AIPMM Webinar Series
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© AIPMM 2012

© AIPMM 2012 http://www.aipmm.com

Today’s Speakers
Moderator:
Cindy F. Solomon, CPM, CPMM
Founder, Global Product Management Talk
http://www.BlogTalkRadio.com/ProdMgmtTalk
Twitter: @ProdMgmtTalk @startupproduct @cindyfsolomon
Presenter:
Ron Lichty
Software Engineering Management
and Product Development Consulting
w: http://www.ronlichty.com
b: http://www.managingtheunmanageable.net
t: @RonLichty
© AIPMM 2012 @AIPMM #prodmgmt http://www.aipmm.com

FEATURED PRESENTATION
© AIPMM 2012 http://www.aipmm.com

Chaos to Clarity:
Managing the Unmanageable
Ron Lichty, Ron Lichty Consulting
www.ronlichty.com

Ron Lichty,
Managing Software People & Teams
SOFTWEST
___________________________________________________________
12/07/12 Managing the Unmanageable http://ronlichty.com

Why we wrote:
*
______________________________ * Addison Wesley published October 1, 2012
12/07/12 Managing the Unmanageable http://ronlichty.com

Rules of Thumb / Nuggets of Wisdom*
* 300 in the book
____________________________________________________________
12/07/12 Managing the Unmanageable http://ronlichty.com

Agenda
• Managing Delivery
• Challenges new programming managers have
• Motivating
• Recruiting
• Handling Problem Employees
• Shielding Their Team
• Managing Out and Up
• Establishing Culture
• Communicating
• Q&A
____________________________________________________________
12/07/12 Managing the Unmanageable http://ronlichty.com

Managing Delivery
• Best programming manager you ever
worked with?
• Skills
• Behaviors
• Finesse
• Gifts of greatness
. . . that made them stand out?
____________________________________________________________
12/07/12 Managing the Unmanageable http://ronlichty.com

Great Programming Manager
• Always recruiting
• Seeks to collaborate
• Listener
• Understands coders
• Deals with problem employees
• Motivates
• Clearly aligns team and purpose
• Infectious enthusiasm
• Delivers
______________________________
12/07/12 Managing the Unmanageable http://ronlichty.com

Challenges
for New Programming Managers
Rule of Thumb:
The very thing that has made you successful will get in your
way in your next role.
•Manage
•Delegate
•Be a Motivator
•Don’t Be a De-Motivator
____________________________________________________________
12/07/12 Managing the Unmanageable http://ronlichty.com

Motivators vs De-Motivators
____________________________________________________________
12/07/12 Managing the Unmanageable http://ronlichty.com

Motivating:
Be Careful What You Reward
• “Behavior revolves around what you measure.”
– Jim Highsmith
• “Firefighters who get rewarded carry matches.”
– Kimberly Wiefling
• Do you define “done” as “coding complete”?
– Or as features that delight customers?
____________________________________________________________
12/07/12 Managing the Unmanageable http://ronlichty.com

Recruiting
Always be recruiting
____________________________________________________________
12/07/12 Managing the Unmanageable http://ronlichty.com

Shielding Your Team
--John Evans photo
Be a damper to the noise. --Joe Kleinschmidt, CTO
____________________________________________________________
12/07/12 Managing the Unmanageable http://ronlichty.com

Managing Out and Up
• “The single most important leader in an
organization is your immediate supervisor.”
– Jim Kouzes
• “You can safely assume all perceptions are
real, at least to those who own them.”
– Joe Folkman
____________________________________________________________
12/07/12 Managing the Unmanageable http://ronlichty.com

Managing Out & Up
• Because
– your peers increasingly are not technical
– and your boss may not be either
• …they’ll pressure you
– to micromanage your team (or let them)
– to report on / prove your team’s productivity
– to fill your team’s plates to capacity
____________________________________________________________
12/07/12 Managing the Unmanageable http://ronlichty.com

Productivity
• The Apple Lisa team’s managers had asked
engineers to report, each week, how many
lines of code they’d written. The first week,
Bill Atkinson turned his attention to making
QuickDraw faster and more efficient,
reducing the previous week’s code by 2,000
lines. He duly reported that he’d written
minus-2,000 lines of code for the week.
____________________________________________________________
12/07/12 Managing the Unmanageable http://ronlichty.com

Capacity
• Slack is critical to throughput
– 100% capacity results in bottlenecks
____________________________________________________________ --photo (c) Bud Adams, SXC, www.aimpgh.com
12/07/12 Managing the Unmanageable http://ronlichty.com

What Be-Devils Managers?
• Micromanagement
• Requirements that are too detailed
• Requirements that are missing
• Requirements that are not prioritized
• Fixed scope with arbitrary deadlines
• Increasing requirements without adding time
• Interruptions
• Arbitrary, counter-productive rules
____________________________________________________________
12/07/12 Managing the Unmanageable http://ronlichty.com

How do we focus on collaboration?
• Roadmaps
• Prioritization
• Listening to customers
• Avoiding wasted time
• Reducing complexity
• Making software customers love
____________________________________________________________
12/07/12 Managing the Unmanageable http://ronlichty.com

Establishing Culture
• Does your company live its values?
• Programming culture ≠ corporate culture
– Wall parts off
– Substitute and bolster more appropriate values
• Wherever you can, leverage culture & values
____________________________________________________________
12/07/12 Managing the Unmanageable http://ronlichty.com

Establishing Culture
• “Publicly reward or acknowledge engineers
who act in a way that supports the culture
that you want to create.”
—Juanita Mah, engineering manager
____________________________________________________________
12/07/12 Managing the Unmanageable http://ronlichty.com

Communicating
• Managers have to communicate more
• Encourage the team to communicate
• Create a culture of communication
– at every level
– with everyone
• up, down, within and across
• “We have two ears and one mouth. Use them in
this ratio.”
— Kimberly Wiefling
____________________________________________________________
12/07/12 Managing the Unmanageable http://ronlichty.com

Form a Mutual Admiration Pact?
• Lots more collaboration and communication
• Surprise the rest of management
– Relief
– Or scare them (!)
• Help each other manage up and out
____________________________________________________________
12/07/12 Managing the Unmanageable http://ronlichty.com

A Few Closing Rules of Thumb
• If you’re a people manager, your people are far more important than
anything else you’re working on.
—Tim Swihart, Engineering Director
• Projects should be run like marathons. You have to set a healthy pace
that can win the race and expect to sprint for the finish line.
—Ed Catmull, CTO, Pixar Animation Studios
• In applications with high technical debt, estimating is nearly
impossible.
—Jim Highsmith, Agile Coach and Leader
• The quality of code you demand during the first week of a project is
the quality of code you’ll get every week thereafter.
—Joseph Kleinschmidt, CTO, Leverage Software
____________________________________________________________
12/07/12 Managing the Unmanageable http://ronlichty.com

Ron Lichty Consulting
• Mentoring and Coaching and Consulting:
– http://ronlichty.com/
• The book:
Managing the Unmanageable:
Rules, Tools & Insights
for Managing Software People & Teams
– http://ManagingTheUnmanageable.net
• Training: now in development:
– “Managing Software People and Teams: the class”
– “The Agile Manager”
(Email me through the site above and I’ll let you know when.)
____________________________________________________________
12/07/12 Managing the Unmanageable http://ronlichty.com

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Follow http://www.blogtalkradio.com/prodmgmttalk
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http://aipmm.com/aipmm_webinars/
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