John Nolan & Rachel Davies

© Connextra 2001: delivering the right information to the right people at the right time© eXtreme Tuesday Club 2003

John Nolan & Rachel Davies

Exploring Motivation

Individuals and Collaborative Teams


Session Overview

• Slide Presentation [30 mins]– To introduce the topic + examples

• Time for:– Stories + brainstorm [25 mins]– Group working [95 mins]

• Exploration using influence charts• Process pattern mining• Write up conclusions

– Feedback [25 mins]


Exploring Motivation This workshop sets out to explore the impact

that development process can have on the motivation of individuals

Issues:–Reward schemes can intefere with

collaborative working–Recognising individual contribution in highly

collaborative teams–Understanding why individuals may resist

agile methods


Agile Methods

• Collaborative teamwork is essential for Agile Methods characterized by:– Face-to-face communication vs written word– Adaptable all-rounders vs specialists– Self-managing teams vs hierarchies of

authority

• What does this mean for individuals in Agile teams?


Experience with XP

• XP practices makes it hard to recognise individual contribution: Pair Programming Collective Ownership Refactoring

• “Where's my code gone?”• For example...


Bus Factor +ve• XP practices combine to protect the team

against the Bus Factor:– “What happens if a Developer gets run over by a

bus?”– XP teams can carry on because:

• Software is released daily• Someone paired with them yesterday• Collective ownership• Coding standards

–Good business practice• Management not held to ransom• Developers can go on holiday


Bus Factor -ve

• Leads to Developer insecurity:– “How can I be special?”– “When do we get to do then fun stuff?”

• Broken Windows:– “Someone else will fix it”

• Management Angst:– “How do I motivate and reward without breaking the

magic?”– “How do I do pay reviews?”– “How do I promote/reward/incentivise, as I can't

measure individual productivity as I used to”


How does it feel?

• In practice, the team can start to feel like a “Borg Collective”– No individual recognition– Less personal control– Just part of “the codin' machine”– Deliver, deliver, deliver....–Where's the learning? Big leaps?

Individuality?


How do we motivate Agile teams?• Agile Manifesto (2001):

– Values “Individuals and interactions over processes and tools”•Saying they're important isn't enough! •How do we do this?

• Techniques:•Traditional Reward Schemes–money, praise, food, etc

•Alternatives?


Punished by Rewards• Rewards are “Do this, and you get that” • “Punished By Rewards” by Alfie Kohn:

– Questions behaviorism (Skinner)– Effective at producing temporary compliance– Ineffective at producing lasting changes in

attitudes or behavior– About two dozen studies from the field of social

psychology conclusively show that people who expect to receive a reward do not perform as well as those who expect nothing. This result is more dramatic when creativity is involved


Influence of RewardsRewards punish

– Non-compliance, manipulative, not disimilar to punishment, “Do this or here's what will happen to you”

Rewards rupture relations– excellence depends on teamwork, but the competition for

rewards destroys cooperationRewards ignore reasons

– incentive plans offer a one-size-fits-all answer that ignores the causes of productivity issues

Rewards deter risk-taking– Take the easy option to achieve the reward, rather than

creative problem solving that may have longer term valueRewards undermine interest

– Loving what you do is a more powerful motivator than money or any other incentive


How important is money?

Research shows that money is not rated no.1 by knowledge workers:

“Numerous studies have shown that when people are asked what is most important to them about work, the top answers are factors such as interesting work to do, or good people to do it with, or a chance to have some say about what one does.” A.Kohn


Reward Schemes

• Do rewards motivate people? –They motivate people to get rewards.

• Research indicates Reward Schemes have a negative effect on:Team collaboration Intrinsic motivation of individuals


Kohn's solution

• Three C's of quality: – Content refers to the job's tasks. To do a

good job, people need a good job to do.– Collaboration means they should be able to

work together in effective teams. – Choice means workers should participate in

making decisions about what they do. • Sounds familiar? Very similar to Agile

attitudes...but how do you put it into practice?


Alternatives

• Some examples– From our own experience

• Then you get to do the work...– From your experience


Gold Cards (Content)• People need to own something, Gold

Cards with “Show & Tell” to whole team helps:• A Gold Card is reserved time for learning

and exploration ["XP Perspectives" 2002]• Implementation at Connextra• Index Card with a gold star on it!– Entitles 1 day of work on new ideas– 2 cards per month– Developer chooses when to use them– Demonstrated at weekly “Show & Tell”


Retrospectives (Collaboration)• Regular Retrospectives give individuals a

place to talk and more control over the way they work as a team.


Work Allocation (Choice)

• Morning Stand-Ups–People self select tasks and form

pairs based on previous work and preference–Team leads only step in where

problems arise• “Let people figure out the right thing to

do, and then do it. Let people be creative.” OOPSLA’02


Business Advantage

• This is not philanthropy the business advantage is:– Retention means lower training/recruitment

costs– Skilled staff that know their domain–Motivation leads to effectiveness


Background Reading

• “Punished By Rewards” by Alfie Kohn• ““Intrinsic Motivation at Work” by

Kenneth Thomas• “Slack” by Tom DeMarco• “XP Perspectives” collected papers

includes Gold Cards


Useful Links

• Ward Cunningham's wiki– http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki?

ExtremeProgrammingRoadmap– Extreme Tuesday Club, XTC– http://www.xpdeveloper.com– Agile Alliance– http://www.agilealliance.com

• Aflie Kohn– http://www.alfiekohn.org


Appetizer• We invite you to share relevant stories

with the session group, to kickstart a brainstorm session to draw out factors affecting individual motivation in software development.


Group Working (1)

• Divide into work groups• Each work group will select a

development process (e.g. RUP,SCRUM,XP,OSS,Lean) and based on your experience work on drawing influence charts showing factors impacting motivation in the context of this process• Each work group presents their charts to

session group


Group Working (2)

• Cross-pollenate work groups• Pattern mining• Each work group presents their output to

the session

John Nolan & Rachel Davies

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