Closed. This question is off-topic. It is not currently accepting answers.
Want to improve this question? Update the question so it's on-topic for Stack Overflow.
Closed 11 years ago.
Improve this question
I am currently a grad student, but I was in the industry for a few years before going back to school.
I am in a class which involves teams of 4 working on fairly ambitious projects. As a result of having been in the industry, I have a lot of "software engineering" experience my fellow teammates lack (they are using SVN for the first time this semester). They are all very good programmers; but they don't have a lot of experience in building "real stuff".
Since I had a fairly concrete vision for a project, and my teammates did not, my idea is the one we will spend this semester working on. On top of that, as a result of my experience, plus the fact that I admittedly have a somewhat strong personality, I've become a de-facto team lead -- established weekly meeting times, assigned initial tasks, etc.
I want to avoid the trap of being so forceful with my ideas for what we should be doing and how we should be doing it, that my teammates feel like they have no say and become uninvolved and detached.
So here is the question:
How can I keep my team of undisciplined but talented programmers motivated while enforcing basic best practices (version control, milestones, etc) and a coherent project vision?
Edit: Thanks to everyone who answered so far. I think I've overemphasized the "software engineering" aspect of things; I'm also looking for ideas for how to encourage my teammates to contribute to the design, and feel ownership in the project which is at the moment a little bit "The SquareCog (and friends) Show!"
The best method I've found has nothing to do with code: team lunches.
Get together in an informal setting where you each talk about your problems, concerns, ideas, etc. This helps team unity in a way that very little else does.
As for the actual code side of it, minimize the amount of work they have to do to work inside the framework you want them to. If you want them to use tickets, do the actual management side of things for them -- have them tell you what the ticket is and have you do the actual legwork of managing these things. This seems like it'd take a long time, but overall it's minimal compared to the cost of poor communication and coordination. It pays off very quickly.
For version control, show them why it truly benefits them. Programmers pick up on ideas and run with them when they see they actually help them rather than just being a PITA.
I think developers are really practical people.
Play with those traits of typical developer personality:
1. Creativity
2. Curiosity
3. Practicality
Following your direct example, source control:
Most of us (I mean by my own experience) will fail to see the point in source control in the beginning (just because), so always keep them aware of the reason behind using source control.
Another thing is.. who decided to go on SVN? There are alternatives, I for one would fight to the teeth not to have SVN because I am a Git! (pun intended)
Instead of pulling them by the nose, you should/could have explained to them:
We need source control, find one you like and lets vote it out what we use to control the source.. this way there is a common ownership..and not just a follow the leader exercise.
Another thing is, be flexible in what you implement.
Draw out a plan on necessities, but try to be ready to implement them as the need arises, or as it becomes obvious to all that x, y or z practice should be implemented.
Have them need to implement the tools and resources and planning techniques you know by having them come to you for advice. (this doesn't mean you can't lay out a best practices blog internally or some other way of giving them access to this information beforehand)
Developers like to learn and grow, but we need ownership and understanding in the direction we are going.
If you try to force feed and drive them too much, both you and them will just lose motivation, enlightenment requires self driven forces.
How about the Scrum (even if you don't call it that). Gives everyone a chance to have their say, and you listen. As the forceful personality giving the others a real chance to communicate what's on their mind (not yours) is a good step towards harmony.
On top of that they will learn from your tech experience, you will learn from their ideas and enthusiasm. A good leader is always open to communication, you set the direction and vision (and you did choose the project) they come up with the clever ways of doing it.
I've been in a similar position a number of times.
Sometimes I just take charge, and be damned. Fair enough.
And many times, I resist the urge; I try to encourage my colleagues to take the lead. Sometimes this works, sometimes not.
And sometimes, I just come clean. "I seem to be taking over, as is my nature. But I don't want to railroad you guys. Anyone else fancy taking the lead? If not, are you happy with what I have already suggested? Speak up if you have any good ideas...". Again, sometimes this works, but not always.
Ultimately, you can 'lead the horse to water'... Projects need the lead, if no-one else rises to the challenge, it is better that you do.
Once you have the lead, lead by example...
The project should be interesting enough to keep them involve
the technology should be also recent
let them know this is how the industry moves and that they will gain the necessary experience to be in top of other programmers
offer prizes and punish those who break the build
rotate the positions let them test their ability to lead
offer non-monatary prizes or awards
Give them their own areas to "own." Even though they may not take pride in the project, they will want to make their own areas excel. Make they question, can their area be refactor or improved. It will make them learn new techniques or practices.
Allow them to learn by fire (in small phases) and then show them the correct way. Let them fail doing it their way, but allow time for them to do it the proper way.
Update:
Sorry to make the above sound like the team-leader would be the one in control of what is correct. It is mean to be more of a code-review that can be done by any one on the teams. They can move forward with the changes/refactor together as a team.
I am doing my masters degree currently and have had frequent group projects. It is not unusual to have only 1 or 2 members of the group doing the project. Not just from my projects but talking with other people. Basically what you said about the "SquareCog" and friends show is not unrealistic.
Really the more people you have on the group the lazier people will be. Also the more time lost communicating with them as they invent tons of ideas that they have no intention of following through with. It is well known that there is a point where extra programmers do not help the project anymore. There is only so much you can break something up. Over doing it will slow things down more than just giving a part to one person and create more dependencies.
Also the average student has a comfort zone, so even if you can get them to do some work, the will stay within their comfort zone. Someone has to leave their comfort zone for most projects (unless someone already knows the information in the class) to succeed. Most of the time I find that I am the only one willing to do that in my group, and some groups have no one. The most radical example was a 7 person project where almost no one did anything. One other guy was willing to do some light sys admin tasks and then the web design, that were within his comfort zone. One girl did some database design (and I do mean some because I basically did the design as a high level outline that she formalized with column names/data types). The rest did absolutely nothing. The class was distributed systems, so someone needed to learn JBoss (and Enterprise Java Beans), Amazon Web Services, etc... But it doesn't matter the class. In a data mining class, someone will have to figure out which techniques to use and how to use the toolkit.
Also many students are not good programmers. In fact there was someone in one of my groups who couldn't program at all. Really based on his description an MBA sounded like the right degree for him, but anyway he went through with the Masters in CS by farming out his programming to friends/contractors... Many are just terrible programmers and not just in style, they couldn't debug hello world with visual studio.... Rather than understand what went wrong they will just keep adding code until it works by coincidence.
One thing that happens quite often is that people come up with fairly ambitious projects that are not realistic for a semester. Usually I end up taking he scissors and cutting it to a barebones project and offer that once we finish the barebones part, then we can refine it and add the more advanced stuff. What almost always ends up happening is that people drag out finishing it and in the end after we get the barebones done no one wants to do anything additional.
There are 2 types of grad students. Full time grad students who take 4-5 classes, in which case they cannot afford to spend 40/80 or even 20 hour work weeks working on the project. Or part time grad students who have a day job, in which case they take 1 or 2 classes and have a full time job so they have even less time. I would say as a general estimate you can figure 6 hours of homework per graduate class (most will spend less). Assuming a normal class, probably 3-4 or that needs to be spent on studying/reading for the class. This leaves 2-3 hours per week per person to work on the project. Even getting that much would be good.
Some of the ideas floated like team lunches are not realistic at all. Many grad classes have group projects, and the full timers can't do 4 or 5 team lunches per week, that is like 5 hours of wasted time per week that could be spent on a rpoject. Also there may be money issues if you go to restaurants and expect all to buy lunch. And for someone who goes part time like me, I'm not going to do a team lunch because I work 9-6+ or 8-5 on college nights.
Probably your best bet is to find people's comfort zones and figure out tasks you can assign to them. Also to identify the freeloaders and not waste your time with them.
Also using version control for a school project seems like overkill. If the whole class is just the project maybe not. But assuming it is a normal class with lectures, exams, and homework assignments with the project done on the side, then any time spent on infrastructure is time you are not getting the project done. Really, though unrealistic for a professional environment, school projects are like start ups. Get them done, even if the code is a mess. You can always clean up later. But if you don't get it done, your grade will suffer. And in reality once it is done, I don't want to clean it up and no one else does either.... Getting everyone to use source control (unless you share a machine) would waste a lot of time with set up issues, and adjusting people to using it. i don't know what your project is. But with many graduate projects you have to do some research/experimentation and then the programming code is relatively simple. One class got me with a 5,000 line project, lucky it wasn't a group project.
Again on the project keep it simple. You can just coordinate the parts, assign the different parts and as they are done check/test it and then integrate it with your version control and leave them free to work on the project whatever is most comfortable.
Many will be happy to let you design the thing, implement the thing, and then learn absolutely nothing and just get the grade. It is their loss because they won't get the lessons of the project. But they are quite happy with squarecog and friends being just squarecog. Some will want to contribute something, but they are in the minority. If you get one of them great for you!!! Also watch out for over engineering. You have to look at things realistically. 3 hours per week per group member would be great, but I find even that is unrealistic. When a project is due sometimes you might get 5 or 10 hours per week from someone who slacked off. But you can't expect more.
How to Win Friends and Influence People has the following suggestions:
Fundamental Techniques in Handling
People
Don't criticize, condemn, or complain.
Give honest and sincere appreciation.
Arouse in the other person an eager want.
Six Ways to Make People Like You
Become genuinely interested in other people.
Smile.
Remember that a man's Name is to him the sweetest and most important
sound in any language.
Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves.
Talk in the terms of the other man's interest.
Make the other person feel important and do it sincerely.
Twelve Ways to Win People to Your Way
of Thinking
Avoid arguments.
Show respect for the other person's opinions. Never tell someone
they are wrong.
If you're wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically.
Begin in a friendly way.
Start with questions the other person will answer yes to.
Let the other person do the talking.
Let the other person feel the idea is his/hers.
Try honestly to see things from the other person's point of view.
Sympathize with the other person.
Appeal to noble motives.
Dramatize your ideas.
Throw down a challenge & don't talk negative when the person is
absent, talk about only positive.
Be a Leader: How to Change People
Without Giving Offense or Arousing
Resentment
Begin with praise and honest appreciation.
Call attention to other people's mistakes indirectly.
Talk about your own mistakes first.
Ask questions instead of directly giving orders.
Let the other person save face.
Praise every improvement.
Give them a fine reputation to live up to.
Encourage them by making their faults seem easy to correct.
Make the other person happy about doing what you suggest.
In addition to this, "Top Three Motivators For Developers (Hint: not money!)" notes the Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose ideas that can also be great motivators for people when it comes to creative work.
Related
Closed. This question is opinion-based. It is not currently accepting answers.
Want to improve this question? Update the question so it can be answered with facts and citations by editing this post.
Closed 9 years ago.
Improve this question
I recently got promoted to be the Project Manager/Supervisor. What do you think the leadership style a managerial role in Programming Dev't should have?
What's your style?
Hands-off, servant leadership, unofficial or "tribal" leadership over traditional management, seem to be all the rage these days.
Basically getting out of the way and allowing the team to get their job done seems to make sense to me, but it all depends on the culture.
I would say an effective manager would already have a style, and know how he wants to work, whereas a less effective manager would probably learn from other senior managers and simply emulate "however things get done around here". Actually in a lot of places the latter is the only choice.
If you have the freedom to do things the way you want, I would probably prefer to borrow ideas from the agile/lean camp than the more traditional PMI/Prince2/PMBOK camp, but it all depends really.
The job of a manager is to get out of the way and let the developers do their jobs. If they encounter an obstacle it is your task to remove the obstacle.
I do not believe to simple management guidelines. In an ideal world, the job of a software manager would be to just provide food, computers, electricity and salaries, but we are hardly in an ideal world.
In a way, being a manager is a highway to frustration. There are few opportunities for a direct contribution to the project, you spend most of the time on planning, meetings, writing reports, and proposing future projects. In a nutshell, you have the responsibilities, while they have the joy of building things. In order to avoid quitting the job due to lack of fun, one needs to find a proper motivation which would justify the troubles.
Now, different people are motivated by different things. Some people like to participate in group efforts, some like the achievement in building things which can't be built by a lone enterpreneur, some like the power, some like the money. I think that a management style should be tailored to the intrinsic motivations of all of the involved parties. For example, it is useless to try to motivate your coworkers with money if they are primarily interested in building cool things (and vice versa).
A key competence in managing people is being able to address conflicts as early as possible. The conflicts range from trivial (X keeps committing buggy code to the repository) to critical (we need to hurry up in order to hit a deadline). I think it is very important to be able to express such concerns frankly and clearly, regardless of the managements style. Thus, at the end of day, oral communication capacities would be at least equally important as the management style.
I dont think it matters alot what style you choose. When leadership is "broken" it usualy is due to more basic things not done right.
Consistency: stick to your style unless you are sure it doesnt work out.
Honesty: Might seem obvious but when "fooling arround" too much with carrot and stick it can get out of control
Respect: Tech-Guys have all different characters but grasping what they value is easy - being passionate about technology and using it in professional way will open hearts. Waveing about your iphone showing off fancy looking but technologicaly trivial apps might result in the opposite ;)
Lead by example: You techs do extra hours? You do extra hours too!
Motivation: You dont need a jungle camp every 3 weeks but you can still help everyone to feel better about seeing each other more often than the family. Implement a friday afternoon beer-session if that is acceptable (be strickt about times though, no drinking before 6pm for exmaple). Show interest in what people are working on even if you are not part of operations. When working on abstract subjects people can have a hard time to put into relation what value they add to the company and to the team. When "in the jum" programmers particularily can become like lone astronauts - Having a broader understanding about your business you will need to remind people about the mission (though thats PM tasks mostly, but no PM is perfect too)).
In the end you are good leader when your team says "WE did it!"
There are plenty of methods with catchy names, but in general I prefer the management style to be lightweight and encourage communication.
I suspect a lot of us have had the experience of having to spend more time filling out forms than actually developing. Than is both frustrating and unnecessary. Controls are important, but a new form is not the solution to every managerial problem.
As far as communication goes, many managers seem to believe that it will work if everyone reports up to them and then they send the collected information back down. That can really lead to disaster. The team needs to communicate with each other well and often.
Finally, I'd like to throw in that as tempting as it is to take a new resource for a project and get them developing as quick as possible, I think it will always work out better in the long run to hold off and get them properly trained and oriented to the project.
My style is a combination of Attilla the Hun, Napoleon Bonaparte and Nelson Mandela. Whatever you do, don't try to adopt my style.
More seriously, to be a good leader you have to develop your own style and you have to integrate that into the culture of the organisation you work in. So, the answer to your question must start with asking yourself some penetrating questions and giving honest answers to them. You must also take some time to understand the traits of the individuals in your team and figure out what makes them tick and how to motivate them as individuals. What works with one may not work with another.
And, while I'm writing, I'll direct a passing kick at the respondents who suggest that it is a manager's job to get out of the way and let the team work: it's the manager's job to manage, you have people you work for who have certain expectations of you and you have to pay attention to them as well as to the losers on your team.
I write 'losers' because you have just been promoted and they haven't. Sure, you have to lead them to great achievement but you won't do that by keeping out of their way, you'll do it by leading them in the right direction, with the right mix of carrot and stick. Oh, and don't let them know that you think they are losers, it will upset them.
First of all; if you try to adopt a "style" that's not your own, you will most likely fail. You basically just have to be yourself! (That's probably why you got promoted in the first place) That said, there are some theorems to embrace, one beeing "you can always be a better leader" ;) I guess that's part of why you posted this question. My advise is to support your co-workers, and remember that it's your job to make them as good as possible. Try to keep yourself on top of all that happens within the project and encourage communication within the team. Agile style development helps with that. Also, try to put yourself in your co-workers shoes and try to imagine what they expect and want from you. Best of luck
There is no one "style" that you can or indeed should focus on. The reality is that you are now a people manager and people are all different. You need to learn to recognize the differences in the people you are managing and respond accordingly. This is a technical role, so if you have some technical understanding then this will assist with gaining respect of the team.
Some people need to be told what/how, some people need a gentle prod and some need full ownership of a task. Learning to spot the differences is where you need to apply yourself.
Typically people fall into 4 distinct camps with different names depending on the management course of the day :)
Beginner, highly motivated, not much experience, needs a more directive approach
Learner, more capable, but may be experiencing frustration, needs coaching
Performer, very capable but may lack confidence, needs supporting in their approach
Achiever, capable and committed, needs delegation of tasks
Management 3.0 Leading Agile Developers, Developing Agile Leaders by Jurgen is a book dedicated to answering this questions. http://www.management30.com/. His home page is here http://www.jurgenappelo.com/
In his book and class, he refers to Martie, the Management 3.0 model. It is composed of
Energize People
Empower Teams
Align Constraints
Develop Competence
Grow Structure
Improve Everything
An excellent introductory presentation can be found here: http://www.slideshare.net/jurgenappelo/what-is-agile-management
Jurgen's two key takeaways.
A software team is a self-organizing system. Support it, don't obstruct it.
Agile managers work the system around the team, not the people in the team.
Enjoy.
Closed. This question is opinion-based. It is not currently accepting answers.
Want to improve this question? Update the question so it can be answered with facts and citations by editing this post.
Closed 9 years ago.
Improve this question
What do you do when you get assigned a project that is just way too hard to do:
Say it's a mammoth project and your boss thinks you alone can handle it
You have knowledge to do somethings, but some other things are a little beyond your expertise at this point in time
Your boss probably thinks it's something that can be done by one person in probably one month
SO users, I would love realistic answers here. This is a real world situation and I am trying to figure out my response to my boss tomorrow on how to approach him delicately.
I just wanted to add an update to my note here. The app in question that my boss is targeting is a "NING like" web app. My hesitation is mostly being the only person being assigned to it for such a complicated app in such a short time period.
This is a situation that everyone has to deal with on a regular basis simply due to the nature of work. (Typically, if you know everything you need to know to complete a job, you've already completed the job and don't need to do it again. :) )
Be honest with your boss about your anxiety. Your manager needs to understand your assessment of the project's risk profile. Odds are good that you'll be doing it anyway. That's OK! This is your chance to shine! :)
Break the problem down into tasks you understand and tasks you don't understand, then start tackling issues one at a time. I, personally, like to alternate between easy tasks and hard tasks. Completing easy tasks helps me feel like I'm making real progress on a gut level, which is important for my personal motivation. Completing hard tasks addresses potential problem areas earlier in the schedule. This mitigates the tail-end risk of the project by evaluating unknowns earlier, rather than letting them fester and explode when you've got 2 days left and no more planning/wiggle room. It also helps your stress level because you know you've gotten the ball rolling on the project's scary bits. Remember-- your unknown areas are where you don't understand the problem domain, so that's where the real risk of schedule/budget slips lie. You need to mitigate those risks early and often. Get the ball rolling with colleagues that you can consult to learn how to do these things.
The one month goal is probably a target. I don't believe it's reasonable to expect person A to realistically estimate person B's scheduled completion of a task in the general case. To track your progress against the target, set up milestones, none longer than 16 hours/2 days, and track your completion rate against them. This goes hand-in-hand with your list of easy/hard tasks.
The simple fact is that, sometimes, you'll just get dumped in over your head. In that case, you may have to make the best of an overwhelming situation. My very first task at my first job out of college was to design a reliable, transaction-oriented, peer-to-peer n-way server synchronization system for high-volume, high-rate data. I told my boss up front that I did not have the expertise for this, and at the time I didn't have enough experience to understand that I needed to push back on the requirements. (In retrospect, given the political environment, I don't know if pushing back on the requirements would really have helped anyway). That was simply a case of a poorly managed project that took about 18 months to ultimately collapse under its own weight. I still leveraged the opportunity to learn a lot and take some knowledge about the way my particular organization worked, though, and that can be very valuable no matter what. :)
Good luck! :)
Edit after question update
Ok, if I understand your update correctly, we're definitely in #4 territory here. There's nothing realistic about creating a competitor for Ning in one man-month. I assumed in my prior answer that you were dealing with someone who had a base understanding of software development. Based on that:
Ask your boss to clarify the requirements more. Perhaps (cross your fingers!) you simply misunderstood what you were being asked to do, or the scope of the project. Always assume competence until absolutely proven otherwise for social reasons. Maybe you were only being asked to come up with an overall design and some very simple proof of concept?
If your boss is truly this out of touch with reality, put together a sensible, 15-minute back-of-the-envelope estimate with him/her on a whiteboard or a shared piece of paper. It shouldn't be hard at all to blow all kinds of holes in this one month to completion. Perhaps your boss thinks you'll be able to reuse some internal code that you're not aware of? This will bring any faulty assumptions your manager is making re: project scope to light.
If your boss is absolutely unreasonable (this doesn't happen often, but it occasionally does-- perhaps the company needs a killer app by the end of the month to sell to avoid going under), prep your resume for an intra- or extra-organizational move (depending on how big the place you work is). Unrealistic expectations on that order can be a sign of organizational desperation or malfunction, and your position may simply not exist 3 months from now.
Don't panic. You may have misinterpreted the goal your boss has. It sounds like he was not very clear if he said only "Ning-like."
Research Ning. What are all the things Ning can do? On Ning's Resources link, they list at least 21 major social network features.
Write up a high-level statement of the goal for this project. Include all the features Ning lists. Also include an objective for how many users this app should serve. Don't try to think about how to solve these goals objectives, or how many programmers it'll take or how long it'll take. Just list them. Keep this write-up to one or two pages.
Present the list to your boss. Ask him, "does this sound like what you had in mind?" Ask a few direct questions to ensure he has looked at your write-up:
"Who are the target users for this application?"
"How many new users per month do you expect to sign up?"
"What level of uptime do we need to support?"
"What's our budget for hosting this service?"
"Do you need this application to support international users?"
"What is the end-user license agreement (EULA) for this application?"
It may become clear at this point that your boss has more modest goals than you assumed. Perhaps he does not intend to duplicate all the capabilities and scale of Ning. So then it becomes a task of getting your boss to articulate more clearly what subset of Ning features or capacity he needs.
Install Drupal, Joomla, or Wordpress, download some plugins, and design a custom site for your boss. That'll probably give him 99% of what he wants, and it's the only way you'll be able to do it in one month.
Don't start by saying "No" or "It can't be done" or "Its too hard" or any of the other things you said in your post. Most managers in a company do not even begin to understand the effort level involved in a programming project and need a little education with their software planning estimates.
I would suggest a conversation which includes the following steps.
Estimates: review the effort level you believe is required for this project to be a success. Make sure that you have thought out tasks in enough detail so that you can answer questions.
Education: if your boss doesn't understand why something will take a certain amount of time, explain as clearly as you can (good analogies tend to help, bad ones can be devastating).
Alternatives: if you believe there is some middle ground or some set of sub features which will fulfill the project needs discuss these alternatives. Managers hate when an employee says something is hard or difficult, they want workable options.
Alignment: are you sure that you and your boss are on the same page about this project? Perhaps you see it as a piece of mission critical software and your boss sees it as a minor enhancement to your existing tools. Be sure that you both have the same expectations; otherwise, you may be planning more complex software than what is being requested.
The most important thing I ever learned in software was how to "push back."
It doesn't always mean saying no. What it means is providing your best estimate of what the impact of new work is. Whether you're saying "yes" or "no", you say, "we can do that, but it will require (x, y and z resource). I think it will take (n days for me, n*a for person b) to understand problem b), but I know how to handle (c, d and e). I've never had to solve problem b before, so I don't know if my estimate for that is realistic."
The difference between "yes" and "no" is whether the cost equation is acceptable.
Any good manager will respect your analysis, question some of your assumptions, expect a round of rethinking, and then, either accept the risks, find additional resources, or abandon the project.
If they say "I see what you're saying, but you're going to have to accomplish the impossible anyway," start looking for another job.
Would your boss not understand the truth? Just talk to him about the requirements of the project, and mention what can and can't be done.
Here's how I would plan it out:
Don't panic and to react - tell your boss that you would like to review the request and will get back to him shortly with questions and concerns
Go through the spec (or if there is no spec, the email or write down the request somewhere) and create a work breakdown structure for each delivery. This should be done to a level where each item is understandable (User Login, Message Entry, etc.)
For each item, est. the amount of work and +/- % amt. based on your knowledge, questions, risks, etc.
Create a list as you're going through the spec of any major/important questions (how many people is this targeted for? does this include the ability for users to IM, etc.)
You now have a rough timeline, risk assessment and list of questions to review with your boss. He'll see that you put some effort into it, may open his eyes to the complexity and provide him with confidence that you are not knee-jerking reacting. He might demand you do it in the timeframe he provided anyway....look for another job, you have at least a month.
What you say is that your perception of the task scope and complexity differs greatly from the perception your boss has. Great.
Most likely you're both wrong: you have misunderstood the requirements and the boss underestimated the task or fell into the trap of wishful thinking.
It's best to go through the requirements with your boss once again, work out together that deliverables are required, try to guestimate amount of time and resource needed to deliver these. If there are blind spots in implementation that you feel you lack skills or expirience for, make this clear and work on the assumption that you'll have spend cash to source these externally (that will at least give you an idea of a market price).
I am sure, the longer you and your boss spend discussing and researching the project, the more detailed the dissussions will become and the better idea of what is feasible will emerge.
The worst thing you can do is to keep quiet. Any good boss relies on developers to give some assessment of a project: either affirmative or hear more questions.
You don't have to say "no", that's not your job to decide whether to go ahead, but you have to be asking good questions.
It really depends on the relationship you have with your boss. If you can, I would just be open and honest with them. Tell them a few things are beyond your level of expertise and you would have to do some research, lengthening the project time. And stress the point that you don't believe you can get it done in a month and you're requesting a team to help.
It's possible your boss doesn't really understand the full scope of the project. If you can break it down into a list of tasks or sections to show how much work really has to go into it, they might see where you're coming from.
In the end, if your boss still wants you to go through with it, just keep stressing that you will do your best but you cannot make any promises about the deadline.
You need to be realistic with your boss. You will come out much better having over-delivered on the project rather than under-delivering on an aggressive timeline.
You have to be honest and tell the boss that there's a problem. However you need to show how much exactly of a problem it is so that you don't sound like an incompetent person waiting for a pink slip.
You need to carefully analyze what is to be done and break it into small parts and see which of them you can do and which you can't. It's normal to have parts in the project which look possible but hard to do - every normal boss usderstands that.
This way you show that the problem is not imaginary and it's not your desire to get nice salary for trivial job.
The truth of course is always the right answer, which your boss will find out eventually, better to fail early.
But with that said, is it something you just don't want to be involved in. Make sure you explain to your boss that you don't want to commit to something that you're sure to fail at but let him know that it could be a learning experience and at least be involved at some level, even if it's to look at the solution after it's done.
Create a realistic schedule and present it to your boss. Ask your boss for his input regarding the schedule. Maintain a positive attitude and let him know that you are both working toward the same end goal. Tell him that this is your best professional estimation of the amount of effort needed to meet all the requirements. Point out where the complexities are if challenged. Be firm and clear and above all else give him an opportunity to speak his concerns. Demonstrate good listening skills and address each of the issues he presents in a language that he feels comfortable with. I wish you all possible success in your project.
If estimations are not yet there then your first task is to do a realistic project estimation. Second task would be to check what technologies are required for the project and check if the knowledge is already available. If not then estimate for the training and gaining the knowledge. I understand boss is boss but you do your part and rest is up-to him. If the boss appreciate others opinion then he will understand but if he is like "I am always right" then you do whatever you can(work as best you can and also look for a new job).
Its a bit on the side of all the good advice I've seen here, but I'll say it anyway: most managers are actually quite smart. Senior managers I've met have all been very smart. The problem is that, as Eric Raymond puts it, they are "differently optimised". So they may need some education. If you assume that they will be reasonable once they know all the facts then you will almost always be correct.
Of course you do occasionally get people who behave unreasonably, or think that saying "make it so" like Captain Picard is Leadership. But they are rare, and do not last long.
Go fight club on him? Get free monies and airfare!
Closed. This question is opinion-based. It is not currently accepting answers.
Want to improve this question? Update the question so it can be answered with facts and citations by editing this post.
Closed 3 years ago.
Improve this question
What are the main reasons personal projects (software apps etc) never get to the level of competing with your salary?
To me one big problem is "on-the-fly" feature expansion, with this problem, the end only gets further and further away!
For me, it's simple: I work 8 hours a day already. I spend a few more hours a day keeping current. I have a girlfriend, some local family and a decent circle of friends. I have (gasp) non-computer-related interests and hobbies. In other words, I have a life.
So ... Time. Time is not on my side. Would that it was ... My blog might be a bit more current if there were just two more hours in every day. :)
(Originally posted by John Rudy.)
If you want your hobby to become your job you have to acquire all the other skills you need to be in business. At the end of the day your pet project has to stand on its own two feet in the real world. At the same time you are enjoying the coding you need to get yourself a concrete plan to commercialise your activity.
Most hobby projects fail to make the big time for one of two reasons:
The idea is not commercially viable
The discipline necessary to commercialise the idea is missing
Just because you are a great technologist does not mean you'll be a great businessman. You may be, but the two are not necessarily linked. It is no weakness to consider partnering with someone who has no technical skills but a good network and some proven business acumen. Quite often people like that are looking for techies too so you might find a great partnership. That person can provide the structure and commercial discipline that you probably lack if feature creep is pushing your completion backwards.
I think the primary reason is the simple work overload that most developers experience. Most personal projects take place in the evening and weekends, and as excited as most of us get about our ideas for personal projects, after 40 hours (or more) of salaried programming, it's hard for "more work" to compete with watching a game while sipping a beer or spending quality time with the family.
Different skill sets are required to start and maintain a business than to develop software. Entrepreneurship skills can be learned, but not every has the skills to make it happen. A lot of times the skills it takes to get something started and off the ground are different than the skills it takes to finish it and polish it. For me, I know that I have the creativity to make software and find ways to solve problems, but I have little interest in finding funding for a business and marketing a product or service.
Assuming that you're a developer, it's most likely due to the fact that you do not know when, or are incapable of, stopping development and focusing on other things, like marketing and sales.
Time and Losing Interest, there is always a new tool or technology that can take your attention away from completing projects.
I'm not sure if I understand your question, but here are a few answers:
Adding "on-the-fly" features isn't necessarily a bad thing. In fact, it's the expected model of Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 projects. The key is to keep them very simple, only roll them out once they've been tested, and listen to your users. If you try to dump the kitchen sink in on the first release, it will most likely be ugly, confusing, and buggy.
Being a great programmer is only a part of it. You need business skills, marketing, knowledge of the user's needs and how to meet them, artistic/design skills, and a hell of a lot of luck.
Lot's of people have great ideas. Often different people have the same ideas. Most never get implemented. Of those that do, very few of them succeed. In some cases, revolutionary products took years to convince the buyers and users that they even wanted the product. Often the people or companies behind the first few iterations failed miserably and then a third or fourth person or company finally hit the market at the right time with a right product. Apple is great at both ends of this by the way - they not only innovate (first Mac, the Newton, etc.), but they also wait until the market need grows and they sense a place to pounce in and take advantage of it (the iPod, the Mac vs. Windows issues, etc.)
Most of these bullets apply as much to software as they do to widgets and services. The big advantage that software has is lower startup costs. Just like the saying "On the Internet, no one knows you're a dog" - "When looking at a web app, the user doesn't know if you are a multi-billion dollar company or a single guy sitting in your underwear in your parent's basement." If your software is good, that is...
I'd say one of the big reasons is that by nature, personal projects don't get as much attention as your job will.
I have a slew of personal/side projects I'm working on, but they get far less of my attention that my 'real' work does because, right now, that's what's paying the bills.
If I were to take a month off and work only on my personal stuff, it'd probably be pretty cool / worth money.
developers often design for themselves instead of for their customers
developers tend to put off releasing products until things are 'perfect' - and they never will be
Weakness of mind and spirit. Build a team around your product early.
Scope creep. Concentrate on selling what you have already got: "The customer can have any color he wants so long as it's black". Henry Ford
Small feature set. Leverage features of your product by what is already available on the market.
Not enough hours spent daily. Often achieving something might depend just on simple routine, putting your time in.
Deep down I think its a lack of belief in the project. If I believed in what I was doing I would not stop in completing the project.
Desire to build an ideal product
For example: There are various ways (algorithms) to get a particular task done. But, people wait to discover that one ideal solution. Even if there are multiple solutions for the same problem already available. That ideal solution is never found.
Procrastination
Your personal software projects don't compete with your salary for one reason.
What do you do for your salary? Whatever that is -- however much you may like or dislike it -- it more valuable than your software product.
"But my day job involves a lot of stupid time-wasting meetings." So? Clearly, someone will pay you more for wasting your time in meetings than for your software products.
"But my day job forces me to waste months in useless analysis and design documents and test plans that never even get used." So? Clearly, someone thinks this activity is more important than writing software.
"How can meetings or useless documents be more valuable than software?" I don't know, but look at your experience. Companies love to pay programmers relatively large amounts of money to hang around and waste time.
Companies don't love to pay for software.
Your personal projects don't compete with your salary because your time is more valuable than your products.
The biggest reason? Because if you can write it yourself and people like it, someone else can make an open source version with much better support than you can provide alone. Why not skip the middle man and release it as open source yourself? Sure, you miss out on the direct profit, but that looks very good come hiring time.
Closed. This question is opinion-based. It is not currently accepting answers.
Want to improve this question? Update the question so it can be answered with facts and citations by editing this post.
Closed 3 years ago.
Improve this question
I find way too many projects to get involved in, way to many languages to play with (and way too many cool features within those languages), and way too many books to read...
How do you guys stay focused and actually get anything done, rather than leaving a trail of partially complete "experiments?"
Seems like there are two types of developers: Tinkerers and Entrepreneurs.
Tinkerers want to know how every little thing works. Once they get the hang of something, they're distracted by everything they don't know. The tech world is brutal for a Tinkerer because there's so much to learn and each new year creates more. Tinkerers are proud of their knowledge.
Entrepreneurs want to know enough to build something really great. They think in terms of features and end-user experiences. You never hear them argue about Python over .NET over Java over C because they just don't care. They're more interested in the result of a language versus the language itself. Entrepreneurs are proud of their user-base.
Sounds like you're struggling with your Tinkerer tendencies. I've got the same problem and have found only one thing that helps - find an Entrepreneur developer that you thoroughly respect. When you put the two together, it's unbeatable. The Tinkerer plumbs the depth of every technical nuance. They keep the Entrepreneur technically honest. In turn, the Entrepreneur creates focus and opportunity for the Tinkerer. When they catch you browsing the Scala site (assuming you're not a Scala developer), they reveal a new challenge in your existing project. Not only that, they're much better at understanding what non-Tinkerers want.
Money, and the feeling of accomplishment that goes along with actually finishing something. When I first thought about working for myself I started coming up with ideas of software that I would develop and then later sell. Of course, I really didn't know if what I was making would actually sell, so it was easy to get distracted and jump at new ideas.
So I decided to go with being a contractor/consultant. When you know that there is a buyer for what you're making, and that somebody is waiting on it, it gives you motivation. If it's an interesting or challenging project, there's a rush associated with finishing it. So that adds extra motivation because you want that rush more and more.
Once I got a fairly steady flow of work-for-hire projects, I found that I can stay focused on my side projects better because I have incentive to practice good time management. I give myself a certain amount of time every day or week to work on my side projects, and it helps me stay focused when I take that time.
Of course, I still go off on tangents occasionally and start new side projects as well, but the ones that I am most interested in I have been able to stick with.
Also, after you finish some projects, then you get a better feel for what it actually takes to go from conception to completion, and it makes it a lot easier to do it again and again.
I think a good programmer may well have lots of unfinished "experiments" hanging around, this is a good thing.
Usually with a good manager, you will be held accountable if your work is simply not getting done. If you're a student, though, it's tougher. I realized that it is impossible to learn everything you want to.
I limit myself to only learning 1 or 2 new languages per year, and only 1 book per month. That seems to be a nice balance between programming chaos and getting my job done well.
Kudos for having a great learning attitude :)
Probably the best motivator (for a team or an individual) is to set goals early and often.
One of the best methods I've observed in project management was the introduction of "feature themed weeks" - where the team (or an individual) was set goals or deliverables which aligned under a general flavour, e.g "Customer Features", "Reporting and Metrics" etc. This kept the team/person focused on one area of delivery/effort. It also made it easy to communicate to the customer where progress was being made.
Also.. Try to make your (or your team's) progress visible. If you can establish an automated build process (or some other mechanism) and "publish" incremental implementation of work over a short period of time you can often gain traction and early by-in which can drive results faster (and help aid in early course correction).
1) I leave a utterly MASIVE trail of unfinished stuff, all side projects of course.
2) When I need motivation to work I open my wallet... That usually does it for me.
I'm building an app I plan on selling and see it as a way of making extra money or reducing the amount of time I spend working for other people.
My wife likes this idea and her encouragement has managed to keep me focused longer than normal as it's now "work" rather than "play"
I find that getting involved with the "business" side of the equation helps tremendously. When you see how much benefit the actual users of your program can get out of your creative solutions to their problems - it's an extreme motivation to provide those solutions to them. :-)
Closed. This question does not meet Stack Overflow guidelines. It is not currently accepting answers.
This question does not appear to be about programming within the scope defined in the help center.
Closed 8 years ago.
Improve this question
You must have heard the archetypical story of a failing/failed project:
A team of inexperienced programmers work 24x7
Bugs are fixed only to introduce new bugs
Customer is screaming that he could not even do the basic stuff (Saving/Querying) etc.
Programmers used to having the spec handed down struggle to improvise
No automated unit tests aggravate the situation
Architecture document that looked nice on paper was not followed in practice
Third party components used become bottlenecks not having been tested for fitness in the first place
Milestone after milestone missed
The team is not able to come up with a delivery date as nobody agrees as to the quantum of work actually needs to be done
No technical leadership / or a Cowboy Coder that can take on the technical issues
Now, If you were to be brought in as #10 what would be your first steps?
Update: First of all: Thanks to you all for chipping in. Well... I'm being brought in as #10. I was the original Architect anchoring the solution when we made the proposal to the client. Then, unfortunately, I couldn't take on the delivery responsibilities as I was assigned somewhere else. :)
Let's say it's a webification of an existing desktop application. I'm now being brought in as #10. Running away, sadly, is not an option. I'm sure this can still be reversed by following agile best practices and just wanted to tap the community for ideas.
The larger question perhaps is this: If the development team does not have specs but only the (baselined) code for a running application, the original solution called for looking at the code and extracting business rules on the fly. Now, the inexperienced programmers are reluctant to look at VB 6.0 code and want documents! So how do you fight this if you were to instate Agile processes?
Vyas, I feel like I could have written this question. My previous job involved resurrecting a KVM project that had failed after a year's development. Specs were in the form of a user manual and developers' experience with similar products. I ended up teaching C to 3 assembly programmers and re-architecting from scratch. We brought the product successfully to market in 4 months. (Then I resigned. Go figure.)
Some of the things I'd do again, particularly with an inexperienced team:
1. A team of inexperienced programmers work 24x7
10. No technical leadership / or a Cowboy Coder that can take on the technical issues
Give them a (short!) break from the project to "recharge." Maybe a day, maybe an afternoon, or maybe a long lunch on you. It will mark the end of the "old" project and the beginning of success.
Get their agreement to work their butts off when they return, and promise that you will be their go-to guy, cheerleader, and flak jacket. You, collectively, are a team, and your job is to forge their path, eliminate distractions, and lead them.
Plan an immediate success, no matter how small, and maintain a "can-do" attitude.
8. Milestone after milestone missed
9. The team is not able to come up with a delivery date as nobody agrees as to the quantum of work actually needs to be done
3. Customer is screaming that he could not even do the basic stuff (Saving/Querying) etc.
Take small bites! Break each piece down as far as possible, then deal with the small components. You'll identify "gotchas" early and be better able to scope the whole project.
Define your interfaces. Anytime you can isolate a chunk, do it. This allows parallel development, because you've already decided on parameters, preconditions, assumptions, what happens inside, and return values. You can stub it out, and build other modules and tests independently.
Prioritize. Focus on the defects and issues that affect the customer first. New features come last. If necessary, defer features rather than delivering buggy code.
Assign responsibilities. Volunteers are preferred, each in his/her area of expertise, but one person must be accountable for each task.
Track defects, and record everything that will help you reproduce, locate, and fix them. Document any that remain at delivery time, so the customer won't be surprised.
4. Programmers used to having the spec handed down struggle to improvise
6. Architecture document that looked nice on paper was not followed in practice
You will create the spec details as you go, each piece just before it's needed. It needn't be pretty, complete, or even written, as long as everyone understands the current task and you've got the big picture.
Discuss the implementation, one piece at a time, when the developer is ready to code it. Write the skeleton yourself if necessary, and let the team fill in the "guts." You want to keep them focused on each task, without "improvising."
Be available to answer questions as they arise. Your primary goal is to keep the team productive.
2. Bugs are fixed only to introduce new bugs
5. No automated unit tests aggr[a]vate the situation
Plan and start unit testing ASAP. If possible, enlist resources outside the team.
Fix small problems before they grow larger--or get hidden. Confidence in each small piece builds confidence in the whole.
7. Third party components used become bottlenecks not having been tested for fitness in the first place
Brainstorm solutions when you're not coding. Don't let them stop your progress if at all possible. Can you encapsulate or code around them? Replace them?
General suggestions:
Stay ahead of the team. Anticipate and try to solve problems before your team hits them. Gather any necessary information before it's needed.
Communicate constantly. Make it clear that you want no surprises, and solicit concerns, questions, status, roadblocks, etc throughout each day. Encourage collaboration and share "discoveries" across the team.
Celebrate every success. Compliment a clever solution, bring donuts when a problem is solved, demonstrate a new working feature ... anything that shows the team you appreciate them.
Get each task done, then move ahead. Don't waste time tweaking, enhancing, or reworking anything that isn't a direct barrier to success.
Keep your promises to the team, the customer, and your management.
Good luck -- please keep us posted!
Run away or find a new job. This is a death march and they need a scape goat.
Often, the death march will involve
desperate attempts to right the course
of the project by asking team members
to work especially grueling hours,
weekends, or by attempting to "throw
(enough) bodies at the problem" with
varying results, often causing
burnout.
Freeze releases, and start fixing issues with the program.... deal with the customer complaints by priority (the business side of the company can prioritize) and get the program running. Once you get the biggest issues out of the way, start cleaning up the code. Assign tasks to other developers, and start enforcing coding practices on all new code.
If you can do whatever you want, then look at what the real issues are and deal with them. If that means putting together a new team to develop the software all over from scratch, so be it. But you should try to at least fix the major bugs. Don't bother introducing new features, they only compound the problem, and a program that doesn't work and the problems aren't dealt with lose you clients.
Number 10 is obviously the worst problem, or at least the root of all others. Find someone with some creativity and ability to deliver a project, and give them free reign to do anything - including start over.
I hope you are getting paid really well. In any case, my plan would be something like these steps in the following order:
0) Stop adding features or functions across the team. Allow bugs to be addressed while the following steps are taken up to step 5, then stop bug fixing & resume feature development:
1) Apply what I call the Inverse Staffing Law: Weaker team members slow down the better and faster ones and generally a late software project needs people removed, not added. So, you need to assess the quality of the team members as individual contributors. Eliminate weaker staff from the team because presumably there are some. This is best done by reviewing their code and examining their bug fixes and figure out who is making the code worse vs. better and chop them for the team. This is not a time to mentor, you are going to need the best folks to have a change of "fixing" the situation in a optimal period of time. If you can't fire them or reassign them, have them getting coffee or something for everyone else left.
2) Assess the code itself. Identify areas of the code that are not constructed well and/or not well abstracted. If a area code is not constructed well and/or is obviously brittle at it what it is supposed to do, target it for a re-write. This feels painful at this point, but it will save you time in the long run. Recurring bugs and/or history of fixes will help identify the code that can't be salvaged. If a code area or module is fundamentally constructed well, but not abstracted well at the interface level, it should be suitable for re-factoring. This will save significant time and is useful code. Keep a list of the re-write areas, the re-factor areas, and the suitable areas.
3) Define a new reasonable architecture that you believe will result in a robust and complete solution to where you want to eventually be in features and functions. The architecture might not be optimal as starting clean, but in effect match up what you have with where you would like to be.
4) Work with the stake holders to decide what will make an acceptable first release attempting to table as many features as possible for "later" releases. Maybe you can't cut anything, but if you can, now is the time to do it.
5) Stop the background bug fixing efforts and assign the defined work out to the (remaining) team to estimate out a reasonable new implementation plan of the rest of the functionality. They need to own the schedule. Roll up the schedule and be fairly conservative. Now you have a reasonable prediction of when you could actually have something workable and robust.
6) Implement the remaining features and then harden up the release by tackling the remaining bugs. I am assuming all the normal good software development practices are observed here like source control, unit tests, etc.
7) Remove as many barriers as possible to keep the team cranking out stuff as fast possible.
8) Monitor for issues, and assist by getting your hands dirty where ever your can. Offer to take on the nastier issues to the extent you can help and still keep all members of the team as productive.
Good Luck!
This isn't about technical leadership any more, it's now about project management.
You as the technical lead will just be shifting deckchairs on the Titanic. So here's what I would do if I was the de-facto project manager.
1) Identify the project sponsors and stakeholders - both the official ones and the real ones.
2) Go to them and request that the project "goes dark" for a week.
3) If they don't agree, walk away from this project.
4) If they do agree, call a project time-out for a week - everything stops.
5) Spend that whole week talking to the important people on the project to identify the real project state.
6) Whilst engaged in those discussions, start formulating a project recovery plan, emphasising possible trade-offs between scope, schedule, budget, and personnel.
7) At the end of the week, decide which (if any) of your possible project scenarios are feasible.
8) Take the best of these scenarios back to the project sponsors and stakeholders, and start negotiating.
9) When a way forward is agreed, reboot the project and pray - possibly not in that order.
Common sense has already been pointed out to you by Maxim (Quit the death march). But if for reasons unknown you wish to persist, let me regale you with my experience in a similar situation - perhaps it might come useful.
It was my first job in a sleepy old town where good computer jobs where hard to come by and I despertely needed one immediately after college. I was hired coz the management thought i was enthusiastic enough and might be better than nothing (I offered to bring in my own comp to save them a cost of giving me a PC and offered to work for the experience alone)
The project had been abandoned by its creators due to the death march situation and had gone away after deleting all the comments in the code and performing other obfuscations. Nobody knew win32 / MFC stuff either.
I simply started studying the code on good old paper and pencil (lots of rubbing and corrections) until within 20 days time i knew the entire code including the variables by heart and what and where things where happening.
Armed with this knowledge i was able to make a critical piece working which had eluded everyone before. Of-course this was nothing but a drop in the ocean but it enabled the management to buy the clients confidence "smart fellow - got him with great difficulty - already got x working - u will have ur stuff working within y time".
Once the client was convinced and we where able to buy some time, some pressure was taken away. This got some hope back into the team and we started to hammer away for good. 6 months later i got promoted to project lead and 9 months later we had our fix shipment (lots of progress demos and a visibly more and more satisfied client in between).
As you can see, the elements of success are not directly duplicatable. But i would summarize that you need to breath some hope into the project first - show some progress and win confidence - that of your peers, management and the client. Once that is in place the technical stuff should be corrected too - there is nothing to replace this part of the equation.
If that does not seem likely, all that hard work (oh yes - lots and lots of work like you never imagined - why do you think its called a death march) would be a waste and you had better quit even before you start.
I had no choice and i was hot blooded and desperately need a job. The technical details where something icould work magic upon, and everthing just clicked into place. I really earned a lot of good will and self respect with that piece of work but in the long run its just a story i can narrate with great aplomb and nothing more except for those few in the know.
Things might be different for you but its for you to decide.
Good luck
Make sure you aren't the scapegoat
Cut scope creep
Trim functionality "requirements"
Implement a faster dev cycle (maybe Agile/Scrum/XP/whatever)
If you can, run away.
If not, you need to stop all activities that make the project unstable - including coding and fixing defects.
Assess where you are
Break up the requirements into much smaller "milestones"
Read some practical books (Mcconnell's "Software Project Survival Guide" comes to mind.
Identify all the problems and risks. Communicate all those to all involved.
Work on each piece one at a time.
Celebrate improvements and milestones as they are reached.
Good luck. Your scenario sounds pretty bad. It may not be salvageable - and things have to change to get better.
If you really had to get it on track (if bailing isn't an option)
Start off by accepting that it's a failure in management. You might then want to go on to implementing a strict but light process.
I'd suggest some form of Agile, since it's the easiest to successfully implement without a GURU, but you have to be VERY strict about it, including Pairing, Ruthless Refactoring, Reviews, Spiking functionality, Visibility, TDD, one-week cycles, 8-hour workdays (Yes, longer than 8 tends to harm productivity more than help, as you seem to have noticed)...
Don't be cutting anything out either. Parts of Agile rely on other parts--without the pairing, refactoring and testing you cannot eliminate upfront design (one of the biggest agile failures).
Don't forget about the management side of it. One week iterations to start (demo EVERY week). Constant adaptation. Very short stand-ups every day to address issues. (Keep to 15 minutes max, table longer issues, etc) Burndown charts, core-team with a client on it.
You can't just have a 15 minute meeting every week and 2 week iterations and call it Agile, but if you do it right, it just MIGHT give you a chance. You might get a GOOD agile consultant in to train you on getting started.
Also, constantly evaluate what works and what doesn't. Be prepared to fix what doesn't work. Weekly meetings to analyze that weeks' development successes and failures.
Overall it CAN work, and can bring a flailing team into line, but it's not trivial. The nicest part is that you can implement it without taking huge chunks of time out of your current development. You just keep developing, but you do it better.
Tough situation, you have zero customer trust and basically can't be successful under that situation, no matter what.
For all intents and purposes the project needs a reboot; the unfortunate fact is that incumbant shops usually don't get this oppurtunity to start over and re-evaluate everything that is there.
I hate to say it, but you need to halt development and spend a month working out what went wrong...
The result needs to be a plan for a feasible 6month - 1year delivery really making them focus on what the must-haves are and real trade studies on your third party components. And trashing the code base needs to be an option; start a new source control project and when you get to a particular module port peices that make sense and leave the garbage behind.
Agile is great and all, and a valid approach once you get a real plan in place; but its not going to fix a broken relationship with your customer... or all the junk that's already there.
Here's the summary of key learning after reading through your experiences:
Maxim
1: Make sure this is not a "Death March"
Ellie
2: Make sure what's delivered works
3: Refactor & Realgin codebase to Architecture / Best practices
4: Look at what are the real issues: Is the team technically competenet to deliver?
Kendall
5: Ensure availaibility of Technical Leadership
Bill K
6: Implement Agile Processes (At least automated unit tests if not TDD, short iterations that make progress visible)
7: Get customer buy-in
8: Be prepared to throw out what cannot work (wishful thinking aside)
Warren
9: Make sure the team memebers that remain given a chance to start over
Tim
10: Motivate team and as improvement becomes visible reward them
jsl4980
11: You need buy-in on schedule from your team (most imp.) & customer
[This raises more questions. What if your customer asks whether the team is competent enough to stick to your schedule? What if you yourself know that the timelines the team is proposing just shows their lack of understanding]
Ather
12: Is the team commited?
13: Do you formally QA?
Patrick
14: Start over, redesign and reconform to Architecture/Design best practices for modules yet to be developed.
The summary has 14 items. You can't do them all. So, what's the first step?
Here's what you have to do first -- get one thing improved.
You've got fundamental quality issues. (#2-5)
You've got architecture and component issues. (#6, 7)
You've got schedule problems. (#1, 8, 9)
You can tackle quality. Formal unit testing, heading toward TDD can help. This might be hard because architecture issues slow testing down.
You can tackle architecture. This might be harder because it will probably involve rework that will not appear deliverable. But it may fix quality issues. Or, it may be compounded by fundamental testing problems.
You can tackle schedule. Without other corrections (i.e., quality or architecture) you may not get any traction with fixing schedule issues.
I think that overall improvements in people's attitudes come from starting with one success -- any success -- as early as possible. What's the lowest-hanging fruit?
One long-standing bug? One unit test suite to find and fix that bug?
One major architectural feature? Would a diagram that everyone can post in their cube help? How about a presentation clarify things?
One new use case? One new feature that actually works?
Here's a good book on the subject:
Catastrophe Disentanglement: Getting Software Projects Back on Track
First off, be resolved that you may fail -- if you can't accept that, don't take the challenge. And that includes being a scapegoat (it does happen). Management won't look at it in those terms (i.e. they're not intentionally/consciously 'setting you up'). But that is a reality of a corporate environment; if you take on the responsibility (often with more pay than those that don't), then your head is for the block if things don't work out. You have to be ready to stick with it for the long haul too. I was once placed on a client site for 8 months to fix a waning project. And as you saw, one of the other blog-posters here spent 9 months before a release version was ready.
Now, assuming you are okay with the possibility of it going all pear-shaped in spite of your efforts, this is what I suggest:
a bug tracking system is going to be your number one best friend, it will allow you to regain a semblance of control. you can't hope to understand a complex system as a whole, so 'chunking' it will help. and a bug tracking system allows you to unitize problems and distribute them to the other guys you are working with.
you have got both technical and political challenges to deal with. the technical generally aren't so bad because you're a coder and you know how to do this. the political ones are much trickier, you're at the helm of a ship thats gone hopelessly off-course, and you're in the Bermuda triangle. the biggest challenge is often stemming the tide of negative sentiment amongst the client (e.g. client: "these cow-boys don't know what they are doing", "they promised me this and didn't deliver", "i have no confidence in these guys to any more").
for starters, apologize to the customer and tell them in concrete terms what you are doing to do to re-right their project, e.g. you: "I'm sorry about the delay on your project, I'm getting stuck into it now. I've looked at the project history, and personally, I would be angry too if I was paying good money for this system. the first thing I'm going to tackle is..." <- bingo, you've just taken responsibility for the project which means there's no turning back - its all or nothing now.
a few other people have said it here, and I agree; stop adding new features. what they haven't mentioned is that you may have to do this to keep the client happy (remember, there's a technical and political side to the challenge).
understand the business domain as best you can. read through any requirements documents you can get your hands on. you are at a massive disadvantage by coming onto the project late since you don't know what was originally discussed. the devil is in the detail. this is what sunk me on a late projects I wasn't able to salvage, everyone was on edge, and i missed a minor requirement. at the time, it wasn't a big deal and could have been corrected easily, but politically speaking, it was the straw that broke the camels back. one tactic which may help is to go out on client site for a few weeks.
understand that time is money. its not just a technical issue. the client has paid for something which isn't right or has not been delivered. your company has expended resources, possible having already used up all the project budget - the business is now losing money. and this is where the issue of new features come in again, yes - people are saying don't add them, stablise. but adding new features can be a politically helpful tactic, management will be happy because new money is coming in for off-spec work.
I'd recommend against you or your coding crew working ridiculous hours to deliver. if you normally leave at 5pm, leave at 6.30pm or 7pm instead. you and your coding boys can consistently maintain an hour or two of extra work for many weeks on end and perhaps 4-5 hours over the weekend. working until 9pm or 10pm every night will result in burn-out in roughly 2 weeks (some can go longer). after that point, your extra time on the project is doing more harm then good. in the unlikely event your boss takes issue with this, make a choice; do what they ask (i.e. work more hours), or say "I've already committed extra hours to working on this project - I'm here for the long haul and im going to get this project done if its the death of me. but that is the limit of how much time I'm willing to put in. i have other commitments to keep outside of work" <- but be ready for the consequences (remember, political situation as much as a technical one).
there are people here that are saying "stop and write a spec, stop and do this..." - I'm sorry guys, i just cant agree with you here, its unrealistic. the project is already stagnating, the last thing management or the client wants to here is "we have to stop everything and...". I've tried this before, where I've said to the client and management "the bugs will keep coming until we stop and i write up a detailed system test plan. it will take me two weeks" - the client didn't want to pay for this, and management wasn't willing to wear the cost. as it happened, the bugs kept coming.
learn to 'juggle' - you have to map out tasks ahead of time so programmers aren't waiting on you. this will generally mean you do less coding yourself. generally this is best achieved by having a project schedule before coding starts. programmers should know what they are doing next after they finish what they are currently working on, and they shouldn't be coming to ask you "what do i work on next?", they should already know.
build-in recovery utilities, especially if the software has recurring problems which are hard to pin-down. for example; it may take 12 hours to track down a bug and fix it, it may take 2 hours to put in utility (read 'hack') to fix the problem for the time-being. time and momentum are of the essessen, and unfortunately bandaid fixes may be needed.
be very observant of the clients mood. they need to know you are 'on their side' (e.g. client: "the product is unacceptable", you: "i agree, i would kick our asses to if i was in your position. all i can tell you is im on it and wont rest until its all working"). when the client is back on your site, they will actually start helping you. for instance, they may shield you from pressure from your management.
lead your guys by example. something along the lines of "I'm staying back a bit to work on the project, I'd appreciate the help if your willing to stay back too" and "i know its not our mess, but we're still going to clean it up anyway. i want the client to get some good quality software". programmers could generally care less about the company that got them into this situation, but they may care if its about one of their own or the client ('may').
many of the suggestions I've seen here assume a fairly high degree of power (e.g. 'stopping the project to restart it properly' or 'say no to new features') - you are starting the project already hamstrung, and as a programmer, you will traditionally have less power to affect change then a true manager. this doesn't mean 'give up/don't try' - it just means you are going to have to be creative and do things you don't normally do (i.e. use 'soft' or people skills).
a lot of people here are saying bail on the project, run for the hills. I have been on 3 hopelessly late projects to date. i managed to fix 2, and 1 I couldn't fix. personally, it doesn't bother me to take on a late project. after all, the worst that can happen is you get fired :)
If you were involved in the project from the beginning, I hate to say it, but the company should replace you (and the entire team).
It should be reanalyzed with a competent team with real project management processes and lead by a project manager with experience in this situation.
None of the original coders should work on the 'new project' of saving it. They can move to other projects (they don't have to be fired) but to get a fresh look at the project, everybody should be replaced.
And of course, management has to understand and be on board with the fact that the project is going to be much later than expected. If management doesn't agree with this (replace team, find experienced leadership, take a step back and start again) then #Maxim is right - get out of there.
1) The first thing I will assess is whether the people on the team are committed to the project or not? If not, it is worthless to do any other thing. Nothing can prevent the disaster unless I get a dedicated and committed team.
2) I'll make sure that there is QA on the team.
3) Come up with a reasonable plan of iterative and incremental releases to the customer. With the mess we are in, there is no way customer can get everything soon. Based on the priorities of customer, we'll deliver smaller increments of functionality to him frequently. This will keep customer engaged, a bit less-edgy since he is seeing something happening.
What ever you do, do it step by step.
First, it's not about addind features, it's about fixing the app. Don't add anything new. Just refactor. Say no to any new stuff somebody ask you to introduce in the system.
Don't try to improve the whole app. Take your team, make it focus on one aspect at the time, with the best practices you can, especially using unit test.
Use test driven development only. In that case, it will immediately show you what part of the behavior you don't understand (you can't code a test if you don't know what to test.
So here are the road map :
Identify the critical part you need to change
Isolate the code that implies this behavior
Find any occurence of this code in the rest of the code
Refactor using this knowledge and massive TDD
Integrate, test and fix until this particular part works
Go back to step
Make the situation clear to your boss : it will take time, money and will be painfull. Explain why, what you will do, and that you have no other way or it will fail AGAIN.
A above all, don't try to make it clean the first time. Refactor what you can, but don't expect to change the entire architecture of the part you are working on the first time. You will have to iterate the process on the whole application several times.
No miracle. Just method and patience.
Been there, followed these steps:
Stabilize
gather the real story: how good/bad is the codebase, how good/bad are the developers, what really needs to get done (bare bone min.), when it needs to get done by
reduce overtime (tired people, good or bad, don't work well)
remove the bad, input new/good - err on the side of replacement (many could be burnt out and appreciate even a forced change)
remove access to bad/un-required code (focus on the 20% of the code base that provides the 80% of the value)
put base code practices in place ensuring only good code is getting in (don't damage the base anymore)
Control
implement teams focused on the app components (decouple as much as possible)
put code management, release management, risk management, QA, etc. in place (build your environment so you can succeed)
get on your clients/sponsors good side - delivery a win, even if it's a somewhat stable very very small release - and then put in change management (control what gets requested)
Move forward
develop a plan (planning is essential, plans are useless according to Ike - you need to plan to find what is missing and to set a target, but don't expect to tell the future) - continuous planning is required
aggressively manage your people - good people make good product - make sure you get and retain the best
refactor over time - clean up code as you go - you may not have the luxury to fix everything at once so do it overtime to provide for a cleaner code base
move forward bravely - overtime be more aggressive with your deliveries test (but not stress) your team
Agile refactoring. Identify and prioritize what customer wants and then create the most important stuff in short sprints out of existing code. Good luck man :)