Have you ever heard your PM refer to his staffing plan as an “inventory control sheet”? Sounds logical right? It’s fairly obvious that you can simplify accounting by viewing people’s billable hours as product inventory. However, what’s dangerous though, is when you start thinking that the people are the inventory. Then you begin to treat them like widgets.

Your true inventory is not the bodies, nor the billable hours for which you get paid. The inventory your client is paying for is the output of the resources. Think about it. Would you want to hire a resource who fit the job description, but was no more useful than a walking-talking paper weight? No, you’d want that resource to add value to your project, even if he was a high-school dropout. Well, your client wants the same thing: results. So as a manager, you want to invest as much as possible into the output-producers, namely your people. Buy them their pet tools; give them flex time; let them telecommute; send them to training. When you do that you improve output, which is what your customers are buying, even if they pay you by the hour.

I was recently the tech lead on a project using Microsoft tools where one developer produced some code that was just hideous. So, like any diligent manager would do, I went back to coach him on the right way to do things. “I know you may have a preference for calling the same 14-parameter function over and over, but it would be better to design this thing in a more modular way. Try to make it look more like the coding standard, more like the conventional Microsoft design examples.” I even re-typed a couple files in the official format, to show him how to convert his work into a compliant manner. I was witty, I was considerate, I was brimming with satisfaction at my mentoring and training skills, and sent him on his way. But to my utter shock, he came back with some strange hybrid of my mandated standard and his personal preference…the same 14-parameter function was there, only prettier. Then it hit me: this guy has so much experience and tenure, he’s too set in his ways; there was no way he was going to do this without some “act of God”. What should I do? In
Leadership and the One-Minute Manager, leadership guru Ken Blanchard says you partner with the person to determine whether they want to be a part of that group. If they don’t, help them determine where they do want to be. By defying the standards, renegade tech workers make an implicit, and maybe even subconcious, statement about not wanting to be there. All you have to do is help them find their home, elsewhere.

Of course, that’s the theory. What do you do if you’ve got an impending deadline? What if your PM or senior management tells you “No Attrition! Use the people you have!” I’m curious to hear what you’ve experienced.