[IxDA Discuss] Working in an Agency v/s Innie

[Katie Albers]

One of my standard questions when I talk to a company about going 
full time with them is: Go over your review process with me. If it 
involves competitive ranking or some form of grading, then they're 
doing it wrong and I don't want to work with them. People are not 
interchangeable parts. If you annually put them all in a pile and 
knock out the bottom 5% (or whatever) your problem is not that bottom 
5%, it's your management. My favorite examples are the companies that 
do "self-assessments" where you can only rate yourself as "good 
enough" or "not good enough" for each of 5 million tangentially 
relevant items (and give examples). Let's hear it for mediocrity. In 
general, I've found that the same flexibility within broad guidelines 
with rigid adherence to certain defined elements (timelines or budget 
or...whatever) produces the best results with the least tsouris.

In any case, I've found that the best companies are the ones that 
have tightly managed processes in the largest possible way. For 
example: You must deliver a set of functional specifications by this 
date...whether that takes the form of highly annotated wireframes or 
text specs with screen illustrations sketched out in pencil or a 
working photoshop "prototype" is up to the team to decide in 
consultation with the engineering team.

At 3:11 PM -0400 10/17/07, Todd Zaki Warfel wrote:
>On Oct 17, 2007, at 2:35 PM, Gretchen Anderson wrote:
>
>>  And the "methods" used for innies tend to be "six sigma" type of 
>>  meta processes. Though this probably depends as much on the company 
>>  as the innie/outie bit.
>
>Now there's a process than can kill almost any software development
>cycle. Great for jet engines, but not so much for software.

I've come to the conclusion that six sigma is so popular because it's 
name is a number AND a greek letter...so it's obviously objective and 
True.

K


-- 

----------------
Katie Albers
katie at firstthought.com