Note on Instructions (no claim to world domination)

As it happens

Do you want to bring some business to a successful end? Seriously? And this is not a picnic outside the city, but a “serious” project for 3-4 months with the participation of five people, a couple of whom work remotely and haven’t seen each other’s eyes (even worse, their qualifications are not known for sure)? And the development of a product can take a tidy sum, moreover, there is a feeling, with an over-expenditure, and behind it is a lender with “big teeth”? You have little idea of ​​the scope of work, and in general, how to implement all this exactly? You cannot control everyone, because you have no idea what each participant is doing (“oh, he went fishing again, and the project is not compiled ...”)? You do not have sufficient qualifications to even understand what another programmer sent you? Do you have friction in the team from the start? Or are everyone smiling at each other nicely, but all meetings on Skype end only with swearing or drinking beer with choking on the touch screen ( tick against questions )?



You can only sympathize. Because without proper project management there is not enough, and the sooner the better. Because the screens do not tolerate when about them clink glasses.



So you think this is rubbish and waste of time. They say that project management is a bureaucracy and a lot of "old feathers ... soviet or Western Pharisees"? Then watch out. The case "will not burn out", but you - will burn. At best, your “project” will quietly die, and you will not even understand at what point it happened. First, one person will disappear, imperceptibly so, without even having passed the last task, then the second ... At the same time, everyone will have a hundred plausible reasons about what happened, and why you still owe him money, which you first hear about. But after all, you yourself will realize it only in a week, or even two, after you had to get the results of the work from them? Then you yourself will start to devote less time to the project, and at some point you will find that you are dreaming of a completely different idea, persuading your neighbor Mishka to take part in the new “super-project for a million”, but you don’t even think about the old one. And everything will start on a new one. Only here with the same result.



Maybe worse. If you borrowed money from your acquaintances, and even with a dark past, or obtained a contract from a distributor or at least a simple customer, or took a bank loan, registered your LLC and became the general director ( “wow!” ), The case may even end. fried. Do not say "gop" until you have been "shot." If, before the deal, you think that signing this “steep contract with blue seals and cool monograms at the corners” will somehow spur you and your colleagues, a star of inspiration will ignite on your foreheads, and your strength will not leave you even after the fiftieth clattering on the screen, then you are greatly mistaken. Everything will be as before , but only until such time as creditors do not remember you. And they, unlike you, will be remembered . Because you owe them by definition now.

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“Bullshit, - you say. - Our project is free . We are all volunteers (and generally from a parallel class). We owe nothing to anyone! ” Should not? This is a direct prerequisite for such volunteer projects for the guaranteed quiet dying described just above. Therefore, the work should not be done on time. And the quality should not provide. And the more they should not report (Question: “No, and who are you?”. Answer: “And you - who are you ?!” Golden calf. ). Do you think this will end with something useful?

Who owes whom?

Well, what do your colleagues owe you? What should they even in "free" projects? What happened when you clapped hands together and shouted joyfully: “Let's go!”? This is strange, but, despite the free of charge of their services, everyone now has to follow the instructions of the doctor’s ... directives of the general director and other "generals", as well as the instructions of his immediate superior. Of course, if all these posts exist, formally or not. And, of course, all these orders must fit into the framework of these very duties of your office and, of course, the powers of the “ordering”.



If you are given a task, you undertake to fulfill it. The obligation consists of three principal and inseparable parts:

• your consent to fulfillment (it doesn’t matter - whether you want to do it internally, psychologically, to fulfill it or not - subscribe to the project, endure or resign),

• your capabilities (powers, strengths, knowledge, skills) and

• Actually accepting the conditions of the task (input parameters, requirements of the manager for terms, quality, methods of implementation, etc.).



There is such a thing as "Texan handshake." Agreed, then you must fulfill the subject of the contract. There is an official contract or not, but it's an honor to bring everything to the end, moreover, as required. But it is there, in faraway America, but we have ...

Instructions will go on the spot ...

And now you start the task, quietly and peacefully turn on the computer, do not touch anyone ... “Read, how to do it!”, The director suddenly screamed, shaking with some crumpled paper. - "Do what is prescribed!". Mood falls. The determination to get into the "Classmates" is slowly fading away. “Damn bureaucrat! - you think. “Again, these job descriptions ...”



But what is written in these job descriptions? Of course, the instructions that you must follow "in its place." It seems that everything is simple, although in practice in most organizations there are only a few general sentences in them, nobody reads them and does not want to read them, but that is another question. Is this bureaucracy? No, not yet.



Instructions are part of the project management system . Let's talk about them. What is the instruction (its version in the case of specific tasks - “standard operating procedure”)? This is a set of steps necessary to perform a task and solve possible problems that may arise "along the way." “Insert the plug into the socket. Press the "Power" button, turn the frequency control knob to the right until you get a clear sound. If there is no sound, check the volume using the indicator on the right ... ".



Why are instructions needed? A seditious thought for some, but for me there is nowhere else to be clearer - in order to effectively and quickly accomplish the tasks set and not reinvent the bicycle. And in general - on time to set these very tasks, without which your project is doomed to ... Well, read above.

Pink reality glasses

Many will say: "The instructions make the system sluggish, unresponsive, unable to respond quickly to changes and emergencies." However, this is not a problem of a specific instruction, but an instruction management system, which should allow to supplement and adapt procedures to the existing realities. The law may be bad, but this is the law — lawlessness is much worse. But if the law is bad, the system of changing it for the better is also necessary. In the same place where the laws (instructions) do not change, they begin to slow down progress and harm the common cause, and a false opinion arises, such as “instructions — into the furnace, we'd better without them.”



Of course, sometimes, in particularly simple, individual cases, "you can do without them." Where people absolutely correctly understand each other, where they know exactly what to do and how, where there are no conflict situations or some kind of external force majeure, there are no simply unaccounted circumstances, where there are no exact dates, limited budget and indigestible technical specifications. Have you often met this? Take off the rose-colored glasses! It happens very rarely. After all, it works, while ... it works, nothing more. But it happens in the minds of the creators of the next "project for a million." And this is already sad. Because there will be problems. Required.

Potato season

A simple example. The employee is assigned the only task and, say, its delivery is scheduled in a week. It takes ten days. The boss comes to his senses (and, incidentally, he remembered accidentally about the worker — he just owes him money), calls: “How are you? At least half done? ". Answer: "Yes, so far, no, Slavka, I went to the potatoes, however, the season!" “With your bucket!” Giggles the “boss.” The customer comes: "Where is the order?". The boss is embarrassed, but firmly, because it is not the first time: “We do. We are testing. Coffee? We will send everything tomorrow. ” Do you think tomorrow will be all ready? The funny thing is that maybe “will”. Because initially they did not understand that the price for this whole task is at most 4 hours, but at the same time they will not conduct any testing - “Why? It works like! ”.

Some theory

In this case, there is a need for at least several instructions, more precisely, “standard operating procedures” (SOP, English version - SOP).



1. The procedure for initiating a review of the implementation of the task. There may be a lot of ideas. Too much. Mad people enough. And for their simple consideration it can take just a lot of time - your precious time. In this case, you must ask the following questions, which are described in this manual. What exactly needs to be done? Should this be done in principle ? How to describe it ? Who will treat her as a technician ? Who will decide on an attempt to consider this problem at all? Is this in principle realizable? Now is the moment when the project is missing something? And where should this be described so that all those who need to read it, and those who should not be watched, do not peep? What words need to describe it? Is it just a sparkling idea or a consequence of another, already existing task? What materials to attach? What reasons lead? Do you need someone's authoritative opinion as an argument?



All these things should be described in detail in the manual as a step-by-step guide, so that the very initial discussion of the problem with the authorities or the specialist does not turn out to be puzzled and irritated: “And what is this, then? I did not understand anything ... Let’s deal with such garbage in a month or two ... ”



2. The procedure for determining the resources for the implementation of the task determines the evaluation instructions for the following resources:

• human (programmers need? And designers? Will one tester cope or just just the two of them?),
• financial,
• temporal,
• material (device, auxiliary device, computer for testing, etc.),
• informational (is the technical specification provided sufficient or are additional documents needed, such as a description of a new technology, a new animation script or information like passwords, server addresses, etc.?),
• resources in the sense of “software resources”, for example, for programmers, these may be third-party libraries or icons drawn before by designers.

3. The procedure for deciding on the need to implement the task. According to the results of the cost determination procedure, it is necessary to make a decision - is it worth it at all at the moment to implement this task? Maybe look for alternatives, postpone it until better times, or even refuse?



4. The procedure for describing tasks for its implementation . When a decision is made that the task should be implemented, it should be described already in a format for specific performers. The option “Need to draw a tree” is very bad. It is not clear - what kind of "tree", where it will be displayed, why and, respectively, in what style, what size, what are the output file formats, etc. Otherwise, the artist will have to redraw "birch into oak", and then back and for sure, not once - and this is an overspending of time, forces, perhaps finances, and increasing general tension and conflict. In the case of programmers, it is still “neglected”. They need to be given extremely chewed tasks that clearly define "where is left and where is right." To write them "You need to animate the gnome" means to run into, at best, Homeric laughter and radical alteration by you of the whole task. At worst, it will be good or not work at all, but in the end, the same failed deadlines and finances are again. Thus, in the procedure (there should be a whole package for tasks of the same type or positions) it should be very clearly described: how and what to describe for the developer so that your desired unambiguously coincides with its implementation .



5. The procedure for the transfer of tasks to the Executive . It is not enough to write an assignment and with a tired but satisfied look lean back in front of an elderly, but leather chair, left over from the former office owner. How will the developer get this task? Will he receive an automatic mail notification or does he need to call the communal apartment and shout into the phone for a long time, calling his spirit among the 37 guests? Are you sure that he looks at the mail every 15 minutes? What does he even take up his performance (otherwise it’s the potato season)? That when he takes it, you will immediately find out about it, because you would like to control the very beginning and change something already now? This procedure should describe in detail all these nuances - who, to whom, when and how to transfer documents and "give the go-ahead." In general, there should be the so-called principle of non - repudiation - if a task is entered into a certain system (for example, Project Management like Podio, Do.com or Basecamp), then the recipient is guaranteed to receive it on his email, telephone, etc., and after that he basically doesn’t have the right childishly babble that "there was no alert, the server was probably buggy, but I sat and waited." But even with this principle in this situation, it is better to foresee something like the response of the performer: “The assignment is received, I understood everything.” For your peace of mind.



6. The procedure for monitoring the execution of tasks. Well, the task is received. And it seems even started his performance. What's next? The task can be very important, extremely. And the performer has “so many relatives in the country, and they are all so painful (“ Beware of the car ”) ... Always control over the progress of work. Oh, no, do not call the developer every half hour and ask in a hysterical voice how many pixels he has already painted or lines of code he wrote! It's annoying just creepy. However, it is clear that he is obliged to provide information in the form of performance percentages - in the same Project Management system., Say once a day or every other day, it does not matter - but, again, in agreement with this instruction. If the task is large, intermediate reports are possible on the course of execution and problems that arise - either tied to dates or to phases of work. Similar things are described in this protocol - what, when, how much and how.



7. The procedure for completing the task by the developer . This procedure is the essence of the description of specific actions that depend on the actual task being performed. What should the developer do? How to do? What problems can be and what to do to solve them? There can be both two lines, and 200 pages of narrow text, there are no universal solutions ... But it is precisely this that often saves the time, nerves and strength of the performer.



8. The procedure for submitting the job . So, the work is done. Now you need to pass it. The procedure describes how the results of the task are transmitted, to whom, in what form, how the interested persons are notified.



9. Procedure for testing tasks . Getting the results of the job does not mean the end of the story. It is necessary to check whether it is done, with proper quality and so on. In fact, this is the testing phase (a huge separate topic for discussion). A very important stage, therefore, testing procedures are an essential attribute of a quality product. Unfortunately, too often this is ignored by the developers. Testing instructions are written for a specific task, depending on its specifics and as detailed as possible. It lists all the conditions under which the “result of the task” can function, or “what it should look like” if it is a drawing (that is, a task specification corresponds). A poorly written test script causes errors and bugs in the final product.



10. The procedure for accepting tasks . Testing itself is just testing. Formally, the work on the task has not yet been accepted. Now it is necessary to describe the steps to “turn on” the task both formally (put a “plus sign” on the implementation, and the salary is also charged for the piecemeal paid employee) and practically - for example, if it’s a drawing, what happens next, what stakeholders this is known so that they can use it in their assignments, to whom it is transferred “physically”, where it is stored, how it is stored, etc.



11. It is also possible to maintain and control the results of the assignment. Indeed, in serious projects this does not end the history of the task. It is often necessary to continue tracking for one reason or another. In the end, subsequent general tests may find bugs in it, and the developer will be obliged to recall the details of how this feature was implemented. It is possible that the results themselves may in their essence change with time or due to interaction with newly arising other possibilities (completed tasks) - either intentionally or not. All this must be strictly taken into account, and for this purpose there are already given instructions. Considering such things can be difficult.



Impressive? But these are only the basic, general procedures, instructions on how to carry out "only" tasks! For individual, specific tasks, their own SOPs are usually written. But it is precisely these steps that help to accomplish all the tasks that have been planned, to do only what is required - on time, without exceeding financial or material resources and, ultimately, to finish the project, and not regret later that you have been involved in handling such matters, hiding eyes from a customer or lender.

Bureaucracy

Well, where and how does bureaucracy arise? Where does this calamity come from, which is commonly blamed on instructions? It arises primarily in the minds of people, from the inflexibility of their thinking, from the reluctance not only to follow something, but often just to read. The instruction does not allow you to turn around in full beauty? So change the instruction, but after the change, follow it, staying in the system, otherwise you will receive not anarchy, but anarchy.