Web Site of Rajiv Pant

For an executive, having a management team of people who are good at their jobs and work well with each other is one of the most important factors that lead to success together. Observing a number of successful projects, I realized that it is critical that your management team members care for each other, work well together and give to each other. Their sincere collaboration is far more important than their individual strengths.

I began to write this article impressed by how well the management team comprising of my direct reports functioned, collaborating with each other towards shared success. I was pleasantly surprised by how these directors shared responsibilities, how closely they worked with people in each other’s teams and how comfortably they gave credit to each other. When conflicts arose between them, they frankly, respectfully and nicely expressed them to each other, often one-on-one. Every time, they resolved them quickly and came out with a closer professional relationship. They actively and regularly talked to quell any turf battles between each other’s departments before they could form.

They had a wonderful professional relationship. They barely knew each other outside of work, having busy personal lives with their families on most evenings and weekends. I felt that my management team and I were like a work-family, sticking together through good and bad times, always believing that our success comes as a team.

When you manage and organize your company or your department, spend time multiple times a week with your direct reports together so that you all work well with each other towards shared success. In turn, they should ensure that their direct reports care about each other and collaborate. If you have, say five direct reports, make sure that just the six of you get together in a room to work openly and collaboratively at least twice a week (assuming you are in the same geographic location). The forum for this need not be always a staff meeting, it could be a working session on a project.

I was struggling to come up with suitable words to describe this and its importance. While reading the book The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive: A Leadership Fable by Patrick Lencioni, I found that the first discipline described in the story talks exactly of this and hence is the title of this article. The book is written as a fictional story that teaches leadership lessons. It is easy to read being under 200 pages in large typeface which you can read in one evening. I highly recommend it.

There are many good ways to organize your technology department. This article presents one of them. It is written for someone in a CTO, CIO, VP Technology or a consultant role looking for suggestions on organizing or reorganizing your Web technology department. It is best suited for you if your organization has the following characteristics:

• You manage software engineering, implementation and technology operations for 3 or more Web sites.
• Yours is a medium to large size organization with somewhere between 20 to 150 technology staff.
• Internal corporate IT functions such as desktop support, telecommunications services and internal business systems are beyond the scope of this article.

The Venn diagram below presents one model of organizing your department into 3 sub-departments.

Web Technology Department Organization Venn Diagram Illustrating Purposeful Overlap Among Sub-Departments

Many CTOs organize their technology departments as 2 sub-departments: Software Engineering and Technology Operations. Software engineering is the function that is responsible for developing and/or implementing Web application software. Technology Operations is responsible for running, maintaining and supporting the Web applications.

If you operate 1 or 2 Web sites, having these 2 sub-departments is a good approach. For 3 or more Web sites, organizing Software Engineering into Site Engineering and Platform Engineering has some benefits.

Site Engineering is focused on working on the Web sites’ direct projects. Its work includes

• Small and large projects for adding or changing functionality on the Web sites
• Bug fixes on the Web site applications

Platform Engineering is typically smaller than the other two organizations and typically includes functions like:

• Architecture across sites
• Shared applications across sites
• Common libraries across sites
• Research & Development (R&D)

Technology Operations includes functions such as:

• Systems & Applications Administration
• Infrastructure Management
• 24×7 Tech Support
• Builds & Configuration
• Release Management
• Testing & Quality Assurance (QA) *
• Technical Analysis
• Technical Project Management
• Budget Management

* Note: QA can also be a completely independent department or part of another department outside technology.

These three departments have purposeful overlap of responsibilities as illustrated in the Venn diagram above. That helps minimize the chances of the departments becoming silos with walls between them. For success, it is important that your entire department functions as one integrated unit. Some shared goals & responsibilities are required for mutual success.

To make this work, you need 3 directors who head up these departments who work well together, collaborate often and are not sensitive about their turf. They should know that a successful technology manager is not an individual-only contributor, but a great team player with peers. They should have strong goodwill among each other and welcome each other to work directly with their teams. Such a collaborative team is essential.

If you supervise employees or are in a senior position relative to some others, make it a habit to thank employees when they do a good job.

Here are some tips for effective appreciation of employees’ work:

Appreciation is good even when it is an expected part of their duties. If the work is good quality, thank the person.

Don’t trivialize your thanks, however. Don’t thank an employee for just sending a meeting agenda or sending a recap of a meeting unless the agenda or recap they sent is so good that it impresses you. (An exception to this rule would be if in the company most people forget to send meeting recaps and this person did and you are working to encourage this good habit.)

Don’t just send an email saying “thank you” and nothing else. Add at least a sentence or two explaining why you appreciate what the person did.

Don’t always send an email. Mix it up. Sometimes walk up to the employee and thank them in person. If they are in a remote office location, call them by phone to tell them.

When thanking someone by replying to an email they have sent, send a thank you note directly to the person. Don’t do a reply-all unless it is a major above & beyond accomplishment that deserves public congratulations. When you do send a public thank you to an employee with other people cc’d, do take the time to write at least a paragraph or a few bullet points mentioning the benefits of the accomplishment.

Mention by name the person(s) when you thank people. Don’t just thank “the team”, or “all who worked on this project” out of laziness instead of calling by name the people you are thanking, unless you have a good reason for not naming names.

We individual consumers should, as a community, take steps to support and strengthen the U.S. and global economy. People’s confidence and our actions resulting from it are an important factor in rescuing and rebuilding the economy.

Yes, we need to be cautious about spending and should save money during this economic time, but we need to balance that with continuing to buying products and services to fuel the economy and keep the markets running. In today’s world, our jobs in various sectors are deeply interrelated in ways we don’t realize.

For example, if we stop eating at restaurants or shopping at stores, the restaurant and shops’ employees would lose jobs. The restaurants and shops would in turn stop spending money on advertising, resulting in job losses in the advertising sector. The suppliers to the restaurants and shops would also suffer. Sooner than we realize, it would come back and hit us. It is within our power as a community to save the situation.

We need to keep doing our part in the economy, supporting the businesses around us, so that they are able to keep supporting us.

Optimism and confidence are essential to human success. I urge you to consider doing some of the following each day:

• When you talk with your friends about the economic situation, talk about how you as an individual and community can do to help instead of talking about doom and gloom.
• Replace pessimism and fear with practical optimism and confidence. Value what you do have: Remember there are people in parts of this world to whom survival literally means keeping their families and themselves alive.
• Buy something. Avail of a service. This is a good time to get good deals on products and services.
• Go online. Learn about the current situation and the proposals out there to fix it. Urge your elected officials to take action on the proposals you believe would help.
• Share this or a similar message of your own with other people.

To be effective at anything in life, balance is required Be it personal life, leadership, management, technical work: balance is essential. You need to be aware of balance at all times.

I plan to write a series of articles about this subject.

Some topics I discuss with friends and colleagues:

• standardization vs. innovation & creativity (technology, management)
• dedicated resources vs. shared services (management, leadership, technology)
• security & privacy vs. convenience (technology, product design)
• centralization vs. decentralization & empowerment (leadership, management)

I’d love to hear your topic suggestions and read your viewpoints and experiences. Please do so via the comments section here and in future articles.

Described here is one way to enable technologists to grow their careers in your organization while still allowing them to focus on the type of work they are best at and enjoy most.

The typical management career growth path does not suit some technical people. These information workers need to grow in their careers (gain greater compensation, responsibilities and influence) without having to become managers of other people. A good way to achieve that goal is to create a technical career growth track in your organization.

The following table shows management seniority positions alongside their equivalent technical seniority positions.

In this model, for example, an architect role is at the same compensation and influence level as a manager role, assuming that the particular manager and architect being compared add similar value to the company. If the organization requires more layers, say, a senior architect would be at the same level as a senior manager.

If the organization prefers consistent titles for levels, the system could name them like this: the fellow role as director & fellow, the senior architect role as senior manager & architect, etc. In the case of a fellow who is at a VP or SVP level, they should always be named VP & fellow or SVP & fellow.

Here is a definition of the fellow role from WikiPedia:¹

Large corporations in research and development-intensive industries ² appoint a small number of senior scientists and engineers as Fellows. Fellow is the most senior rank or title one can achieve on a technical career, though some fellows also hold business titles such as vice president or chief technology officer.

Such a technical career growth plan brings many benefits to your organization.

• It helps retain good technologists who want to grow in their careers, but want to do keep doing the type of work they are best at and enjoy doing: technical work.
• It avoids brilliant technical people from being “pushed” (by themselves or their supervisors trying to “reward” them) into people-management responsibilities.
• It reduces situations of having too many people-managers but not enough people-management positions over time as people get promoted.

Care should be taken to recognize that some technical people do enjoy making the transition to people-management roles and the presence such a technical track should not discourage them. Having an alternate career growth track option is about presenting employees with more than one choice.

A similar system could also be applied to other departments with individual contributors. For example, creative design.

Related Articles on Other Sites

• Fog Creek Professional Ladder by Joel Spolsky
• Construx’s professional development ladder

1. Definition of Fellow at WikiPedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fellow and Wikitionary http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fellow [↩]
2. IBM or Sun Microsystems in information technology, and Boston Scientific in Medical Devices for example [↩]

I’ve found this to be an effective way of evaluating potential hires compared to just interviewing in a question/answer format: Put them to work for a few hours (or even days/weeks/months as contractors) and see how well they perform.

Having someone do the job as a short-term temporary contractor before hiring them is one of my favorite ways of testing them for the job. However, sometimes this isn’t practical. In those cases, having the candidate work on a short test assignment for a few hours can be very telling.

For example, when interviewing a software programmer, set them up on a computer and give them a programming assignment representative of the type of work they would do on the job. Give them reasonable freedom as you’d give an actual employee. If they need to research references / solutions on the Web, let them. If they want to call a friend for consulting help, that’s fine. If they ask for your or their “coworkers” for help within reason, that’s okay too.

Hiring a journalist? Give them a reporting, writing, and/or editing assignment. Hiring a web site producer? Have them build a mini-web site or edit a copy of an existing site. Hiring a designer, have them design a logo for a business or product. (This will help determine how well they can relate their design skills to the business aspects.)

While this is a simulation, the more realistic you can make it, the better.

For information worker type jobs, coming up with a realistic assignment is easier than one for a management or executive leadership position candidate. Another challenge with this is that a manager and leader’s job requires significantly more interaction with others. That means this simulation will consume a fair amount of your and your team’s time. However, remember that manager and executive leaders are very important hires, so the time spent in finding the best possible hire is totally worth it.

Some factors to consider in your evaluation. How resourceful is the person? Do they communicate with the customers? How do they interact with the customers? Do they get the job done? Do they seek help beyond their own resources? Do they become a drain on others’ productivity? How is the quality of their work? What’s their balance of being a team player and contributing individually? How is their planning? How is their presentation? Do they document their solution? How well do they explain their solution?

I admit this is too time consuming to do for everyone who applies for the job. You do need to filter the list down to between three to five candidates for this working interview. There are a couple of ways you can do this. For contract-to-potentially-hire positions, you can rely on a trusted vendor to do the filtering for you according to your guidelines. For others, you do need to review their resumes, see who has recommended them, do phone interviews and give them tests. Computerized tests are a good way to save you and your team some time during the initial screening, provided you present the test in a way that is not demeaning to the candidate. The time/money invested in setting up an automated online test is worth it. The test needs to be respectfully presented as a part of the standard process and should not feel like an entrance exam or impersonal screening.

So next time you have a position to fill, consider using a working-interview.

At interviews, technology executives are often asked about build vs. buy. The question would be better articulated as own vs. rent. See, building and buying in the true sense are often part of the same ideology: owning. For example, Google bought Blogger and YouTube. As a result, Blogger and YouTube programmers (builders) became Google employees. When people ask about companies buying software, they are almost always referring to leasing or renting software.

I consider using open source to be in the own camp, because you can withing reason do as you please with your copy of the open source software and no one can take it away from you. Open source makes owning even better. It enables owning and sharing at the same time, which benefits the community.

Often technology executives answer this question ambiguously. They claim they have no preference towards either owning or renting software. To me, when a person provides such a noncommittal answer, it means they might lack leadership, vision, a clear philosophy, or the courage to give an honest answer to a prospective employer.

I generally prefer owning over renting. This applies not just to software, but to other things in my life like owning a home and owning a car. There are other people who prefer to rent apartments and lease cars. Neither philosophy may be better in general than the other, but one of them is always better depending on the circumstances. Circumstances by themselves don’t make the own vs. rent decision. That’s where people come in. A leader does not manage their company or department at the whim of circumstances. A leader has a style, has preferences and applies them to the situation. Leaders who prefer either one of owning or renting can be equally successful in the same organization and circumstances.

Here I present my viewpoint on why sometimes a philosophy of renting software as much as possible runs companies into trouble. There are numerous examples of vendor solutions in search of problems. A vendor will often wow a team of executives with a product presentation and demo. The company will agree to rent the software at a high cost. Later, the company will find it wasn’t worth the investment, even though they may not admit it or even like to talk about it.

When a company owns a software product core to its business, it can use it towards a competetive advantage. When you own the software product, you also have control over your data. When a vendor hosts and manages your data, in most cases you have practically relinquished control of your data even though your contract may say on paper it is yours.

When you own the products you use, it is generally easier to integrate with other systems. Your timelines are less at the mercy of vendors.

However the future of software may be changing. With web applications becoming popular, even home users may be renting software on a pay-per-use basis. I’ll have more to write on that subject. Stay tuned.

Here are some tips for making better use of email at work and in personal life.

• When you send an email to multiple people asking for a response or assigning a task, specify by name who you are asking for a response or action from. Otherwise people may read your email and assume one of the others will act on it.
• Avoid using the bcc feature in a sneaky way to tell someone else (e.g. the main recipient’s boss) only your side of the story without telling the known recipients.
• At a workplace, when you send announcements (i.e. when your goal is for you to disseminate information and not to start a discussion), send the message in a way that recipients do not reply-all.
  • You can do that by either using a mailing list that only authorized people can send mail to, or by putting the actual recipients in bcc: field and using a placeholder address in the to: field. That is a legitimate use of bcc:. You could also request in your message that recipients do not reply-all to this message and instead for example, report issues to an alternate address.
  • Managers sometimes cringe when after they send a positive message to a large number of people, one of the recipients replies-all with a negative message that either diminishes or distracts discussion away from the original positive message. An employee who does reply-all to a positive message with a negative one is being foolish or a jerk (usually both). You should avoid giving such people a pulpit and opportunity to lower others’ morale and/or start a flame war. (When you have such employees who don’t stop doing this after being told, fire them and hope they get employed by your competitor.)
  • If you are the recipient of an announcement, do not do a reply-all, unless you have a relevant, positive message to add that adds value to and strengthens the original message.
  • I am not suggesting that you don’t voice your disagreements, corrections, cautions, constructive criticism and other comments. You should express them, but not via reply-all. Communicate them to the appropriate person(s) only, typically that would be the sender of the announcement or your supervisor. If you find an error in someone’s announcement, give the sender the courtesy of an opportunity to send out a correction by letting them know first.
• Give people reasonable time to respond to your email, even if they have mobile devices (like BlackBerry or other email enabled phones).
  • Realize that some people are overwhelmed by email and you should occasionally reach out to them in person or via phone for certain important matters. Email is not a replacement for all personal communication.
• Avoid checking your email on a mobile device when interacting with other people in person except when absolutely necessary, for example in a meeting. It is rude and it implies you are not focusing on your job in the meeting.
  • If your job requires you to be on alert for certain messages, set up alerts via mail filters that will sound or vibrate the device to inform you of messages that require you to interrupt your current activity.

Starting early, not driving recklessly fast

People who have worked with me are familiar with my trait of challenging the team to bring products and solutions to market as soon as possible. I’m a strong proponent for quickness to market and love to deliver sooner than the initially projected timeline. In this article, however, I present a different viewpoint for balance.

In product development, the question often comes up: How can we be quicker and faster to market with our products? We should ask instead: How can we be earlier to market with our products than our competitors? We should also ask: Is it more important to be early, or to deliver good quality and innovation?

For the medium and long term good of your organization and in the best interest of your customers, it is more important to deliver a high quality and innovative product than to deliver it quicker.

In most cases, successful companies are not the ones who are fast or early to deliver products, but those that deliver better products.

Take Google for example. They were a couple of years late to the Web search engine market and were reinventing a product that had already been established by others. Many thought the search engine market was already saturated. Remember some of the early ones like Infoseek, Lycos? Where are they now? Consider Microsoft and Apple: most of their products are not early, but they often succeed. The iPod came years after the early portable digital audio players. MySpace.com came up to dominate online social networking a couple of years after Friendster, Tribe and Orkut were already established.

Even when analyzing products whose success was due their being early to market, we find that early does not imply fast. These projects often started early and were executed at a comfortable, smooth pace.

As the saying goes, when you ask for quick and dirty, you get both. The benefits of speed to market are for the short term. In some cases, it does make sense to go for quick, short-term solutions. In all cases, however, one must give serious thought to whether that’s the correct path to choose considering the medium and long term goals.

People & Teamwork

In projects, working fast is often a recipe for failure, especially after starting late. The overwhelming majority of projects are not like 100 meter races, where speed results in victory. They are like football games, where factors like teamwork have much greater influence on winning.

The greatest factor affecting the success of projects is not speed, not technology, not even process or planning. It is people. Invest your time, energy and resources on your people and they will make your projects succeed more than anything else.

Whether you are a leader, manager or information worker, I recommend learning more about the people factor and practicing better people related activities at work. Here is a quote I like from a book: “People under time pressure don’t work better; they just work faster. In order to work faster, they may have to sacrifice the quality of the product and their own job satisfaction.” — Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams, 2nd Edition, Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister

Keep in mind this order of descending significance of factors in projects’ success:

1. People & teamwork
2. Priorities
3. Planning
4. Process & operations
5. Products & technologies
6. Pace & acceleration