Project managers in IT departments have well-established
ways of describing the different phases of a development project, depending on
the methodology. It all looks very scientific, but forgets the fact that project
teams are just groups of people that, like any other human group, don’t always
behave in rational ways. This has been well-known to the psycho-dynamic
psychologists who studied group behavior, such as Kurt Lewin , Bruce Tuckerman
and Wilfred Bion. The group dynamic of working teams, they noticed, tends to
run in phases. (eg. Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing , Adjourning.
Tuckerman 1965). When groups are under pressure, these phases are different,
and much less adaptive.
I’ve had plenty of experience, both as members of IT teams,
and managing them, and it has convinced me over the years that the group
dynamics of a development team under pressure are neglected at your peril: Even
a well-led task-oriented group has to be very carefully ‘facilitated’. You may,
as a project manager have got ticks in all the boxes, and the team that does the
development may, as individuals, be perfectly sane and well-adjusted, but the
group can, when set to a task for up to 60 hours a week in difficult conditions,
go completely barking mad.
A development team that is being poorly led, facilitated
and directed seems to me to revert so something more like pack behavior, and
tends to go through the following phases, led usually by the pack members
exhibiting the most ‘alpha-male’ characteristics.
The Euphoric Phase.
The excitement of a project
infects the group. Developers flirt with new frameworks and technologies;
everything seems possible and the timescales seem ridiculously generous.
Beautiful, crafted objects and routines are designed, full of comments.
Standards that conform to the industry’s best practices are decided, and
resolutions about meticulous testing are made. Savvy business managers always
choose this phase to introduce extra scope into the project. It will be embraced
by the participants.
The Chill Wind
This is a brief phrase: so brief
that its existence is controversial, like the Quark. The first seeds of doubt
resound around the group with positive feedback, and the celebratory Gluhwein
flush suddenly leaves the cheeks. The sheer angle of the project path home sinks
in, and suddenly confidence collapses.
The Slough of Despond.
The mood of the group has flipped
suddenly, and despair grips the team. The natural competitiveness within the
group focuses on the race to come up with the most doom-laden predictions for
the project. Developers mutter amongst their colleagues about the utter shambles
of the state of the project. Testers get over-excited when they find bugs, and
make huge lists, wringing their hands like Ancient Greek professional mourners.
There is much puzzlement over the increase in the projects’ scope. (See:
Festinger’s concept of Cognitive Dissonance)
The Search for the Guilty.
This is the phase of the project
where a mob consciousness takes over. The mob thrashes around looking for
someone to blame for their state of despair and doom. (cf Lloyd Demaus’s classic
analysis of the Nixon Tapes). The obvious candidates are those developers who
have got on quietly despite the excitement around them and consequentially done
the most work, as they, logically, have created the most bugs. The DBA usually
makes a good candidate too, as they will have been reluctant to have supported
the radical domain-specific data-model that had been proposed by the developers
when heady with euphoria, and will be viewed by the group as being reactionary.
Sacrifices to the fates are planned to assuage their anger. Anyone with an urge
for professional assassination of their colleagues does well to choose this
phase; a negative remark always hurts most when delivered mid project.
The Depressive Position.
After the switchback ride of
elation and despair, reality breaks in. Depending on the nature of the reality,
this could be more uncomfortable for the group than the previous psychotic
despair. They weep for the lost opportunities of the euphoric phase, and tremble
at the closeness of the deadlines. The taste for retribution vanishes.
The Death March
With all creative energies now
spent, the group decides that fate has decreed a long trudge to project
completion, and there is a weary acceptance of this fact. Even realistic and
helpful technical solutions are shrugged off, since their doom seems inevitable
and inescapable. They develop a touching but misguided faith in technologies of
their youth and innocence, as they become more introspective and passive, in
final acceptance of their fate.
Recriminations
Most likely, at some stage in the
death-march, the entire project will be put out of its’ misery by IT management.
If, however, the survivors reach home base, then the bitter recriminations will
start as to whose fault the debacle was. This seems to be a cleansing process
since there is no longer any taste for retribution for anyone perceived to be
guilty. In fact the cleansing process is so effective that the participants
develop a curious amnesia about the mistakes of the project, and the delusions
they suffered. The developers are ready for the next project where, in the first
heady stage, euphoria will once again grip the team.
When we, as an industry, develop a new development
methodology, I always hope, vainly, that the basic lessons of successful team
working have percolated to the IT industry. It is always a bitter
disappointment to me to discover that we continue to ignore the basic pressure
points that prevent people in groups from working productively together, even
when all the participants have the best of intentions.
See:
- Bion, W. R. 1961. Experiences in Groups: And Other Papers. Tavistock
- Demause L Foundations of Psychohistory Chapter 6:
Historical Group Fantasies
- Festinger, Leon; Schachter, Stanley and Back, Kurt. Social
Pressures in Informal Groups; a Study of Human Factors in Housing. Palo Alto,
California: Stanford University Press, 1950.
- Lewin, K. (1947) Frontiers in group dynamics 1. Human
Relations 1, 5-41.
- Miner, J. B. (2005). Organizational Behavior: Behavior 1: Essential Theories of Motivation and Leadership. Armonk:
M.E. Sharpe
- Tuckman, B. 1965. Developmental sequence in small groups. Psychological bulletin, 63, 384-399.
- Weisbord, Marvin R., Productive Workplaces Revisited (2004)
ISBN 0-7879-7117-0