Be able to say “no” and be able to say “yes”

Be able to say no

Senior developer Valera works as a tmlid on a large and important project for a large and important customer. A hot summer is roaring outside the window, passers-by are running through the dusty streets, pigeons twirling pirouettes in the immense Kazakhstani sky. Life is beautiful - a pilot launch is scheduled for the end of November, the team gained a good pace and is on schedule. And then Valera observes with side vision how a yellow dot appeared on the Skype icon - someone remembered him and wrote a message. This is the project manager: “Come to me ...”

The manager is called Erbol and he has the most unpleasant news for Valery. In the company of the customer has changed the executive director. He looked at the system being developed and decided that it was not safe enough. And now it requires the use of EDS absolutely in all business processes with the addition of QR codes in all generated documents. And at the same time he set the condition to do it without changing the deadlines for the system. “Valera, you need to solve the problem and include additional functionality in the delivery. I am sure you can. You are professionals! ”- Yerbol voiced his position.

“Opachki!” - flashed through Valera’s head. He immediately figured out that new features would require about three weeks of work for the whole team. After all, you will have to partially rewrite the business process engine, plus screw the EDS and QR codes throughout the system. Valera began to frantically think what to answer to his supervisor.

Our hero turned away for a minute, thought, then returned to the starting position, smiled and said: “It’s not a question, Yerbol! We will have time. We are professionals! ”Yerbol sighed with relief and once again noted to himself what great people he was working with. Valera was also happy: he avoided conflict with the leadership and mitigated the difficult situation. Moreover, we must agree with what the leaders say, right? They are smarter, and they have more experience.
')
Valera said “yes” and thus made a commitment . The next day, Yerbol proudly stated at a meeting at the customer that they are going to meet and implement new functions, and not at the expense of time. The executive director, in turn, wrote a report to his management, in which he also assured everyone that in December everyone would be able to start using a new and very secure system. That is, based on the words of Valera, many people began to build their plans and promise something to other people.

And here the most interesting begins. Although Valera said “We are professionals!”, In fact, he behaved unprofessionally. The fact is that a professional assumes obligations only when he is fully confident that he can fulfill them. It is unlikely that the minute he was thinking about the decision in Erbol’s office, a new plan was born in his head, where he understood in detail how it is now necessary to build work in order to implement more functions in the same time. He just wanted to sound good and not quarrel with his leader.

If you are very lucky, Valera will be able to meet the deadline with the team. And if you're lucky, even without strong processing. But, in fact, other options are more likely. There is a very big chance that the deadlines will be derailed and this will entail a violation of all agreements and a lot of unpleasant conversations between interested people (or maybe even penalties, God forbid). Either the team will still have time, but with great costs in the form of demoralized employees and a heap of crutches and bad code in the system. And this then comes around in the process of support and development.

Once again I want to emphasize that the decision taken by Valera was unprofessional. But, fortunately, the format of the story allows you to go back in time and change something that we later regret. So, we are again in the office at Erbola.

Valera turned away for a minute, thought, then returned to the starting position, smiled and said: “No.” Valera expected that after these words in the eyes of Erbol the fire of indignation would flare up, but Erbol remained calm. In fact, he was a smart man and understood that his subordinates should say no to him in certain situations. After all, they are therefore taken to work, that they understand something better than their boss.

“I will immediately say that in the same time frame we will not be able to implement additional functionality. Give me one day, and I will present you solutions to the problem, ”Valera continued. Erbol gave the go-ahead and Valery went to confer with the team.

The next morning, Valera appointed a meeting and at the appointed time came to Erbol. Here is what he said: “Yesterday we sat down with the team and appreciated the new functionality in 3 weeks of work of the whole team. Plus a week for risks - a total of four weeks. There are not so many risks involved, because the task is known and we know how to do it. There is just a large amount of improvements. If we had to learn more technology, the time to risk would increase significantly. Thus, the first solution to the problem is to move the time by four weeks. Either another way is possible. We have in terms of the same amount of time laid on the functionality of scanning documents through a flow scanner. But the customer says that the devices themselves will appear in them only in the spring. That is, we can exclude in-line scanning from the backlog, and instead implement new security mechanisms. A scan to implement either during the support or through an additional agreement - this is how you agree. And then we fit in the same time. ”

They conferred for another half hour, discussing the details, after which Yerbol drove to the customer. There, the conversation was surprisingly easy and a variant was agreed with the elimination of the stream scanning function from the schedule and the transfer of its implementation to the winter.

Happy Yerbol went by taxi to the office and thought about how good it was that such professionals work in their company.

Be able to say yes

The end of the previous story may seem happy ending. Valera said “no” and together with Yerbol he was able to eliminate the threat that was approaching the company. But the project is not finished yet, and before it is finished, there is still a lot of functionality to be implemented, check everything and run it on the combat servers. Therefore, we will not prematurely rejoice, but let us see how events developed further.

After the meeting with the customer, at which the option of replacing the in-line scan with additional security features was agreed, Erbol again met with Valera. He told him about the decision and, just in case, asked: "Now we will do it and we will be laid out in the previous period?" "Yes, we will be laid down," Valera answered. We now know that Valera is a professional. And his answer shows us that professionals should also be able to say yes. Having said this magic word, they take responsibility for the fact that it will be done.

But back to the story. Working days began to flow again. The team coded new functions, tested and documented them. Everything was going fine, but suddenly there was a small problem. In the large office where the meetings were held and architectural and design decisions were discussed, the Internet began to act up. It could work stably for some time, but then the connection was lost and you had to wait a few minutes until it appeared again. Since most of the team’s resources were in the cloud, this was a real hindrance to work.

Valera talked to the sysadmins and found out that the problem lies in the Wi-Fi router, which could not support a large number of connections at the same time. Valera really wanted to solve this problem and after lunch he met with one of the system administrators named Victor. He described the situation and asked if it was possible to fix it. "Yes, you need to change the router" - said Victor.

Valera, satisfied that he had been promised to solve the problem, was about to leave, but then he remembered the course of sociolinguistics, which he took at the university. It turns out that not every “yes” answer leads to the commitment of a person. In fact, the fulfillment of obligations includes 3 stages:

1. I must say that you do something.
2. You need to really intend to do something.
3. Need to do this.

So, in this scheme, Victor did not even fulfill the first paragraph. He confirmed that there is a problem and it is necessary to change the router. But he did not say that he would do it. Most likely, Vitya will forget about this as soon as he leaves the office. And the problem will not be solved for a long time.

Valera understood this by the word “must” that Victor used. There are indicator words that are used when a person seems to recognize something, but at the same time does not take responsibility. These include: “need / need”, “hope”, “let's”. For example: "We need to start going to the gym", "We need to go on a diet and start losing weight", "Let's use TDD in the next iteration." The man talks about it, but does not plan to do it. Usually, these phrases are pronounced and forgotten in 5-7 minutes. Viti's answer was from the same category.

If Valera was not a professional, he would be content with the answer received and leave. But he decided to continue the conversation so that Vitya clearly said who would solve the problem and when. “ Will you solve this problem and change the router to Wednesday ?” Asked Valera. “I have a lot to do, I need to audit our storage systems and write a report to management. Therefore, by Wednesday I will not have time. I propose such a way out: I will start the process of buying a router for now, and on Thursday I will install it in my office, ”answered Vitya.

There are all signs of a commitment. The man says that he will make a specific case for a specific date . And now he is in a situation where Valera can come to him on Thursday and ask if the problem has been solved. And Victor will feel extremely uncomfortable if he did not fulfill his promise.

But here in the response of Victor there is a flaw. The fact is that he does not control the process of purchasing network equipment. And, when he comes to the person responsible for this, they can refuse him. The budget has not been approved, there are more priority purchases - these are just some of the objective reasons why there may not be a router by Thursday. A professional should take responsibility only for being completely under his control, and he is not dependent on other people in this.

Valera, led by his professional sense of smell, caught this problem in the answer to Viti. He talked for another 10 minutes and eventually settled on the next solution. On the same day, Vitya will send a request to the administrative department and, as soon as he receives the answer, he will inform Valera when the router is purchased and when he installs it. That is, although Victor alone cannot solve the problem, he will take the necessary steps to solve it as soon as possible. He clearly and clearly described this to Valera, voicing his responsibility in this matter. In the company, one professional has become more.

Finally, Valera reminded Vita about one more thing. In case something unforeseen happens and it prevents Vita from installing the router by the required time, he should immediately inform Valera about it. Anything happens in life and the entire system administration department can be pulled out to the customer to solve an emergency problem. And, if it jeopardizes the fulfillment of obligations to other people, they should immediately be notified of this. Then they will be able to adjust their plans and take other measures to eliminate possible troubles. Of course, in the case of a router, the consequences will not be very serious. But the professional treats all his promises equally. Whether it is updating the version of Counter-Strike on a local server or deploying server infrastructure for a project of scale all over Kazakhstan.

After this memorable conversation, Victor became even more professional in his duties. The network and server infrastructure of the company began to work flawlessly. And from time to time, they even started organizing excursions to schools and colleges in order to show the children how the technical department of a large and modern IT company should work.

To be continued...

PS Most of the ideas described in this article, I learned from Robert Martin's book "The Perfect Programmer". They superimposed on my own experience, and in the end I decided to tell about it in the form of a small fictional story.