The way of Management (10)-Are you still worshipping delivery speed?

Story one, the anxiety of the hippocampus

The little seahorse had a dream one day and dreamed that he had seven golden Hills.

Waking from a dream, the small seahorse feels that this dream is a mysterious revelation: it now all the wealth is seven gold coins, but one day, these seven gold coins will become seven Jinshan. So it resolutely left his home, with only seven gold coins, to find the dream of the seven Jinshan, although it does not know where the seven Jinshan in the end.

The hippocampus is a vertical body swimming, swimming slowly. It is struggling to swim in the sea, the mind has been thinking: Perhaps the seven Jinshan will suddenly appear in front of.

However, Jinshan did not appear. There was an eel in front of him. Eel asked: "Seahorse brother, look at you in a hurry, what are you going to do?" "The hippocampus proudly said:" I went to find their own seven Jinshan. It's just that...... I swam too slowly. "That's very lucky of you." For how to improve your speed, I happen to have a complete solution. : "The Eel said," As long as you give me four gold coins, I will give you a fin, with this fin, you swim up will be much faster. "The hippocampus was wearing a four-gold fin and found that the speed of its own swimming had increased by one fold." The hippocampus swam happily, thought, perhaps Jinshan immediately appeared in front of.

However, Jinshan did not appear, appeared in the hippocampus, is a jellyfish. Jellyfish asked: "Little seahorse, look at you in a hurry, where you want to go?" The hippocampus proudly says, "I'm looking for my own seven-seater Jinshan." It's just that...... I swam too slowly, "That's very lucky of you." For how to improve your speed, I have a perfect solution. "The jellyfish said," You see, this is a jet-type quick-glide boat, you just give me three gold coins, I will give it to you. It can travel very fast on the sea, where you can go wherever you want. The hippocampus buys the skiff with the remaining three coins. It found that the magic boat made it five times times faster. It thought, not long, the Golden Mountain reception immediately appeared in the eyes.

However, Jinshan still did not appear, appeared in the hippocampus, is a big shark. The big Shark said to it: "You are so lucky." I happen to have a complete solution for how to improve your speed. I am a fast-moving ship in the sea, and you will save a lot of time by riding on my ship. The big Shark said, then opened the big mouth: "That's great, thank you, Mr. Shark!" The little Seahorse said as he dived into the shark's mouth and swam happily deep into the shark's belly ...

This is a time of worship speed

in an era of prevailing worship speed, many managers have attributed many management problems to the problem of speed, and have simplified the speed problem to the problem of speeding up. They, like the hippocampus, became their basic anxiety about "slow" anxiety: "I went to find my own seven Jinshan." It's just that...... I swam too slowly! "As a result, they have simplified the development strategy of the enterprise into a" buy "strategy ... Use Money to buy speed. However, only a strong desire to make money without the goal of management can be said that business is still "roaming state", fast or slow is no difference. Because at this time we can not find a reference coefficient to determine how fast is fast, how slow is slow. As we can see in the hippocampus story, the fast and fast development model may eventually cause the enterprise to be depleted of resources by the "Demon of Speed" and happily perish. Chaotic strategies, vague targets, are likely to plunge businesses into a horrible "business romanticism". As a typical form of business romanticism, roaming operation is secretly destined to "the road to Destruction". If a person does not have the definite goal, does not have "the Zhengye", he will breed many fragmentary hobby and absurd "the romantic sentiment". The same is true for an enterprise. In a business environment where market level is not high and customer maturity is low, there may be a successful business with a romantic management approach, and there may be poets and philosopher-style entrepreneurs. However, as the market matures, customer identification and power awareness enhancement, such enterprises and entrepreneurs will be gradually extinct. In the 80 's, the business celebrities who had been doing the same thing in China were a circumstantial evidence.

Development team also worship speed

For the development team, the rate of worship is still the mainstream of the current problem, we have more or less heard the words: "Software delivery time determines the value of software, delivery time every week, software value is less than X". The leadership will also pay more attention to speed, then directly or indirectly to the subordinates pressure.

For example, the following scenario:

client on behalf of Sam and project leader Lucy discusses the completion time of the project.

Sam said: "Luke: We have this project I want you to deliver before number 10.1th, and after 10.1 delivery we will lose the chance to seize the market opportunity." ”

Then Lu Xi hurriedly find the project manager Jack, said, "Jack, this project must be completed in No. 9.2, otherwise the customer will be angry, we will be very sad, the project bonus will not be normal!" ”

Then Jack hastily convened a team project meeting, at the meeting to seriously say to everyone "this project must be completed before No. 9.12, otherwise the customer will not give us a project, our team is finished!" From today onwards, the team must be forced to work overtime, in the next 3 months, each month can only take a day off ... "

The above scene in the current project development should be a lot of see, each layer of leadership will be used in advance to the pressure of the time to complete the task, and then give yourself a little risk of handling the hours, and then, Originally asked 10.1 to complete the work, the final notice to complete the time ahead of nearly 20 days, then the result?

Demanding high speeds while still ensuring high quality? The team believes that the project date is very tense, and therefore abandoned a lot of framework design, functional design, the quality of the calibration and testing, and put all the time into the function to complete. Finally, although the completion of the function, but the frequency of the bug, and because the previous design is not enough to change the bug, The result is that the light bug modification takes longer than the development time ...

Project urgency: This is the biggest cause of overtime, frequent overtime has become the software industry logo, to the development of the body and mind caused a great harm.

As a project manager to change how to identify and avoid the schedule of the game?

the story "Give Me a Rock"

Cliff worked with the team to work out the project schedule for a week. They completed the "Hudson Bay startup" and determined that the major technical risks had been identified. He told his boss Nome about his risk and schedule. "Can't you finish the project earlier?" "Norm's sentence brought Cliff back to the team and faltered.

Cliff and the team spent another week revising the schedule to get another date. He went into Nome's office and said, "If you can provide me with more staff here and here," he points to a few milestones, "I'll be able to finish the project in one months ' time." "It's not good enough," Nome said, frowning. I need this project to end early. Cliff sighed and went back to the project team.

A week later, Cliff took another agenda to find norm, "Well, that's what we can do." "Cliff said. Norm barely even looked at, and said, "but it's not good enough." Cliff furious: "What do you want?" ”

"Give Me a stone", this is the game that norm plays. No matter what schedule you make, your funders always want the project to finish sooner. You'll only find that the funders don't agree with every deadline you put forward-your dates are always far from their expectations.

When "they" want the project to be delivered faster, but do not tell you when you need or why, you will play "Give me a stone" game. If they tell you the expected deadline, you can tell them what to do. If they tell you why, you and the team may be able to come up with some creative solutions to meet their requirements. Effective project managers have a strategy to deal with, among them the negotiating strategies that Cliff has adopted. Once a negotiation fails, or seems to never succeed, the game "Give me a stone" is repeated in an organization. Most of the time, this happens for every project. If you always encounter the "Give me a stone" question, consider using the following practice.

1, before trying to take more stones, ask a few questions : Do you like short schedule, or long schedule? Do you want more people, or fewer people? What if there are few features? Knowing what's most important first will help the project manager produce a more reasonable solution and be prepared for your negotiations .

2. Let the funders understand the choices you make and the reasons behind them . Perhaps the funder will have a better idea of how to do it more easily and faster .

3. Provide you with a date to explain the scope of confidence . It's likely that management doesn't understand what your estimates mean, and you may not understand what they want .

4, when providing the date to explain the release criteria , so you can ask some questions to understand their release version of the quality and functionality requirements. We can make the performance of this feature extremely good, but we have to let go of that function first, can we do that? Can users accept products with more defects?  

5, set up the priority of the product handling matters

6, one by one to achieve the function. If the funders were able to learn more about the project process, they would not be so obsessed with deadlines.

7, the use of short time box (duration of less than four weeks), so that the funder can see the project process. If you can show the valuable progress of a project every few weeks, the deadline is less important.   You can start talking about when to implement which function, and what their quality requirements are .

At last

The project manager does not take the overtime of the employee into account when calculating the duration . Consider the health and wellbeing of your developers

The way of Management (10)-Are you still worshipping delivery speed?