Management Objectives & Coder Objectives

Technical Debt.
Management has business goals - both short term and long term. The two need to be balanced. That is the art of management. Excessive focus on one, or the other, will lead to failure. The short term, by its very nature grabs attention; in most cases to the detriment of the long term. In software development this leads to the taking on of Technical Debt.

Consequences.
As Technical Debt piles up the code becomes increasingly fragile. Fixing one defect introduces other defects. Feature addition becomes a nightmare. Customers become increasingly dissatisfied. The brand erodes.

Causes.
Technical Debt 101 explains the factors that cause technical debt. I strongly recommend reading the article.

Concentrating on today's fires is exciting. Trouble is, the excitement is paid for by taking on technical debt. In this, management have very "willing allies" - the Coders. What are a coder's objectives? The most important are:

1. Improve job market prospects. Hence acquire skills, knowledge.
2. Ensure that they are not easily replaceable by their current employer. The higher the technical debt the greater the job security.

Practices required to prevent buildup of technical debt do not figure in the objectives of most coders. In the rare case that it does, management, by their actions, ensure that it is soon given up.

Software Exorcism is a book that deals with Technical Debt. The book, as it's title says, is about getting rid of the "evil spirits" that can take up residence in software. An evil spirit, in Hindustani, is called Bhoot. Once evil spirits take up residence the software becomes what, in Hindustani, is called a Bhoot Bangla - a Haunted House. Now there is a vested interest in not exorcising the evil spirits.

Exorcism: First Step.
Technical Debt must be managed. Managing anything - whether diabetes, or sports teams, or whatever - requires metrics. Managing financial debt requires financial metrics. Managing technical debt requires technical debt metrics. Managing technical debt will ensure a development process that,

1. Prevents unhealthy build up of Technical Debt. 
2. Takes corrective action to reduce it to defined acceptable levels.

30,000 ft View

Ever heard the phrase, "the view from 30,000 ft"?

I have learned to be wary of people who use the term. These are people pretending to be leaders. At 30,000 ft you lose touch with reality. Reality is at ground level. God, and the Devil, are in the details.

Yes, the big picture, the vision, is very important. But a vision is of no use unless it is communicated to others. Communication happens where - to use another Americanism - " the rubber meets the road". Unless every day nitty-gritty is linked to the vision, on each small step forward, as well each step back, the vision is useless.

Leadership is exercised from the front. Not from hovering above.

Are Top Management's Sensory Channels Effective?

The collapse of a building gets the Chief Minister's attention, not this person's complaints.

My question: Can IT not be used to see that such citizen complaints are visible to the Chief Minister. Not just made visible but processed to extract information, spot trends, establish correlation, ... Delhi Traffic Police's Facebook page is an initiative that could be replicated and built upon.

What is the barrier to effective implementation? The political and administrative culture.

In a software company too, the culture and the values of the organization, can either sensitize, or de-sensitize, the sensory channels. The culture must re-inforce the value - get the bad news early. The culture must promote scientific checking for reality, the courage to face it, take corrective action, determine preventive measures and put them in to practice.

It is top management which, by its actions - not just words - communicates the culture and values.

With the wrong values even the most basic of business sensors, the balance sheet, is worthless - witness Satyam.

What is The Hard Part in Your Venture?

Finding and doing the hard part in your start-up is critical. It is leading from the front.

The trouble with leading from the front is knowing where the front is. The added problem is that the front keeps shifting. It is not just fighting fires. "Fire-fighting" gives an adrenaline rush. It can be addictive. You have to lead. But you have to also do the hard part, and that is putting "fire-prevention", "fire-detecting" and "fire-fighting" processes in place.

The hard part at any given time could be quality, productivity, raising financing, sales, seeing reality and changing the business strategy, people, ... Whatever it is, it has first to be identified. It is about spotting broken windows. And there could be more than one broken window.

In my view, getting the right people on the bus, and keeping them on it, and getting the wrong people off it, is always a hard part.

Can one person do it? Highly improbable. But a team with shared values, mutual respect, and interlocking skills, can.

At acmet we did not have such a leadership team.

Leadership

Seth Godin says, "It requires education and coaching and patience to create a team ..." in this post. Exactly the same as teaching sparrows.

Innovation: Staffing

Govindarajan & Trimble , as mentioned in an earlier post, describe the Performance Engine and the Dedicated Team and why they should be distinct. The book also mentions the need to have a proper relationship between the two so that the resources, skills and knowledge of the Performance Engine can be effectively leveraged.

Context To Core
Geoffrey Moore, in his book Dealing with Darwin: How Great Companies Innovate at Every Phase of Their Evolution, speaks of the need to allocate from Context to Core. Context consists of whatever the company needs to do to stay in the game. Core is what the company needs to do to stay ahead in the game - and that is innovate. (Watch video of Geoffrey Moore on Context and Core in the Software Industry). However, Geoffrey Moore does not deal with the barriers to allocating from Context to Core and how to overcome them. Govindarajan & Trimble do that.

Moonlighting
Givindarajan & Trimble advise against trying to do worthwhile innovation with people working in their slack time. It is not as if such "moonlighting" cannot come up with ideas or small victories, or incremental improvements. What they fail at is, in the words of the book's title, "the other side of Innovation".

Concerning Startups: There are startups where the "entrepreneurs" are not entrepreneurial enough to quit their regular jobs. Such a startup is is not a place to be employed; nor are these people to be doing business with. At acmet we dealt with one such firm.

Missing Performance Engine
I mentioned in an earlier post that a startup, unlike an established organizatiion,  has a Dedicated Team with no associated Performance Engine. It has its advantages; it is not burdened by the past. But that is also a disadvantage. The startup does not have a brand. It does not have a set of customers who trust it.

Mitigation: These diadvantages can be mitigated, to an extent, if the entrepreneurs have worked in the industry in various roles - production, product development, marketing & sales. They should be known within the industry and to customers who use the products and services of the industry.

When RR & I started Ergo Electronics we lacked this. We could have overcome this disadvantage. I suppose hubris prevented us, both then, and later at acmet, from never really being able to so.

Postscript
With this post I have ended my current set of takes on Govindrajan & Trimble's book.

If you work at an established company, the book will help you understand what your company needs to do if wants to innovate. Maybe you could suggest what needs to be done, and why.

If you intend to start a venture, or are already in one, I hope my posts would have motivated you to read the book.

Thank you for your attention.

Shutting Down Acme Technologies

Finally, last week we took the decision to close down Acme Technologies. The writing on the wall was there for sometime now but some of my colleagues on the board did not see it. Our current commitments will be completed by September. By the end of Mar2011 we should be able to down shutters

Happily all our people have been placed well. This was because they were all kept in the picture about our revenue position.

The root cause, as I see it: No shared values within the top management.

Where I failed: Realizing too late that I had to get more proactive in marketing.

Why do Crabs not jump out?

I have heard that this is behaviour peculiar to Indian crabs, though recently I did come across an email which said Alaskan crabs too behave the same way, (I suspect the sender is a person of Indian origin settled in the US:-)

According to people who tell the story, the crabs on the top cannot escape because the ones below are pulling them down. (Actually the top crabs have the option to jettison a limb and escape. Somwhat like in the erstwhile Iron Curtain countries:-)

Here are some ways I like to look at it:
1. The crabs below are ambitious. They want to get on top. The top crabs have the option to either get out or go down. Nothing wrong with that. It is competition.

2. All the crabs know the danger. They want to cling on to each other out of sheer fright. Result - none can escape to live. Splitting a company going down may permit some of the spin-offs to survive. Some management teams will not think that way.

3. The top crabs know the danger and ,because they see it as their duty to protect the crabs below, are supressing them to protect them:-) They tell stories about how safe the lower crabs are in their current postion and they should not think of leaving. Some management teams behave this way.

No matter what, the best they can hope for is to land up on someone's menu. Hopefully, some chefs convert the crabs into quality dishes:-)