The Regenerate Web

I received a call from a recruiter-colleague yesterday, bemoaning a hiring manager who was waiting for the “perfect” candidate. “I’ve sent her 5 great candidates, but none of them are perfect. Doesn’t she have to fill this position?”

Well, maybe not right away. And, maybe it’s not just technical skills that make a candidate a perfect or imperfect fit. (You and I both know it’s not!)

And, at some point, it’s time to hire a candidate who is good enough. Otherwise, you have to change which projects in the project portfolio you can staff, or how the people work on projects. (See Hiring The Best Knowledge Workers, Techies & Nerds: The Secrets & Science Of Hiring Technical People for more details)

But how long can you wait? How long should you wait? In this economy, chances are good that you can find good candidates relatively quickly. If you are a hiring manager who’s had an open position for several months and you haven’t found the right person, make sure you review your job analysis. Maybe what you thought you needed has evolved. Iterate on your job description–maybe it’s not working for you, helping you filter in the right people and filter out the ones who aren’t quite right.

The problem is that waiting does cost you capacity. Only you can know how long you can wait for the perfect candidate. And remember, the “perfect” candidate does not exist. You can hire people who are very close.

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“She ignores me, like I am not even here,” Joan complained, “I know she has been here for twelve years and I have only been here for nine months, but, I am her boss.”

“What is the behavior you observe?” I asked.

“I call a meeting of my staff, she doesn’t show. I walk past her in the hallway and she doesn’t acknowledge me. She is focus forward. I have seen personality conflicts before, but this one takes the cake.”

“How do you think you will gain her respect?”

Joan shook her head. “I just want her to be nice. At this point, I have about given up on respect.”

I waited for the pity party to settle for a few seconds. “First, this is not a personality conflict. Second, I don’t care if she is nice to you, I just want her respect.”

“Yeah, right, how is that going to happen?”

“It is really very simple. All you have to do is bring value to her problem solving and decision making. Stimulate her thinking. Help her improve to the next level. You cannot gain respect by giving directives or demanding that she be a nice person. You can only gain respect by bringing value.”

The next Subject Area in our Working Leadership Online program begins August 2, 2010 – Coaching – Bringing Value as a Manager. As is our custom, we are opening 50 slots with a Free Introductory membership (one month). If you have an interest, please follow the link.

Free Introductory Membership

I’m proud and pleased to be on the list of LiquidPlanner’s Top Project Management Thinkers. I’m thrilled, too!

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The discussion of estimating - cost and schedule - has produced references usable in a variety of domains. As a background here's the guidance in the domain I work.

This "mandates" an Estimate At Completion with a Best Case, Worst Case, Most Likely. As well a Schedule Risk Analysis (SRA) is mandated.

And just for clarification for those favoring "hand built" 3 point estimates, the 3 points estimates stated in DID-81560 above are generated using the "ordinal range" method. The outcome from this processes are the percent ranges - upper and lower - of the probability distribution (Triangle) used for the Monte Carlo tool (Risk+ and @Risk for Project). So we have the three points, but they were not gathered by asking the engineers what they should be. The Systems Engineering, Control Account Managers, and Technical Leads, plus historical data, plus some statistical analysis produced the ordinal ranges for 5 classes of programmatic risk. That is then applied to each class of work, and then loaded into the baselined Integrated Master Schedule.

The point of all this is that producing credible estimates is part of the culture of the work we do. It's still just as hard, just as complex, and just as annoying as any other domain. But doing it, and doing it right is what is expected. It's part of being credible. So for those gathering variance ranges by hand, if the credibility - statistical confidence, auto-correlation, assessment of all the biases and influences discussed in The Psychology of Risk and Sources of Estimating Error can be addressed, then you're on the path to credibility.

You know this!  And yet, I see this idea, or shades of this idea, come up again and again. We think that if we clarify expectations and hold people accountable that we can "manage" increases in how much employees care and their engagement.

Care is an element of ownership, and it is a gift. We can't make people care. But we can lead in ways that inspire, uplift, and engage our employees' hearts and minds.

Going back to the original example. Do you share business results with your employees and hope that they will internalize the information and play an active role in making the organization stronger? If your employees don't seem to care about the business, the solution is not to shove MORE information down their throats or tell them they are expected to care about the business. The solution is to inspire and engage employees so that they ask for more information and ask questions that show you they are interested.

“You ain’t gonna learn what you don’t wanna know.” Jerry Garcia

You know this! And yet, I don't see an emphasis on this in how we train, select, evaluate, and promote managers. Do you? I mean REALLY. For example, is it NOT OK to have supervisors who drag the vibe of their teams down?

As I was finishing this post, I looked back over it and realized I have written this same general message repeatedly in several recent posts. Why? It keeps popping up as a theme in the projects I am working on. Many clients, many different projects.  One key theme. Hmmm...

Being a manager is a privilege and great management is not about pushing employees. Great managers create pull environments.

Eisenhower had to deal with as

"fractious and dysfunctional a group of egomaniacs as any war had ever seen."

Ike's greatest achievement was keeping the allied command focused on killing the Nazi's not each other.

- From a speech delivered by Secretary of Defense, Robert M. Gates, Abilene, KS, Saturday May 08, 2010.

“Tell me, why do you think it is important to match the person’s Time Span capability with the Time Span required in the task?” I asked. This was like an impromptu quiz, with a point.

Jonas looked left. “Because if the person doesn’t have the capability to complete the task, it won’t get done. Obvious, I think.”

“And how does that person feel about that task, their role in the company?”

“I suppose they would feel frustrated, a bit overwhelmed,” Jonas replied.

“And so what happens then?”

“Well, usually, that person gets put on the bubble. And if they stay on the bubble, long enough, they’re history.”

“Theoretically, that sounds good,” I pushed, “but that’s not what I see. Can this person make it on the basis of their performance?”

Jonas shook his head, “Nope.”

“So, how does this person survive? How does this person stay on your payroll?”

Jonas smiled. “You’re right. I call it Teflon. Nothing sticks. And try to hold the person accountable, you hear every excuse.”

“So, why is it important to match the person’s Time Span capability with the Time Span required in the task?”

Mike Clayton pointed me to a post on the The Psychology of Risk. The book in his post Risk: The Science and Politics of Fear, looks like the next reading assignment after our book club finishes Against The Gods.

Mike's post lists four biases for developed by Tversky, Kahnemann, and Slovic.

This book, Mike's post, and the materials in the previous post on Sources of Estimating Error, should put an end to the naive and simple minded approach to gathering estimates on projects.

Please, please, please do not apply three point estimates to anything without first having read the materials referenced here and the Tversky and Kahnemann materials. You will simply be setting the stage for disappointment all around.

“So, how can you tell?” Jonas asked. “How do you measure Time Span capability in a person?”

“How can you tell anything about a person?” I replied.

“I can tell you the most about people I know,” he nodded.

“Let’s start there. With the people you know the most. In fact, let’s make a list of those people who see you, as their manager. That should be a list of four or five people.”

“Okay, I have the list, now what?”

“Take that list and rank them according to Time Span. Longest Time Span at the top of the list and shortest Time Span at the bottom of the list. Here are some questions I ask myself.

• If I had a project that would take a year to complete, which of those on the list would I feel most comfortable with?
• And if I had a slightly shorter project, who is the next person I would feel comfortable in making that assignment?
• And if I only felt comfortable assigning a short phase of a larger project, who would that person be?
• And who on the list, do I have to check up on every ten minutes, just to see if they are still working?

With that list in hand, how does it look?”

Jonas was working while I was talking. “Got it,” he finished.

“And now, as you look at that list, your team ranked in Time Span order, how confident do you feel about the accuracy of your ranking?”

Jonas nodded, “I think I did a pretty good job.”

“If I were to tell you that you did a highly accurate assessment of your team members, why would I have such a high level of confidence in your ability to make this assessment? Do you consider yourself an expert on Time Span?”

“Well, no, but I know these people. I have known each of them for several years.”

“Exactly, you see, you have not been doing this exercise for the past few minutes. You have been doing this exercise for years. Every manager always maintains a running intuitive judgment about the Time Span capability of their team. You just never though about it this way before. And now, you have a very simple tool to work with.”

I was surfing some presentations looking for good layout ideas, when I came across a Jazz - A Metaphor for Agile Management. I'm not a real jazz fan, but I do enjoy certain artist. Sitting in the Chautauqua,  performance hall last week for the Brahmas 1st Piano Concerto and thinking about Jazz as a management metaphor, I'm struck by several things:

• How many players can you have in the performance before you need a conductor?
• If I want to perform the 1st Piano Concerto, can it be done without a conductor, individual section music?
• Of course the pianist, Peter Serkin, played without  music, but he "knows" the piece inside outside. The orchestra struggled a bit since they had only rehearsed for two days.
• When you listen to the penultimate performance, I would guess it was rehearsed many dozens of times, Ashkenazy, and Haitink studied the piece and the orchestration for months if not years, and were both at the peak of their performance capabilities before laying down the tracks. 

Finally:

• When the metaphor is applied to software development, are there people (the customer) willing to pay others (the developers) to improvise in the way some Jazz groups do?
• At what point does "spending other peoples money" need oversight in the same way the orchestra needs a conductor.
• What are the limits to the size and complexity of the music or the software that requires external oversight - project management or a conductor.
• What is the customer doesn't like Jazz?

Starting with Tversky & Kahnemann (1974), "Judgment under Uncertainty: heuristics and Biases," there are sources of error that should lay the foundation for abandoning the simple and many times naive 3 point estimate approach to work duration and effort.

• Representativeness - occurs where probabilities are evaluated by the degree to which A is representative of B.

The last time we did this, we say durations that looked like this. Or, We've asked the guys down Florida and they think we should be able to get this done in 1,400 hours, that what it took them the last time they did it.

• Insensitivity to prior probability of outcomes - we ignore the past statistical behavior of our work efforts. This is ignorance of Bayesian statistics.

I know they took 1,400 hours, but we've learned a lot from their mistakes, so we can do it for less. We don't really have evidence, but our gut feel is they were not very good at their job and took too long.

• Insensitivity to sample size - this is a very common error, where the estimator makes a forecast independent of the sample size.

My students - all 23 of them - answered a survey I wrote about a behavior of problems with Earned Value, and they came up with answers I'll apply to a broad set of situations. I sampled the people I know and they came up some interested statements of what works and doesn't work. We hand picked 12 managers in our firm, gave them a survey we put together from some outside suggestions and we'll be making changes based on their answers.

• Misconceptions of Chance - the belief that random processes represent the core behaviors of a process, while observing a short sequence of outcomes.

I've seen this happen 3 or 4 times in other places, it's got to be the same thing happening here. It's happening in all kinds of places, so it's got to be the same here. "For every up there is a down," let's just wait and we'll be back on track pretty soon.

• Insensitivity of predictability - the future can be predicted intuitive predictions

I've seen this happen before, it's got to be the cause of what's happening this time too.

• Illusion of Validity - the observations we're seeing are a good fit with what we're expecting.

We interviewed a list of people selected by management, and they support the what management thinks is going wrong here. Management has a target budget and schedule in mind, and when we asked the developers - after hearing the management numbers - they came up with about the same numbers.

• Misconceptions of Regression - all those random processes add up to a average we can live with.

When we get all the estimates in, we can find the average variance and use that to forecast the work we're going to be given in the future. This concept is actually mis-represented in a government cost estimating guidebook. Adding a sample set of distributions results in a "normal" distribution.

• Biases due to the effectiveness of a search set -when asked to recall some data or event, the one they come up with is what is most familiar to them.

• Biases due to the retrievability of instances - the data I have at hand is the data I used for my forecast.

We had all the data from the projects they did in Dallas, and used that as our sample data for foresting our performance.

• Adjustment and Anchoring - the estimate is based on the starting value and is then adjusted to get the final answer.

Management gave us a starting point for the cost and schedule, so we need to improve that estimate.

• Biases in the evaluation of conjunctive and disjunctive event - in conjunctive events probabilities are over estimated.

Our rule of thumb has served us well in the past - turns up to be biased

• Anchoring in the assessment of subjective probability distribution - confidence intervals are over confident.

These topics are from Micheal Axelsen's review of of Tversky & Kahnemann 1974 paper, "Judgment under uncertainty: heuristics and biases."

These topics will hopefully put an end to the simple minded 3-point estimates extracted from the people tasked with doing the work. They certainty have a contribution to the estimating process. But serious problems arise when you take those numbers and start making management decisions. In exactly the same way you create serious problems when you take management directive and start makes estimates "anchored" on the bounds of cost or schedule they what to have you produce to.

“I’m curious, though,” Jonas was thinking out loud. “As we create these tests for Rudy, to determine his capability in longer Time Span tasks, I am wondering how long this assessment period will take? If we test his capability on a 12 month Time Span task, does that mean we have to wait for the results after 12 months to make our decision? We base our Performance Appraisals on results. In fact, we hired a consultant to come in to develop our Results-based Performance Appraisal System.”

I held back, all but the glint of a smile. “Interesting question. Many companies proclaim an undying commitment to a results orientation. Management For Results. But let me ask you this, Jonas. When you observe a 12 month Time Span task, do you have to wait 12 months for the results to determine whether the person is being effective in the position?”

Now, it was Jonas’ turn to smile, as he shook his head from side to side. “No, you don’t. You can tell way before that.” Jonas stopped, then continued. “I wonder about our system of Performance Appraisals. Perhaps instead of Manage for Results, we should Manage for Effectiveness?”

Would you like to learn a simple way to unlock your best thinking? Check out this podcast!

During this 33 minute podcast, I chat with Mark Levy, author of Accidental Genius: Using Writing to Generate Your Best Ideas, Insight, and Content.  You are going to want to listen to this podcast and then give Mark's suggestions a try. I always enjoy the podcast conversations I have with folks, but this is the first time, in a long time, that I felt intellectually "buzzed" after recording the podcast (and the post-cast conversation). I am working on a new concept for my next book and Mark gave me some great ideas for ways I can tap into my creativity.  I have been using several of the techniques Mark reviews in the book and, by golly, they are really helpful. Open up that beautiful brain and see what's inside!

Check out Mark's blog here. And if you live in or near NYC, plan on attending Mark's book launch party this coming Wednesday. Information here.

You can listen to my podcast with the Mark Levy by clicking here:

You can also download an MP3 version of the podcast here.

And just a reminder.....

Here is the Podcast Feed for the entire Fireside Chat podcast series:

To see the complete list of podcasts in this series, select the Podcasts and Webcasts category on this blog.You can also find this series on iTunes (and several other podcast sites), just search under my last name for Fireside Chat.

The standard approach to project taskl duration estimating is the PMBOK® 3 point estimate. Josh has provided several approaches to the discussion of the issues.The top two issues are:

• The anchoring and adjusting error occur when humans make estimates in the presence of uncertainty.
• Failure to understand the underlying statistical distributions produce unfavorable confidence in the estimates

Stochastic process models of task durations appear in other domains - shop floor scheduling, interval estimates, and constrained resource management - are examples. Bayesian networks are another. These paradigms offer significant improvement in the confidence of the estimates needed for credible schedule and cost estimates for projects in all domains.

The issues with the traditional - and many times naive - approaches include:

• Unrealistic assumptions of probabilistic independence.
• Failure to take into account the "estimating in the presence of uncertainty" described in the anchoring and adjustment research.
• The stochastic nature of all project work, that is ignored in non-statistical estimating processes.
• Failure to assess the probabilistic critical path

It is Time to Move Forward

For a project to be successful it must balance schedule, cost, and the technical performance measures. The influence on these three elements are probabilistic rather than deterministic. The outcomes from these elements and their relationships are a function of these probabilistic distributions.

Because of this, we must move forward in our understanding of the behaviors of the project...

• No more single point estimates.
• No three point estimates without acknowledgment of their limitations.
• No naive definition of the critical path.
• No more ignoring the complexities of schedule and cost.
• No using simple minded process for complex projects

We launched three new Stack Exchange sites this week!

• Gaming
• Cooking
• Pro Webmasters

We’ll have three more for you next week, too.

Need to hire a really great programmer? Want a job that doesn't drive you crazy? Visit the Joel on Software Job Board: Great software jobs, great people.

So, what is this recovery going to look like. My primary economic forecasters, Alan and Brian Beaulieu are not expecting a double-dip, but they are predicting a long slow dig out.

Victor Cheng is issuing a strong warning anticipating a double-dip. Victor’s observations are based on conceptual trends and events, while Alan and Brian pay more attention to numeric indicators.

My sense is that we are looking, not at a V shape or U shape recovery, but something that looks more like an L shape recovery. Seven actions to take.

1. Examine your revenue budget to make sure it is realistic. From your budget, create at least a tactical 6 month forecast, aggressively updated every 30 days.
2. Take a long look at your personnel plan for the next 12 months. Determine which positions are absolutely necessary based on your revenue budget. Now, lay your tactical 6 month forecast on top of that personnel plan to see if, in the short term, it is survivable. Update aggressively every month.
3. Eliminate any operational function that is not necessary to meet your customer demands.
4. Simplify every operational process. It is likely, you will find an effective solution inside most of your methods and processes that is simpler and at a lower cost structure.
5. Consolidate methods and processes, so that similar tasks are staged and cross-trained. This will allow you to maintain operations in the event you have to reduce headcount.
6. Outsource any process that is not part of your core value stream. Outsourcing allows you to fix costs and jettison overhead in the event that process is no longer necessary.
7. Technology. Before adding headcount, explore technology to see if there is an alternative to labor intensive processes.

During this time of uncertainty, blessed are the flexible, for they will not get bent out of shape.

Credit to the Four Hour Work Week, for some of the central themes of survivability.