The Most Vital Currency

[jducoeur]

It's fascinating, being in the Product Manager role. On the one hand, it's rather different from anything I've done before; on the other, the basic principles of being a good team-oriented programmer are proving really valuable. And perhaps the most valuable lesson is one that may be crucial to any workplace -- to run a good project, you need to have respect flowing in all directions.

Really, I'm kind of surprised at how smoothly it's going. We're trying to develop a system that's hard to define and a bit different from anything else out there, feeling around in the dark. We're a strong-willed bunch, and everybody's got opinions. I essentially arrogated the PM job to myself, declaring that since it was my idea in the first place, I wanted the creative control. It was by no means obvious that I could do the job.

And we do have arguments about how it should work, almost daily. But those arguments aren't lasting long, and we're basically running by consensus. The key to this seems to be the fact that everyone on the team respects each other, and we're all trying to be scrupulous about that. Folks are calmly deferring the final decisions to me, mostly because I'm working very hard to take every argument seriously, consider every angle, and keep my ego out of the way as much as I can. As a result, while the original vision may have been mine, the nuances are coming from all over the team.

It's remarkably pleasant: we're getting a lot more done a lot more quickly, and with little strife. I have to say, it's a bit of a change of pace. While Convoq was a pretty decent company, I think the thick management structure prevented enough communication between the developers and management, and that impeded proper respect on all sides. Folks just didn't interact enough to get to *trust* each other enough.

It's a lesson worth remembering. To really work well, a team needs deep mutual respect and trust. You can't have that without sufficient communication among the players. And the "team" needs to include all active stakeholders, not just the developers. All of which is kind of obvious from the Agile point of view, but seeing it from the "other side" really drives the point home...

Comments

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

To really work well, a team needs deep mutual respect and trust. You can't have that without sufficient communication among the players. And the "team" needs to include all active stakeholders, not just the developers.

(wistful sigh...) I wish my company was still small enough that this was possible.

[cellio]

Absolutely. My team (newly formed earlier this year) has just gone through its first release, and I am pleased that we had similar results. All the core members and all but one of the late additions have that respect for each other, and it makes a big difference. Now if I could just instill this in the one last-minute QA person who doesn't quite grok the difference between bugs and wishes, we'd be set. (All of our other QA people rock, by the way.)

[umbran.livejournal.com]

think the thick management structure prevented enough communication between the developers and management

Thick management structure? If I remember correctly, any of us could have walked into the CEO's office at any time to chat with him. We didn't do so often, but there wasn't anything in the structure that prevented it. I see that as much our failing as it was his.

[jducoeur]

Yes and no. While we were able and allowed to talk, the developers were in practice discouraged from doing so on the kind of regular and casual basis that I think is probably best. First Carol, and later Dave acted as a pretty strong shield between dev and management. I can't say that was especially their fault -- it was what pretty much *everyone* on both sides wanted -- but in retrospect it was a bad idea, encouraging a subtle "us vs. them" mentality. It was fostered by, and worsened, the trust issues.

Hence the comment about structure. While we thought of ourselves as very flat and open, that isn't how the actual lines of communication flowed -- those were actually something like four levels deep, which is silly for a 25 person company. In practice, even the senior developers like myself interacted with management nowhere near enough day-to-day, and the junior ones hardly at all.

Granted, by big-company standards it was a pretty thin structure. But the communications still weren't all that good...

[umbran.livejournal.com]

Well, I think it is very important to note the difference between thickness of the organization, and thickness of the personalities.

Yes, the organization was four layers deep. In my sector, for most of my time there it was me->PM->VP->CEO. But note the VP was always open to my simply walking into their office to chat about whatever was on my mind. They encouraged it. The place was pretty thin and transparent until that last layer, and that was a block of personality (the CEO really wasn't all that interested in our input).

And later on, after our old CEO left, I effectively reported directly to the new CEO - and the structure was still as opaque, as he really didn't care much about my opinions, and apparently was simply waiting for a good time to get rid of me. While technically the structure was less thick, the personalities were still an issue.

The point being - in terms of management strategy you deal with a thickness of personality a whole lot differently from a thickness of actual structure or process.

[jducoeur]

The place was pretty thin and transparent until that last layer, and that was a block of personality (the CEO really wasn't all that interested in our input).

Granted, the strong opinions at the top were a serious issue, especially since in both cases they had the final say on the design. Even moreso in the case of Steve, actually -- without you and Jack, he wound up as the de facto Product Manager for Relay, and really never had the cycles to do so effectively, so a lot of decisions had to be made by fiat when we could get his attention. That was an issue until we brought Cathy in, and that wasn't until the waning days of that project. It's working a lot better now: Chris has strong opinions, but he's more able to act as an equal member of the team, feeding into the process collectively.

The point being - in terms of management strategy you deal with a thickness of personality a whole lot differently from a thickness of actual structure or process.

This is true, but I think it really was a bit different for Dev than it was for you. We were more intentionally sheltered from the upper levels than you were, and the communications chain was just plain more *formal*. We were allowed to talk directly to management, but really never encouraged to do so -- when it happened, it was usually because Dan or I barged in and insisted on being heard, and most of the engineers weren't willing to be quite so forthright. Other than that, communications were usually highly mediated. That was quite deliberate, but in hindsight was probably a mistake...

[jducoeur]

And it's worth noting -- while I was *very* annoyed that you got fired just when we most needed a Product Manager (running a supposedly Agile process without one is just plain foolish), I suspect it was for the best, at least for you. My strong suspicion is that you never would have received the authority to do the job properly, so it would have been never-ending frustration...