If You Want Something Done, Practice Your Patience
As a manager you've been taught, either by your peers, or through hard knocks, to avoid micromanaging your teams. You quickly learn that micromanagement only alienate people.
Anyway, I have noticed that delegation appears to be a difficult concept for inexperienced managers that I had the opportunity to mentor. Delegation does not come naturally. Newly appointed supervisors often think “If you want something done, do it yourself.”
Delegation of authority is an investment and you need patience and time to see your investment come to fruition. It may take a few weeks, a few months, or a year but your patience will be rewarded in the end.
This is the theme of Jurgen Appelo's humorous article.
[via NOOP.NL]
Original photo by mrsmas and published under SXC license.
Skepticism in Software Development
I just read an article from Jason Gorman, from Parlez|UML, on skepticism in software development. He explains that a lot of preconceived theories about software development abound but few of those theories have been thoroughly investigated and therefore, it is difficult to know if they bring value to the engineering process or not. For example, Jason mentions refactoring that claims to make changes easier without supporting research.
In my understanding, this leads to more academic research on those theories to validate them and also to explore their practical boundaries and limits. I believe that this is a perfectly valid, and necessary approach.
However, in parallel to this academic approach, I would have a tendency to take a more pragmatic route. If a concept like refactoring comes to my attention, I would try it out in my environment, see if it has value to my organization and decide, after retrospective, to continue using the method or not. Also, you can not detach the software engineering method or principle from the human component. The method, under properly applied leadership, has to be accepted and embraced by the programmers, testers, or UX designers that would use it. Therefore, the development team, including its lead, decides, if a particular theory helps bring more value to customers.
[via Parlez|UML]
In your organization, are the right people on the bus?
In his book "Good To Great", Jim Collins introduces the notion of "Bus" as a simple metaphor to describe an organization and its employees.
In an ideal organization, you want the right people on the bus, the right people in the right seats on the bus, and the wrong people off the bus.
It is a very simple concept but the reality, in most organizations, does not reflect this concept.
What do you think of this metaphor? Do you think it is accurate or simplistic?
I let you read what snowdolphin has to say on this subject.
[via snowdolphin]
