Better Software - December 2007 - (Page 30)

DEFINING PERSONAL VALUES Here are three short exercises you can do to help define your personal values: • Imagine you are producing and directing a movie about your life. What will you highlight? What are the happiest scenes or the most uplifting? What challenges did you overcome and how? (Optional: When you go to accept your Oscar, what will you say at the podium?) • Do you have a hero—someone whom you greatly respect and admire? What is it about that person that garners your high regard? • National Public Radio (NPR) sponsors a recurring program called “This I Believe,” where NPR invites the listening community to share the core values that guide their lives. Imagine you are recording your own version for NPR. Need examples? Go to the StickyNotes for a link. they can find their division’s strategic goals on an internal Web page or on a poster somewhere. What they usually can’t find is the list of what the company believes in. As a result, many are left to infer corporate values based on what they’ve observed. If your culture supports it, question your executive management and ask to be informed of the corporate values. If it’s appropriate, share with them the values that your division or team has created and ask if these values are in keeping with the values of the company as a whole. If you receive approval and kind regards from upper management, this is good news—yet it may not mean that all is well. If the value system of the organization is simply “for show,” then it may be career suicide to “deliver the unvarnished truth” in all communications. As Oxford professor John Kay states: “There is a real difference between saying to your workers, ‘We care about your welfare because we do,’ and saying, ‘We care about your welfare because that will make you work harder for us’”(see the StickyNotes for a reference). Thus, some companies quietly value the death-march approach to product delivery because it gets results, even as they say otherwise. Indeed, turnover can be directly related to individuals’ personal values conflicting with those of the corporation. When you wake up in the morning dreading having to go into work, it may be because you have discovered that what you value and what the company values are two different things. If you feel unappreciated, then perhaps you value recognition—and the company does not. If you think that the work you’re doing is a bore, then perhaps you value being challenged and doing work that is important—and the company values only the results of what you’re achieving right now. While a company can dictate its values as part of the contractual relationship you entered into when you accepted the job, it can not dictate your own personal values. And even as you are collecting a paycheck, this clash of values can be a soul-sucking experience, and only you can determine whether or not the tradeoffs are worth it. Think about what you www.StickyMinds.com personally value in your life, and use your values as a barometer in future interviews to determine whether or not your next job is going to be a good fit (see the sidebar). There are implied values in everything, but these will vary by team and by company culture. And that’s the point of this article—you need to examine the values that drive behavior in your organization or team and move them from being implicit and subject to interpretation to being explicit and discussed regularly, so they can guide behaviors in an appropriate fashion. Author Ignazio Silone said it best: “On a group of theories one can found a school; but on a group of values one can found a culture, a civilization, a new way of living together among men.” So what do you believe? And what are you going to do about it? {end} Michele Sliger has extensive experience in agile software development, having worked in both XP and Scrum teams before becoming a consultant. As a self-described "bridge builder," her passion lies in helping those in traditional software development environments cross the bridge to agility. Her forthcoming book The Software Project Manager’s Bridge to Agility, co-authored with Stacia Broderick, will focus on that topic, helping PMI-trained project managers make the transition. Michele is a Certified Scrum Trainer (CST) and a certified Project Management Professional (PMP). If you have a question or would like help with your agile adoption, Michele can be reached at michele@sligerconsulting.com Sticky Notes For more on the following topics go to www.StickyMinds.com/bettersoftware. I I I I References Google’s philosophy Certified public facilitator resource NPR’s “This I Believe” 30 BETTER SOFTWARE DECEMBER 2007 http://www.StickyMinds.com/bettersoftware http://www.StickyMinds.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Better Software - December 2007

Better Software - December 2007 Contents Mark Your Calendar What's Happening @ StickyMinds.com Technically Speaking Code Craft Test Connection Management Chronicles Man and Machine Let Your Values be Your Guide A Story About User Stories and Test-driven Development Product Announcements The Last Word Ad Index

Better Software - December 2007

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