Business manners
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Roger Wright wrote:
The one thing missing in the curriculum for an MBA is a class on how to manage people.
The one thing missing in the curriculum for an MBA is a class on how to manage people be a human being. Fixed that for you.
Software Zen:
delete this;Thanks, Gary! Have a virtual donut. :-D
Will Rogers never met me.
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Thanks, Gary! Have a virtual donut. :-D
Will Rogers never met me.
All part of the friendly service :-D.
Software Zen:
delete this; -
I'm curious about what people think in general about keeping/ missing deadlines. I ask because I'm from a Western working environment (there wasn't much business training there), but now in an Eastern working environment (again without much training, but more experience), and I believe there are some differences in what is expected in a business environment depending on where you are in the world. In my opinion, if I were to miss a deadline for whatever reason, I'd email up front to tell them that I am about to miss the deadline, and when I expect the updated deadline to be. I think it's the same as when you try to meet a friend for coffee, say, and you are running late. Wouldn't you phone (or otherwise) as soon as you become aware that you are going to be late? Is it too much to ask a colleague or other business collaborator to do the same? Also, does "I've been off sick" or "I had a family emergency" work as a good enough excuse for missing a deadline when it comes to working with other companies? In my opinion, if a company can't provide their service or goods in time because an employee suddenly becomes unavailable, the company hasn't got a proper risk management in place. Of course, I'm sure, there are exceptional circumstances (you wouldn't apply the same thought to the companies wrecked by the latest earthquake and tsunami in Japan), but in general, I'd have thought deadlines should be adhered to by company teamwork. Maybe I think this way at the moment because the deadline I'm referring to has been broken so many times... I do recall in my last workplace, some people (Westerners) were writing things like "there has been no progress on this project this month because I've been on holiday" and the boss (Oriental) told them not to write such things. I also think that writing that you've on holiday in your monthly report is silly. A holiday shouldn't be an excuse for lack of progress. Anyway, here I am, wasting a morning again... Any thoughts on the above issues welcome...
Almost, but not quite, entirely unlike... me...
The fact that someone is on holiday should not affect a "project" When you asked the question if it's okay for there to not be progress on something because someone is on holiday, I think that's hard to answer without knowing more details. If the work being done has to be done by a particular person, and that person is on holiday, then that fact should have been incorporated into the project and any schedules or commitments would reflect that. And thus, the fact that he's on holiday would not have been any surprised to anyone, and would not be considered an impact since it's already in the plan. If this was a notice after the fact (after he took the holiday) and then is telling his stakeholders it is why nothing got done, then that's bad, regardless if it's Eastern or Western culture. That's just bad project / time management.
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I'm curious about what people think in general about keeping/ missing deadlines. I ask because I'm from a Western working environment (there wasn't much business training there), but now in an Eastern working environment (again without much training, but more experience), and I believe there are some differences in what is expected in a business environment depending on where you are in the world. In my opinion, if I were to miss a deadline for whatever reason, I'd email up front to tell them that I am about to miss the deadline, and when I expect the updated deadline to be. I think it's the same as when you try to meet a friend for coffee, say, and you are running late. Wouldn't you phone (or otherwise) as soon as you become aware that you are going to be late? Is it too much to ask a colleague or other business collaborator to do the same? Also, does "I've been off sick" or "I had a family emergency" work as a good enough excuse for missing a deadline when it comes to working with other companies? In my opinion, if a company can't provide their service or goods in time because an employee suddenly becomes unavailable, the company hasn't got a proper risk management in place. Of course, I'm sure, there are exceptional circumstances (you wouldn't apply the same thought to the companies wrecked by the latest earthquake and tsunami in Japan), but in general, I'd have thought deadlines should be adhered to by company teamwork. Maybe I think this way at the moment because the deadline I'm referring to has been broken so many times... I do recall in my last workplace, some people (Westerners) were writing things like "there has been no progress on this project this month because I've been on holiday" and the boss (Oriental) told them not to write such things. I also think that writing that you've on holiday in your monthly report is silly. A holiday shouldn't be an excuse for lack of progress. Anyway, here I am, wasting a morning again... Any thoughts on the above issues welcome...
Almost, but not quite, entirely unlike... me...
I think the quote in my signature properly addresses this situation.
Craigslist Troll: litaly@comcast.net "I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours. " — Hunter S. Thompson
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As a developer I don't consider deadlines a relevant issues, I deliver as fast as possible under all circumstances. I work weekends only under duress and it will never be taken for granted. Deadlines are for the PM (this is one of the major reasons I am NOT a PM) and a good PM will be aware of all factors affecting the project, it is then up to the PM/business to resource the project to meet the deadlines. But then I'm a bastard to work with! my PM tells me all the time.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity RAH
"A holiday shouldn't be an excuse for lack of progress." ~ Project planning calendars MUST include holidays and all employees' planned absences "...a good PM will be aware of all factors affecting the project..." ~ I concur, see comment above from original post A missed deadline can have a myriad causes, but is seldom unforeseen. ~ Be polite, call ahead. ~ Be a grown up, admit fault (if the fault is yours), but try not to point fingers. :o)
-Bob
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PaulowniaK wrote:
In Japanese common sense, you don't take a month's holiday.
You don't even take a full day's holiday.I simply don't get it. Why can't you take a full day's holiday? Over here (and presumably in many other parts of the world), people get a number of paid day offs for each year, and a few of those holidays can be carried over to the next calendar year, can be accumulated into big numbers, and can be used in a stretch, when needed. In fact, that could be more than a month.
PaulowniaK wrote:
Make sure you do your work up front so you do have something to report even on the day you get back to work?
This is where our opinions differ. Holidays are those days when I do NOT have to work. I'll do my work until the day I leave for vacation, but for the days that I'm off, they'll pay me for doing nothing because it's a privilege that I've earned by working hard for a long time, and everyone deserves a nice break once in a while. And once I'm off, they can contact me ONLY in case of emergencies until the vacation period is over. Again, I can send a report and go to vacation, but it's nonsensical for a boss to expect me to send a "report" after my vacation. If I were to send what I did during the vacation, then the report would contain non-KSS, NSFW, and some seriously sick stuff. :)
"Real men drive manual transmission" - Rajesh.
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I'm curious about what people think in general about keeping/ missing deadlines. I ask because I'm from a Western working environment (there wasn't much business training there), but now in an Eastern working environment (again without much training, but more experience), and I believe there are some differences in what is expected in a business environment depending on where you are in the world. In my opinion, if I were to miss a deadline for whatever reason, I'd email up front to tell them that I am about to miss the deadline, and when I expect the updated deadline to be. I think it's the same as when you try to meet a friend for coffee, say, and you are running late. Wouldn't you phone (or otherwise) as soon as you become aware that you are going to be late? Is it too much to ask a colleague or other business collaborator to do the same? Also, does "I've been off sick" or "I had a family emergency" work as a good enough excuse for missing a deadline when it comes to working with other companies? In my opinion, if a company can't provide their service or goods in time because an employee suddenly becomes unavailable, the company hasn't got a proper risk management in place. Of course, I'm sure, there are exceptional circumstances (you wouldn't apply the same thought to the companies wrecked by the latest earthquake and tsunami in Japan), but in general, I'd have thought deadlines should be adhered to by company teamwork. Maybe I think this way at the moment because the deadline I'm referring to has been broken so many times... I do recall in my last workplace, some people (Westerners) were writing things like "there has been no progress on this project this month because I've been on holiday" and the boss (Oriental) told them not to write such things. I also think that writing that you've on holiday in your monthly report is silly. A holiday shouldn't be an excuse for lack of progress. Anyway, here I am, wasting a morning again... Any thoughts on the above issues welcome...
Almost, but not quite, entirely unlike... me...
Please see my signature to know what I think about deadlines :)
"I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by." (DNA)
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I'm curious about what people think in general about keeping/ missing deadlines. I ask because I'm from a Western working environment (there wasn't much business training there), but now in an Eastern working environment (again without much training, but more experience), and I believe there are some differences in what is expected in a business environment depending on where you are in the world. In my opinion, if I were to miss a deadline for whatever reason, I'd email up front to tell them that I am about to miss the deadline, and when I expect the updated deadline to be. I think it's the same as when you try to meet a friend for coffee, say, and you are running late. Wouldn't you phone (or otherwise) as soon as you become aware that you are going to be late? Is it too much to ask a colleague or other business collaborator to do the same? Also, does "I've been off sick" or "I had a family emergency" work as a good enough excuse for missing a deadline when it comes to working with other companies? In my opinion, if a company can't provide their service or goods in time because an employee suddenly becomes unavailable, the company hasn't got a proper risk management in place. Of course, I'm sure, there are exceptional circumstances (you wouldn't apply the same thought to the companies wrecked by the latest earthquake and tsunami in Japan), but in general, I'd have thought deadlines should be adhered to by company teamwork. Maybe I think this way at the moment because the deadline I'm referring to has been broken so many times... I do recall in my last workplace, some people (Westerners) were writing things like "there has been no progress on this project this month because I've been on holiday" and the boss (Oriental) told them not to write such things. I also think that writing that you've on holiday in your monthly report is silly. A holiday shouldn't be an excuse for lack of progress. Anyway, here I am, wasting a morning again... Any thoughts on the above issues welcome...
Almost, but not quite, entirely unlike... me...
Scheduling is a specialized skill that takes time and effort to develop. Within a team, individuals vary in scheduling skill just like they do in development skill. If a team member is not skilled in schedule estimating, it isn't reasonable for an internal manager to hold this lack of skill against them. A manager who values good scheduling estimates should help their team develop this skill. The manager can lead the team to develop concensus estimates, track progress, give gentle feedback when estimates are consistently wrong, and reward correct estimates in a measureable way. A manager might instead use negative reinforcement to develop scheduling skill in a team; yelling at people who are late, demanding they put in extra hours, leaving them to track their own success or failure. This is just bad management. There is no industry norm that requires workers to be punished for something they are not skilled at. A development organization accepting an engagement to deliver a product on schedule has fewer excuses. Organizations should know how good they are at scheduling before contracting for work. External customers have more right to expect a contracting organization to do what it takes to make good a slip. An organization should find more resources to put on a project if they run over their estimate. They should bill these extra hours, or accept reduced profit depending on the contract to which they agreed. Some organizations make an initial estimate, and then expect the developers to bear all the schedule risk, holding profit steady by extracting more hours from the same staff resources without compensation. It's especially bad when the initial schedule estimate is not highly correllated to the amount of work to do. There is no cultural bias to behave in this way other than the universal bias of greed. There's the rub. Individuals aren't good at scheduling. Contracting organizations are expected to be good at scheduling, and good at making a profit. And the least productive team members are the most vulnerable. That means there will always be pressure on the team to put in extra hours. But every team member has another choice. If they are made responsible for too much schedule risk (that is, if they are required to work too many hours), they can find new work under better managers. I highly recommend that individual contributors think about how risk is shared in any development organization to which they belong; where do the extra hours come from, and where does the profit go to. If you don't like
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"Needing steenking deadlines we are not." -- Yoda
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This whole thing needs to clarified, was the "boss" aware that he was on vacation? or is it some other case where "he" is a freelancer? etc. hard to argue about something vague
fuximus wrote:
This whole thing needs to clarified, was the "boss" aware that he was on vacation? or is it some other case where "he" is a freelancer? etc. hard to argue about something vague
The employee in question did book (as in informed the boss) his holiday in advance (we were all supposed to give at least 1 week's notice, if I remember correctly). The employee knew we all had to submit a monthly report roughly at the same time every month, so it's partly his own bad time management that he had to put "I was on holiday" in the report. Since the minimum notice for a holiday regardless of its length is a week, I doubt the boss had time to juggle the schedule to incorporate the diminished man power. But then, again, that's the boss's fault for not having a realistic strategy in place for informing about holidays.
Almost, but not quite, entirely unlike... me...
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Scheduling is a specialized skill that takes time and effort to develop. Within a team, individuals vary in scheduling skill just like they do in development skill. If a team member is not skilled in schedule estimating, it isn't reasonable for an internal manager to hold this lack of skill against them. A manager who values good scheduling estimates should help their team develop this skill. The manager can lead the team to develop concensus estimates, track progress, give gentle feedback when estimates are consistently wrong, and reward correct estimates in a measureable way. A manager might instead use negative reinforcement to develop scheduling skill in a team; yelling at people who are late, demanding they put in extra hours, leaving them to track their own success or failure. This is just bad management. There is no industry norm that requires workers to be punished for something they are not skilled at. A development organization accepting an engagement to deliver a product on schedule has fewer excuses. Organizations should know how good they are at scheduling before contracting for work. External customers have more right to expect a contracting organization to do what it takes to make good a slip. An organization should find more resources to put on a project if they run over their estimate. They should bill these extra hours, or accept reduced profit depending on the contract to which they agreed. Some organizations make an initial estimate, and then expect the developers to bear all the schedule risk, holding profit steady by extracting more hours from the same staff resources without compensation. It's especially bad when the initial schedule estimate is not highly correllated to the amount of work to do. There is no cultural bias to behave in this way other than the universal bias of greed. There's the rub. Individuals aren't good at scheduling. Contracting organizations are expected to be good at scheduling, and good at making a profit. And the least productive team members are the most vulnerable. That means there will always be pressure on the team to put in extra hours. But every team member has another choice. If they are made responsible for too much schedule risk (that is, if they are required to work too many hours), they can find new work under better managers. I highly recommend that individual contributors think about how risk is shared in any development organization to which they belong; where do the extra hours come from, and where does the profit go to. If you don't like
Member 2941392 wrote:
Scheduling is a specialized skill that takes time and effort to develop.
I couldn't agree more. This is partly the reason I left my last job, as my boss at the time was terrible at coming up with realistic schedules. Where I am now, the department has a long history of passing down methodologies for drawing up project schedules so being a newbie still, I don't have to do much with regards to scheduling, but my bosses do. But the bosses have had years learning from their bosses and so on... I will be asked to lead projects and write up schedules and project plans in a couple of years, but by then, I hope to have learned our company methodology. A group like ours work like clockwork when things are going smoothly, but has the problem that it is slow to adapt to change... Anyway, so I'm working in a place where every project member's work is controlled by the hour (sometimes minutes!). Progress report is made every month and schedule is revised accordingly. If a project is delayed by over 2 months, we need to submit a formal project rescheduling plan. I guess some will find it suffocatingly restricting, but I like my working environment. :rolleyes: On the other hand, I've got this problem of being the contact person for a collaborating firm who clearly has a much more relaxed (to put it mildly!) attitude towards scheduling. While I'm asked by my boss whether the project milestone will be achieved on time, missed by a minute, or missed by 10 days, my collaborators are keeping schtum so I have no idea how their work is going. Worse still, the type of contract we have between the bodies involved means that I have no authority over their work. (Yet I have hawk eyes watching over me to make sure I keep the collaborator's work in check. X| ) It's coming up to holiday season on either ends of the world (Easter for the largely Christian countries and general early summer holidays here in Japan). Joy...
Almost, but not quite, entirely unlike... me...