How would you improve your current company/IT department?

Question

If you were the head of your current company/IT department, what would you change?
Would you:

• introduce SCRUM to all teams or stop using it?
• hire more software testers?
• change the policy on IT related courses?
• change the bonus system?
• ...?

Please mention the reason(s) behind the non-trivial changes you'd make. All ideas for improvement are welcome.

Answer 1

Just one area, but... ... I think motivation is a big key if you want to score big. You want to have motivated workers that always strive to be up to date on knowledge all by themselves. Workers that love to go to their job. If you don't, it's easy that your organization will have a rather low roof of knowledge. To get a feel for what motivates your employees I'd take them out, one by one and ask them what their ideal working environment would be and what they would want to change to the current one. Ask them to loose the boundaries on that question to get really open answers.

Answer 2

Optimize meetings. They are often conducted in such a way they become a waste of time and a killer of productivity - many people get together and sit for two hours discussing things which only some of them have heard about and can affect.

In most cases it's much better to plan several smaller meetings.

Answer 3

1. Organise enough number of meeting. As of now there lot of unwanted meetings.
2. Avoid personal meetings and introduce call conf
3. Introduce IM . My current company does not have one :(
4. Give developers more freedom to use their own ideas (My current company's development standards are formed by some architects who have no clue about the current developments in s/w development)
5. Reduce the number of documents and increase time in innovative ideas.
6. More peer reviews than the testing by testers.

Answer 4

• Introduce design and code reviews. They have a higher ROCE than hiring more testers.
• Can all regular meetings, they're a crutch for inadequate managers. All meetings should be ad-hoc.
• Introduce a rule that states all documents written prior to coding are for discussion purposes only, i.e. paper is considered ephemeral.
• Remove all bonus systems. Bonuses require metrics to be objective, and metrics are counter-productive because they encourage gaming.
• Introduce a rule that states any methodolgy consultant entering the building will be shot on sight. These people can destroy your company.

Answer 5

I would:

• increase communication between the different departments (it's an IT company, so the competence is spread out)
• have an architect join the salesmen to restrain them from making too big promises
• arrange for some regular tech-talk courses, where employees can learn about new technologies and deepen their knowledge by asking questions and going over things in group.
• have code reviews a requirement in stead of an exception