Beaten to Death with a Carrot

Do you work for carrots? You just might. One of the most common refrains heard in the land of client relationships and business development is - "but we're going to get more work out of them." It's used as the proverbial carrot on a stick to justify going out of scope, over budget, and generally not standing up for ourselves. This mindset is quickly related to the feeling that if we push back we will risk "ruining the relationship with the client"...and thereby not get the work. If merely being honest and addressing business or communication issues with a client ruins the relationship, did we really have a...???? You get the idea. Client relationships are critical. New work from them is critical. Just don't let yourself get beat to death by that carrot on the stick.

Why don't you fix the problem, round 3

There's a nasty stereotype out there that software developers are a bunch of uncooperative jerks who seek any opportunity to rain on your parade. Unfortunately, many developers aren't helping break this stereotype.

I see a lot of blog posts out there that can be boiled down to "Management doesn't get it." No, they don't. The reality of the situation is that the popularity of the internet has made demand for developers grow in sectors that are not typically technical.

You might become lethargic, thinking that there's no hope of ever educating them. That might be true, as every situation is different. but reverting to a Nick-Burns-esque character will only make the problem worse. By actively refusing to do your best at educating the people around you, you're fostering the very stereotype that makes your job so difficult. A simple "RTFM" will only hurt you here.

By doing your best to educate your peers on how things work, and factors that make development difficult or easy, you're building a relationship. overtime, management will eventually get it.

Yes, this will require an extraordinary level of patience, but you should be rewarded for your efforts provided you stick with it.

Why don't you fix the problem, round 2

As a business, you want to get the most out of your developers, and it makes sense that you want them to work as quickly as they can. Some feel that in order to make your devs work quickly, you have to schedule more aggressively. However, it's pretty unlikely that thats why your developers aren't building as quickly as they could be.

In order to achieve rapid development, you must plan for it, and scheduling more aggressively may actually get in the way, because your developers must write code so quickly that little consideration is given to code reuse. As such, developers will end up solving old problems in new ways. Reinventing the wheel, over and over again, is very time consuming.

Hopefully your developers are voicing concerns about this kind of thing. If they're not, take it as a warning sign; you may have a floor composed entirely of immature devs.

On the other hand, if your developers are spending too much time on administrative tasks it might be wise to see if any of that responsibility can be pushed onto other people.

Put succinctly, you should ensure that the obstacles your developers are dealt with. Closing your eyes and trusting them to deal with it is runs completely counter to the concept of Rapid Development.

Why don't you fix the problem?

There's a concept in software developed called "Silver Bullet Syndrome." It's an overly optimistic view of the benefits of adopting a new technology. Switching from PHP to Java will make development 65% faster, switching to SATA hard drives from IDE will make compile times fall, or agile development will make changing requirements easier to deal with.

No. None of those things are true. If you're running into speed issues the tool you've chosen almost certainly not at fault, but the way you've used it. So why don't you fix the problem?

But if software developers are willing to adopt this thinking, it's no surprise their managers do as well. When a project is behind schedule, some businesses will add more people to the team, thinking that the larger the team, the faster work will be completed. But this reasoning quickly falls apart. If a project is behind because the business changes requirements schizophrenically, adding more people to that project will only make the problem worse.

What if your developers are sitting around doing nothing? You could give them more tasks. Except it might be tough to judge if they're actually doing nothing. If someone is holding them up, it would be better to work to unblock them so they can get their assigned work done. Adding more to their plate puts the new work items at risk.

Really, what this all boils down to is the need for thoughtful consideration. The obvious solution isn't always the right one, and if you trying to fix a problem without understanding it completely, you will, predictably, make the situation worse. So, why don't you fix the problem?

Desperation and Arrogance in the WIRED Exchange

I'm a fan of Wired in the same way that I'm a fan of In Style magazine. I like to thumb through the pages looking at pretty pictures, occasionally reading an article but I never really do much with the information. In Style tries so hard to be fashionable. Wired tries so hard to be smart. Anyway, one of my fave areas of Wired is the Exchange at the very back of the magazine. It's sort of in in-flight mall rag for readers and it's full of equal parts optimism and arrogance.

We have Rosetta Stone to teach you the Chinese language you'll need to compete in the New Global Economy. There are summaries of the 5000 best business books so you can annoy your colleagues by parroting back business mantras from Jack Welch, Seth Godin, and Guy Kawasaki. And just so it's not all about the art of the deal, we have an e-book on Delivering Happiness - a path to profits, passion... oh wait, I guess it IS all about the art of the deal. Well who better to learn how to live a life of happiness and passion than from the CEO of Zappos. Optimism is here also in the form of protection - advanced air purifiers, identity protection, biomorphic desks that "adjust to your lifestyle" so long as your lifestyle is sitting at a computer all day.

And we have odd bits of arrogance. Turn your photo into large scale canvas art. What better way to contribute to the culture than by blowing up my Facebook photo into a huge wall hanging. For those who really believe in their own specialness, you can send in a scrap of skin or hair to DNA11 and have them convert it into a custom portrait - your DNA markers for all to see. Riddle me this - isn't it ironic to have an ad for a special wallet that purports to keep your identity safe sitting just below an ad that has you send in a DNA sample?