Author: Sergey Bondarev

Developer Advocate & Project Manager

What is your orientation?

Sergey BondarevLeave a comment

I often notice that people can be separated into the following groups based on how they get satisfaction from work they do.

  1. Tool-orientated
  2. Process-oritented
  3. Goal-oriented

Let me describe what I mean.  Imagine that a project or a business is a marathon with the finish line.

  1. Tool-orientated people. They like to run in their special boots and sportswear. During the project development, they enjoy playing with the “tool”: it can be some process methodology, framework, service etc. The big concern that they are just focused on playing. If the new tool will arrive and not used – they will be really unhappy and leave the marathon before the finish line. Do they bring profit? Yes, of course: they are brave to use new technologies and they are geeks, they like to dive deep into the details. I think many good experts started in this group.
  2. Process-oriented people like just to run in their own manner… doesn’t matter where is the finish line. They are interested in some work area of the project and they do it in their own way.  They do it well, not restricted by tools and have a good vision of the process they do.  The problem is that they can forget about the work goal. Additionally, they are losing their satisfaction if it’s not possible to make things in their way. From another side, they do they work and will go till the finish line. Not in the top, but still with good result. It depends on the trainer who will remind them about the goals 😉
  3. Finally, Goal-oriented people. They like to meet the finish line … anyway. As a result, they are winners and they like it. It doesn’t matter what tool to use and how. The Goal is their God.  What could be wrong?  They’re using not perfect tools, they can use them in a wrong way, they can bring down other runners. Yes, they are not perfect. But hey… winners are not judged!  The project is completed. It’s good for management, good for the customer and…  quite stressy for the project team 😉

Of course, people are not dedicated just to one group and the project is not just marathon.

All people make some profit for the project, especially in the right place.

But let’s be frank:

If you need to win, you need to be a Goal-oriented person.

Make your choice, but don’t be indifferent to your work!

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Work without worker

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Many times I see the same situation inside the company or just inside the team:

  Work or problem exists, but NOT DEDICATED WORKER assigned on it.

Basically, it’s because of lack of budget or the feelings that there’re no work or problem at all.

Possible examples of such work inside the company: organization of team events, sales support by development experts, employee career management, meetups, education process etc.

Examples of such work inside the team: it can be requirements management, DevOps tasks, manual testing etc.

The problem begins when the project manager or customers say that project requirements will be handled by them or not all (this is the same ;)), or delivered project should have no bugs… Sad, but true.

Let me describe what happens in this case:

Work with not assigned employee are unformally handled by enthusiasts when they have free time.

They change since they are not assigned to this work and are engaged in other activities.

What we see as a result of this work: it has totally different quality and work style, the results are not predictable, not consistent with other work etc.

What I recommend in this case and how it’s done by prospective companies, management or team leaders:

Initially management should recognize the existence of the work or problem and take responsibility over it.

Unfortunately, this is a complex process and occurs when the problem becomes critical.

But let me rephrase this in another way:

If you want to achieve results of the work in the new quality  – assign it to a dedicated person! It will have good effect from the very begining.

The result of the work will be predictable, in the same style and so on. Quality will grow as the person will get a constant experience.

And if you find the right person – it will be Bingo!

Good luck!

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Retrospective vs Psichology

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I have a weekly retrospective meeting with my team. To be prepared for the meeting we fill out some kind of board with the table: 1st column for good points (i.e. “Where we succeed), the 2nd column for other points (i.e. “Where can we be better”)

I noticed that the whole team and even I don’t like to add items in the 2nd column even if you want to suggest or improve something. I see here 2 reasons:

  1. Since all positive items are in the 1st column. The 2nd column always contains non-positive and negative items. As a result, even positive improvements interpreted as negative.
  2. If you are writing something negative about any point and it always makes pain for the responsible person

The result is sad:

  • People don’t want to talk about improvements to avoid conflicts with colleagues.
  • If they are brave and add something in the 2nd column it becomes a negative background and makes stress for the writer. After a while, he will just skip writing in this column at all.

Let’s see what Psychology could say for this case:

If you want to say something about others work:  let’s share YOUR PERSONAL feelings instead of evaluations!

NO- “Your code is really bad”

YES –  “I’ll be happy if you change something in this code”

SO-SO – “I’m sad, since your code breaks our application”

Now let me share the solution I noticed from Atlassian newsletter:

It should be 3 columns:

  1. I like
  2. I wish  //to improvee existing things
  3. What if  //ideas for the future

That what we need!

  • All items are with positive background
  • All items are focused just on personal feelings instead of evaluations
  • This allows you to write ideas for  improvements

It’s great and it works! Let’s use it!

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Let’s begin

Sergey BondarevLeave a comment

Welcome to my personal Tech Blog!

What I’m doing there? Heh…

  1. I write here my thoughts and ideas related to my work area: IT, Management, Development etc. I think this process will organize them in my head and make clear even for me.
  2. I want to accumulate my visions to organize  them in the future
  3. I want to share my knowledge

Writing helps to organize the thoughts.

Hmm…  coding works in the same way!

Don’t hesitate to code even if the idea is not clear!

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