Increase useful work, not increase total work

Weibo seen such a post, just as Tencent , Tencent , competitiveness and user experience in the past criticized Tencent said their core competencies are the same overtime as employees , along with my reply to Winter also criticized the micro Bo -

"Overtime by overtime opponents ?! Labor-intensive? If I was an opponent, then I would dig a chance to kill you directly ... ... Winter winter: When a manager's wisdom can not measure the production of a team When out, he will "work hours" as the last straw, clinging to death - this is his only thing to understand.

Then, at a metaphor, I said at Weibo that he read @Fenng's comment on overtime in WeChat and wanted me to comment. I looked at Tai-hui's essay. Although it is a bit messy, I share some of his views. I mainly strengthen my opinion here.

About overtime

It's a pretty Ridiculous idea to think overtime is the company's core competency or a way to go beyond an opponent. This shows that managers have come to think of the core values ​​of their own company.

Yes, the value of these products without souls by the heap function is only faster than who is running. Their stupid and limited thinking brains have made a difference between "running fast" and "running well." Product development is not a sprint, but the long-distance running, or even more like climbing, climbing is not faster, than the strategy, the will is more than the purpose of the summit. It is not the first person who climbed quickly who will be the first to climb, you are often beyond the latter half. For some dangerous snow-capped mountains, the summit is usually very well prepared and learn how to stay fit and learn how to climb at will, and never forcibly climb to the top.

In the "Rework" excerpt and feelings mentioned two points

Restrictions are a good thing, because of the limited conditions that can make you useless, so you have no other way to get on with brute force and you have to think about using knowledge-intensive solutions to solve problems smarter.

Workaholic often can not get the essentials. They spend a lot of time trying to solve the problem. They think they can rely on brute force to make up for the inertia of thinking. The result is to toss out a bunch of useless solutions.

Just like manual looms, when dealing with large orders, a simple and rude way is to desperately work and work hard in exchange for greater productivity. Only if you are under manned or too labor-intensive can you think about whether you can optimize your tools to create a more productive and productive tool.

In China, labor costs are not high, and managers have limited intelligence and ability, so in this environment, especially under the weight of KPIs and numbers, managers are very, very easy to think of, Overtime to increase productivity. So instead of using knowledge-intensive innovations, they employ labor-intensive, crude and rude methods, which in the long run have led to their refusal to think again, resulting in the use of human flesh to solve problems.

So when the fully automated loom appeared, the labor-intensive company became a minute in minutes. Too many examples of this, take a look at history to know.

Of course, sometimes we need to sprint or have to work overtime, but this should not be the norm and the long term. Otherwise, it is inevitable that it is a drink-quench.

In addition, I would like to say a few more things:

1) If your employees are like those mentioned in "Two Types of Software Companies," like the Widget Factories, who are net X-type people, then you only have to work overtime and join the group, Like the process of building the Great Wall and the Pyramid, just like Foxconn, the essence of your team is that you can not think about how you can only manage with a whip to pump them. As a result, you can only use "wolf sex" to call your employees to act like low-IQ beasts.

2) Sometimes, we need to go "card bit", need to quickly achieve a thing occupy the market, which requires overtime. Like Win95 and Intel's Pentium chip floating point problem the same. But do not forget, you're stuck in the card, you immediately put the quality of your product, or else you will die ugly. (Windows has two teams, one for the market and the other for peace of mind) Note: The "card bit" should be a valuable thing to some extent, but we Still have to think about whether to use brute force.

3) In addition, some people work is life, life is work, so, for him, this is not a job, but a career. I recognize such a spirit and passion, but I still want to let such people reflect on themselves, are not in a smarter way to engage in their own business? Instead of using brute force.

In either case, we can see that as long as you enter the labor-intensive, rely on people and work overtime to solve the problem, and addicted to and deep in which can not extricate themselves, you will one day play to the end of.

About efficiency

Many people do not know what it means to be efficient. They think that efficiency is doing more work per unit of time. This is wrong! Efficiency is not more than who did more than work, but who worked more than who have greater value. The physical formula of efficiency is: useful work / total work. In other words, efficiency is the value of unit time and people. Therefore, to increase efficiency is not to add people, not to do more, but how many valuable things you have done so far.

With the formula, we also know how to improve efficiency.

1) increase useful work

You have to ask your demand side more, why add to this demand? What is the value of doing this thing? How many people can benefit?

You have to ask your demand side more, can we simplify the demand a little, so that I can make less effort?

You have to think more about it, are you working on a construction team, or are you working on a renovation team?

You have to think more about it, what are the biggest pain points in business and users?

On the increase in useful work, to say two more points:

Like Steve Jobs, tell your product manager or business side, you now mention 10 requirements, I can only do three, which three will be? Why are these three? The source of useful work is not desperately demand, and Is to cut demand.

Instead of moving money from one's pocket to another in the same way as Baidu's "PPC," we're about to create value. Instead, we want to bring real value, like the "Industrial Revolution in Britain" or "Silicon Valley" Created.

2) reduce the total work

You have to ask yourself much more, how much time do you have to do some supportive rather than productive tasks?

You have to ask yourself more and more about the labor-intensive work of reducing cruelty and relentless work?

You have to ask yourself more about the ability and quality of your managers and employees to reduce the cost of your team's execution.

3) to form a joint force

A very good product manager told me that he was shocked to read the news of the starving death of the two little girls in Nanjing. Each of the parties associated with it says that it is doing its best, but the end result is starving, and you can scarcely believe this to be true.

However, analogy with our projects, it seems that such things happen in our company, especially in large companies. Each team said they did their best, the results of the project is not done, the bottom team said that they only do the bottom, has done its best, the front that they are only responsible for the front, but also do their best, the back end that they just back-end, regardless of the front and The bottom, operation and maintenance said that for such a design and deployment themselves do their best, product manager, operations say so, their best. You will find it almost impossible for you to criticize them because they did their very good job, as they say, and did a good job. However, the end result is: the whole product is a lot of problems.

Therefore, efficiency is not the efficiency of each team, but the entire team responsible for the entire product is the common mission, so as to achieve the overall efficiency. There is no overall efficiency, only the efficiency of the individual, the final is also equal to inefficiency.

T-Shirt Size Estimation

Amazon uses a T-Shirt Size estimate to do the project.

The product manager assesses the size of the business impact on each requirement, such as: XXXL affects more than 10 million people or can account for hundreds of millions of dollars in the market, XXL, affects millions of users or accounts for more than 10 million gold level The market, followed by XL, L, M, S, so down.

The same is true for the development team. To assess the time and cost of staffing, XXXL means one year, XXL for six months, XL for three months, L for two months, M for one month and S for two weeks or less. and many more.

then,

When business impact is XL and time staff cost is S, this is the highest priority.

When the business impact is M, the time staff cost is M, which is a low priority.

When the business impact is S, the time staff cost is XL, and the demand is cut directly. Because it is a loss.

When the business impact is XXL, the time staff cost is XXL, the demand needs to be simplified, the demand reduced to XL, and the time and personnel costs become M or less.

Everyone feel about it.

Well, I say so much, welcome to discuss.