Thank someone each day

Recognition for what we do each day comes rarely. Many of us were brought up in homes that neither gave recognition nor modeled receiving recognition well. Recognition improves job satisfaction, encourages open communication, and reinforces good behavior.

I remember hearing a wonderful story on NPR a number of years ago about an author who had suffered from mental illness and was institutionalized in her youth. Now, many years later, she recalled an anecdote that epitomizes this topic. She had been in a communal area and heard one of the doctors calling on the phone to the maintenance department and asking "Who cleaned my office today?" She had assumed she was about to hear this doctor chide someone for inferior work. Instead, when the doctor had gotten his answer, he went on to say "Well he cleaned my office better than it has ever been cleaned, please thank him for me." The author was blown away.

You too can blow away an employee by taking the time to recognize them. It does not have to be a big public thing.

Here are some basics:

• Learn the facts (correctly pronounced named, the details of what they did)
• Go to them and do not make them come to you to thank them
• Do not mix the message with something they need to improve on (you can send that message another time)
• Find someone to thank each day
• Be sincere

Often, without recognition, employees will not feel valued or just equate good work with compensation. Neither of these outcomes are desirable. Create a culture of gratitude and it will be easier for your employees to go the extra mile for you and your company.

In this spirit, I would like to thank a number of people who have helped over time with this blog:

• LeeAundra Temescue who created my website and the accompanying look and feel for the blog (http://www.thecontrarypublicspeaker.com/).
• Bill Grosso (http://www.wgrosso.com/), Joe Strazzere (http://www.sqablogs.com/jstrazzere/), and Paul Brown (http://mult.ifario.us/) for their kind words about the blog and the book.
• My mom, Sandra Himelstein, who periodically gets on here and attempts to correct my spelling and grammar.

Be thankful and lead a better life and a better company.

More later ...

How should you manage bugs?

Managing bugs is difficult. Often bugs become a battleground within a company. Questions like which bugs to fix when or what amount of bugs is ok to ship a release with becomes unclear and divisive. It take a little process and a lot of leadership to address bug management.

Here are the basics:

• Improve quality so you do not have as many bugs
• Provide clear direction on what bugs to fix
• Track and forecast the trend and effort to meet your goals

We know that we are not perfect developers but there are some good hygiene things that all companies should adopt in order to improve quality:

• Do feature/design specifications and reviews
• Do code reviews
• Require automated passing exhaustive feature unit tests before code complete
• Determine and review root cause for bugs

It will always be better to catch bugs early or better yet never create them. You should pay attention to why bugs occur and help your organization address those reasons. One of the big issues in many companies is how to prioritize bugs. The first problem stems from ambiguous categories like priority described with P1, P2, P3, ... and the plethora of other categories like severity, customer priority, etc. While your company many need to gather the emotion and need of your customer regarding a bug, the only thing your engineers should care about is when to fix a bug. Here are my suggested categories:

• Now (either for a patch or release build)
• Must fix for a particular release
• Should fix for a particular release Future

Don't confuse your engineers with overloaded codes. Make sure that bug backlogs that "must be fixed" for a released are legitimately scheduled and are not expected to be addressed in someone's overhead or free time. Make sure product management prioritizes the bugs in the must-fix categories appropriately and that you have resources allocated to fix them.

Finally, as I said in a previous blog, you need to track the trend of bugs. If your incoming rate does not go down, it does not matter how many bugs you have fixed, you will not have a stable release. Set an outstanding bug goal for your release acceptance criteria. Forecast when you get down to the bug goal for the release and manage to the forecast. Remember that there is always a tail and if you do not defer some bugs for the next release at the end of the cycle, you may never close on the current release. Bugs are tough. Pay attention and make your products quality products.

More later ...

Process is not a substitute for leadership

When an organization is facing challenges around meeting their commitments, hiring goals, retention goals, and quality goals it is often suggested that teams improve their processes. While I have seldom seen teams succeed without processes, I have seen numerous teams fail with them. In my mind they are required but they are not sufficient. In the end, competent and courageous leadership will win the day.

I think the reason why many organizations try to use process to dig their way out of problems is because they are black and white tangible items. They might include well defined and documented phase sign-off, detailed schedules and real acceptance criteria. However, if these processes do not have useful content or the leaders do not make timely decisions or allow constant change, then it is easy for the processes to become lip service.

So what makes a good leader? Here are some basics:

• Communication
• Sense of urgency
• Empowerment

See my recent article in Dr. Dobbs about what makes a good manager at http://www.ddj.com/dept/architect/187203587 for more details.

Here are some basics that you might employ to resolve the leadership gaps in your organization:

• Make decisions in a timely fashion
• Assign meeting action items with delivery dates
• Communicate where your team is headed and why on a regular basis
• Measure your progress and make changes where necessary
• Empower your employees (make it clear what they get to do and let them do it)
• Respond to your employees (respond to emails, questions, etc)
• Treat your employees with respect

Don't get me wrong processes are wonderful things but they are tools. Take the time and interest in leading your team and your processes can be an great ally.

More later ...