What is non-negotiable?

This performs a bit slow, I left it there.
I think we can address it for future.
Well it has been like this forever, I know its trivial work, but I dont know if I should touch it.
I had found the issue, but thought it was too trivial to stop the release.
It was going to be too much work, so I did it this way.

When you start hearing this, and many such things; You have to be warned that you are on the wrong side of the road. And if you dont realize it, this one should be a NON-NEGOTIABLE one as well. Quality is important, and most time overlooked. Walter Isaacson in his book "Steve Jobs" mentioned each time Jobs did not like something or found something was not up to the mark he called it "SHIT"

There are several things in a project / development lifecycle, that purely needs to be seen as NON-NEGOTIABLE, yet we choose others over them.

Time over Quality
Scope over completeness
Technology over Usability
A brainstorming session over documented specification
A hurriedly completed feature over a value emitting function

and each time we make this negotiation, we create a great deal of debt, Technical Debt that is hard to manage. A project team needs to decide what is negotiable and what is not. In a lifecycle we have and would always come across things that would need to be ignored, at times prioritized low, or be compromised. But these are situations that put your basic attitude towards development to test. The day you start negotiating quality, is the day you lose focus to success. Rest can still be achieved, still be raced to, still managed. Quality cannot be.

A typo on your login can be more embarrassing than having missed a button to cancel a process. Quality needs to be seen as oxygen to your product. When you start juggling the oxygen, you are prone to faint, if not seize to breathe.

Think over, next time you are in a compromising state, you negotiate and what?

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Its not Them, its US

 I usually put a negative rating, when a candidate uses "They" to refer to their existing companies. I have this issue even when the project teams across refer to each other as "They". It can be Dev is working on it, or QA is testing it but it never needs to be "They" are working on it or "They" have done it wrong. Its US, WE and if cant be that then a very fundamental question needs be asked.

Today I interviewed a girl for a QA position, I asked her what does your company do... and she started with "They" are into.... then each time I asked her a question about the team, product, project I hear this word "They". Towards the end of the interview I asked her a question "When you refer to your company as They is it because you are quitting or is it because you don't like them?" her answer matched her experience and hence there is no point in talking about it.

I always see this as an issue, if a team member starts referring to another team in 3rd person, or for themselves. In any case such reference just says you are connected enough. I also analyzed that the one who starts calling other team members as "They" sooner or later converts into a Loner, Anti-Team member.

Anti-Team attitude drags good from happening, it drags you into political war, it drags into un-productive conversations and debates. It yields US vs Them stream in your team, a high risk for a working team.

The "They" thing also occurs when someone does not want to be counted as a part of the team, at times to not be linked to a failure, embarrassment or has a feeling of superiority if not inferiority. Next time when one of your team member use "They" for another, stop them. Next time you interview a candidate who says "They" for their existing team / organization educate them.

For life is too large to accommodate your own as WE instead of THEY and it is too short to make it US vs THEM.



 

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Lets do it forever

I have to deliver a product that will change the way of the worlds, problem is I am taking forever to deliver it. You lose the value of what you are doing, if you don't do it in time. For a few times in last few months I experienced how most valuable thing become useless, just because it did not complete in time.

We need to understand Agile much better to be able to value time. Agile is not about delivering in sprints, about creating iterations, about talking Agile, about telling how we scrum...

Agile is about iterating every day, asking for feedback and improving every few hours, getting a minimum value delivered every day.

Let's Agile, Let's not do it forever. 

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Prioritize or Die

I was late for office, I had time given to a banker guy to meet me at work. I had to pick some stationary for my son, I had to go to the bank and deposit some money which I was carrying in cash, I had to make a call to a potential customer on the way, I had a report to send to my boss, I had a issue to be responded that affected a customer,

All of this was running in my mind when I was driving to work and every fraction a thought was triggering on why I did not read that " 7 habits of successful men". In any case I had things to do, I had important things to do. When I finished my day, I was left with 1 thing... the most important one. Priorities can be so much a killer, specially when you procrastinate or do not care about it most importantly if you don't prioritize.

Priority is usually a challenge, for most; this is just not natural. A husband and wife at the age of 45, staying in my neighborhood once told me that they lost both their parents and never had time to even sit and speak to them since it never made a priority in all the trips, travel, work and running a business.

Priorities are to be thought of carefully and executed with some level of commitment to avoid mess. Since my experience with messed up priorities I have always worked them out on a simple rating scheme.

Impact vs Effort : Higher the impact and Lower the effort makes it easy to decide the priority. A simple rule is to fit the items to be worked out in a simple chart



Every item goes into a simple table

Task                                 Impact Score                       Effort Score
Fix Issue with door            7                                            5
Shop clothes                       3                                           8
Pack Bags for Travel          8                                           4

The scores are then sorted by high impact and low effort and life can be easy to decide the priority. Most times since this information is never analysed before starting work, people tend to miss on priorities,

BTW there is no excuse to missing priorities for forgetting and procrastinating.

S


        

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Why am I not on that email?

A few days ago, someone from my team IM me, in despair wanting to have a chat. I agreed. We went to a meeting room, where he raised his disappointment on why he is not on the emails shared between one of the project teams. Since I myself was not on the email, I curiously asked about the email. Wanting to know what was in the email, that a person has to raise an alarm. The email was about an instruction from one engineer to another asking for certain changes in a feature he/she was working on.

I was forced to ask a question, Why do you need *that* email to be sent to you? The answer was enlightening "I should know what is happening". A mistake many new managers do. They want to know everything that is happening, even if they are not required to know. But I was not interested in knowing that.

I asked another question "What would you have done, had you got the email in first place?. The answer not surprisingly was "I wasn't required to respond on that email" I should just be "For Information" on it. The killer was the answer to next question, I asked "Say you did not get this email, what wrong would happen?" the reply surprised "Nothing, But then I am not responsible for anything goes wrong, not for that thing but any other task that relates to people or task involved in the email"

I guess this type of thing is clearly an Identity challenge, someone immediately starts thinking if he/she is not on an email, means his/her identity is in danger. It means that his or her identity or existence is questioned and the threat comes from the person, who missed you in the email. A potential conflict. It may start with "why" and may end with him/her. I responded very clearly by mentioning that lesser the emails, better I can work, lesser the meetings, productive I can be, The lesser I am needed, the better I can innovate.

If the email is not asking me any question, answering any of my question, informing or alarming me about any fact there is no point in me having the email.  Next time you get worried about why you are not in a meeting or email, please ask the questions above before you get into a position of vertigo.

S



 

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Mind your meeting

I was called in a meeting a few days ago, a meeting to discuss the release plan. I went into the meeting only to realize I was not required there, a few moments later I realized a bunch of people in that meeting were not required there either. I waited to listen, just of curiosity to find out the meeting was not required. I spent 12 minutes end to end for that meeting, I spoke exactly 25 words 20 of which were repetition of an email I had already sent for the release plan.

Meetings have been a biggest time killer for me, I have already started avoiding them as much as I can. A lot of these meetings that get the first priority rejections are the one's that come in form of an invite without any agenda.

Last week when I finished reading Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson I realized how important it is to not be in a meeting, when I started searching for a few articles around each of those elements that were covered in the book, I came across Gloria Lin's amazing response to a question on Apple's concept a very interesting tool DRI - Directly Responsible Individual in meetings. Someone who owns the task , agenda and drives the agenda item to an end.

But more importantly someone who makes the meeting meaningful. Off late I started observing what different people do in these meetings and found out..

1. A few pretend they are listening, but they are in back of mind thinking about how amazing sex they had last night.

2. A few don't just know why they are, but think maybe ahead something that relates to them would come up.

3. A few just hang in there, you know because "I was invited".

4. A few know they are not needed, but then they don't have anything else to do and this one is a big time filler in the time sheets.

5. A few have to speak as they don't want the one to have not contributed.

6. A few have a purpose but are diverted by use-less conversations, dragged to kill.

7. A few ...... who are needed, who value the meeting and who have objectives to take out of it.

The DRI should also ensure that no non-required entry is allowed. I like the tool. I hope and wish to use it. I look forward to lesser meetings and more productive use of my time.


S


  

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