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Three Encouraging Developments in Software Management

The biggest problem that most any company in the Western world faces is not its competitors, nor the Japa-nese. The biggest problems are self-inflicted, created right at home by management that are off course. [1] As I started to write this article, a colleague told me that management in his company is taking decisive action to improve the skill level of employees and increase productivity. This company certainly needs management action to improve business results. They haven't shipped a significant release in over two years, and they've racked up technical debt. The product development group seems incapable of deciding what they should ship; they change course every few weeks. The result is lots of action, but no completion. People who are doing their jobs well don't hear from their manager, and neither do those who are failing. Managers complain , but don't clarify expectations, offer feedback, or support people to improve. The senior managers have decreed that they will raise the overall skill level in the organization and improve productivity. I was intrigued to hear how they planned to accomplish this goal ... until I heard what action they were planning to take. They plan to rank all of the people in the company, with the bottom 5 percent invited to find other employment. Sometimes, I despair. But sometimes I dream, because there are moments that make me feel hopeful about management in U.S. companies. Evidence-based management is a movement to look at what actually works in business rather than relying on common practice, fads, and what everyone else happens to be doing. We've all heard about known unknowns and unknown unknowns. But Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton focus on the so-called knowns of business practice that ain't so, or are only partly so [2]. Pfeffer and Sutton examine the evidence behind the so-called war for talent, use of incentive pay, emphasis on strategy, and other widely accepted business practices. In most cases, they find that the data do not support, or only weakly support, the efficacy of these many common business practices. Take incentive pay, pay-for-performance, and related pay system schemes. Many people in organizations believe that incentives can fix performance problems in organizations. These systems come with cascading goals, objectives, and rating and ranking programs aimed at motivating and rewarding behavior that will benefit the company. The evidence shows that incentive pay and rating systems overestimate the …