Honor your commitments!

At home:

Wife : Did you talk to your boss about taking a vacation next month?

Husband: No, I did not.

Wife: Why not? You were going to do it last week. Now we will be late in booking tickets. I really want to be able to see my parents this year. You can't do one thing right for me!

Husband: Stop nagging me about it! I tried bringing it up last week but everyone was quite stressed out with the project deadlines then.

Wife: Well, you could've just told me! You said you will do it and you didn't. If you just thought of letting me know, I wouldn't be that upset. You know how much this means to me. I haven't seen my family in years. It seemed like you didn't care about it.

Husband: I'm sorry. I guess I should've informed you. I didn't realize you were waiting on me to make a decision. I know it's uncomfortable not knowing what our plans are.

At work:

Manager: Liz, are you done with the software update yet?

Liz: No, I'm not. None of the test benches were available this week and so I didn't get any debugging time.

Manager: Well, why didn't you let me know that your work was impeded? I am responsible to get the software released next week and we are not done yet.

Liz: (getting all defensive) I was working overtime just to get this delivered but it's not my fault that the other group was using the test bench!

Manager: I am not blaming you for not working hard. Everyone in this office is very hard-working. But, if only you had given me a heads-up, I would have been able to either help you out or planned for a late release. I want to you understand that if you can't keep the date you committed to, let me know beforehand. It just gives me enough time to react to impediments and change the plan. Honor your commitments or don't commit to something you can't do!

Liz: I see why you are so upset now. I assure you this will never happen again.

 

Are you a goal keeper?

Sometimes we get so involved in our mundane tasks that we lose focus of our goal. Whether at work or at home, I am sure we have all been through times like these.

Let me share a story with you. I am part of this workplace improvement group at work. We organize fairly good seminars and events to help employees develop themselves and make the company a better place to work for. But lately, the activities of the group have either been very repetitive or unrelated to where we all started. Rarely have I seen people question why we host certain events or what we really want to achieve with them. Not to my surprise, the attendance of members themselves has drastically reduced at these functions.

Although we all have good intentions, the good hasn't been well-defined. There is no roadmap. There haven't been enough questions like "Why are we exactly here?"

Another story from one of my older employers-

One morning my boss called me and asked me to work on this so called extremely important assignment. The sense of urgency in his voice was very evident. I listened to him for a while and asked him only one question at the end. "Why do you want me to leave everything and work on this right away?"

His answer was, "Well, because my boss told me to do so. What would you do if your boss called you and said that something is urgent?"

I almost laughed before I said "I would ask her the reason behind the urgency!"Of course, I explained to him why what he thought was urgent was really not a big issue and we had a bit of a discussion over it.

Once again, no surprises! It turned out that the assignment wasn't an urgent one after all. Someone higher up panicked due to a customer complaint and it trickled down all the way to us lower beings. Many layers of people in between never asked the question – why?

It is so easy to go on auto-pilot sometimes that we forget which direction we are going in.

Anyway, if your boss is as good as mine, ask him why? If your family is as good as mine, question them why? And if you have been diligently working on something, definitely question yourself why? Don't ever lose sight of your goal!

Simplicity

I have noticed this attitude in every company I have worked for. Whenever people are bragging about company products, the conversation is all about highlighting things like –

1. how many features the product has
2. how slick the user interface is
3. how a certain 'latest' technology or paradigm was used
4. how complex the system is or
5. how smart the guy behind the design is(that he could make such a complicated system work). The more complex his design is, the smarter the designer must be.

But I have never heard someone say something like – "Look how simple the design is!" or "Look how comprehensible it is that anybody can pick up where they have left and sustain this product. Imagine how much money it would save us in future"


As I see it, features can always be added to a product at any point; cosmetic appearance can always be polished. But simplicity and robustness of a system is not only hard to achieve but it is something which we cannot easily 'fix'.


Why can't we then 'show-off' or take pride in our simplicity? Does it not sound cool enough?

Good promotion or Bad promotion?

Last week, some of us represented our company at a career fair in a reputed school in California. Our neighbors were from an organization that is into social media and very popular among students these days. They were giving away free t-shirts which people seemed to take quite a liking for. At about noon, when the crowd started dispersing for lunch, a relatively older looking lady stopped by their booth. She did not look like she was interested in looking for a job at the fair. She seemed to be awed by their impressive booth design. She probably fancied getting one of those free t-shirts too. She approached them and asked for a t-shirt but the gentleman behind the booth snapped “Ma’am these are only for students!” 

She patiently asked him “Why is that? What is the purpose of the free giveaways anyway?”

He said “They are meant for students to keep. It is a company initiative for marketing our brand name in the student community.”

She replied “Well, my friend, you seem to have decided that I am not good enough to promote your brand name. With today’s experience, I have not been left with much to say about your company. If one of my students asks me about you, I wonder what my response would be. Do you think you have done a good job at brand promotion today? Or do you think you may have lost a great marketing opportunity?” And just like that, she left. 

Isn’t it amazing that every time we interact with someone, we convey a message. This message could do a good promotion or a bad promotion of who we represent. At events like trade shows, we are an image of our company. At global events, we are sometimes an image of our country. In a much more personal group, we are an image of ourselves. What do you want your image to look like?

The tale of trust- part 1

Raj is the new engineer in the team. He is working on the most talked about project in the company. Samuel is helping him come up to speed with the company products. Sam is about to review Raj's first ever written code in this company. Raj is a bit nervous about his first code review but trusts Sam a lot. He has always helped Raj through the tough situations so far. 


The review goes on for three hours. Sam finds at least 40 places where there is room for improvement. A brand new hire would usually get really upset about it. But Raj trusts Sam. He knows Sam's intentions are good. He wants Raj's first project to be a success, he wants the code to be as problem free as possible, and he knows how much small bugs in the code cost the company later in the product's life. He readily accepts that some of the areas need to be improved but defends his case on some parts of the code. 


Now Sam, in return, trusts that Raj is a good engineer and has a good reason for his defense. He says "Some of my comments are only my preferences on how things could be done. Whether you accept them or not is completely at your discretion. I fully trust and support your decision."

Are these imaginary people talking? I've personally known people like these for a while now. So, can we all try and trust that our co-workers are trying to their best? 


The bigger question is - Can we all trust that people around us have better intentions in mind than we think they do?

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team

That is the name of a bestseller by Patrick Lencioni.
Alexander manages the software team in California. These are the five dysfunctions of a team from a management book he read.

• Absence of Trust 
  
• Fear of Conflict
  
• Lack of Commitment 
  
• Avoidance of Accountability 
  
• Inattention to Results 
  

"How do we use this information? How can we make them the five building blocks of a high performing team? For now let us list them out for the group."

• Trust
• Constructive conflict
• Commitment
• Accountability
• Attention to results

Okay, now what? We'll work on one at a time. Just like Alexander worked with his team.

Dates!

Alexander, the project manager, is in the process of setting up a small project schedule. He needs Jack’s input on the same.  

Alexander:  What’s your estimate on this software update?

Jack:  I believe I would take 25 days for the code itself but the documentation and review with the team will take about 10 more days. 

Alexander:  That is very close to what I thought too. 

Jack: Great! I’m glad this fits in with your expectation. I was worried it would upset you since the customer is waiting for us to deliver.

Alexander: Oh no! You have to write the code; you know best what it takes. You don’t need to please me. I’m just the guy who manages other things around your schedule. 

Jack: Thank you Alexander. I think you are a great manager. I am glad you understand why it will take me this long. I think I can go back to work with a peaceful mind now.

Scheduling backwards

If this Dilbert comic strip rings a bell, you might want to continue reading.

Raj is working on a project declared as the number one priority by the company. If this software does not get released within the next month, the company will not meet certain certification standards for the product which in turn will affect the sales this year.

Mark, the project manager, is very keen on moving fast. “We must do what it takes! The certification test has been set to end of the month. A week before that date, we should be testing the software. This means, the software should be ready by the end of this week. Raj, will you be able to deliver?”

Raj is thinking “This is such a critical project. It seems like an emergency. We will all be in trouble if we can’t get it done.”  He responds, “Yes, absolutely! I’ll try my best.”

Raj takes the ‘do what it takes’ command seriously. He is working late, fixing bugs the ugly way and is headed straight towards completion. What about documentation and reviews? We don’t have time for everything right now. We can do it LATER! We just need to pass the test.

 

Weeks later, the software is certified. There is a short celebration party held for the team. Champagne is served. Everyone is happy. Raj is beaming with pride. 

The next year, the company is in the same situation for another round of certification for a similar software update. But this time, Mila and Paul are on the software team. And what else is new? The project manager is Alexander. 

Alexander understands the significance of the project very well. But he starts like this “Mila and Paul, can you give me an estimate of how much work this is? It would be nice if we had some dates to go with it.”

Paul says, “Yes, sure. Well, the design document will take about a week’s time; the software itself will take about two weeks. Mila says she will review it in a week. We are both attending the training session for a couple of days within that period too. So I think the software will be ready for test within five weeks from now.”

Alexander notes down the dates and reports it to his boss Alisha. Alisha is shocked. She says “The last year’s team did this in one week. This year your team is going to cost us extra money. We had everything scheduled and now we need to spend on getting it all re-organized. Last year, getting the software cost us NOTHING!”

Mark imposing a deadline, Raj working overtime hours, the team ignoring the software process last year sent a wrong a message to the company’s top level management. They had started believing that they could impose any deadline for small software updates and it will be delivered more or less on time. It was a monstrous myth building in itself- Software is free!

Why spend on travel?

Mila, as you know, is one of our high performing software engineers based in California. She is smart, sensitive, works well in a team. Mr. Schultz is her German counterpart in the new project. He is a fairly nice guy, respected by his peers for his contribution, excited to work with the American team. Both get along very well over emails and phone conversations and are collaboratively working on this fast track project. 

One day, there is a disagreement between the two. Mr. Schultz is very critical of Mila’s software and presents his ideas on how she could improve it. He doesn’t hold back any criticism telling her how the basis of her idea is just plain wrong. You see, he comes from a culture with no pretense; they speak what they feel. Mila, on the other hand, is a strong individual but sensitive to her audience when she speaks. Mila decides Mr. Schultz is just a stubborn person who is not accommodative of others. She thinks his intention is to ridicule her ideas. “Why would he always oppose what I say otherwise?”

The next week, something comes up and their project manager Karl decides that Mila should visit their German facility. Karl says, “I know we are cutting on costs this quarter but this might help the team work better and faster. There seem to be a lot of ideas going back and forth. ” Mila immediately grabs the opportunity and is excited to meet the team in Germany. She spends a month there. They work hard that month; they work late nights, share a beer or two, but make it “one productive month!”

In that one month, Mila learnt a few things about Mr. Schultz. He is open and straight-forward, not stubborn. He gives you an honest feedback, no pretense there. Mila realizes that Mr. Schultz’s extremely critical feedback actually led them to create a very stable software by the end of the month.

How did Mila’s opinion change? Because she saw the man in action! She saw the emotions and reason behind his critical emails. She began to understand the goal behind the criticism. And so on…

So, is travel really expensive?

Is Overtime simply Overkill?

This one is a modified version of a scenario described in the book Peopleware(which by the way, is a great read).

Jack, Suresh, Mila and Andrew are a closely knit team of four is working on a project. They are all high performing engineers and work well within a team. These are salaried employees; so they don’t get paid for overtime. 

The company is not doing so well this year and a very important software update needs to get released by the end of the month. As a result, the project manager requests the team to put in some extra effort and get it done. They all know it is a very visible project in the company and the CEO has shown special interest in its outcome. They all know it is important to succeed as a team in this situation.

Jack has a bit of a situation though; he cannot stay late hours. His wife’s job demands that she work evening shifts. So, Jack has to take care of the kids. Now, the rest of the team understands this and offer to “cover for Jack” willingly. Each day, the four of them work together till 4pm and then Suresh, Mila and Andy stay back till their everyday goal is met. They order-in pizza, call their loved ones but never leave the office till they feel like they have achieved something for the day. Week 1 is exciting; Week 2 they are all overworked, the software doesn’t seem to be very stable, their spouses are unhappy but “Jack leaves exactly at 4!”

Come Week 3, the frustration levels are higher; Suresh and Mila start cribbing about how “How Jack gets to go home early!” 

Week 4 is the worst; the software has to be released and the team is still fixing bugs. “But Jack doesn’t care!”  or does he? 

Of course, Jack cares. But now we see how a closely knit team has started falling apart. We don’t know how overtime helped the company produce better results. May be they were all so overworked, that the software was extremely buggy. But even worse, now a great team which ‘could kill’ to succeed, has fallen apart. 

Has the company saved some overtime money? May be. Has the company lost much more than that? Think about it…

I am a people person

I have begun reading books and blogs about people behavior in organizations. Almost all of them are written by people with years of experience in this area. I want to try writing a blog on this subject from a current software engineer’s perspective. These would typically be examples of people behavior I have seen at work or outside and some ‘lessons learnt’. From time to time, I might throw in some nuggets from books, articles or videos typically related to organizational behavior. I may make up some stories to explain certain things better. Pardon me if I write occasional side-posts just to feed my blogging hunger.

My opinions should be taken with a grain of salt. They might even change over the course of time and that probably is just an indicator of the fact that I am actively learning.

For those not very interested in this subject, give this a shot. You might just find that connection with your everyday life. For the rest of you, hope this keeps you interested. :)