Although the relevant personnel involved in software development are called engineers and technicians, they are actually craftsmen in essence. Craftsmanship must be a skill, and there are some tricks in it that laymen cannot do, and it is difficult to fully understand the tricks. During the cooperation process, I am afraid of being fooled :-).
"Are you saturated with workload?", "Is the team's workload saturated?" For many students, I believe this is a soul-searching question. Recently, Uncle Guo has also been asked "again". This question can be discussed from many angles, and now because the boss is asking, here is an answer mainly from the perspective of the boss.
1. The low efficiency may be because the demand is too high-end
"Things are made too slowly. Shouldn't these things be done in 2 days? Why did it take 10 days?"
House decoration is an example that is relatively close to life. To transform a house from a rough into a "Mediterranean" one involves many processes, techniques, and materials. Different processes, materials, and different construction requirements have a great impact on the cost. Most of the time, what kind of process and material to use is determined by the budget first, and then reversed.
This shows that there is a lot of room for flexibility to solve the same problem of "decorating the house as the Mediterranean Sea". If you meet a wealthy owner and say that you are not short of money, you can do whatever you want, then you may use better materials and more complicated craftsmanship, focusing on the effect. If you encounter an owner with a limited budget, you may recommend affordable materials, relatively easy-to-construct techniques, and the price is the main factor. In the end, a luxury-equipped Mediterranean may be able to hold 3 low-end Mediterraneans of the same size. However, it obviously cannot be said that the workload is not saturated for luxury outfits in the Mediterranean.
Replacing this problem with "developing an online shopping mall" or completing "XXX function" in the software field, the situation is actually exactly the same. Good-looking, high-performance, many functional modules, no bugs, and support for 100,000 people to kill at the same time, the cost and time required must be several times more expensive than finding an open-source one from the Internet with slight modifications or even no modifications. If the budget is limited, you can lower the requirements first. It is not necessary to make a Taobao in one step, just enough. In this way, the investment can be reduced, the development cycle can be shortened, and the remaining time can be used for other projects, and the work efficiency will be more "high".
As a leader, the goal and thinking should be clearly defined, "how to save money" and "how to get it", the results obtained cannot be simply compared in quantity. For example, if you don't care much about the quality of a function, you can make it clear. This is not important, no specification test is required, as long as it can be used. You can save a lot of testing costs. If the requirements for user experience are not high, you can tell the developer how to do it conveniently, and don't pursue interaction and appearance details.
Therefore, doing more does not mean that the workload is saturated, and doing it slowly does not mean that it is not saturated. It is necessary to clarify the standards and priorities first.
2. Saturated workload may not be beneficial
Most of the time when you spend money to hire someone, you hope that he will not be idle, but there are also many exceptions. The typical type of exception is "in case of emergency". The so-called raise soldiers for a thousand days, and use them for a while.
For example, if you hire a driver, his job responsibility should be to drive you safely to your destination when you need to travel. This is what you hired for, and it is your core need. You should not arrange for him to drive out for two laps by himself for a full 8 hours a day when you don't need him to help you drive, because you are afraid that he will be free.
Going back to the software field, if your company model is mainly for project outsourcing, then every developer should not be idle is undoubtedly what you should pursue. Faster delivery time means lower cost, which corresponds to higher profit .
And if your company is operating a product of its own, whether it has been "saturated" is no longer the key to the problem. Your requirements for R&D may become, whether you can respond to business needs in a timely manner, and whether you have the ability to realize your creative requirements. Because working hard to produce functions does not necessarily bring corresponding customer and business growth.
On the contrary, in order to saturate the research and development, do not use it for nothing, and desperately add some dispensable requirements, but it may hurt the user experience of your system, technically make your system difficult to maintain, and increase the cost of hardware requirements.
"Knowledge comes from leisure", everyone lowers their heads and pulls the cart, and it is difficult for anyone to look up at the road.
3. Risks in the details of the assessment process
——"The boss has started to strictly control attendance, hygiene, and dress, which means that your company must be going downhill." Most people should think that such a statement makes sense in technology companies, because these details are usually not the main factors that affect how much your business does. If the company can't finish all the orders, there must be no time to take care of this, and everyone's workload will automatically be saturated.
Managers usually get what they assess, and at the same time, there are gains and losses. If you feel that everyone is not working hard and evaluate everyone's overtime work, then the overtime statistics will eventually increase. But the efficiency may not be improved. Employees may think that they have to work overtime anyway. Put 8 hours of work into 10 hours and get it done. At the same time, it may cause dissatisfaction among other pragmatic employees, resulting in an increase in turnover rate and an increase in personnel replacement costs.
If the efficiency is assessed by assessing the number of codes, then a higher man-day code output will definitely be obtained. However, the reuse rate of modules may be reduced. Everyone tends to invent the wheel by themselves, which reduces the maintainability of the system and eventually becomes a mountain of shit.
There are many factors in the process, and the assessment cost is high. It is generally recommended to be result-oriented, such as whether the delivery is on schedule, whether the users are satisfied, and whether it has made money. At the same time, it is not recommended to assess individuals, and the smallest granularity should be sufficient for teams. The process and details should be handled flexibly by professional managers. After all, management is people-oriented, which is where the value of managers lies.
Business is the result. If one person is hired to take orders from 10 people, the workload will not be saturated.
4. Determination of psychological price
Most of Uncle Guo’s professional experience is in the development of self-operated product projects. During this period, the affirmation obtained from the team level is very limited. Because in addition to the first launch of the self-operating node, the follow-up is to continuously collect and iterate the needs of all parties. Among them, the impact of development efficiency and skills on whether you can make money is very difficult to reflect. Therefore, it is difficult for the bosses to have a psychological price for the stage efficiency and quality of the development team. Usually, when the delivery time affects the business development, they will urge you to hurry up and go online as soon as possible, or if the R&D expenditure is too much, they will lay off employees.
R&D employees also hope to have a feedback, to give some good or bad comments. The basis of the evaluation is the target, the psychological price.
Combined with real life, "Can it be cheaper?" "How much do you want?". This actually reflects that in the transaction process, the first thing to determine is the psychological price, and the final determination party is usually the buyer, that is, the bosses. As a buyer, you can't always ask the seller "cheaper?" If you can give a psychological price, it will appear full of sincerity and enjoyment.
The psychological price anchors a benchmark, and the seller knows that if the price is lower than this price, it means a happy cooperation. If the cost cannot reach this price, then I will recommend you other products or solutions, also for the purpose of happy cooperation.
Bosses may think that if I don't understand research and development, how do I know how much is expensive and how much is cheap. In fact, when we buy most things in life, it is difficult for you to know how much it costs, but in the end the transaction is still made.
With psychological expectations, it is possible to produce good or bad evaluations and have clear goals.
V. Conclusion
When the boss feels that everyone's workload is not saturated, there are usually two situations.
1. The company's business income is limited, and the proportion of R&D budget investment is too high. Generally speaking, R&D cannot be supported. At this time, if you don’t have the confidence to start the business in a short time, you can only focus on cost constraints, lay off some people, simplify the requirements, lower the quality requirements, lengthen the development cycle, and don’t spread too much.
2. I feel that my own research and development is not as good as that of others, and others can do it faster and more economically. You can directly put forward the requirements of results, such as when this must be launched, and there must be no major problems in production, etc. Let professional people handle the details of the process, and everyone will be happy if it is done. If it can't be done, then check the boss's insight. Whether the management is bad, the employees are not capable, or someone is fooling you about Star Wars, the bosses need to decide on their own.