Page 204 - The Art of Designing Embedded Systems

People Musings 191

two. Or, there are those who feel an aggressive schedule inspires harder
work-possibly true, but only when “aggressive” is not confused with
“impossible.”
My feeling is that if there’s no mutual trust between workers and
management, the employment situation is dysfunctional and should be ter-
minated. Professionals-us !-are paid for doing the work and for making
reasonable technical recommendations. We may be wrong sometimes, but
a healthy work environment recognizes the strengths and weakness of each
professional. If your boss thinks you’re an idiot, or refuses to trust your
judgment, search the employment ads.
Too many bosses have little or no experience in managing software
projects. The news they get is invariably bad-the project will take six
months longer than hoped-yet it generally comes with no options, no de-
cisions that he can make to achieve the sort of balance between product
and delivery.
It’s critical that we learn to manage our bosses. When presenting bad
news, be sure you give options. “We can deliver on time but without these
features, or 6 months late with everything, or on time but with lots of
bugs. . . .” An intelligent analysis of choices, presented clearly. will help
get your message across.
We need to develop trust with our superiors by educating them about
development issues, by being right (meeting our own predictions), and by
communicating clearly.
We’ve got to avoid quoting a long, arbitrary time impact as a knee-
jerk reaction to any change request.
Too many developers react to a manager’s request by obfuscating the
facts. A schedule question gets answered with a long discourse peppered
with obscure acronyms and a detailed analysis of the technology involved.
In most cases your boss will not be as good as you are at cranking code or
designing FPGA equations. The boss is paid to manage, not do. We’re paid
to do, and to communicate clearly to the rest of the organization. When
talking to the boss, talk his lingo, not the language of ones and zeroes.
If we expect to be treated honestly and with respect, we have to re-
ciprocate accordingly.
Just as it takes time and many projects to get the data you need to be
an accurate estimator, educating the boss and creating trust can be a very
slow process. So slow, in fact, that you must remember that sooner or later
the boss will die or move on . . . and you’ll be in charge. Then remember.
Treat your people with trust and respect, and teach them what you’ve
learned about scheduling.