Combination of labor in software development
I think many habroops have had a chance to play the role of a human orchestra in such original desks, where they can develop a program, write the instruction for it myself, install it on everyone’s PC and then take an active part in the analysis of situations. somewhere all was lost, changing the cartridges between the cases and pulling out the paper in (from) the printers (s).
The opposite of this is work in large companies with a high level of maturity of processes (such as CMMI 3 and higher), where a specialist from a certain moment begins to feel like a small cog in a large mechanism performing a piece of work, not really understanding what it is for, who it will exploit what problems it faces now and will be faced after the introduction of the software product.
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Where is the golden mean, the balance of the market and the matrix? It is unlikely that in the foreseeable future there will be an unequivocal universal answer to this question. But there are principles of planning and improving the combination of labor in a single production (organization), which are presented in this article with an emphasis on the sphere of software development.
To me, search engines for requests like “job combination” issue various articles for personnel officers in the top, explaining how to properly work out labor pooling without violating the Labor Code of the Russian Federation. I would like in this article to open the topic from the standpoint of labor economics, the organization of production relations, division planning and labor cooperation in an enterprise.
After reading, I ask everyone to take a survey .
Let's start with the fact that many, I am sure, have already known this way, but have not considered it from the angle of division and cooperation of labor.
In his famous book, The Mythical Man-Month , Frederick Brooks cites a lot of statistical data and their generalizations from his experience working on projects at IBM in the 60s, 70s and 80s of the last century on the creation of operating systems, system and application BY. Among other things, he considers the cases of team members working together on completely shared tasks (ideal, which he positions as "mythical"), completely inseparable tasks (for example, having a single expert in a certain field, without the result of which others can not start their work , a kind of critical path in the network), as well as an intermediate case - a separable task that requires the exchange of data between team members.
For the latter, he gives the formula n Ă— (n - 1) / 2 - the number of connections when data exchange between each participant is required. This is, in fact, a simplification of the formula for the number of combinations of n through 2 from combinatorics:
In this case, k = 2, we get n Ă— (n - 1) Ă— (n - 2)! / (2 Ă— (n - 2)!) = N Ă— (n - 1) / 2. That is, with 5 people in a team, we get 10 possible connections, for 6 - 15, 10 - 45. In general, the possible number of communication groups is 2 n .
Of course, the methodological idea in the field of software development is not dormant and aims, among other things, to reduce the number of connections, eliminate duplication of communications by uniting recipients into groups, etc. But in any case, the time for communication within the team is taken at the expense of working time (well, or after school hours, which is already there). Moreover, the more team members there are, the more inevitable will be the time for communication, in order to demonstrate what Brooks gives a graph of the dependence of the duration of a conditional fixed project on the number of participants:
Fig. 1. Conditional graph of the duration of the project on the size of the team
Here you can remember the phrase: “Eight people cope with the work of ten better than twelve.”
Obviously, in my opinion, the fact that by combining the labor functions of different specialists can reduce the number n, and therefore - the number of communications. I emphasize that here I mean working in the same team of diverse specialists (developer, tester, analyst, system architect). The work of one for two programmers is a topic of a completely different discussion.
Nevertheless, it does not become much clearer what exactly can be done using the combination of labor, and what is not. Then there is a desire to turn to Soviet research: although the scientific organization of labor (NOT) was not invented by us, and not even the Soviets were the first to start working in our country, but it was under Soviet power that the ELT received support at the governmental and ideological level from the very first years of the existence of a young Soviet of the state.
Indeed, in the first half of the 1980s, a number of sectoral research institutes in the framework of the relevant program prepared according to a unified methodology recommendations for “developing and increasing the effectiveness of combining professions (positions) and functions” for individual sectors ( one , two , three , four , five , six , seven , eight ...). I digitized the brochure for workers of transport (without attachments), in full confidence that I would not violate any rights, although the Research Institute of Labor still exists and even functions a little. I recommend to get acquainted with this work without fail to anyone who is interested in the organization of labor, regardless of the field of activity.
Although there have not been developed guidelines for IT specialists, we can easily transfer the main provisions to the sphere of software development, because they are almost word for word duplicated in all the above-mentioned methodological recommendations, and have not lost their relevance to this day, which cannot be said about the specific standards presented in the annexes. Nevertheless, here you can find Appendix No. 2 and the beginning of Appendix No. 3 for construction work.
So, below are the prerequisites and conditions for the introduction of the combination of professions and functions, as well as other general provisions.
Prerequisites:
Combination of professions (positions) is permitted, as a rule, within the category of personnel to which this employee belongs (workers, engineers and technical workers, employees, etc.).
Conditions:
Here I just quote in chunks:
According to the results of this analysis, a part of the shift time is determined, free from the employee performing labor operations in his main profession (position) - t joint . This calculation is made according to the following formula:
t joint = T total - (t main + t end ) ,
where T total - the total Fund of working time;
t main - the time of work but the main profession (position), including the weight of its elements;
t Dep - time, regulated rest.
More literal quotation:
I would like to especially emphasize the most important, in my opinion, ideas:
As mentioned above, here you can find an example of the design of combining professions in an integrated team of building constructors (VNIPI Labor in the construction of the USSR State Construction Committee, 1983). There you can pay attention to the reference to Appendix No. 1, where the permissible options for combining occupations in construction are given.
But what should we, software developers, do? We have “The Basics of the Microsoft Solution Framework ” by Michael Turner (I used the Russian-language edition - 2008).
MSF operates with such concepts as groups of representatives that consistently resemble the profession in the development of software. The only thing that is confusing is “Product Management” and “Program Management”. Here, for simplicity, we can consider these groups as the “Project Management” group, but the first with a bias towards business interests, and the second with IT interests. And “User Satisfaction” is technical support. Below is a table of the admissibility of experts in a couple of groups of representatives. There may be 3 options: permissible, undesirable or risky.
Table 1. The admissibility of the simultaneous membership of an individual specialist to 2 role groups
Microsoft in drawing up this table is repelled by the principle of conflict of interest. For example, the developer is interested in the speedy transfer of the product into operation, the tester is in the detection and elimination of all errors, technical support in the presence of important functional features. The diagram below shows the distribution of the roles of a team of 3 people, taking into account the recommendations of MSF.
Fig. 2. An example of the distribution of roles in a team of 3 people in MSF
Let's also hope that the corporation has conducted research on real projects of the performance of the proposed model.
Let's go back to the example of the design of the combination of professions in the integrated team of installers of building structures . Please note that the labor costs are fixed, which does not take into account the unevenness of loads in various specialties in the course of promotion of the project.
Fig. 3. Uneven distribution of work in individual functional areas in the course of project promotion
For this reason, the above-mentioned method of working day photos or even shifts is poorly suited for software engineering, unless it is technical support or pipeline development of mini-projects where cyclical, repetitive work can be observed.
Therefore, labor costs are proposed to be considered separately at each managerial period of time: week, iteration, sprint. As a result, it is required to create a matrix C ij - labor costs for the i-th specialty (or deployed to an individual specialist) in the j-th period of time. At the same time, when planning the combination of labor functions, based on the principles described above, one should make sure that in none of the time periods the amount of labor costs for the combined specialties does not exceed the working time fund.
For example, let T be the fund of working time of 1 specialist in each time period of a project. Specialist k is planned to be involved in the duties of specialist r . Then T> = MAX j = 1..n (C kj + C rj ) .
Just quote as it is.
True, in real life, all this is quite easily managed by the employer at the expense of the clause in the job duties to which the employee’s employment contract refers: “and other instructions from the management”. Therefore, formally in the labor contract shoved everything.
The article of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation, Article 60.1, is determined nearby Part-time work . Combined employment is an employee who has more than 1 employment contract with an employer. Chapter 44 is devoted to this question.
So, the combination of professions can have a positive effect on the reduction of intra-team communication costs, but the necessary conditions are:
At the same time, when searching for temporary reserves, peak loads for the main and combined professions should be taken into account. The incentive for workers in attracting to the performance of functional duties of other positions should be an increase in the content of work and additional payments.
At this point, the question of combining labor cannot be fully disclosed. Much is left out of the box, for example:
The reason for this is a lack of objective data.
By the way, I have doubts about the completeness and objectivity of MSF. And although I am aware of the inferiority of surveys before measurements, but still it is better than nothing, so I ask everyone to take part in the survey . You will be able to see its intermediate results yourself as you progress through it. If this topic causes interest and / or there will be interesting survey results, then I promise to write a continuation of this article.
The opposite of this is work in large companies with a high level of maturity of processes (such as CMMI 3 and higher), where a specialist from a certain moment begins to feel like a small cog in a large mechanism performing a piece of work, not really understanding what it is for, who it will exploit what problems it faces now and will be faced after the introduction of the software product.
')
Where is the golden mean, the balance of the market and the matrix? It is unlikely that in the foreseeable future there will be an unequivocal universal answer to this question. But there are principles of planning and improving the combination of labor in a single production (organization), which are presented in this article with an emphasis on the sphere of software development.
To me, search engines for requests like “job combination” issue various articles for personnel officers in the top, explaining how to properly work out labor pooling without violating the Labor Code of the Russian Federation. I would like in this article to open the topic from the standpoint of labor economics, the organization of production relations, division planning and labor cooperation in an enterprise.
After reading, I ask everyone to take a survey .
The formula for the number of connections in a team
Let's start with the fact that many, I am sure, have already known this way, but have not considered it from the angle of division and cooperation of labor.
In his famous book, The Mythical Man-Month , Frederick Brooks cites a lot of statistical data and their generalizations from his experience working on projects at IBM in the 60s, 70s and 80s of the last century on the creation of operating systems, system and application BY. Among other things, he considers the cases of team members working together on completely shared tasks (ideal, which he positions as "mythical"), completely inseparable tasks (for example, having a single expert in a certain field, without the result of which others can not start their work , a kind of critical path in the network), as well as an intermediate case - a separable task that requires the exchange of data between team members.
For the latter, he gives the formula n Ă— (n - 1) / 2 - the number of connections when data exchange between each participant is required. This is, in fact, a simplification of the formula for the number of combinations of n through 2 from combinatorics:
In this case, k = 2, we get n Ă— (n - 1) Ă— (n - 2)! / (2 Ă— (n - 2)!) = N Ă— (n - 1) / 2. That is, with 5 people in a team, we get 10 possible connections, for 6 - 15, 10 - 45. In general, the possible number of communication groups is 2 n .
Of course, the methodological idea in the field of software development is not dormant and aims, among other things, to reduce the number of connections, eliminate duplication of communications by uniting recipients into groups, etc. But in any case, the time for communication within the team is taken at the expense of working time (well, or after school hours, which is already there). Moreover, the more team members there are, the more inevitable will be the time for communication, in order to demonstrate what Brooks gives a graph of the dependence of the duration of a conditional fixed project on the number of participants:
Fig. 1. Conditional graph of the duration of the project on the size of the team
Here you can remember the phrase: “Eight people cope with the work of ten better than twelve.”
Obviously, in my opinion, the fact that by combining the labor functions of different specialists can reduce the number n, and therefore - the number of communications. I emphasize that here I mean working in the same team of diverse specialists (developer, tester, analyst, system architect). The work of one for two programmers is a topic of a completely different discussion.
For us already thought
Nevertheless, it does not become much clearer what exactly can be done using the combination of labor, and what is not. Then there is a desire to turn to Soviet research: although the scientific organization of labor (NOT) was not invented by us, and not even the Soviets were the first to start working in our country, but it was under Soviet power that the ELT received support at the governmental and ideological level from the very first years of the existence of a young Soviet of the state.
Indeed, in the first half of the 1980s, a number of sectoral research institutes in the framework of the relevant program prepared according to a unified methodology recommendations for “developing and increasing the effectiveness of combining professions (positions) and functions” for individual sectors ( one , two , three , four , five , six , seven , eight ...). I digitized the brochure for workers of transport (without attachments), in full confidence that I would not violate any rights, although the Research Institute of Labor still exists and even functions a little. I recommend to get acquainted with this work without fail to anyone who is interested in the organization of labor, regardless of the field of activity.
Although there have not been developed guidelines for IT specialists, we can easily transfer the main provisions to the sphere of software development, because they are almost word for word duplicated in all the above-mentioned methodological recommendations, and have not lost their relevance to this day, which cannot be said about the specific standards presented in the annexes. Nevertheless, here you can find Appendix No. 2 and the beginning of Appendix No. 3 for construction work.
So, below are the prerequisites and conditions for the introduction of the combination of professions and functions, as well as other general provisions.
Prerequisites:
- the commissioning of new <production> means equipped with means of automating the main production processes for their maintenance and management;
- improving the division and cooperation of labor;
- development of "command" forms of labor organization;
- improving the organization of work processes;
- unification of highly specialized professions in one, wider profile.
Combination of professions (positions) is permitted, as a rule, within the category of personnel to which this employee belongs (workers, engineers and technical workers, employees, etc.).
Conditions:
- due to the technological features of production processes, the employee’s incomplete use of a regulated fund of his working time per shift (month);
- technological commonality of work performed (operations, techniques) and the unity of the final product (work);
- the possibility of combining in time and geographically the implementation of production operations in the main and combined profession;
- the level and range of the employee's qualifications and the possibility of successfully mastering their professional knowledge and skills in the profession planned for combination.
Here I just quote in chunks:
For an objective and comprehensive assessment of the options for combining and determining the degree of employment of an employee according to the main and combined profession (position), it is necessary to take into account the specific features of labor processes.
Determination of the actual employment of workers is made on the basis of work day photos (shifts) conducted directly at workplaces. The number of these observations (photos of the working day) depends on the degree of complexity of the studied technological processes. The results of observations are carefully analyzed and must provide Reliable data on the actual workload of the worker, his main profession (position).
According to the results of this analysis, a part of the shift time is determined, free from the employee performing labor operations in his main profession (position) - t joint . This calculation is made according to the following formula:
t joint = T total - (t main + t end ) ,
where T total - the total Fund of working time;
t main - the time of work but the main profession (position), including the weight of its elements;
t Dep - time, regulated rest.
More literal quotation:
When calculating the time possible for use by the combined profession (position), it is very important to investigate the duration and frequency of free time periods for the main profession (position), since in some cases it is this that determines the effectiveness of combining professions (positions).
At the same time, one should strive to ensure that the planned combination of professions (posts) increases the content and attractiveness of work. In this regard, it is not recommended to combine labor operations performed by skilled workers with ancillary work (cleaning, toe cap, etc.). It should also be borne in mind that additional burdens arising from the combination of professions (positions) are permissible only up to a certain level of employee fatigue.
The most important prerequisite for the further development of combining professions (positions) is to increase the efficiency of its promotion, which should be aimed at developing the initiative of transport workers, high productive work in the main and combined profession (position).
With the release of the number of employees compared with the standards for supplements for the combination of professions can be sent up to 70% savings in payroll.
I would like to especially emphasize the most important, in my opinion, ideas:
- The combination of labor functions is possible with the obligatory condition of sufficient free time during working hours. The reason for the availability of free time can be a consequence of production and technological features, and the improvement of the organization of labor, the introduction of new technologies and tools, advanced training of specialists.
- The combination of labor functions should increase the attractiveness and meaningfulness of labor.
- The combination of labor functions should be stimulated financially. Depending on the complexity of the combined work and its duration, the size of the allowance can reach 50% of the basic salary.
- Despite the increase in the wage fund of individual employees at the expense of additional payments for combining, the expenses of the enterprise should decrease due to the reduction in the number of employees.
Table of admissibility
As mentioned above, here you can find an example of the design of combining professions in an integrated team of building constructors (VNIPI Labor in the construction of the USSR State Construction Committee, 1983). There you can pay attention to the reference to Appendix No. 1, where the permissible options for combining occupations in construction are given.
But what should we, software developers, do? We have “The Basics of the Microsoft Solution Framework ” by Michael Turner (I used the Russian-language edition - 2008).
MSF operates with such concepts as groups of representatives that consistently resemble the profession in the development of software. The only thing that is confusing is “Product Management” and “Program Management”. Here, for simplicity, we can consider these groups as the “Project Management” group, but the first with a bias towards business interests, and the second with IT interests. And “User Satisfaction” is technical support. Below is a table of the admissibility of experts in a couple of groups of representatives. There may be 3 options: permissible, undesirable or risky.
Table 1. The admissibility of the simultaneous membership of an individual specialist to 2 role groups
Microsoft in drawing up this table is repelled by the principle of conflict of interest. For example, the developer is interested in the speedy transfer of the product into operation, the tester is in the detection and elimination of all errors, technical support in the presence of important functional features. The diagram below shows the distribution of the roles of a team of 3 people, taking into account the recommendations of MSF.
Fig. 2. An example of the distribution of roles in a team of 3 people in MSF
Let's also hope that the corporation has conducted research on real projects of the performance of the proposed model.
Uneven temporal load distribution
Let's go back to the example of the design of the combination of professions in the integrated team of installers of building structures . Please note that the labor costs are fixed, which does not take into account the unevenness of loads in various specialties in the course of promotion of the project.
Fig. 3. Uneven distribution of work in individual functional areas in the course of project promotion
For this reason, the above-mentioned method of working day photos or even shifts is poorly suited for software engineering, unless it is technical support or pipeline development of mini-projects where cyclical, repetitive work can be observed.
Therefore, labor costs are proposed to be considered separately at each managerial period of time: week, iteration, sprint. As a result, it is required to create a matrix C ij - labor costs for the i-th specialty (or deployed to an individual specialist) in the j-th period of time. At the same time, when planning the combination of labor functions, based on the principles described above, one should make sure that in none of the time periods the amount of labor costs for the combined specialties does not exceed the working time fund.
For example, let T be the fund of working time of 1 specialist in each time period of a project. Specialist k is planned to be involved in the duties of specialist r . Then T> = MAX j = 1..n (C kj + C rj ) .
The same article of the Labor Code
Just quote as it is.
TK RF Article 60.2. Combination of professions (positions). Expansion of service areas, increased workload. Fulfillment of duties of a temporarily absent employee without release from work, as determined by the employment contract.
With the written consent of the employee, he may be entrusted with performing additional work in another or the same profession (position) for additional pay (article 151 of this Code) during the prescribed working day (shift) along with the work specified in the employment contract.
Additional work entrusted to an employee in another profession (position) may be carried out by combining professions (positions). Additional work entrusted to an employee in the same profession (position) may be carried out by expanding service areas and increasing the amount of work. To fulfill the duties of a temporarily absent employee without dismissal from work, determined by the employment contract, the employee may be assigned additional work for both the other and the same profession (position).
The period during which the employee will perform additional work, its content and volume are established by the employer with the written consent of the employee.
The employee has the right to refuse to perform additional work ahead of time, and the employer has to cancel the order for its execution ahead of schedule, warning the other party in writing no later than three working days.
True, in real life, all this is quite easily managed by the employer at the expense of the clause in the job duties to which the employee’s employment contract refers: “and other instructions from the management”. Therefore, formally in the labor contract shoved everything.
The article of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation, Article 60.1, is determined nearby Part-time work . Combined employment is an employee who has more than 1 employment contract with an employer. Chapter 44 is devoted to this question.
Conclusion
So, the combination of professions can have a positive effect on the reduction of intra-team communication costs, but the necessary conditions are:
- Availability of sufficient time reserves for specialists of the main profession
- The admissibility of combining the main and combined professions
- Ensuring that an employee is sufficiently qualified in a combined profession (training)
- The physical possibility of combining a specific production (time, place)
At the same time, when searching for temporary reserves, peak loads for the main and combined professions should be taken into account. The incentive for workers in attracting to the performance of functional duties of other positions should be an increase in the content of work and additional payments.
At this point, the question of combining labor cannot be fully disclosed. Much is left out of the box, for example:
- Technological combination of labor functions within one position (programming on different technology stacks).
- Restriction on the average number of employees of the enterprise (in the Russian Federation) to maintain the status of a medium / small enterprise and to receive tax and other exemptions.
- Limited capacity of small (in terms of profit and human resources) companies and their dependence on “human orchestras”.
- Individual psychophysical characteristics of workers, division and cooperation of labor, taking into account the classification of psycho-types.
- Advantages and disadvantages of attracting freelancers, outsourcers and other forms of contingent labor as a way of interorganizational division and cooperation of labor.
The reason for this is a lack of objective data.
By the way, I have doubts about the completeness and objectivity of MSF. And although I am aware of the inferiority of surveys before measurements, but still it is better than nothing, so I ask everyone to take part in the survey . You will be able to see its intermediate results yourself as you progress through it. If this topic causes interest and / or there will be interesting survey results, then I promise to write a continuation of this article.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/340664/
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