Saturday, September 13, 2003

Net Negative Programmers

Steve Norrie links to this article [PDF] about the effect of ‘net negative programmers’. I’ve known a few of these. They take two main forms - the overly technical, resume building, next big thing developer, and the spoiled child, my-work-is-my-art prima donna.

The first type slow everyone else down by using convoluted architectures or half-baked, new, high risk technologies which are unproven for the application scale and performance requirements. This can result in a need to train lots of engineers in a new technique. It increases the defect rate, and may result in a poor product which fails to meet customer expectations.

The second type just refuse to change, to grow, to learn more and to challenge themselves professionally. They aren’t humble. In fact they are downright arrogant. They think they know it all and their performance is already good enough. They act as a “fifth column” and undermine managerial initiatives to create a culture of continuous improvement. These ‘net negative programmers’ are one man ‘limits to growth’ - individual constraints.

Net negative programmers can increase project risk, increase costs, increase defects and reduce throughput, profit and ROI for the whole team and business. It requires strong management to overcome this. It requires managers prepared to be unpopular and prepared to make the hard decisions. Sometimes, eliminating a team member who is otherwise well respected for their intellect may result in a net improvement in performance.

Critical Chain Scheduling

Frank Patrick has a really colorful post explaining Critical Chain scheduling and buffer usage. The 2 charts of what is essentially the same project with different amounts of buffer tell a very revealing story. Good project management is all about probability and learning to live with uncertainty. Deterministic dependency is where Critical Path techniques breakdown.

Translating to project management, the deterministic line is equivalent to completed work. Looking into the future, we move from points in time to ranges of time within which we can expect completion of a project. The further out we look—the more work subject to uncertainty that remains—the wider the range of promises needs to be.

Sample Chapter

A sneak preview of the book. Prentice Hall have allowed me to make the introduction to Section 1 and the whole of Chapter 14 “Operations Review” available in PDF form.

Friday, September 12, 2003

Dell’s CIO & the Essence of Agile Management

Dell’s CIO, Randy Mott really seems to understand the essence of Agile Management according to this article in Information Week.

<!—StartFragment—>For Dell’s IT staff, the challenge is executing on that visionary ambition within intensely practical performance goals. Their five-year objectives include reducing IT spending to less than 1% of revenue and cutting the application development cycle to nine months or less. And to do that while delivering 100% of projects on time with a measurable bottom-line improvement.

Structural Change in the US Economy

CNN has picked up on a report by the New York Federal Reserve Bank that suggests that the recovery is jobless because there is a restructuring beginning to happen.

In a recent report, economists at the New York Fed suggest that what is happening is structural. In past recessions job losses were far more cyclical: The economy turned down, your company laid you off, but as soon as things got better you got hired back.

I’ve referred to this as the “silicon rust belt” effect. The idea that many knowledge worker jobs will go off-shore just as heavy industrial jobs moved to lower cost economies in the 1970’s and 1980’s. This will leave an aging workforce of software engineers who can’t be easily retrained. They will then spend their twilight career years pushing carts for Home Depot.

It’s time for the software development business to get lean and focus on delivering real ROI faster. Read the whole CNN article…<!—StartFragment—>