Two management methods for software companies

A simple answer should be: "because in our society, we always think that the salary will be tied to the level of position ". However, this answer also reflects the fact that our salary is based on the value we understand, but it is not explained.

1. Why is PM (project manager) and Ba (business analysts) at the upper layers of the Organization in many software companies?
2. Why is the software project team always at the bottom?

These two questions are really worth asking and thinking about.

In general, there are two different software companies' organizational structures in the world. I call themWidget Factory(Small Commodity factory) andFilm crews(Film workgroup ).

Widget factories wants to solve how to inspire people affected by X theory. The X theory is proposed by McGregor. This theory means that the average person's nature is lazy, and the less he or she works, the better. If possible, he or she will escape the work, the organization or organization) does not care about the target. Therefore, managers need to motivate people to work with incentives such as coercion, threat punishment, guidance, and monetary benefits. As a result, the manager is always going to do his subordinate work. Therefore, it is natural that the entire team can be easily replaced by a manager, in such a team, everyone is easily replaced by others. In such a team, the manager's working ability is constantly strengthened. Because, such companies generally use tree-level organizational structures, rather than horizontal roles.

The widget factory management system operates on a certain assumption of software requirements. This assumption requires Ba to be in an environment that is clearly defined and requires supervision by the Project Manager, prepare the specification for the software. This software manufacturing industry needs to set enough programming and testing resources for the project to be replaced. The entire work is driven by a pre-arranged budget, which is completed by PM and Ba during business case initialization.

The management of a widget Factory Company can be identified by observing the conversation of its employees. They like to talk about resource resources (including resources), process flows, operating efficiency operation efficiency, uniformity consistency, repeatability, and strictly control the use of resources, clear work roles and clear process definitions (inputs and outputs ). They are indifferent to real software development. They want to turn the ideal software development operation into a visible picture.

Film crews. Such companies think that people have a high level of intelligence and creativity, and they can motivate themselves (Chen Hao Note: even if there is no external pressure or punishment threat, they will also work hard to achieve their goals-people are capable of self-regulation and self-supervision), people work hard and enjoy work (people are willing to work hard for the collective goal, I will do my best at work to make full use of my creativity and talents. Film crews believes that the professional competence of each individual is far superior to the ability to be organized and coordinated. Because managers no longer replace everyone, and tree-like hierarchies cannot work well-people have to work together in a complicated way to get things done. Job responsibilities become very vertical-you need to have a wide range of capabilities from top to bottom (Chen Hao Note: everyone needs to have management and technical capabilities ), this kind of management is based on McGregor's y theory.

For a filctor filof film crew (Note: there are directors and directors), he understands every fragment of a great software combination, and he needs to organize an unparalleled team, we also need to help this team to unite and work together. His role is to inspire everyone, guard vision, provide direction and concentrate everyone's energy. Everyone in the team is critical because "ctor" believes that the software results come from all the participants and their unique way of working. Everyone knows that they are a star in this matter. The star effect can increase everyone's chances of success. Their vision drives the project's budget and funding.

When we use compensation,Widgets factories believe that valuable things are always derived from PM and Ba, so they stay on top of the management layer and pay accordingly. For the software team, as long as they make the demand work correctlyCodeThen, the software team becomes indifferent. PM and Ba work hard to maintain their authority. They usually do not give you original project information. Because the team cannot obtain the original project information, the team is desperate to create various reasons to make their solutions valuable,ProgramMembers become workers who only follow commands from PM and Ba. In this case, the widget Factory Company magnified their idea-programmers are similar, just like the workers in the workshop, they just do some complicated but standard things mechanically.

In stark contrast to the widget factories, film crew advocates equality of work functions. Every Member can obtain the primary and original information without restriction, it encourages everyone to build their own value judgments and to freely choose different ways to achieve the vision of the team. The leadership structure is based on human abilities rather than work roles. The reward reflects how this person works in this project and needs to understand how much value this person has created and what results it has produced for our software. In this environment, PM's work is not prominent, and he may not be a creative leader. His role has been weakened into an administrative supporter, and contacts outside the team. Some work of BA is directly replaced by the Team (it was replaced by ctor in the early stage of the project ).

Today, we are not surprised at all that the software development teams and some consulting jobs in most companies operate on the widget factories, and they need to rely on the process to constantly create boring software. In this case, in practice, PM and Ba earn more than programmers, which is basically a assumption that they can create more value.In such a strong group architecture and management, it is difficult for programmers to prove that management is wrong.

Successful software companies tend to adopt the film crew approach, and anything else will hinder their ability to attract cool people, because only the cool people are attracted, you can create great software . In such a company, a good programmer will earn much higher than BA and PM.