Managing Teams Congruently
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Managing Teams Congruently

Volume 6: Quality Software Series

About the Book

Becoming an effective manager of teams is the subject of this sixth volume in Gerald M. Weinberg's highly acclaimed series, Quality Software.

To be effective, team managers must act congruently. These managers must not only understand the concepts of good software engineering and effective teamwork, but also translate them into their own practices. Effective managers need to know what to do, say what they will do, and act accordingly. Their thoughts and feelings need to match their words and behaviors.

Congruence has the sense of "fitting" —in this case, simultaneously fitting your own needs, the needs of the other people involved, and the contextual, or business, needs. Managers themselves must take responsibility for improving the quality of management and for changing their own attitudes and thinking patterns before they attempt to impose changes on everyone else.

As the author advises, "If you cannot manage yourself, you have no business trying to manage others." This book offers practical advice on how to act, and how to manage others congruently. Examples, diagrams, models, practice suggestions, and tools s fortify the author's recommendations.

Topics include:

• Achieving Congruent Management

• Curing the Addiction to Incongruence

• Ending the Placating Addiction

•  Ending the Blaming Addiction

• Engaging the Other

• Reframing the Context

• Informative Feedback

• Managing the Team Context

• Why Teams?

• Growing Teams

• Managing in a Team Environment

• Starting and Ending Teams

• The Diagram of Effects

• The Software Engineering Cultural Patterns

• The Satir Interaction Model

•  Control Models

• The Three Observer Positions

About the Author

Gerald M. Weinberg
Gerald M. Weinberg

I've always been interested in helping smart people be happy and productive. To that end, I've published books on human behavior, including Weinberg on Writing: The Fieldstone Method, The Psychology of Computer Programming, Perfect Software and Other Fallacies, and an Introduction to General Systems Thinking. I've also written books on leadership including Becoming a Technical Leader, The Secrets of Consulting (Foreword by Virginia Satir), More Secrets of Consulting, and the nine-volume Quality Software series.

I try to incorporate my knowledge of science, engineering, and human behavior into all of my writing and consulting work (with writers, hi-tech researchers, software engineers, and people whose life-situation could require the use of a service dog). I write novels about such people, including The Aremac Project, Aremac Power, Jigglers, First Stringers, Second Stringers, The Hands of God, Freshman Murders, Where There's a Will There's a Murder, Earth's Endless Effort, and Mistress of Molecules—all about how my brilliant protagonists produce quality work and learn to be happy. My books that are not yet on Leanpub may be found as eBooks at <http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/JerryWeinberg>; on Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B000AP8TZ8; and at Barnes and Noble bookstore: http://tinyurl.com/4eudqk5.

Early in my career, I was the architect for the Project Mercury's space tracking network and designer of the world's first multiprogrammed operating system. I won the Warnier Prize, the Stevens Award, and the first Software Testing Professionals' Luminary Award, all for my writing on software quality. I was also elected a charter member of the Computing Hall of Fame in San Diego and chosen for the University of Nebraska Hall of Fame.

But the "award" I'm most proud of is the book, The Gift of Time (Fiona Charles, ed.) written by my student and readers for my 75th birthday. Their stories make me feel that I've been at least partially successful at helping smart people be happy.

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Table of Contents

  • Managing Teams Congruently
    • Preface
    • Acknowledgments
    • Part I. Achieving Congruent Management
    • Chapter 1. Curing the Addiction to Incongruence
      • 1.1 Force the Addict to Stop
      • 1.2 Punishment
      • 1.3 Rescue
      • 1.4 Co-dependency or Co-addiction
      • 1.5 A Successful Cure
      • 1.6 Helpful Hints and Suggestions
      • 1.7 Summary
      • 1.8 Practice
    • Chapter 2. Ending the Placating Addiction
      • 2.1 The Placating Organization
        • 2.1.1 Deming’s Point Eight
        • 2.1.2 Technical arrogance
        • 2.1.3 Placating the developers
        • 2.1.4 Placating the maintainers
        • 2.1.5 Transforming the placating organization
      • 2.2 Making Placating Less Attractive
        • 2.2.1 Blaming is not the opposite of placating
        • 2.2.2 Choice prevents placating
        • 2.2.3 Outsourcing
        • 2.2.4 Internal bidding
        • 2.2.5 Dispersed maintenance
      • 2.3 Remaining Steps
      • 2.4 Helpful Hints and Suggestions
      • 2.5 Summary
      • 2.6 Practice
    • Chapter 3. Ending the Blaming Addiction
      • 3.1 The Blaming Organization
        • 3.1.1 The temptation to blame
        • 3.1.2 What are your motives?
        • 3.1.3 Blame as revenge
        • 3.1.4 Methodology magic
      • 3.2 Criticism As Information
        • 3.2.1 Pain of blame, pain of recognition
        • 3.2.2 Example: Criticism of regression test practices
      • 3.3 Prohibiting Blaming
        • 3.3.1 Openness
        • 3.3.2 Preserving the open-door system
        • 3.3.3 Making contact
      • 3.4 Helpful Hints and Suggestions
      • 3.5 Summary
      • 3.6 Practice
    • Chapter 4. Engaging the Other
      • 4.1 Placating
        • 4.1.1 Placating through false compromise
        • 4.1.2 Handling an out-of-control developer
        • 4.1.3 The double bind
      • 4.2 Blaming
        • 4.2.1 Blaming through rules
        • 4.2.2 Blaming the lazy employee
        • 4.2.3 The Aikido way to engage blaming
      • 4.3 Superreasonable
        • 4.3.1 Getting small, relevant feedback
        • 4.3.2 Choosing communication channels
      • 4.4 Irrelevant
        • 4.4.1 Management availability
        • 4.4.2 Performance appraisals
      • 4.5 Loving and Hating
      • 4.6 Helpful Hints and Suggestions
      • 4.7 Summary
      • 4.8 Practice
    • Chapter 5. Reframing the Context
      • 5.1 Reframing
      • 5.2 Discontinuity of Language
      • 5.3 Presuppositions
      • 5.4 Monsterizing versus the Helpful Model
        • 5.4.1 The Helpful Model
        • 5.4.2 The Malice Model
        • 5.4.3 The Stupid Model
      • 5.5 Choice of Expression
      • 5.6 Responding to Blaming
        • 5.6.1 Taking the observer position
        • 5.6.2 Handling Temper Tantrums
        • 5.6.3 Perfection belief
        • 5.6.4 Verifying your notions
      • 5.8 Helpful Hints and Suggestions
      • 5.9 Summary
      • 5.10 Practice
    • Chapter 6. Informative Feedback
      • 6.1 Feedback
      • 6.2 The Giver’s Fact
      • 6.3 Forms of Feedback
        • 6.3.1 Verbal precision
        • 6.3.2 Trust
        • 6.3.3 Freedom
        • 6.3.4 What people remember
        • 6.3.5 Modeling desired behavior
      • 6.4 Softening the Pain
        • 6.4.1 Shame
        • 6.4.2 Fear of the hook
        • 6.4.3 Technical envy
        • 6.4.4 Lack of practice
      • 6.5 Helpful Hints and Suggestions
      • 6.6 Summary
      • 6.7 Practice
    • Part II. Managing the Team Context
    • Chapter 7. Why Teams?
      • 7.1 Teams Toward Perfection
        • 7.1.1 Multiple eyes
        • 7.1.2 Tours of duty
        • 7.1.3 Parallelism and “comperation”
        • 7.1.4 Fault resolution teams
      • 7.2 Review Teams
        • 7.2.1 Fault prevention
        • 7.2.2 Process improvement
        • 7.2.3 Reducing variability
      • 7.3 Other Teams
      • 7.4 Helpful Hints and Suggestions
      • 7.5 Summary
      • 7.6 Practice
    • Chapter 8. Growing Teams
      • 8.1 The Reusable Work Unit
      • 8.2 The Maintenance Team
      • 8.3 Examples of Team Performance
      • 8.4 Management by Team Process Improvement
      • 8.5 Helpful Hints and Suggestions
      • 8.6 Summary
      • 8.7 Practice
    • Chapter 9. Managing in a Team Environment
      • 9.1 The Manager’s Role in a Team-Based Organization
        • 9.1.1 Delegation
        • 9.1.2 Control
        • 9.1.3 Coordination with the rest of the organization
      • 9.2 Delegating Work
        • 9.2.1 Challenging
        • 9.2.2 Clear
        • 9.2.3 Supportive
        • 9.2.4 Mistakes in delegating
      • 9.3 Controlling
        • 9.3.1 How to tell if the team needs an intervention
        • 9.3.2 Intervening for the team’s benefit
        • 9.3.3 Envy of the well-functioning team
        • 9.3.4 Rewards that don’t reward
        • 9.3.5 Rewarding congruently
        • 9.3.6 Are you the problem?
        • 9.3.7 Using the MOI model for interventions
        • 9.4 Communicating with the Outside
      • 9.5 Helpful Hints and Variations
      • 9.6 Summary
      • 9.7 Practice
    • Chapter 10. Starting and Ending Teams
      • 10.1 Forming Teams During a Crisis
        • 10.1.1 Depression
        • 10.1.2 Exclusion
        • 10.1.3 Existing teams
      • 10.2 Letting the Team Solve Problems
        • 10.2.1 Placating upper management
        • 10.2.2 Panic when late
        • 10.2.3 Excessive demonstrations
        • 10.2.4 Setting technical priorities poorly
        • 10.2.5 The bright but side-tracked employee
        • 10.2.6 The perfectionist
      • 10.3 Dissolve Nonfunctioning Groupings
        • 10.3.1 Nonfunctional ownership
        • 10.3.2 Breaking up the long-term team
        • 10.3.3 Dissolving “temporary” teams
      • 10.4 Helpful Hints and Variations
      • 10.5 Summary
      • 10.6 Practice
    • Part III. Epilogue
      • Hsün Chü-po Visits His Friend
    • Notes
    • Appendix A: The Diagram of Effects
    • Appendix B: The Software Engineering Cultural Patterns
      • Pattern 0. Oblivious Process
      • Pattern 1: Variable Process
      • Pattern 2: Routine Process
      • Pattern 3: Steering Process
      • Pattern 4: Anticipating Process
      • Pattern 5: Congruent Process
    • Appendix C. The Satir Interaction Model
      • Intake.
      • Meaning.
      • Significance.
      • Response.
    • Appendix D. Control Models
      • D.1. The Aggregate Control Model
      • D.2. Cybernetic Control Models
        • D.2.1 The system to be controlled (the focus of Patterns 0 and 1)
        • D.2.2 The controller (the focus of Pattern 2)
        • D.2.3 Feedback control (the focus of Pattern 3)
    • Appendix E. The Three Observer Positions
    • What Next?

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