In this episode, Jeffrey shared how an executive oversees a software team Situation Our industry struggles mightily with failed software projects. On average half of the projects still fail. Failure is defined as the executive who authorized the budget wishing he hadn't. The project is so over budget and so over schedule, that the company would be better off having never started it. Even in the middle of these projects, executives can feel powerless to abort it for fear of sunk costs. And without knowing the right questions to ask or the right reports to demand, the executive in charge doesn't feel in charge at all. He's left choosing between trusting the team still longer or the nuclear option to scan the entire thing. Mission Right now, if you are an executive overseeing a software group, I want to equip you with the tools to do that well. If you work in a software team, use this video to give your software executive the information he needs to know the project is on track or the insight to know what the team needs to do a good job. From here out, though, I'll call you the software executive. Even if you've never programmed any code, you are running a software team. Their success will steer your future career, so this is important. Don't keep going on faith. Don't proceed merely trusting that someone else reporting to you knows how to do your oversight job for you. Lean in. And I'll give you the questions to ask, the tools to use, and the practices to deploy so that you can safely guide your software project to success. And most importantly, if your current software project is veering toward failure, I'm going to empower you to stop the bleeding and get it back on track. Execution Before diving into the guidance, I want to paint a mental model for you. Think of every other department in the company. Think of every group. Think of every team branch on the org chart. Each one of them is responsible for delivering some output valuable to the business. And each of these teams also needs some inputs in order to deliver those outputs. And if the outputs are not delivered, the team's leader is typically replaced. And the leaders who excel are the ones that can set up the team members for success. Mental Model The factory is arranged well and operates efficiently every day in a safe manner. The assembly line flows at a good speed with incoming materials being delivered at the right cadence to keep going. Quality issues are prevented and detected very early. Hourly and daily throughput measures are tallied and reported up the management chain. Quality and throughput measures are paired with acceptable thresholds and established as a standard with better numbers as stretch targets. Then, the executive in charge ensures that the factory or assembly line is organized in a way where each team member understands the job and what activities it will take to meet the targets. What we don't do is declare a building to be a manufacturing plant, ask a team to come to work inside it, and then come back to check in a month later. The people we staff on the team are typically not the same people needed in order to design the process for how the team should work. And Scrum has done the industry a disservice by spreading the notion of self-organizing teams. Even the certified ScrumMasters are trained to ask the team what they want to do and then work to remove blocking issues to what they want to do. This isn't leadership. Only when a team is working in an efficient manner can the lower-level details be turned over for self-organization. An appropriate leader (you) is always necessary to put the overall structure in place for the team so that real measurable throughput can build momentum. I started out with a factory and assembly line analogy. And many knowledge workers will rightfully object that the nature of the work is different. And it is. Earlier in my career, I was one of the self-organization promoters, and I was banging the drum about knowledge work being inestimable or unmeasurable. But speaking for myself, what I liked most about that message was that it gave me space to dive into the work without having to report up as much. It gave me more space as a programmer. But what it didn't produce was less risk for the executive who authorized the project budget in the first place. This challenge exists in all the fields of knowledge work as well. Managerial accountants and CPAs also have tough problems that don't have rote solutions. The rote solutions have been automated away by good accounting software. But if your CPA takes forever to figure something out and then bills you twice as much as what you budgeted, you still have a problem. Sales is another area that has some similarities with the "magic" of software development. You want a certain pace of sales. And the staff just wants to get to work. But seasoned sales executives know that without a good sales team process, closed sales won't happen. And even enterprise...
