Pick the process improvement process you prefer and there will always be an analysis phase specified before deciding what to improve.

For this entry, I am going to focus on the postmortem or 'lessons learned' which should be done after any project or iteration and the interesting reasons why the analysis rarely leads to any change.

When gathering the good, the bad and the ugly, there seems to be a natural propensity to state the symptom and not the problem. Gather the symptoms and spend the time analyzing which are just symptoms and spending the time doing the analysis to uncover the problem. Some symptoms do need to be addressed, but once they are do not ignore them especially when they are an indication of a problem.

Avoiding the analysis ( the hard part) rarely leads to any meaningful improvement so focus on uncovering,understanding and addressing the problem and do not just list and address the symptom.

Aspirin is wonderful for a headache but not very effective if the problem is a brain tumor !

The link below is an  survey which should be required reading for all middle and upper managers in engineering companies:

http://electronicdesign.com/trends-amp-analysis/2013-engineering-salary-survey-pressure-salaries-down

It contains a large number of divergent opinions, but states most of tone which I have noted amongst engineers, and says most of the things they would be very unlikely to transmit to management.

Since this is a long article, I will not be commenting on it except to say that it does allude to a multitude of complex problems which we should all be thinking about and addressing.

Hope this provokes as much thought for you as it is doing for me.

A few days ago I saw an interesting article on personnel evaluation where the author noted that a packet of seeds does not carry a picture of the seeds but rather the plant that they will become with nurturing. This appears to be the best way of viewing the role of the mentor - recognize and nurture the potential of the mentee.

Most of the mentors I have had took the approach of sink or swim, and luckily I swam.  However, when you act as a mentor, I believe your main task is to see the potential, understand what is needed to achieve that potential and assist in growth by a mixture of preparing the person/environment as well as some showing by personal behavior and motivation. Like your garden this takes an ongoing investment to see the results.

Growing the seed is more than planting and occasional watering !

All of the process improvement processes are a variation on:

• Define
• Measure
• Analyze
• Act
• Control

So to improve, one must measure and one of the most requested and hotly debated metrics is programmer productivity, which is used for ratings, raises and a plethora of non-process activities.

Unfortunately, this measurement is often subject to inversion ( does not correlate well to what is being measured) and when people realize that it is being used for rating, can and will be gamed. The other unfortunate reality is the programmer productivity is actually a better measurement of the process than of the people, so it is a very useful metric if used correctly.

As always, be careful what you measure since this will often be counterproductive and drive unintended consequences as can be seen in the much quoted Dilbert cartoon -
http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1995-11-13/

In conclusion, ensure that metrics are judiciously used and that productivity and performance are based on more than one metric

There are two types of people, simplifiers and complicators and there are generally more complicators than simplifiers especially in software. If this were not true, we would not have the joke that "if it ain't broke, it doesn't have enough features yet".

Complicators can take any problem and complicate it, they can add irrelevant facts, take hours of every bodies time, and unfortunately, since they are visibly in the thick of things, are usually getting accolades and rewards.

Simplifiers can separate the important from the irrelevant and are those quietly getting the job done, not because the problem was simple, but because they made it so.

Simplifying creates a more focused, productive and profitable environment, so constantly check that things are being kept as simple as possible, and if anything feels overly complex, go back and think about it more before rushing off to execute.

Here are some steps to assist in simplification:

• Reward the behavior you want - you tend to get what you ask for.
• Plans should be simple, short, clear and communicated.
• Ensure that priorities are set - if everything is important, nothing is.
• Create an environment where review and correction is the norm.
• Avoid analysis paralysis - understand that data is never complete and less is better.