Focus On People

Peoples' actions are ultimately responsible for the success or failure of a project. Process and tools can guide and help, but they cannot coerce. Therefore, focus on the needs of the people in the project. Make sure the process, tools, culture, and environment help them rather than hinder them.

Possible Techniques:

• FortyHourWeek
• Many more are described in PeopleWare

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There is a chapter in JerryWeinberg's BecomingaTechnicalLeader? that addresses the "people vs. task" dichotomy: that is, when you have a choice between overworking/hurting people and not getting the task done, which do you choose?

Weinberg makes the case that this is a false dichotomy: all choices are really about people. For example, if you have to decide whether to ask people to work overtime to meet the schedule, it is not really a "people vs. schedule" decision. It is a "development team vs. customer" decision. In other words, you are deciding whether to make the team work harder or to increase the cost to the customer. Similarly, a "people vs. budget" decision is really "developers vs. owners-who-want-return-on-investment" or "developers vs. managers-who-need-to-show-good-results-or-be-fired".

So, all decisions are really about people. Decisions should be made to maximize benefit and to minimize harm to everyone involved. Sacrificing one group of people to serve another doesn't pay off over the long run, and even if it did, doing so is just wrong.

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I can't remember the source of the quote, but I use it frequently: "No matter how much you want it to be a technical problem, it's a people problem"

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CategoryProtoPattern | CategoryProcessPrinciple | CategoryFocus