So coming back to when to call an Ufffff (you call it "stop it" or "Enough" or anything else). I realized that sometimes certain mistakes are repeated, one, two, three and many more time... by the same people differently or by different people in the similar fashion... be it Software development or any other damm piece of profession, to be honest people repeating the mistakes… are not a problem ... it's the management who is the problem here....
How?
OK so here it comes…. Last few months (since I am here with my current employement) (We) had been talking about the Quality in the programming, and in spite of calls and discussions every 2 weeks for the last 1 year I somehow feel that the team makes the same mistakes and gets ignorant about the quality… nothing new... I am sure if you are into a Software Manager you must be facing the same issue…
"Dammit why the hell they dont understand" that's what Prince told me when I was at bolt's office...
Long back I heard a story from Henry Cobb about a Donkey who used to carry some scrap everyday and used to spill part’s of it on the way to the Masters house. The Master did drive the donkey off the path, made barriers to the load so that it doesn’t spill ... But it changed for a day and then the same old story… He had no other choice than whipping, but things never changed for years and years… The moral Henry wanted to give was that if you do the same thing again and again you get into a habit... what I derived from it was the Master never went and analyzed why this happen …simply because he too had a Project Manager’s brain…
The Donkey tells me that certain mistakes remain rectified only till the influence is there … which doesn't means that till the developer thinks that his code is being reviewed he will not make mistake with the quality… it means that till the fire to build the quality code is present in the developer the code produced is quality … the moment this fire gets ceased… I mean urge towards quality consciousness is off the mistake comes into action…
Same thing happened to the cricket … when we started playing cricket for the first time in the organization there were a bunch of guys… the moment there were matchsticks that don't produce flames cricket was off… Thanks to Natwar and Saket that this is being enlightened again….
So the whole point here is that repeated mistakes will come all the way along... all the Management has to do is to think of avoiding the scenarios...
I am sure you have the next How??? ok so I am not coaching you here until you pay me a few grands or promise to subscribe the blog ;) just kidding....here are things that can be done to avoid / tackle repeated mistakes...
1. Make sure that the Objective is in front of the Eyes all the time...
2. Make sure that it is being talked and followed up so that the feeling of the objective been alive is there.
3. Embarrass the odd ones out and publicize it so that everyone understands that mistakes might go un-noticed but repeated mistakes will lead to embarrassment. (This really came up when I was talking to Kari about this in one of the Demo where we were silent spectators...)
4. Cut the root not the branches… meaning cut the causes of the Build breaking not the developer's doing the builds…
Well these are not all…. I am sure all through next few months I am going to face bigger issues than these that will cause bigger than Ass pains… But I am preparing myself for it.... A New Lesson to a repeated problem...
Do you have another How ????
I am preparing a board to list down the Mistakes that we(The Team) makes everyday (at least the ones we catch) and try to work on them, of course there should be the Mistake (wo) Man of the week so that their is a celebrity status to the legends. The plan is to have a Story board of mistakes on a common area so that every one sees it… and the Actions taken on them ... nothing more can get your celebrity ranks high in the company...
Next week I will try to post how this board will look like ….
Regards
Sameer Shaikh
http://sameer-shaikh.blogspot.com
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