Project Management. Week 6 Staff Motivation. Staff Motivation. Staff Motivation. Lecture Overview

Transcription

1 Project Management Week 6 Staff Motivation Staff Motivation Lecture Overview Typical Developer Motivations; Using the ; Using Other Motivation factors; Morale Killers. Staff Motivation Of the four areas of RD leverage (People, Process, Product Technology) - People has the greatest potential to shorten software schedules across a variety of projects; Researchers have identified performance differences on the order of 10 to 1 or more between different developers with the same experience. 1

2 Staff Motivation Motivation is the single greatest influence on how well people perform - as most productivity studies have found that motivation has a stronger influence on productivity than any other factor; Motivation plays a critical role in development speed - but it is a soft factor and takes a back seat to other factors that may be less important, but easier to quantify. Staff Motivation Every organization knows that motivation is important, but only a few do anything about it; Many common management practices are penny-wise and pound foolish, trading huge losses in morale for methodology improvements or budget savings. Typical Developer Motivations Different people are motivated by different factors and developers are not always motivated by the same factors as their managers or the general public; Compared to the general public & managers developers are motivated by: Possibility for growth, personal life, opportunity for technical supervision & interpersonal relations; 2

3 Typical Developer Motivations Compared to the general public & managers developers are much less motivated by: Status, interpersonal relations with subordinates, responsibility & recognition. Refer to table. Typical Developer Motivations Another source of insight into developer motivations comes from surveys conducted to determine the personality types of developers using the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) Test. MBTI measure peoples preferences along four dimensions & comes up with a four-letter categorization; Typical Developer Motivations Extroversion (E) OR Introversion (I) Sensing (S) OR Intuitive (N) Thinking (T) OR Feeling (F) Judging (J) OR Perceiving (P) 3

4 Typical Developer Motivations There are 16 four letter combinations, which means there are 16 personality types; Different forms of motivation work with different people - success comes from identifying effective motivation for individuals. To tap into the 10 of that 10-1 difference in individual performance, you have to go beyond movement and tap into developers internal motivations; Excite the developers and create an environment in which they can satisfy their internal drives. There are five motivation factors that most influence developer motivation: Achievement; Possibility for growth; Work itself; Personal life; Technical supervision opportunity. 4

5 Achievement Software developers like to work and the best way to motivate them is to provide an environment that makes it easy for them to focus on what they like doing most - developing software. This can be achieved by: Ownership - people work harder to achieve their own goals rather than someone else's; Goal setting - explicitly setting development speed objectives will accelerate SD. Weinberg & Schulman (1974) conducted a study involving how team performance ranked against objectives that teams were told to optimize; The results of this study were that none of the teams did consistently well; The implications of this study was that developers do what you ask them to do, they have high achievement motivation and will work to the objectives specified, if you tell them what the objectives are. Successful projects use goal setting to their advantage - you must be careful, however, as a study at ITT found that productivity dropped sharply when multiple goals were defined (Vosburg et al. 1984); Setting too many goals at once is a common problem - this is a major leadership blind spot. 5

6 Possibility for Growth Considering the changing nature of the SD industry developers have chosen to work in, it is not surprising that they are motivated by possibilities for growth; An organization can tap into that motivation by providing developers with opportunities to grow on their projects - by aligning the growth goals of the organization with the growth goals of the individual. Possibility for Growth An organization can assist in developers professional growth in the following ways: Providing tuition reimbursement of devpt classes/books; Giving time off to attend classes or study; Assigning developers to projects that will expand their skills; Possibility for Growth An organization can assist in developers professional growth in the following ways: Assigning a mentor to each new developer; Avoiding excessive schedule pressure. Support for professional development is vital to the health of any corporation - especially in SD. 6

7 Work Itself Peoples internal motivation generally comes from three sources (Hackman & Oldham1980) : They must experience meaning in their work; They must experience responsibility for the outcome of their work; They must know the actual results of their work activities. Work Itself Hackman & Oldham1980 identified five dimensions of the work itself which contribute to these sources of motivation : Skill variety Task identity Task significance Autonomy Job feedback Work Itself First three characteristics contributes to how meaningful people find their work to be: Skill variety - degree to which work requires you to exercise a variety of skills to avoid boredom; Task identify - degree to which job requires you to complete an identifiable piece of work; Task significance - degree to which work affects other people & contributes to social welfare; 7

8 Work Itself The fourth characteristic contributes to a person s feeling of responsibility for the outcome of the work. Autonomy - is the degree to which you have control over the means and methods you use to perform your work - the sense of being your own boss ; Work Itself The fifth characteristic contributes to how much people know about the results of their work activities. Job feedback - degree to which conducting the job itself provides you with direct and clear information about how effective you are. Work Itself The key to motivation is to control these five dimensions to create meaningful work and match that work with people who have the desire to achieve; The importance of the work itself is one reason that quality is usually more motivating to SD s than schedule. 8

9 Opportunity to Focus on Work Itself Another motivational factor - degree to which environment allows developer to focus on work itself; In most organizations a significant proportion of time is generally spent on trivial administrative tasks that broke the day into a series of distractions. Opportunity to Focus on Work Itself An organization must eliminate administrative hassles in order to prevent averting the developers attention from work. Other non aspects of work should be removed such as: Enforcing a dress code; Enforcing strict hours. Personal Life A company can not do much for developers by using their personal lives as motivators; Scheduling projects realistically so developers can have a personal life is sufficient; Companies must respect that developers need vacations and occasional time-off during a work day. 9

10 Technical Supervision Opportunity For a developer, a technical supervision opportunity represents an achievement - implying that they have achieved the level of expertise sufficient to direct others - a manager would view this as demotion; Technical Supervision Opportunity The technical supervision motivator can be utilized broadly instead of assigning one person: Assign each person on a project to be the technical lead for a particular product area; Assign each person to be the technical lead for a particular process area; Assign all but junior developers to be mentors. Other Motivation Factors Other motivation factors may also be implemented in order to motivate developers such as : Rewards & incentives; Pilot projects; Performance reviews. 10

11 Other Motivation Factors Rewards & Incentives Developers grow tired of working for unappreciative companies and rewards are therefore important to long-term motivation; It is also important to present any reward as a gesture of appreciation rather than an incentive; Other Motivation Factors Rewards & Incentives Some Gesture of Appreciation: Praise due to an accomplishment; Team t-shirts, mugs, pens etc.. Awards in form of plaques, trophies, certs; Special events to celebrate specific accomplishments; Other Motivation Factors Rewards & Incentives Some Gesture of Appreciation: Exceptions to company policies - casual dress on Friday, gym, ping-pong table; Special courses; Sponsorship at conferences; Grade-level promotions; Special bonus's. 11

12 Other Motivation Factors Pilot Projects The simple act of conducting experiments has been said to increase productivity (Boehm 1981); If staff are aware of experiments, it can affect performance; The Hawthorne Effect - has been confounding productivity experiments & software metrics for decades; Other Motivation Factors Pilot Projects Every software project should be run as a pilot project - with possibility of motivating staff; As with rewards, there is a fine line between motivation and manipulation. Other Motivation Factors Performance Reviews Proper execution of a performance review increases motivation - improper execution decreases motivation; If an organization conducts performance reviews once or twice a year, be sure reviews increase rather than decrease motivation. 12

13 Morale Killers De-motivating factors are just as important as motivation factors in the SD industry; Hezberg (1987) identified two types of motivating factors: Satisfiers - which stimulate performance if present; Dissatisfiers - which degrade performance if present; Morale Killers Hygiene Factors Hygiene factors are basic conditions a worker needs to work effectively; At best they create satisfaction, at worst they create dissatisfaction; Hygiene factors include a variety of aspects such as : Morale Killers Hygiene Factors Appropriate lighting, heating, air-conditioning; Adequate desk, shelf space; Enough quiet to allow concentration; Enough privacy to prevent unwanted interruptions; Access to office equipment; Readily available office supplies; Unrestricted access to a computer; 13

14 Morale Killers Hygiene Factors Up-to-date computing equipment; Immediate or near immediate repair of broken computer equipment; Up-to-date communications support; Applicable software tools; Applicable hardware; Morale Killers Hygiene Factors Applicable reference manuals, auxiliary reference books and on-line reference aids; Minimal training in new computer software; Legal copies of all software used; Freedom to set work hours both generally and specifically. Other Morale Killers Management Manipulation Developers are sensitive to being manipulated by management - Developers tend to deal with issues head-on and developers also wanted to be treated in a straight forward manner; 14

15 Other Morale Killers Excessive Schedule Pressure If the deadline is real, it still might not be realistic - one of the quickest ways to drop motivation to zero is to present developers with an impossible deadline. Other Morale Killers Lack of Appreciation of Developers Efforts Development sandbags any project schedule, however, it is a common dynamic that people do not see how much work developers are doing. Other Morale Killers Inappropriate Involvement of Technically Inept Management Developers can be motivated by technically inept managers as long as the mangers recognize that they are technically inept and confine their control of the project to non-technical decisions. 15

16 Other Morale Killers Not Involving Developers in decisions that Affect Them Not involving developers in decisions that affect them creates the impression that the manager either doesn t care about the development team or that management does not respect them enough to consider their contributions. Other Morale Killers Not Involving Developers in decisions that Affect Them Managers must involve developers in the following tasks to keep motivation high: Committing to new schedules; Committing to new features or feature modifications; Hiring new team members; Other Morale Killers Not Involving Developers in decisions that Affect Them Volunteering developers for short-term assignments outside the project; Designing the product; Making technical trade-off decisions; Changing office space; 16

17 Other Morale Killers Not Involving Developers in decisions that Affect Them Changing computer hardware; Changing software tools; Committing to deliver products that are not planned by the team; Committing to new development procedures. Other Morale Killers Productivity Barriers If the environment is set up in a way that thwarts developers best efforts to be productive, you can be quite sure that their motivation will suffer; Productivity road blocks should be removed to allow teams to focus on work rather than distractions. Other Morale Killers Low Quality Developers derive some of their self-esteem from the products they develop; If they develop a high-quality product they feel good - vice versa for low-quality; For a developer to be motivated by pride of ownership, there has to be ownership of the work and there has to be pride in the work. 17

18 Other Morale Killers Heavy Handed Motivation Campaigns Using slogans, posters & pep-talks will only insult developer s intelligence instead of motivating them; The light touch works best. Lecture Overview Customer Oriented Development Customer s Importance to Rapid Development; Customer-Oriented Practices; Managing Customer Expectations. Staff Motivation Typical Developer Motivations; Using the ; Using Other Motivation factors; Morale Killers. 18