First make someone responsible and put them in the middle
Long, long ago in a company not far from here I worked for a company that was full of smart, capable people. We did good things without any defined process. Knowing what I’ve learnt since and especially reading about the experience of others it was amazing. Either we were incredibly lucky, super smart or there was something else stopping us from creating nothing but train-wreck software. I’m voting for something else since the luck thing doesn’t sound right and I don’t think I’m super smart.
So what do I think this something else was? I think it was related to putting a capable person, who cared about almost nothing except for getting a good project out the door at the centre of the project. Because I was at the company for a while (more than 10 years) and was interested in nerdherding I paid attention to the leadership/management of the teams and was able to correlate project success with the different team and project philosophies used on each project.
The most interesting failure in the company was a project that was months late and didn’t seem to be capable of delivering. In fact, the project team didn’t even have a list of the features that it needed to implement or the bugs that needed to be fixed prior to delivery. What was interesting was that once we realised that the project was going nowhere we only changed one thing. We added a person to the project who was responsible for working in the middle of the team to make sure that the project was delivered. Nothing else was changed - the technology, tools, daily processes and staff all remained static. The person in the middle maintained a list of tasks that needed to be done, talked to everyone (individually) to find out what they were working on, doled out work to those who needed some, guided features towards simplicity and sought help for people who were struggling. Think of the role as a task-nazi/coach or an unholy amalgam of a customer representative and a lead developer or perhaps a project manager who worked at a half-day granularity and understood the business. After this change the project quickly build up a head of steam and finished only a few weeks late.
Other interesting failures at the company had to do with strict functional splits on projects. You know the thing - business analysts too separated from software developers who are too separated from test resources, etc. Even if each of the individual functions was communicating well with each other function, unless there was a person who co-ordinated and guided all of the interactions then things went wrong. The worst example of this was on the company’s biggest ever project. The project limped along and was delivered, but in the end wasn’t what was needed by the customer and was eventually canned (resulting in lots of job losses and investor money evaporating). If only a person was put at the centre!
I’ve seen similar failures and successes at other companies often strongly correlated with the presence of a person in the middle.
Now I know that there have been plenty more advances in process and I’d rather use a more complete agile process any day but if you don’t really have a process or you use a waterfall variation then for the love of all things good, please put a single, capable person in the middle of each of your projects.
May 4th, 2006 at 3:15 am
I definately agree, but in my experience, few really want to do the job.
It’s a mess of contradictions - the job is mostly communications, but you need to be a technical expert otherwise the techies will snow you. The job is about compromise, negotiation and swallowing ones ego; but getting the technical skills required to face up to the people you are managing requires the reverse of that. The Internet age has made it even worse, taking ‘coolness’ and mindless babble on web pages to new heights.
Worse, neither the big cheeses nor the bright shining stars really value or understand the role … so the quiet communicator is less well paid than the noisy star. When the pay for the coordinator is better, everyone wonders why, because he or she never seems to actually … do anything! And when they finally succeed in taking over the lucrative position, and discover what the job is, your average guru doesn’t last 2 weeks before he’s found some secret niche he can hide away in and do some ’special project’ … leaving the real job open again.
May 4th, 2006 at 10:46 am
Great post and great comment by Iang! You both hit the nail on the head. The man (or woman) in the middle has to bridge the gap between nerds and management and be content with the fact that both sides think the middle layer is unnecessary. Keeping both sides happy and getting none of the credit takes a special individual. Ahhhh, middle management.
May 5th, 2006 at 3:07 am
From my experience, the difficult part of this is finding someone or getting someone to really CARE about the project. Any resources or thoughts you have on getting people to CARE?
May 9th, 2006 at 7:47 am
Been there. Done that.
Completely agree. I will agree that this role is useful when you dont have a full-fledged process but regardless of whether you have or do not have a process; if you have a late or overbudget project then this is probably the only thing you can quickly change that will make a significat difference to its time-frames or cost.
May 9th, 2006 at 8:04 am
[…] Interesting point made at Nerdherding, that sometimes - and only sometimes - things work even when you have no process. Your projects still come under time and on budget. The expectations of your executives and customers are met. Yeah, you have a good, smart team but what else? […]
May 10th, 2006 at 8:21 pm
[…] There were a couple of comments on my First make someone responsible… post that I’d like to highlight. […]
December 5th, 2006 at 11:21 am
I got one of these jobs once by accident. I worked really hard on a project, some one noticed and when the project was over I didn’t want to go back to what I normally did so I was offered this officially non-existent position. Actually someone had retired and after a couple of weeks people started to realize that he had been working after all. I kicked ass and got things running smoothly in spite of not knowing anything about the technology. I was under paid, worked crazy long hours, took the work home in my head, spent sleepless nights solving problems and eventually got an award (I was a Hidden Hero!) at a big event where I met a vice president on a stage in front of hundreds of people and went home with a back pack full of branded goodies. My position had a time limit and once the goal was achieved I was supposed to find myself another job within the company. I realized that while I was really good at this kind of management it was making me crazy so I took some time off and went back to school (to finish the BA I hadn’t finished the first time out).
Fast forward to today- I am almost finished with that BA (actually a BS) and I really don’t want any of the jobs that it will qualify me for. I find my self longing for my “in the middle job.” I think that I have learned enough along the way to do it without driving my self nuts. The thing is that I don’t know how to get that job. I don’t think it gets listed on Monster.
Any thoughts on how to find one of these would be appreciated.
zoeyka at yahoo dot com