to support any crazy thing our customers want, make products, support installations, or what. Let’s define our mission 20 BETTER SOFTWARE MARCH 2008 and write our mission statement. Then we’ll have a basis on which to say no to new work if it doesn’t support our mission. From now on, we will have a reason for the work.” A week later, Steve and Janice met to develop their mission. “Steve, I invited Chris so we have all you technical leads in one room. Since you prompted me to think about the mission for our group, I decided to ask my boss for his mission, as well. He doesn’t have one yet, so we may have to revise ours later. But at least we’ll know where we’re going.” Janice placed two lists on the table. “Here’s all the work we’re doing in development. One list is a month-bymonth portfolio of all of our projects— and all the extra things I’m supposed to do as a manager. The other list is the work other people would like us to do that we’re not doing. Now, do you two have work you’d like to be doing that’s not on this list?” Chris and Steve nodded. Janice handed them a stack of index cards and said, “OK, let’s write all the work we’re doing and the work we’d like to be doing, one project to a card. We’ll organize them into these buckets: work that seems to make sense for our group; work that needs to get done, but maybe not by us; and work that we are doing but we don’t understand why.” www.StickyMinds.com After a few minutes, Janice, Chris, and Steve had their cards sorted. Chris said, “Wait a minute. Why are we looking at the work? Why don’t we decide on our mission first and then manage the work?” “Good question,” Janice said. “Since my manager doesn’t know his mission, yet, I’m not sure we can finalize ours beyond the work we do. Clearly someone in the company values our work, so we have to make sure we continue to do work the company values but that also makes sense for us to do. By starting with an analysis of our work, we’ll have a basis for our decisions—especially when we start looking at the work we’d like to be doing that we never have time to start.” Janice, Chris, and Steve discussed their work, bucket by bucket, starting with work it made sense for them to do. Next, they discussed the work that they thought the company needed to have done—but not necessarily by them—and put a sticky on the card with the name of the group that they thought should do the work. Finally, the trio discussed the work they didn’t understand why they were doing. Janice wrote a sticky with the name of the person she was going to talk to about those projects. “Now that we understand our work ISTOCKPHOTO http://www.StickyMinds.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Better Software - March 2008

Better Software - March 2008 Contents Mark Your Calendar Contributors eLightenment Technically Speaking Code Craft Test Connection Management Chronicles Cover Story: Breaking Ground On SOA Software Development Worst Practices Mind the Gap Product Announcements 10 Things You Might Not Know About... The Last Word Ad Index

Better Software - March 2008

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