4 ms·

Trust is a continuum. If I'm a manager, I can't afford to know every single detail of what you're doing. Managing outcome sounds nice, but suppose I assign yo

Trust is a continuum. If I'm a manager, I can't afford to know every single detail of what you're doing. Managing outcome sounds nice, but suppose I assign you a task that I think will take two days in my limited understanding, and it takes you two weeks. I have to figure out the cause. Some common ones are: 1. Neither of us understood the full complexity of the task at the outset. If we want to improve, we'll have to put in more work upfront to figure out the problem. 2. You're less capable than I thought you were -- it just takes you longer or you make more mistakes than I had expected. 3. I didn't adequately describe the job to you, and you spent time going down blind alleys and readjusting trying to figure out what exactly I want. 4. You're a slacker, you didn't work very hard on it and so it took longer. It's easy to say that I should manage outcome, but if you repeatedly fail to achieve the outcome, what should I do? It depends on why. If you're remote, you're going to say it was #1 with a fallback position of #3. If you're in the office I can probably get a reasonable sense of whether or not it's #4, and if it's #3, we're naturally going to communicate more and so I'm more likely to fix it sooner. This is why office space in SF costs so much.

dvfjsdhgfv 9y ago
In practice, being a slacker when working from home is not really an option. I know very well that if I don't perform well enough, I'll be fired. Why should I take the risk? Also, when I realize a job is going to take longer than expected, I notify my boss immediately and clearly explain the reasons. It's not that I wake up after two weeks that I'm 12 days late - I probably realize something is wrong immediately or after a couple of hours at most.
- occamrazor 9y ago
  It works for you, it may not work for others. Unfortunately slackers do exist (I know some people who boast their ability to be unproductive and deceive their boss) and working from home may make cheating easier.
  - wolco 9y ago
    It is easier to cheat in person because you can put a show where it appears you are working but remotely your work is the only thing to judge you on.
lagadu 9y ago
> but suppose I assign you a task that I think will take two days in my limited understanding Why would the manager be the one making estimates? That's a task either for the team, if applicable, or for the implementer. edit: I work from home, every sprint we have a planning meeting where we do the estimates together, my manager isn't even involed in it. Only if we're expecting to exceed an estimate by 20% do we contact the project manager (not my manager) so we can figure out how to proceed. How we work: we have a bunch of tasks available that we create during the sprint planning and we pick them as we have time, some may be marked as priority. My manager only hears from me if I'm ever blocked for some reason and need him to either get in touch with the person that is blocking the task or similar, otherwise we don't. For us at least the manager is someone who enables us to spend our time productively, generally speaking he'll have no idea what I'm doing most of the time. I guess you could say we're self-managed.
- HenryBemis 9y ago
  Assuming that "the "manager" knows his 'stuffs', should know that TaskA requires 5 hours, and TaskB requires 1 hour. Now to that add a 20% for interruptions, emails, etc. With my team(s) I (almost) always knew (more or less) the time for various tasks. I was also expecting any feedback/'negotiation' to happen at the time of task assignment OR as soon as someone can see that deadline is at risk. I know that Tasks from Tasks vary, but hey, this setup requires knowledge from both parties AND trust.
  - Clubber 9y ago
    What I've often experienced is the manager estimates what he wants to happen (typically fairly arbitrary or based on company goals) then the team kills themselves trying to accomplish the timeline because they don't like to fail. This is great for short term productivity but long term leads to attrition and spitefulness from the team. I'm not saying it's not possible, but make sure what you think is happening, is happening (good sustainable estimates vs. constant crunch time estimates). Of course, situations warrant crunch time, but I've seen departments in a constant state of crunch just by the nature of their sprints. The saying goes, you can't sprint a marathon. Also, depending on the organization, a 20% buffer seems on the low side. If you can guarantee zero distractions throughout the day, outside of 1 or two meetings a week, 20% is probably ok. FWIW, if the developer makes the estimate, he is more likely to live up to it, because it's not just some number someone pulled out of their ass. I'm not saying that's you, I'm just saying how I've seen it happen time and time again. I like to think I give good estimates, but like you said, it's a negotiation and if a dev says it will take longer, it will take longer. They most likely know the codebase way better than some manager does.
lostcolony 9y ago
You will never be blindsided by #1. Because if the person finds it will be more complex than initial estimates they will tell you ASAP. If they don't, the problem is #4, not #1. You -should- never be blindsided by #3. Because that's why daily standups exist. That's why tasking out a story. If the person is going down blind alleys, the -process- should be what brings that out, via daily standup or whatever. No amount of colocation will fix that, only explicit communication. You're not going to passively observe someone going down blind alleys.
OpenDrapery 9y ago
If I want to make a 2 hour task take an entire work day, I will do that whether I'm in the office or not. Sometimes devs need to coast a little. The notion that they will just continue to vigorously attach a backlog of monkey work is silly. It's ok to treat adults with respect and empathy. Knowledge workers need more latitude to manage their pace.
svnsets 9y ago
If you assign a task that is estimated at 2 days of work and it actually is going to take 2 weeks, it should be pretty clear way before that 2 weeks has elapsed. At that point you could get a second opinion from another employee in the same role as the assignee. That kind of difference in LOE vs actual development time should be rare. If it isn't, then your team needs to spend more time researching LOEs up front, getting solid requirements, and assigning tasks to someone that has the proper experience to complete the task on time. I've worked as an engineer for a company that had ridiculous engineering turnover rates because engineers were treated like children, and management would always give these kind of excuses where one guy was a slacker one time so everyone has to abide by ridiculous policies around required office hours. If you want to retain talent and accurately measure employee performance, you need to put effort into measuring outcome rather than working hours.

dvfjsdhgfv 9y ago

In practice, being a slacker when working from home is not really an option. I know very well that if I don't perform well enough, I'll be fired. Why should I take the risk? Also, when I realize a job is going to take longer than expected, I notify my boss immediately and clearly explain the reasons. It's not that I wake up after two weeks that I'm 12 days late - I probably realize something is wrong immediately or after a couple of hours at most.

occamrazor 9y ago
It works for you, it may not work for others. Unfortunately slackers do exist (I know some people who boast their ability to be unproductive and deceive their boss) and working from home may make cheating easier.
- wolco 9y ago
  It is easier to cheat in person because you can put a show where it appears you are working but remotely your work is the only thing to judge you on.

lagadu 9y ago

> but suppose I assign you a task that I think will take two days in my limited understanding Why would the manager be the one making estimates? That's a task either for the team, if applicable, or for the implementer. edit: I work from home, every sprint we have a planning meeting where we do the estimates together, my manager isn't even involed in it. Only if we're expecting to exceed an estimate by 20% do we contact the project manager (not my manager) so we can figure out how to proceed. How we work: we have a bunch of tasks available that we create during the sprint planning and we pick them as we have time, some may be marked as priority. My manager only hears from me if I'm ever blocked for some reason and need him to either get in touch with the person that is blocking the task or similar, otherwise we don't. For us at least the manager is someone who enables us to spend our time productively, generally speaking he'll have no idea what I'm doing most of the time. I guess you could say we're self-managed.

HenryBemis 9y ago
Assuming that "the "manager" knows his 'stuffs', should know that TaskA requires 5 hours, and TaskB requires 1 hour. Now to that add a 20% for interruptions, emails, etc. With my team(s) I (almost) always knew (more or less) the time for various tasks. I was also expecting any feedback/'negotiation' to happen at the time of task assignment OR as soon as someone can see that deadline is at risk. I know that Tasks from Tasks vary, but hey, this setup requires knowledge from both parties AND trust.
- Clubber 9y ago
  What I've often experienced is the manager estimates what he wants to happen (typically fairly arbitrary or based on company goals) then the team kills themselves trying to accomplish the timeline because they don't like to fail. This is great for short term productivity but long term leads to attrition and spitefulness from the team. I'm not saying it's not possible, but make sure what you think is happening, is happening (good sustainable estimates vs. constant crunch time estimates). Of course, situations warrant crunch time, but I've seen departments in a constant state of crunch just by the nature of their sprints. The saying goes, you can't sprint a marathon. Also, depending on the organization, a 20% buffer seems on the low side. If you can guarantee zero distractions throughout the day, outside of 1 or two meetings a week, 20% is probably ok. FWIW, if the developer makes the estimate, he is more likely to live up to it, because it's not just some number someone pulled out of their ass. I'm not saying that's you, I'm just saying how I've seen it happen time and time again. I like to think I give good estimates, but like you said, it's a negotiation and if a dev says it will take longer, it will take longer. They most likely know the codebase way better than some manager does.

lostcolony 9y ago

You will never be blindsided by #1. Because if the person finds it will be more complex than initial estimates they will tell you ASAP. If they don't, the problem is #4, not #1. You -should- never be blindsided by #3. Because that's why daily standups exist. That's why tasking out a story. If the person is going down blind alleys, the -process- should be what brings that out, via daily standup or whatever. No amount of colocation will fix that, only explicit communication. You're not going to passively observe someone going down blind alleys.

OpenDrapery 9y ago

If I want to make a 2 hour task take an entire work day, I will do that whether I'm in the office or not. Sometimes devs need to coast a little. The notion that they will just continue to vigorously attach a backlog of monkey work is silly. It's ok to treat adults with respect and empathy. Knowledge workers need more latitude to manage their pace.

svnsets 9y ago

If you assign a task that is estimated at 2 days of work and it actually is going to take 2 weeks, it should be pretty clear way before that 2 weeks has elapsed. At that point you could get a second opinion from another employee in the same role as the assignee. That kind of difference in LOE vs actual development time should be rare. If it isn't, then your team needs to spend more time researching LOEs up front, getting solid requirements, and assigning tasks to someone that has the proper experience to complete the task on time. I've worked as an engineer for a company that had ridiculous engineering turnover rates because engineers were treated like children, and management would always give these kind of excuses where one guy was a slacker one time so everyone has to abide by ridiculous policies around required office hours. If you want to retain talent and accurately measure employee performance, you need to put effort into measuring outcome rather than working hours.