Back to Basics: Feedback

There is a common misconception from both managers and employees alike that feedback in generally a "telling off" and can therefore be an uncomfortable subject for both parties. This is certainly not the case and I'm going to try to dispel that myth. Feedback actually comes in two forms. Positive (affirming) and negative (adjusting) feedback and should be delivered in exactly the same way. Delivery should be short, casual but specific.  There should also be no ambiguity or misunderstanding of the message contained within that feedback. 

So how do we deliver effective feedback?

1. Ask before providing feedback

For feedback to be effective, the recipient needs to be in a receptive state. If the recipient of the feedback is currently under pressure to meet a deadline, now might not be the best time to deliver it. If when you ask they say no, respect that and tell them you'll catch them later.

2. Be emotionally neutral when providing feedback
The way positive and negative feedback is delivered should be identical. Which it is you are giving is derived from the content. There is no point giving angry feedback as that doesn't encourage a change in behaviour. Angry feedback will simply result in the same behaviour as before but covered up better next time so they don't get into trouble again.

3. Be specific
Explain very clearly the behaviour it is you wish to encourage or discourage. Tell them exactly what it was they did and what the result of that behaviour was.  A simple "Good job" isn't feedback. That's praise and it doesn't encourage affirmation or adjustment of a behaviour because it doesn't identify what the behaviour was in the first place.

4. Finish with an acceptance from them
This is your assurance that the feedback you delivered was understood. In the case of negative feedback, a simple "can you work on that?" prompting a "yes" or "no" response is all you need. If you find that things are not improving and you are still having to continually provide the same feedback, try requesting they own the solution by asking "what can you do about that?". This way, they will need to demonstrate they understand the problem with the behaviour and think of a suitable course of action.

That's it. Four simple steps for delivering effective feedback. We can further maximise the effectiveness of the above model by also considering the following..

Give positive feedback regularly

The most effective way to maintain or improve performance is to provide positive feedback when it is due. This will affirm what is expected of them and result in the continued repetition of that behaviour. Regular positive feedback will also help prevent resentment for the mechanism setting in when you have to use it to provide negative feedback.

Give feedback as close to its catalyst as possible

Relevance is important so the longer you wait, the less effective feedback becomes. This is especially crucial for negative feedback. Don't wait for multiple instances of the same poor behaviour to manifest. Provide feedback early on and prevent the behaviour growing into something larger. If you don't, you risk your direct wondering if you wanted them to fail and that isn't healthy for your relationship with them.

My only caveat to this however is when a negative behaviour was caused though emotion, e.g. your direct sent out a poorly worded angry email. In a case such as this, wait for this emotion to dissipate before attempting to provide feedback on it.

Back to Basics: One-to-One's

One-to-one's for me are the number one way to build relationships with the members of my team.  Everybody is different; an individual.  We all respond to situations differently and we all have different motivations towards work.  It is therefore essential that we treat everybody as an individual and don't try to work with or manage them all in the same way.  To help us understand the individual - one-to-one's.

One-to-one's are also a great opportunity to get into the details of your teams work or issues.  This can actually be a huge time saver for you as a manager; especially if you do these weekly as your team will be more inclined to wait for their one-to-one to discuss the less urgent issues rather than requiring regular and immediate face time with you.

So how do we roll these out?

1. Do them weekly.

You cannot hope to build a relationship with somebody by spending 30 minutes with them just 12 times a year.  If this is a team that is new to you and you are concerned there will not be enough content to fill the 30 minutes (which incidentally is rarely the case and you are more likely to have the opposite problem), start at bi-weekly meetings.  I do however encourage moving to weekly meetings as soon as you can.

2. Have a balanced agenda.

Aim to have half the time dedicated to them, the other half for you.  Don't be too concerned if they over-run slightly on their side.  Remember, it's possibly a lot easier for you to arrange further time with them than it is for them to arrange time with you.

3. Let them talk about what is important to them.

Preferably this will be about work but if they want to spend a few minutes talking about their weekend, cars, cats etc, let them.  This is a meeting where its primary purpose is to build a relationship and you can't build a relationship with somebody when you dismiss what interests and is important to them.  Believe me, if they are having issues with their work and they really want your direction, they will soon bring it up.

4. Let them go first.

If you don't, you will set the tone of the meeting from the outset and they may not open up thereafter.

5. Don't allow yourself to be interrupted by external interruptions.

If you do, you risk sending a negative message that your meeting with them isn't as important as the interruption.  You cannot hope to build a motivated team if you allow that perception to manifest.  It's therefore a good idea to turn off all phones, email and IM when entering these meetings.  If anybody attempts to interrupt in person, politely ask them to come see you afterwards.  You have no idea how much this point alone contributes to building a relationship with somebody until you have actually had to do it.  It's very motivating.  Of course, apply some common sense here.  If the building is on fire then you probably want to know about it.  Just avoid everything other than the most essential interruptions.  It's only for 30 minutes after all.

6. Never cancel a meeting.

Again, this sends the same negative message as when you accept interruptions.  If you genuinely can't make your normal scheduled appointment, reschedule immediately for another time in the same week.  This will at least reaffirm that meeting with them is important to you and it is simply a scheduling issue.

7. Do them in private.

You can't expect somebody to open up about delicate or confidential issues if there is a concern they may be overheard.  If you can't find a private location in the office, a public location can still be private.  Coffee houses for example can make excellent locations for one-to-one's in the absence of a meeting room back at the office.

8. Always start and finish on time.

This one is a general meeting rule and should be no different for one-to-one's.  It helps form a mutual respect for each others time and provides coaching through example on this particular facet of meeting etiquette.

9. Determine who owns any resulting actions.

Just like any meeting, determine who is responsible for completing any actions and decide by what date they should be completed.

10. Follow up on any actions you received in the last meeting.

It is of course vital that your team has confidence in you as a leader.  If you yourself received any actions, follow through on them.  If you were unable to fulfil an action from the last meeting, be open and honest and add it to your list of actions for this week.  Try not to let this happen for too many consecutive weeks as this in itself sends an implicit message that their request isn't that important to you or the business.  If it was important enough to be added as an action to begin with, follow it through to completion.

That's it!  Just ten simple rules to help ensure the effective roll out of one-to-ones within your team.  What else do you do to ensure these are effective and run smoothly?

Improving estimates with Planning Poker

I once overheard a comment regarding a last minute request to estimate a piece of work in an area of the code base the developer knew nothing about.  "Whatever you estimate, you'll be held to it.".  It's no wonder developers are often reluctant to provide estimates when there is an unrealistic expectation that estimates are always spot on.  An estimate by its own definition is an approximation and we should therefore anticipate and plan for the possibility that it is going to be incorrect.  What we can do however is employ techniques that help improve the quality and accuracy of estimates so that we can have a higher level of confidence in them.  One such technique is "Planning Poker".

Let's say we've been asked to estimate a particular user story in a large area of the system.  Different developers have had different experiences within this area and so their opinion of the complexity of implementing this user story differs.  Planning poker allows us to identify this and provide a forum for further short discussion; by the end of which we should achieve a more accurate estimate that everybody buys into.  Let's play a short hand to see this by example.

We have five stakeholders playing which consist of a two DBA's and three developers.  They all hold the following standard hand which contain numbers from the Fibonacci sequence.

Image courtesy of Mountain Goat Software

We have been asked to estimate two user stories and we'll play a hand to estimate user story 1 first.  Each stakeholder selects a card that represents their estimate of that story.  What we see after the first round are the following cards selected.  Two 1's, two 2's and a 3.  As the estimates from all were relatively close with no wildly differing opinions, the group decide to take the average(ish) estimate of 2 and move on.

Next we look at the second user story and get the following hand.  One 3, three 8's and a 13.  This time we have quite a split opinion so it is now up to the low and high scoring stakeholders to justify their estimates.  Once each stakeholder has presented, we go through the process of playing another hand, this time considering what we have just heard.  We repeat this cycle until we eventually reach a hand similar to the first where we had similar enough estimates that the group felt comfortable taking the average, if not the same estimate across the board.

As you can see, planning poker has the potential to be an effective tool in collaborative estimation.  It won't guarantee that every estimate will be perfect but it will improve the accuracy and reliability of them and certainly give you every possible chance of avoiding those unfortunate occasions where we get them wildly wrong.

The var keyword in C#. What's in your coding standards?

So this was a subject that led to much debate in the office this week.  When is it acceptable to use the var keyword in C#?  Well, lets start with the obvious situation where everybody will agree it is necessary and we have no choice otherwise.  Anonymous types.  

Take the following example where we have a Linq projection to an anonymous type...

var employeeDetails = from employee in employees

                where employee.County == "Kent" 

                select new { employee.ForeName, employee.Surname };

foreach (var item in employeeDetails)
{
    Console.WriteLine("Name={0} {1}", item.ForeName, item.Surname);
}

var is used twice here.  Once to hold a sequence of anonymous types, then again to iterate through the sequence of anonymous types; but where else is it appropriate for use?  Well actually, most people agreed that it shouldn't be used anywhere else.  It certainly shouldn't be used where it would cause ambiguity, like in the following example... 

var products = _repository.GetProductsByCategory(ProductCategory.Bike);

What is the type of the variable products in the example above?  It's not immediately obvious and requires you to drill down into the method GetProductsByCategory to determine the return type.  Instead, the use of an explicitly typed variable is preferred.  Here is the same example typed correctly. 

IList <IProduct> products = _repository.GetProductsByCategory(ProductCategory .Bike);

Much better.  Also, I don't think var should be used where the type is inferred from the right side of an assigmnet.  i.e...

var age = 31;

Sure, we know the implicit type of the variable age through our own experience, but what about junior members of your team?  Will they know?  Perhaps this was written by a junior.  Did they know the implicit type they would receive when they wrote this?  Were they expecting something else?  Its use here raises too many questions and is best avoided.

I think the biggest split in opinion was around using var when instantiating an object.  To be honest, I've always found C# rather verbose when it comes to this.  For example...

List<Bike> bikes = new List<Bike>();

Isn't there quite a bit of redundancy there?  We explicitly type the variable bikes, then we immediately instantiate that variable, specifying the type a second time.  Personally, I fall into the camp where if the type is specified on the right side of the assignment, use the more concise syntax of...

var bikes = new List<BikeDTO >();

To me, that reads much better.  It's concise and there isn't any ambiguity over the type.  This point however seems to split the room and there seems no way to convince either side otherwise.  I guess this one comes down to what you are used to and what other languages you have had exposure to.  The same verbose declaration in VB for example would look something like...

Dim bikes as List<BikeDTO> = new List<BikeDTO>()

However, nobody would ever use that syntax.  Instead, the norm would be to use the conciser form of...

Dim bikes = new List<BikeDTO>()

...and move on.

Ultimately, the standard you choose should be consistent and not cause the developer to think too much about it, either at the point of variable declaration or variable discovery.  It's important to settle on something that everybody will buy into and adhere to.  I think it's impossible to please everybody on this one so if permitting its usage for the sake of reducing redundancy is going to cause debate and inconsistency within your code base, perhaps go with the safest option and don't permit it.

What do your coding standards say about the use of var?