Author: Rob Broadhead

  • Hiring For The Long Term

    Hiring For The Long Term

    The typical hiring process focuses on finding a person to fill a position.  This leads to the position being defined by the current needs of the team or company.  Thus, it usually gets simplified down to a list of desired skills. This occurs even in the modern world of IT.  There are hundreds of skills that are utilized every day.  However, we manage to find ways to reduce a position down to a set of skills.

    Short-Term Matches

    To be clear, this is a good approach when you are looking for a short-term employee or contractor. That is why a short-term match is going to be the candidate with the closest match in skills. When a candidate has a skill match, they should have little to no ramp-up time. Thus, the percentage of time where they are not productive is minimized.

    Long-Term Matches

    When we switch to looking at the best long-term employee match the importance of skills drop off. They do not become irrelevant but they should drop in priority. Instead, the fit for the team should be given more weight. Areas of this fit include items like personality, drive, work habits, etc. This is easily seen in professional sports. American football teams, for example, often will bring in players that they plan on growing into a position. This is done rather than trying to fill a position immediately. They have found that it tends to be too expensive to hire for the position directly. Resulting in cases where even a perfect match for skills may be a bad hire.

    Bad Fits

    This would be a case where the hire does not fit with the organization. The long-term approach should be used in hiring full-time employees. It provides a better approach to building a team, keeps staffing costs down, builds loyalty, and more. This approach fits employees for the job they will have tomorrow as well as the needs for today. Please note, you can always stay tactical and hire consultants or employees that you only care to keep for a short time. However, when you do this too often, the costs can become detrimental.

    The regular loss of intellectual property (IP) due to turnover is also a standard weakness of the tactical approach. This tends to cause a loss of quality as companies rely more on short-term resources than those that have more of a vested interest in the success of the company.

    Strategic Job Descriptions

    One of the first things to focus on with strategic hiring is how job descriptions are done. A focus should be placed on skills that are needed in the long term and not just the short term skill set. The short term skills should be considered “nice to have” as it will help the employee become productive sooner. Since we are looking at a long term investment, the skills that are needed in the long term should end up providing more value to the company. Thus they outweigh a slow start when the employee needs to learn those short term skills. Obviously, the applicant with a match of both short and long term skill sets will be the best.

    When putting together a job description that is more strategic it helps to look at where you see the ideal employee in one, three, five, or more years. What skills will they need to have for that role or position? Do they need to have those skills today? On the other hand, do they need to have a certain set of skills that will help them get to that position/role you envision for them?

    This approach teaches that it quickly becomes less about technical skills and more about soft skills. These include things like: the ability to learn, fit with the current team, ability to help build the team, work ethic. Also, do not forget skills and traits that will make the employee a fit in the company rather than just a fit for the job. The true benefits of a strategic hire may have nothing to do with the position they are hired for. The initial role may simply be a stepping stone to prepare the employee for a position where they will bring greater value to the company.

    The Interview

    In the hundreds of interviews I have done of technical candidates, I cannot think of a single one where the answer to a technical question did much to sway me on choosing them. You do need to use technical questions to properly vet candidates. However, when you have a pool of candidates that all pass the technical test, what is the next step? How do you differentiate among them to find the best candidate? If you are looking at a short term fit, then the answer is “who cares?” You just pick one and make an offer. They won’t be around long enough for you to notice anything beyond what they were tested on. A strategic hire is different. You can find the best technical skill set in an employee that ends up being poisonous to the company and does serious harm.

    The strategic interview needs to get the candidate talking. Ask them about their likes and dislikes, habits, goals, and anything else that can help you learn about them beyond their technical skills. You should be able to learn how they work and how they will fit (or not) into your team and/or group. Take a close look at the personality of your group and ask leading questions to see if the candidate will be a fit for that group personality and style.

    Environmental Conflicts

    For example, your office may tend to be very loud and full of conversations. If the candidate prefers a quiet and/or solitary sort of work environment, then they may not be effective, or may quickly become unhappy. Your team might often discuss ideas and avoids anyone feeling like they have personal ownership of a problem or solution. Bringing in someone that is happiest when they have some sort of ownership could cause friendly discussions to suddenly take on a personal aspect that stifles conversations.

    Strategic Questions

    I have found a great source of strategic questions come from those that are “too busy” to interview candidates. These are often high-level managers or executives that want to keep a finger on the pulse of their teams and hires. Unfortunately, they don’t have the time to get into the details of a position when evaluating a candidate. They may even start by saying they have no idea about the technical aspects of the job/role, but they want to get a measure of the type of person the candidate is.

    The questions will usually be open-ended. This is because the interviewer is looking for a style or direction in the response. How the answer is delivered helps point to whether the candidate is a good fit or not. When in doubt, ask one of these senior execs or even the CEO, if you can get their time, about how they see the company and its employees. Where do they see the company going and what sort of people are going to be needed to make that journey? What is the makeup of the “ideal” employee?

    The Bottom Line

    These are just a few thoughts, but hopefully, it has sparked some ideas for you. Your team should be viewed as a long-term investment in time and resources. Therefore, hire with the big picture in mind. It will save you a lot of time and the headaches caused by turnover.

  • Building a Team For The Long Term – Keeping Core Staff

    Building a Team For The Long Term – Keeping Core Staff

    There are so many factors that go into a successful development team that it can seem like an impossible task.  The technology and requirements seem to change daily, and there are always options for staff to move to another job.  All that being said, there is a considerable value in keeping core staff in the team and creating long-term stability.  This is not a goal that will just magically be accomplished.  It takes some planning and effort as well as communication with the team.

    A Career Path

    One of the traits that all good developers share is a passion for advancing their career.  It is important to recognize that career advancement is not just a title or higher pay.  Both of those are important, if not critical.  However, there is far more to a successful career path.

    It may seem obvious, but the best among IT staff tend to the technical.  They may advance to where they do not write code every day, but that does not mean they will not be technologists.  There are managerial, mentor, and architect roles that can be very technical in day-to-day tasks.  Thus, the career path you offer should be a steady growth towards scaling the skills of your best staff, not a choppy series of steps.

    This approach does make titles sort of “fuzzy” in their application.  That can be a challenge, but it does allow for a natural progression of skills, experience, and responsibilities.  For example, There should be a lead role that is not a senior developer nor a manager.  This provides a path into testing (and refining) management and leadership skills from a developer.  The staff can progress without a trial by fire approach where they are thrown into a role 100% and without much support.

    Perpetual Mentoring Everywhere

    A good team starts at the top and carries through to the bottom a culture of nurture or mentoring.  Every role must include a mentorship or teaching aspect.  Thus, the team will have an internal drive to improve itself by improving every member.  When you have this sort of environment you have one that is not only positive for the team, it also attracts the best from elsewhere.

    The thing about an environment that fosters growth is that it is not easy to find.  When a “guru” or “superstar” developer hears about a job that exists in this environment, they are immediately attracted to it.  Of course, that creates a snowball effect where the team that builds itself draws those that desire to develop the team.  Before you know it, you have an organization like Google or Amazon where everyone is knocking on your door to be a part of your story.

    Money Talks

    For better or worse, money is an important part of keeping core staff.  You can be an incredible organization that does not pay very well.  However, that will soon fade as the best on your team are lured away by better compensation.  On the other hand, developers often like to stay where they are and avoid the “headaches” involved in moving to a new job.

    This is where momentum works to your advantage.  You do not have to be the best deal in town.  A compensation plan and approach that shows your respect for the team members will offset that deficiency.  Likewise, stay competitive in how you compensate staff and include some bonuses that factor in the savings associated with a stable team.  I love the idea of retention bonuses that payout based on staying with the company for another year.  This sort of plan can do wonders in keeping staff around for a while.  Better yet, it often stops them from looking for another job based on cold calls.  Yes, they will still leave a negative situation.  They just will not be as likely to consider out-of-the-blue offers throughout the year as they will be steadily focused on the next bonus day.

    In the same way, there should be regular reviews and raises.  It is difficult to wait until a team member complains about their situation before acting.  They may have already decided to leave no matter what your response whereas being proactive can win back a member before they are lost for good.

    Value Them

    The bottom line in all of this is to value your team members. Show them the respect you have for them as people and workers on a regular basis.  Make it evident that they are appreciated and that you desire them to grow as individuals, not just as a team.  This goal can be achieved without spending much more money.  However, it cannot be reached without being intentional about bringing forth the best from every member.

  • Keeping The Agile Development Approach Flexible and Increasing Velocity

    Keeping The Agile Development Approach Flexible and Increasing Velocity

    The Agile development approach is a hot topic and has been for a while.  Although it is adopted in a lot of shops and well-documented, there are still some issues with it.  The way we implement the Agile approach can defeat the purpose of a flexible model that allows a high velocity of production.  That assumes you have enough resources to effectively do more than one thing at a time.  However, there are some ways to adjust your scrums and sprints to get the most out of this methodology.

    Agile as Small Waterfall

    One of the flaws I have come across is that teams treat a sprint as a short waterfall process.  It does include all of the same steps as the waterfall approach (gather requirements, design, implement, test, deploy) but does not need to be as linear.  For example, a waterfall approach to a sprint would be a few days for requirements, then to design, then implement for a while, then test, and end with a deployment.  All you gained in this is reducing the scope of the requirements and what is deployed.  I am over-simplifying a little bit.  However, this is close enough to a lot of sprints I have seen.

    The productivity problem is that you have resources during the sprint that are not used.  Testing is not done until the end, so testers are idle at the start.  Designers are not needed much during implementation, so they are almost unused.  Team members do a lot of work at a high pace during their portion of the sprint and hang around the rest of the time.  You can use that spare time for training and skills improvement (not a bad idea), but there are better uses of your resources.

    Continuous Progress

    The goal is likely to keep all of your resources working on a steady and constant basis.  This can be partially achieved by including everyone in every step.  It makes sense for testers and developers to be involved in design and designers engaged in implementation, testing, and deployment.  However, this is almost like busywork in some of those cases.  A better approach is to overlap your sprints.  This is easy to do with multiple teams.  Nevertheless, it can be accomplished with a single unit as well.

    The effect is that you will have more than one sprint active at a time.  Multiple teams will have this, but a single group may as well.  With multiple units, a productive approach is to have members be a part of more than one sprint at a time.  The implementation team will be the only group that tends to have a single sprint focus most of the time.

    Overlap For Productivity

    Let’s use a two-week sprint as an example of how this works.  Sprint A starts on week one and requirements are gathered (from the backlog).  The implementation and testing team go over the items for the sprint and provide feedback, estimates, and ask for clarifications as needed.  This is the first few days of the sprint (we will assume two).  Next, we move into implementation.  For this example, implementation is six days which leaves two for integration testing and deployment.  That is not enough time for sufficient testing so we will have our testers running through scripts where possible as tickets are completed during this phase.

    The designers will be supporting the implementation phase, as needed.  However, they will also be looking ahead to the next sprint.  The design team can dig deep into designing for the next sprint and use this time to get feedback on design decisions as well as poll customers/users.  That should make it easy to keep the selection and clarification part of the next sprint go smoothly (maybe a day instead of a couple).

    As we move into testing, then the implementation team and designers will start work on the next sprint.  They will be selecting and clarifying tasks while the testers test.  As we move into deployment for Sprint One, we will also be working on implementation in Sprint Two.  Rinse and repeat.  The overlap of a few days will help keep designers busy and the developers implementing.

    If you have two or more teams, you can overlap implementation, keep design short and assign designers to possibly several sprints at a time.  This will also allow for more design time to be allocated to each sprint.  That will pay off in clarity around requirements as well as reduced design related flaws.

    Minor Tweaks

    As you can see, these changes are not earth-shattering, nor are they complicated to introduce.  Your scrum master and designers might have a little more asked of them.  Nevertheless, the payoff is worthwhile, and they will find a rhythm with this process early on.  It also helps avoid a roller coaster of activity that can often occur with team members when you do not find ways to keep them busy and focused throughout a sprint.  Better yet, this is an easy change to try for a few sprints to see if it works for you and your team.

    I would love to hear other suggestions and feedback on how your attempts at improving your agile development velocity turn out.  We can all learn from the successes (and failures) of others.