What you don't know about the product development team

We zap dogs in cages, dogs instinctively avoid, when they realize that the electric shock is unavoidable, will be negative, no longer evasive, despair waiting for the shock to happen, this is the acquisition of helplessness, in the software team can also observe similar situations, such as the anxiety of the project manager and a few depressed engineers, When they feel it's hard to change the status of the project, the lifeless atmosphere arises.

In a job that requires creativity and passion in software development, the sense of helplessness may come from loss of control or selectivity. When the project manager can not determine the product requirements, development progress and priority, the gap between theoretical authority and reality will increase the sense of helplessness; Similarly, when an engineer cannot decide to develop ideas, can not express their own views on development issues or the expression of useless, the sense of helplessness also increases. The longer the sense of helplessness lasts, the more members of the team tend to lose the sense of control as permanent, to show depression and passive obedience.

A nanny-style team leader makes it easier for team members to acquire a sense of helplessness, especially in a research-and-development team, where the technical manager controls every line of code, even in good faith, and makes other engineers feel that they are just tools. If an engineer has a lack of control over the code, can you expect him to be in a good mood? The lack of skills of mandatory orders, the practice of unpredictable, or even intensive progress assessment can cause loss of control, need the attention of project leaders.

Social psychology studies have shown that promoting personal control enhances individual well-being. In management, there are also "goal management", which allows members to participate in the organization goals, through self-control to ensure the implementation of the goal. In the software team, the definition of software function and schedule is easy to involve all the members in the operation, and effectively improve the sense of self-control of the members. Whether a member's sense of self-control lasts or not depends on whether a member has a successful experience or a sense of accomplishment, so that the enterprise or organization will help the software team achieve the milestones quickly, and the team will help the members to complete the project milestone quickly, and the leader will help the newcomer to complete the Getting started.

People are always complex animals, from 100 TV channels to choose 1 than from 10 channels to choose 1 is difficult, and the former on the choice of satisfaction is much lower, more selective will bring higher opportunity costs, regret is easier, this is to avoid the acquisition of helplessness, the first choice is to improve the sense of control rather than provide a choice of reasons.