A short story from real life. Our neighbor team recently put above their workplaces a big wide screen connected to Mac Mini. About a week it was blank, then it was showing a banner “coming soon”. A week ago the real fun began.
The screen became alive and started displaying project statistics: the number of failing unit tests, bugs, etc. `Wow!’ thought I to myself—’It’s a great deal. You fix a bug and after the next build you see the progress. And everybody see the progress.’ Excellent motivation tool.
But just yesterday I was even more impressed. The screen started to show photos of team’s developers accompanied by the message `I’m blocking the release!’ I think those were people with the most bugs left on the moment.
What I’m thinking about is that such form of motivation is only applicable in good teams. Otherwise, it will be like `shame boards’ on USSR’s factories—useless and really demotivating. If you feel yourself like a scapegoat, you’ll never work good. But I think the latter is not the case of our neighbors.
So I wish them good luck in launching the next release!
3 Comments
Maybe I’ve missed smth, but the photos with “I’m blocking the release!” is the clear resurrection of “shame boards”. The only difference is tools used. This is clear negative motivation (I do not want my photo appear at the wide screen, so I’d better fix that bug).
Displaying project statistics is great! Can I take a look?
Yury, I agree with you. “I’m blocking the realease!” is a really stupid thing.
@Yuri: Sorry, I didn’t make photo. But it was really simple, like a 2 row x 3 cols table. By rows there were versions (say, daily and last continuous build) and by columns there were unit tests (total/failed) and bugs count. Indeed, there are not much of project statistics that are both easy measurable and indicative.
Yes, I always have mixed feelings about displaying concrete persons. Imagine that automatic statistics counter made a mistake and blamed wrong person.