Managing Product Development

When I teach coaching or feedback skills, I teach them in the context of work. At work, as long as the feedback is about the work, or the work relationships, or it’s a question of safety, feedback is appropriate. Coaching, as long as it’s about work behavior is appropriate.

But a funny thing happened to me yesterday, when I didn’t give feedback. Mark and I had been at the beach celebrating one of the few sunny weekend days this summer. We were leaving, and I was all set to use the public showers. The showers are outside, three shower heads around the top of a post. There’s room for three people at each of the three posts. The dressing areas are single-person and private.

As I walked toward the showers, a man approached the showers wearing small white underwear. I have to admit, I am not current with all of male underwear styles, but this was close to a thong. There’s a problem when white underwear gets wet–it becomes transparent. I don’t know if he didn’t realize it, or he didn’t care. I did, but I kept quiet. I was quite uncomfortable (!) and just stood at another shower to rinse the salt off.

I asked Mark later, what he would have done. He wasn’t sure. That’s when I realized if either of my daughters had been with me, I would have verbally pushed that guy back into the dressing area. That’s because the context moves from “two adults who can ignore each other” to “an adult being not quite appropriate in front of younger people.” That’s an issue of personal safety.

I felt uncomfortable, but not unsafe. As soon as the context changed, it would have been necessary for me to give the man feedback. I could have said something like this. “Hi. I don’t know if you realize this, but your underwear has turned transparent in the water. I’m not comfortable. Can you please put something else on?” I suspect, that in a public area, as this was, many men would change what they were wearing based on that statement.

If you’re worried about giving feedback at work, don’t be. Look at the context. Make sure you talk to the other person, providing non-judgmental data (transparent underwear), explain the impact with “I” statements, and ask for a change in behavior. It’s not difficult once you practice. (See here for the feedback “recipe”.)

Feedback at work is almost always easier than telling a man his parts are showing. Well, for me it is. But, if you want to enhance your working relationships, and make sure everyone is working well and in a safe way, feedback is necessary. Practice it. Even with the guys at the beach.

I was shopping today, taking advantage of the summer sales. One of my favorite retailers offers petite sizes online, but almost nothing in the store. I go to the store to try the clothes on and then decide what to order online.

I had a number of blice (blouses to those of you who are not aware of alternative plurals to order, and the nice salesperson who was trying to type my information into the form got frustrated, “I keep putting the wrong data in the wrong boxes.”

“It’s not your fault,” I explained. “The developers should have sat with someone in a store to see what it’s like to input the data when you’re interrupted and holding onto clothes, and all the things that happen when you’re on the floor and not in a back room.” She then explained that the form was the same whether you were online or in the store. But the problem is the data available online is different from the data available in the store.

I don’t know if the developers were lazy, or pressured, or if it just didn’t occur to them to test the system with a real user. But a salesperson should never have to apologize to me about the lack of user interface keeping me at the store longer than it should have. It wasn’t her fault.

User experience design and implementation is difficult. But why make it more difficult by not getting feedback from the users? I’ll never understand.

I was talking with a new manager recently, and she was explaining what she had to tell a new employee (a co-op, but an employee). “I told him he had to be here by 9am every day he works. He can eat lunch from 12 to 1, and then he should be back at his desk. I then told him if he ran out of work, he should talk to me, and that he could leave between 5:30 and 6:00.”

We were chuckling, and I told her the story of one of the first co-ops I hired. I had to tell him to brush his teeth, take a shower every day, wear different clothes every day, and make sure to use deodorant. After he got into the rhythm of work, about a month later, he thanked me. I was curious, and asked why he’d been so unaware all these years before this job. He said, “Well, I was smart enough to coast by on my brains. But all the work I did, I did from my room. I never had to see anyone or work with anyone before. This is a huge difference for me. And, my social life is improving!”

I’ve had a number of funny-strange conversations, and many of them are about feedback. If you have to give someone feedback about body odor or halitosis, remember how:

• Create an opening to deliver feedback.
• Describe the behavior or result in a way the person can hear.
• State the impact using “I” language.
• Make a request for changed behavior.

Take a look at With Feedback, It’s Kind to be Firm for an example. As long as we have geeky people in high tech, managers will have to have these conversations. Make them helpful conversations, and you’ll have an employee that’s loyal to you forever.

At SD earlier this week, I led a tutorial about coaching. Imagine my surprise when I asked people why they were there, and some of them said, “I have a person who’s not doing so well. I need to coach them.”

Uh, no. You need to give that person feedback. Feedback is information about the past, given in the present, with the goal of influencing the future. (That’s a paraphrase of What Did You Say?.) Coaching is helping people see other options, and therefor helping them increase their capacity or capability.

Feedback is something managers must do. The more collaborative the team, the more everyone on the team needs to know who to give and receive feedback. But coaching? Coaching is optional.

People choose when they want coaching. They choose their coach. It’s not acceptable to impose coaching on someone else. (Esther and I showed examples of this in Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management.)

If you’re a manager, make sure you know the difference between coaching and feedback. Otherwise you’ll confuse your team members, spend too much time with the people who provide the least value, and not coach the people who could use your coaching.

A couple of weeks ago at our Managing One-on-One workshop, Esther and I were teaching about how to give feedback. Here’s the “recipe”:

• Create an opening to deliver feedback.
• Describe the behavior or result in a way the person can hear.
• State the impact using “I” language.
• Make a request for changed behavior.

When we teach feedback, we ask people to practice giving feedback using this structure. Some people take to the structure right away; some need to practice. One of the teams in the workshop had a little trouble giving feedback about hygiene. The feedback giver “fluffed it up” instead of getting to the point. The feedback giver said something like this (all names and situation changed):

“Raymond, got a few minutes?”

“Sure.”

“Good. I wanted to talk to you about something. How’re those Red Sox?” (and more like this for a couple of minutes) Raymond, I have to tell you something.

“What do you need to tell me???” (in a strangled tone of voice)

“Have you considered using mouthwash?”

The feedback receiver sat there with his mouth open, wondering what the heck was going on.

At that point, Esther and I intervened to help move the conversation back on track. Here’s another way for that conversation to proceed:

“Raymond, got a few minutes?”

“Sure.”

“Good. Raymond, I’m not sure you realize this. When I work with you on the budget, I can smell your breath. The smell is bothering me, so much that I’m not happy about working with you that closely. Is there something you can do?

“Oh no.”

“Yes.”

“Of course there’s something I can do! Let me use one of those breath mint strips. And, if I forget, just tell me, ok?”

A completely different conversation. Giving people personal feedback isn’t easy, and it’s necessary to keep a smooth working relationship. The quicker you are, as the feedback giver, to make your point, the kinder the feedback is. As someone in the workshop said, “It’s kind to be firm.”

I am an early reviewer on Esther Derby’s and Diana Larsen’s upcoming book about retrospectives (Pragmatic Bookshelf, sometime this year).

Here’s a piece of my feedback that puzzled Esther:

“Put those words on weight training!”

Her response was “cute, but what do I do?” I laughed out loud on the phone with her. I was attempting to say something like this: “The verbs you’re using are too weak for me to convey the strength of your ideas. Please use stronger verbs.” But what came out was the weight training.

Now that I’ve explained what I meant, it makes some sense. Esther and Diana will decide what to do about the feedback now that they understand it But feedback like this occurs all the time when people review other people’s work.

If you’re not pairing–which tends to eliminate confusing feedback–make sure your review comments help people see what to change, whether they are writing a natural language or code.

I’d recommended a group consider pair-programming as a technique to help everyone learn more about the system. One of the developers came up to me later and said, “How do I give feedback while pairing?” I said “Nicely,” and promised more specifics. Here are my guidelines for pairing feedback:

• Explain the effect on me for that line of code/writing. “I’m confused by that…” with the specific confusion.
• Recognize when it’s time to change positions. If I’m the navigator and I object constantly, it’s time to change seats.
• If one person says, “I wouldn’t do it that way,” the other person has the right to say, “Ok, but we both have to live with the product; this isn’t just yours.”
• Don’t label the work product. “This code is awful” is useless feedback. It doesn’t explain what’s awful, and the label feels like it’s on the person, not the work product.
• Meta-feedback: Listen for laughter or some other expression of enjoyment. If no one is laughing or obviously enjoying the pairing, something could be wrong. When Esther and I stopped laughing when we were writing Behind Closed Doors, we knew it was time to stop for the day.

I’m sure there’s more and I’m blocked for now. If you have a favorite mechanism for feedback while pairing, please comment. And read some of Esther’s writings on feedback, especially Peer-to-Peer Feedback.

In my project management class a few weeks ago, I did an activity on feedback. In my experience, many project managers are also functional managers, so they need to give feedback. And, in highly collaborative teams, the person called “manager” isn’t the only one to give and receive feedback.

One team got stuck. One team-member worked with someone with bad breath. As he explained it, “You could tell 10 minutes after this guy was in the room that he’d been there.” This one person’s bad breath was preventing the whole team from working together. In fact, some people asked to be moved off the project. This is a serious problem.

They’d thought of these techniques:

• Send him an anonymous email to some site that deals with bad breath.
• Leave Listerine on his desk.

I asked if they couldn’t think of some direct approach to feedback. “Oh, no, I couldn’t do that; it would hurt his feelings,” was the answer. I don’t buy it, and explained my reaction. If someone left me an anonymous email or a mouthwash, I would either assume it wasn’t for me, or that it was a joke. I’m dense enough that I would not link it to my breath. And even if I did assume it was for me, I would be hurt that no one felt that I was a reasonable enough person to have a conversation about it.

Anonymous feedback techniques are not specific. Does the person have bad breath all the time or only after eating a lunch with lots of garlic? The person needs to know.

Here’s the suggestion I made to my student. Make an appointment for a private conversation. Explain that you (the person in my class) has noticed the other person’s bad breath on several (and name them) occasions. And, other people notice the odor enough so that they have asked to not work on the same project with this person. Once the two people agreed on the data, they could move into problem-solving mode. (”Would you like help solving this problem?”)

Note that this follows Esther’s four steps listed in Feedback Traps:

• Start by creating an opening.
• Describe the behavior or result without using labels, or evaluations.
• State the impact using language. No one can argue you out of what you feel.
• Make a request.

I don’t know the state of this feedback, but it’s clear to me that indirect feedback doesn’t work. Clear and direct feedback does work.

I was reading You Are Possibly Very Annoying and realized I hadn’t posted Esther’s and my six steps to effective feedback. (This is in the management book, starting publisher editing.) Here they are:

1. Make sure you’re giving feedback about the work or the working relationships. Especially avoid clothes and other personal appearance issues (unless they interfere with work), choice of romantic interest, religion, child-raising.
2. Gather specific examples of observed behavior or results. When you gather specific examples, you’re likely to say “The last three times you checked in code, this, this, and that, your code broke the build.” If you say “You always break the build,” all the other person needs is one example of a time he or she didn’t. There goes the conversations.
3. Determine the outcome you desire. Sometimes you want some joint problem solving. Sometimes, you want to explain a narrow band of acceptable behavior.
4. Deliver feedback privately. Unless other people are in danger, or the behavior is unacceptable for your culture, have a private conversation.
5. If you have some specific action or result you want, say it. If you’re open to a range of possible solutions, engage in joint problem solving.
6. Agree how you’ll follow up.

When Esther and I ran a Feedback Lab at AYE a few years ago, people loved the chance to practice. Take the chance to practice yourself. That way you (and I can avoid being possibly annoying.

I’m teaching project management to graduate students this year. One of their assignments is to keep a project management journal. I explained it this way: PMs make decisions where the consequences — the results of their decisions — can be far removed from the decision. One of the things I want the students to learn is how to observe their states, not just the project’s state. Journaling is the feedback technique I chose for this class.

I explained this to someone last week, and he was more than mildly surprised. He’d never heard of journaling, certainly not as a technique to obtain feedback about your own work. I was surprised, because before I’d heard of journaling, I’d kept an “engineering” notebook. I took notes at meetings, notes about problems, anything I didn’t want to forget in my notebook. I didn’t use the notebook specifically as feedback for me — not at the beginning — but my notebook is how I finally learned not to create infinite loops. (I was a pro at writing infinite loops no matter what language, and it wasn’t until I started noting under which circumstances I’d created the loop did I learn to stop writing them.)

I learned about journaling when I read Weinberg’s Becoming a Technical Leader. Weinberg suggested people journal, not just taking notes, but looking back at your work or life and commenting on it. Aha! I learned about my decision-making patterns and I could make choices about whether I wanted to continue with those same choices or make new ones. (I learned tons of great stuff from that book.)

In my consulting, I find that too many managers and project managers don’t take a few minutes a day to reflect on what they’ve done, the decisions they made, or the consequences of those decisions. I started notebooking in 1978. I started journaling in 1995 (ok, so I was a little slow). But now, I don’t work without the benefit of some form of notebook and journal. Do you journal? Do you find it effective? Have you ever kept a journal to see where your PM decisions have taken you?