The mice cried, pricked, but continued to nibble the cactus


This note is about one unpleasant situation in which not so long ago I got personally. The described problem and the experience gained in solving it are especially valuable due to the fact that I visited two roles: in the status of senior developer - project manager for developing product features, and later in the rank of head of software development department. Briefly, the problem can be stated as follows: how to change the attitude of employees to the product that they make, especially if the attitude is bad, and the product has a bad reputation.

We will clarify the introductory notes a bit. We are talking about an employee of a medium or large company that produces replicated software, which has a non-zero audience (about 100 or more customers who paid money for it), has been on the market for several years (at least 2-3 years) and has some kind of reputation.

I must say right away that further discussion will not be about the external reputation of the product, which is often formed by sales, marketing and PR in order to dust the customer’s brains. Any external review of the product should not be taken for granted, and there are many reasons for this. Here are just a few of them:
  • The review can be written by the marketing of your company, which is very common, and this is normal;
  • recall can be a "black PR" of your competitors (and this is also normal);
  • The review is simply incompetent. Example, the client did not understand your product and wrote that your CRM is not able to hammer in nails, or an inexperienced marketer began comparing your online Task Manager with Excel ...

But this is not about that, but about the internal attitude of the team to the product, i.e. people who do it in full time mode talk about what the product says about it and earn a living for it. I’ll clarify that this is also not related to the product of other departments of the company, otherwise external factors must be taken into account (for example, competition, envy).

A few more words about why I found the problem relevant. Indeed, directly or indirectly, external factors confirm it. For example, at technical conferences and forums, some representatives of large companies (not all !!!) often react to reasonable attacks on their products quite aggressively. The larger the company and the longer the product is on the market, the harder it is to maintain its internal reputation and maintain high morale in the team working on it. I will not discuss this topic further, because Habré recently wrote about this .

With the production sorted out. What to do? Let's first visit the shoes of an “ordinary” employee.

Developer and Cactus

I worked in a department directly related to the development of replicated software, which had a bunch of problems. Attitudes towards him, like morality in the team, were appropriate. How was this manifested among ordinary employees and department managers? When in an informal conversation it was a question of the quality of the program, instead of answering, the respondent saw a downcast gaze, a nervous laugh, an uninitiated mooing or convulsive attempts to snap back. Everyone considered it his duty to add firewood to the furnace, i.e. Scolding a product was simply fashionable even within the team. In general, the title of the article describes the situation that I’ve gotten to in the best possible way ... What should a “person from a plow”, that is, an ordinary employee, do in such a situation?

First of all, it is worth asking the management whether it is aware of the current internal problem and has an idea how this situation can be solved. Indeed, for an ambitious professional it can be an interesting challenge to return the product to a competitive state, provided there is a clear strategy for its future development. It is important not to make a mistake in the person from whom you demand these answers. It is unlikely that this should be the president of the company or CEO, because in large companies, as a rule, they are not aware of such “earthly” problems. The higher the leadership is, the less is his awareness. But you have to put up with it. In our case, besides me, there were a couple of curious employees, and there was also someone to ask. We did not get a clear answer, but made the managers think about it, which, it seems to me, has moved the process from a dead point.

If you didn’t get a clear plan for getting out of the situation or it just doesn’t exist, then it already makes sense to look for a new job or you will remain a mouse from the title of the article. Unfortunately, many of our handful of "activists" did just that without waiting ... Although exceptions are possible here. For example, in the Russian market there are many examples of far from the most outstanding products of a different class, which have not been developing for several years and are supported in the patch and backup mode. At the same time, they feel great financially and are not going to bend at all (at least in the foreseeable future).

The patchworking department of the product is well suited for people looking for a safe haven in the turbulent IT world. All this is a solution to the problem for ordinary employees, but then we will consider a more constructive approach.

Manager and cactus

From the above it follows that the key role in solving this problem lies with the manager (department head or product manager). Now we get into his skin and look at the problem from a different point of view, which happened to me.

First of all, the manager has more opportunities to look at the situation from a different angle, because ordinary employees do not always have the breadth of view or information to compare their brainchild with competitors, and they simply by inertia follow public opinion. Realizing this, I had to make every effort to study the market of competitors, trends, and also try to identify key problems from the sea of ​​negativity formed around our cactus.

Secondly, after receiving adequate information, if reality has not yet recaptured your desire to change the situation, you need to use the following advice - "force yourself and others to look at the harsh facts in the face." This is a phrase from Jim Collins’s book, From Good to Great. In a situation where everything around is breathing negative and waiting, it won’t wait when you screw it up, it's not easy. After all, the instinct of self-preservation or the delicate mental organization of developers can simply prevent one day from dumping everything on subordinates. For me, the main argument was that by and large there was already nothing to lose, so it would be difficult to spoil the stalemate. All the team members should talk about problems constantly (almost every smaller or larger meeting I start with this), since people tend to run away from major problems and do what they like or get better. Do not forget to talk about the advantages of the product without undue sentiment. One practical piece of advice helps a lot in this matter. Only daily using your product, you can feel yourself in the shoes of the user. Ideally implement your software at the company level. If this is difficult, then at least adapt it for the personal use of employees.

The third step is to shape the vision and strategy of the product, or to get it done. After the first step, it will already be easier to do.

The key role in ensuring that this vision becomes part of the corporate spirit and is conveyed to all participants in the process is played by the charisma and motivation of the manager. For example, I’m sure that the first thing we proposed to everyone as a strategy didn’t look the best way that many still disagree with it internally, but the enthusiasm with which this was done could not but positively affect the general mood collective.

Instead of a conclusion

Two other interesting points that I noted for myself:
  • Not always a problem can be solved by applying these tips in their pure form. For example, a case helped us develop a strategy. Leaving the company is a product manager, before whom, while I was still an RP for developing one of the features, I raised questions about the development concept. After that, the general director had to take up the concept personally, which is also not about Feng Shui, but we entered into a constructive dialogue. And now there is no product manager (which in itself is certainly bad), but the "internal reputation" of the product in the company has become much better ...
  • Often the problem is not in the software that is done from scratch or which has been inherited, but in the heads of the people who work with it. Even before the events that were completed, we ourselves changed a lot in our development processes, which led to an improvement in quality and increased speed of product delivery, but until we started to change our attitude to the product, no one just noticed.


And the result was as follows: it became not fashionable to scold our cactus, and if outbreaks of negativity begin, they quickly go into the plane of a reasoned dispute. In other words, the mice don’t cry, the cactus doesn’t seem so prickly either. There is even a hope that sooner or later it will blossom ...

But not everything is so rosy, because Having solved one problem, I ran into another, more global one. In most cases, the product is positioned and, worst of all, sold and actually used by customers incorrectly! Figuratively speaking, they try to eat our cactus instead of potatoes, abundantly pouring sauce ... Now I understand that in fact this was the key problem from the beginning. But more about that in a separate article. I hope the experience and tips come in handy, and there is something to complement them.

Also popular now: