This past week I attended Agile 2007 where I picked up the book Behind Closed Doors by Johanna Rothman and Esther Derby. I started reading this book on Thursday night and finished on Friday on the plane. It is an absolute must read for anyone that manages people. It is slightly geared towards people that are managing software development teams in an agile environment. I think the book’s principles could be applied to any department though and to any methodology. The book provides dialogue between people that make up a company to provide examples of how a great manager would handle specific situations. It also explains how to interview potential team members. I actually took a session at Agile 2007 from Johanna Rothman specifically on this topic. Unfortunately, it was the best session of the conference and I had to leave half ways through it to get back. It really makes you question what you look for when hiring for an agile team specifically as the values are typically different than traditional development environments. There are many other great points in this book that resonated with me. This includes:
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Manages who fail to give feedback lose trust and productivity.
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Appreciate, Don’t Thank. They say to do this because “Thank You” is not very personal. It is better to tell someone that you appreciate them for something and that they helped you in a certain way. I do agree with this, however, there are people that don’t even say thanks, so if appreciation is too much then try thanks and then move onto appreciation after you have mastered that.
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Multitasking: Wasting Mental Cycles. I can’t remember if it was the book or Johanna’s session where a great analogy was brought up. People are not computers. Computers can contain perfect memory for two sets of instructions. It can bounce between the two sets and execute the sets concurrently because of this. People however cannot do this. I think it is pretty obvious from this book and almost all other sources that multitasking is not effective as completing one thing and moving on to the next. It still seems that people that do this are looked highly upon.
There are many other great points, but these are just a few I felt that were worth mentioning. I encourage you to read this book. I look forward to hear what you took away from it. I also have a copy of this book so if you are a co-worker and want to read it, please let me know.
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