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Watts Humphrey shares his 'Reflections on Management,' Part II


By David Worthington


 David Worthington
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July 6, 2010 —  (Page 1 of 4)
Watts Humphrey headed the IBM development team that introduced the first software license, and he later served as its director of programming and vice president of technical development. He is a fellow of the Software Engineering Institute and the Association for Computing Machinery, as well as a recipient of The United States Patent and Trademark Office's National Medal of Technology.

Accolades and accomplishments aside, he's also made his share of mistakes, and from his decades of experiences, he learned hard lessons about how software projects should be managed, how to manage teams, his bosses and himself. Humphrey recounts those experiences in his recent book, "Reflections on Management," which he elaborates on in the second part of this interview.

SD Times: In a low-growth economy, how does a manager make the case for prioritizing projects rather than triple-assigning programmers to pretend that every job was staffed?
Watts Humphrey: All it takes is guts, and the brains to recognize that you are just putting off an inevitable problem and making it worse at the same time. Double- and triple-staffing projects is wrong for four reasons:

It destroys teams. No one knows who is on the team so no one can count on anyone else for help when they need it.

It demotivates the engineers. In effect, management is telling them, “We can’t set priorities, so you decide what to do.” This is like telling the engineer that none of his or her work is very important, and that management is just pretending that all these projects are being worked on.

It destroys productivity. It takes time to switch jobs and to rebuild the context of what you were doing a day or two earlier.

Finally, by double- and triple-staffing your projects, you are pretending that you can do more work than you actually can do.

Why pretend? Face the issue now. If management insists on taking on more work than they have resources to accomplish, that’s their problem and make sure they know it. Stick to your guns, and as long as you have good plans, you will win the inevitable battles.


Related Search Term(s): IBM, professional development

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