From 482a7fd1aa2f10596667b88754d47a82af9b6c9d Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: alex Date: Fri, 1 Dec 2023 09:22:16 +0000 Subject: [PATCH] Move Peopleware Cliff's notes here --- cliffs_notes/peopleware.md | 264 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 264 insertions(+) create mode 100644 cliffs_notes/peopleware.md diff --git a/cliffs_notes/peopleware.md b/cliffs_notes/peopleware.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1264791 --- /dev/null +++ b/cliffs_notes/peopleware.md @@ -0,0 +1,264 @@ +# I. Managing the human resource + +People are different from software. + +## 1\. Somewhere today, a project is failing + +* 15% of all projects deliver nothing.\ + 25% for projects >25 work/years\ + Not for technical reasons, "politics" => sociology + +## 2\. Make a cheeseburger, sell a cheeseburger + +* Errors should be encouraged +* A project objective is to be ended. Therefore, a project is never steady. Therefore, a project is always changing and there is no steady state +* Need to think more about "why" this task needs to be done rather than how the task must be done + +## 3\. Vienna waits for you + +* Spanish Theory Management: increase productivity by extracting more work for the $ +* Mechanizing development, lowering quality, standardizing procedure reduces enjoyment of work + +## 4\. Quality-if time permits + +* Self-esteem makes people emotional +* Self-esteem is tied to the quality of our work +* Deadlines conflict with quality +* Manager: Market wants time-to-market over quality +* Builders: want to match their past best achieved quality, more than what the market wants +* But quality is a means to productivity + +## 5\. Parkinson's law revisited + +* "Work expands to fill the time allocated for it" +* Parkinson was a humorist +* Motivated people do not want to work forever in the same task +* The team can motivate people better than the manager +* Productivity by task estimator. No estimate > Systems analyst (unbiased expert) > Programmer > Programmer + supervisor > Supervisor +* Bureaucratic work does expand + +## 6\. Laetrile + +* People are desperate to increase productivity, fall to the seven sirens, seven false hopes of software management + * Missed something obvious: no + * Others are succeeding, you are getting outdated, not using the right programming language, need more automation: technical gains affect just a small part of the total effort + * Need to get to the bottom of the backlog: bottom of the backlog is worthless + * Workers need more pressure + +# II. The office environment + +It's hard to increase productivity, but easy to decrease it + +## 7\. The Furniture Police + +* Optimizing for cost, and uniformity is not productive + +## 8\. You never get anything done around here between 9 and 5 + +* Top performers work in quieter, more private, with less interruption, bigger spaces + +## 9\. Saving money on space + +* Cost of workplace is a small past of cost of worker + +## Intermezzo. Productivity measurement and unidentified flying objects + +* Gilb's Law: Anything you need to quantify can be measured in some way that is superior to not measuring it at all +* Individual productivity should only be measured by the invidivual + +## 10\. Brain time versus body time + +* Interruptions are expensive + +## 11\. The telephone + +* Ensure people attend their email with reasonable frequency (3/day) to allow prioritizing non-interrupting communication + +## 12\. Bring back the door + +* People work better in quiet environments + +## 13\. Taking umbrella steps + +* Developers should design the working environment +* Windows +* Provide outdoor space, public space + +# III. The right people + +* Get the right people, make them happy, let them work + +## 14\. The Hornblower factor + +* Difficult to improve people, choose well +* Appearances << capabilities +* Do not hire for uniformity in the company +* No dress codes + +## 15\. Hiring a juggler + +* Interviews are about performing, not talking +* Portfolios +* Aptitude tests are not for hiring, they are for self-assessment +* Audition on topic related to work selected by the candidate + +## 16\. Happy to be here + +* Turnover is expensive and leads to short term planning + * Needs quick promotions, leads to inexperienced people doing the building +* Company moves are the worst +* Good companies *retrain* + +## 17\. The self-healing system + +* Humans can improvise, automated process cannot +* Big M Methodologies automate + * No improvisation, so must grow to cover all cases + * Lots of documents +* Big M Methodologies take responsibilities away from people into the Methodology +* Big M Methodologies lead to malicious compliance- follow the Methodology even if it has bad outcomes +* Convergence of methods is good, easier to onboard, etc. +* Achieve convergence of methods by training, tooling and peer review, without forcing a Methodology +* Hawthorne Effect: people perform better when trying new approaches +* Do new things on every project to benefit from the Hawthorne Effect +* But have a 10-page max. standard + +# IV. Growing productive teams + +* Teams working as one on a challenge are the objective. Help the team form + +## 18\. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts + +* Jell: a jelled team is more than the sum of its members. Jelled teams enjoy the work +* Jelled teams have a common objective, low turnover, strong sense of identity, feel elite, join ownership of product, enjoyment + +## 19\. The black team + +* The black team tested other teams code. +* The black team outlived the original members +* Identity: dressed in black, some evil mustaches, mystique + +## 20\. Teamicide + +* You can't make a team jell, but you can prevent it from jellying + * Defensive management: preventing people from making mistakes. If the team cannot do the job, they cannot do the job. + * Bureaucracy + * Physical separation + * Fragmentation of people's time: the team must be together most of the time + * Quality reduction of the product: quality jells a team + * Phony deadlines + * Clique control (preventing the team for working together in further projects) + +## 21\. A spaghetti dinner + +* Small successes lead to bigger successes +* Perform small projects, demos, etc. + +## 22\. Open kimono + +* Trust the team +* Get them out of the office +* Let skunkworks projects happen +* Let people choose their peers and project +* Natural authority by being competent + +## 23\. Chemistry for team formation + +* Some organizations have environments that favor team formation +* Managers do not seem busy nor manage a lot, they maintain the chemistry +* Chemistry building + * Cult of quality + * I told her I loved her when I married her. Provide closure to each task. Small tasks for frequent closure + * The Elite Team. Allow and grant uniqueness. + * On not breaking up the yankees. + * A network model of team behavior. Managers are not part of the team. Occasional leaders inside the team + * Selections from a Chinese menu. Do not have a uniform team + +# V. It's supposed to be fun to work here + +## 24\. Chaos and order + +* Constructive reintroduction of small amounts of disorder + * Pilot projects. All projects as pilots, but limit experimentation + * War games + * Brainstorming + * Provocative training experiences + * Training, trips, conferences, celebrations, and retreats. + +## 25\. Free electrons + +* Some people should be left to work at what they want + +## 26\. Holgar Dansk + +* A "sleeping giant" can oppose any bad change + +# VI. Son of Peopleware + +## 27\. Teamicide revisited + +* Those damn posters. Motivational posters tell obvious things people already know. It is demeaning +* Overtime: An unanticipated side effect. If someone is exent of overtime, it is even more damaging + +## 28\. Competition + +* Internal competition inhibits jell + * Prevents internal coaching + * Can come from: + * Annual salary or merit reviews + * Management by objectives + * Praise of certain workers for extraordinary accomplishment + * Awards, prizes, bonuses tied to performance + * Performance measurement in almost any form +* Musical ensembles are better metaphors of good development teams than sport teams. Individual sport teams members can have differing valoration from the rest of the team + +## 29\. Process improvement programs + +* Standardized interfaces are good, standardized processes are not +* Goal is a good product, not building it efficiently +* Good products are risky projects, process improvement avoids risky projects +* Better teams do more complex projects, more risk + +## 30\. Making change possible + +* People fear change +* Degrees of fear to change + * Blindly loyal (ask no questions) + * Believers but questioners + * Skeptics (show me) + * Passive observers (what's in it for me?) + * Opposed (fear of change) + * Opposed (fear of loss of power) + * Militantly opposed (will undermine and destroy) + + Blindly loyal can abandon a change for a newer one. Only Believers but questioners can be allies to a change. Work with them to make change successful +* Celebrate the old system +* Phases of change + * Introduce foreign element/catalyst + * Chaos + * Transforming idea (finding the "correct training"/correct way to adopt change) + * Practice & Integration + * New status quo +* People need to feel safe for change, there should be room for some failure + +## 31\. Human capital + +* Money spent of people is only lost if they leave +* Replacing someone is expensive + +## 32\. Organizational learning + +* Organizations can only learn if people stay for a long time +* Organizations learn when middle management works together without competition and without reporting to upper management + +## 33\. The ultimate management sin is... + +* Wasting people's time + * Being late for meetings, blocking meetings, inviting people who don't need to be there + * Status reporting meetings + * Early overstaffing (and leads to fragmenting time of people) + +## 34\. The making of community + +* Aristotelian politics is building communities, extending ethics to a group +* Creatin \ No newline at end of file -- 2.47.3