Evaluation based on results is not the answer to long working hours

Shinzo Abe, Japan’s Prime Minister, has announced that Japan needs a more flexible working style without the ridiculously long hours that prevent many women from working. This is a very laudable goal and something that Japan will need in the face of a shrinking population and many in the younger generation that seem reluctant to devote their lives to the company. (Typically, the photo accompanying the article about improving working conditions for women shows a committee that consists almost entirely of old men.) In fact, changes are already happening, albeit very slowly. When I started working in Japan 14 years ago many colleagues came into work on Saturdays and nearly all stayed very late. Many still stay fairly late but the company has prohibited Saturday working and is putting limits on overtime.

What really worried me in the Yomiuri article though was the quote:

“I would like you to investigate a framework for a new working-hours system that befits work styles evaluated based on results, not time,” Abe said at the meeting.

This sounds like Abe wants to replace one dysfunctional system with a different but equally dysfunctional one. A shift from the bureaucratic nightmare described by Northcote C. Parkinson to one based on industrial age thinking.

The Yomiuri article hints at the problem by describing the “entrenched system of long working hours suppressing productivity” and suggests limiting working hours as the solution. However, the problem is in the working culture that equates dedication to hours worked and working harder as the means to achieve more. Changing this will be harder than just limiting overtime. Which is probably where the focus on results comes from, companies worried about their revenue probably want that to ensure nothing actually changes.

The suggestion in the article is that employees could work whatever hours they like so long as they achive the results. This sounds remarkably like management by objectives which is strange from a country that so admired W. Edwards Demming who had “Eliminate managemement by objective” as one of his 14 points for running a company. The problems with this approach are legion. It discourages teamwork and it puts the focus on the individual instead of the system as the source of productivity. It also assumes that it is actually meaningful to measure “results” or productivity at an individual level.

To improve productivity it is necessary focus on the system. Ironically it is Japanese companies such as Toyota that have shown the world what can be achieved by doing this. Yet Abe’s statement demonstrates that this is an exception, even in Japan rather than the norm. I see this problem daily at my own workplace. Long working hours are considered normal, this gives no incentive to actually improve the working practice since you are going to be in the office anyway. And even when there is a desire to improve the system everyone is so busy dealing with what John Seddon calls ‘failure demand’ that there is no time to introduce improvements.

From the perspective of software development this means that developers are so busy debugging the code that they have no time to consider how those bugs got there in the first place and what changes they could make to prevent them. “We don’t have time to do unit testing or code review”. It is very hard for them to change the system, so simultaneously making them responsible for their results while limiting the only thing that they control, their working hours, is both demotivating and unfair.

Update: A nice article from Vangard Consulting puts the case against "management by results" in the health care sector very clearly:

Wherever management by results exists so too does the failure to accurately understand and sustainably solve systemic problems. This is in the nature of management by results because:

1. It wrongly assumes that performance can be adequately described by a system of measurement; and
2. It holds people and organisations to account for the fictions that this creates.

Another book from Packt

Packt asked me to review another book for them; this time on Review Board.  "Getting Started With Review Board" by Sandeep Rawat. Maybe they didn't actually read my previous review of the QtCreator book. After I replied that I would be happy to write an actual review, that would probably be bad,  rather than just an endorsement I didn't hear back from them

Review Board is a great tool. I have been using at work now for several years. It is a free open source tool for code review. In the very early days the setup required installing several packages but for several versions now the setup/upgrade process has been made trivially easy. It uses the python easy_install tools so normally the install, including all the pre-requisites can be done with a single command. It also has great online help and installation instructions. It is also very easy to use. I find that new users in my team just need a 5 minute explanation of the main features and they are good to go.

Which brings me to the Pack book. It is described on their web page as

This book is a concise, to-the-point guide with a practical walkthrough of the code review workflow using the features present in Reviewboard. 

Based on the table of contents and the sample chapter what this means is that the book is simply a very short description of what reviewboard is. The sample chapter on "Reviewing Code Review Requests" was simply a description of the Review Board features that are not only easy to figure out for yourself they are also described fully in the free help with the program. The book will also be out of date very soon since Review Board 2.0 is about to be released.

So I don't really understand the point of this book. Why would anyone want to spend $12  for the eBook or $22 for a paper book for something that is not really needed and available for free online.

What would actually be useful is a book on how to do code reviews. Karl Wieigers "Peer Reviews in Software: A Practical Guide" is one of the best books on the subject that I have found. Smart Bear also have a free eBook on code review available (requires registration) which while obviously meant to advertise their code review tool does discuss code review in general. However, there are not so many books that cover code reviews.

The publisher of the book is often a good indicator of the quality of the book. Some publishers, like The Pragmatic Programmers are always reliable.  I think I will be avoiding Packt books in the future.

Application Development with Qt-Creator

Packt sent me a copy of their new book on using Qt-Creator "Application Development with Qt-Creator"  by Ray Rischpater.  It is very clearly targeted at beginners and anyone with experience of other IDEs would probably find it too light. However, if you are completely new to programming it covers some of the basics of using Qt-Creator, but not really enough to create an actual application.

This is not a book for learning C++ or Qt. The code samples are very simple. There is section on how to use Qt's signals and slots but many of the topics needed for non-trivial applications are not even mentioned (for example the more advanced widgets such as lists, tables, combo-boxes or event handling.) Fortunately, Qt has comprehensive documentation that covers most of this.

The biggest problem that I had with this book was what was missing. Many of the functions that I use the most while programming were not mentioned at all. One of Qt-Creator's strengths is the C++ code model that allows fast navigation. You can find all the places a function is used (Ctrl+U), follow a symbol to where it is declared/defined (F2) and switch between header/source files (F4). This makes navigation in a large code base fast and easy. But these functions did not seem to be covered. Also, the following basic topics are not covered:

•  Search and replace
•  The different views in the left hand pane (class view, open documents etc)
•  Splitting the main editor window to view two files at the same time
•  Editor functions such as commenting out a block of code
•  Shortcut keys
•  Refactoring functions for renaming symbols / extracting functions
•  Code snippets

For anyone familiar with an IDE these are all straight forward and easy to use. However, if you are new to programming (and are therefore in the target audience for this book) then you might want a bit more explanation and description of the available functions.

The really big omission is a description of the location function (Ctrl+K). This function is central to using Qt-Creator and, for me, what makes Qt-Creator stand out as an IDE. The location field in the bottom left of the screen has many functions. Just typing a filename allows quick opening of any file in the project. It also gives access to the help system, the source control functions, lists of classes and member functions.  Since this is something that sets Qt-Creator apart it almost deserves a whole chapter by itself, but it is not even mentioned.

The lack of coverage of major functions actually suggests that the author has not actually used Qt-Creator for any serious development and has not used Qt significantly either. Slots can be private (or protected) contrary to what is claimed in the book.

The overall impression is one of a professional writer who has not actually used Qt-Creator for any real development. So the writing is clear and easy to follow but the coverage of the topic is very superficial.

If you just want to quickly learn how to setup Qt-Creator, for example to complete a class assignment, then this book covers what you need.  For professional developers on larger projects this book is missing coverage of too many functions.