OpenSource Connections
Category: Uncategorized
When an IT team needs help with a big project or a new task, they will often look to outsiders for help in delivering their objectives. Oftentimes, they will bring in an elite coder, one with superior skills and knowledge, and look to that coder to be the white knight and save the team.
Unfortunately, managers are overawed far too often by the elite coder, and they take a far too hands-off management style, letting that person run roughshod and do whatever he or she wants. What managers forget is that theres a horizon beyond the current project, and when the external help is gone, the remaining IT team needs to maintain and update whatever was left behind. Often, this means that the team is left holding the bag, trying to figure out the code and how to work with it.
Just as any company that hires a consultant, just gets a deck, and lets the consultant leave, it is incumbent on the manager to MANAGE the external resources as well.
How so?
1) Integrate the external resources with the internal team. For all intents and purposes, for as long as the contract lasts, the contractors are part of the team. Have a kickoff. Do some social events, even if they are on the company clock and the company dime. Managers need everyone to work together.2) Set expectations. Managers should demand well documented, clean code and walkthroughs of the code base so that when the team has to do maintenance, its not the first time anyone has seen the code.3) Get the contractors skin in the game. Put some percentage of the total payment into an escrow to be released a certain time after the code goes live. The contractor should be responsible for bugs, which often dont appear until the release. Demand testing, at least unit testing, and regression testing if possible.4) Pair program. This isnt so that someone is consistently watching over the contractors shoulder, but, rather, so that the internal team can learn from the person who was brought in with special knowledge. There should be knowledge transfer, be it through seminars, brown bag lunches, or observation.
This means that a manager looking to bring in external resources needs to do more than look at a resume. Solo riders cure the symptom, but probably dont cure the root cause. This means that the manager needs to do a thorough job in screening; the problems of a bad relationship will last with the team much longer than the relationship will.