Step 3: Retaining Great Developers

Too often, staff can be forgotten once they've been recruited. It's important to have a well-planned induction process and an ongoing career development process. Once you've hired someone you usually don't want to lose him or her! This employee cost a lot of money to find and train and, after a surprisingly short period of time, accumulates an intrinsic worth that's hard to quantify—the employee's knowledge is of high value (for example, they know how the company operates and all about its clients). All in all, you really don't want to lose good people. One of the ways to address this issue is to realize why people up and leave. People generally do this because:

• They're not being rewarded in a manner commensurate with the effort they're expending

• They feel they're not valued in some other way

• They're not being stimulated or challenged in their current role

• They're not getting the recognition they feel they deserve

• They can't see how to progress within the organization (or feel that they can't progress, period)

There are other reasons, of course. Typically, remuneration is not the main reason people leave; so long as they're getting a fair rate and they don't have any of the above complaints, they're happy.

Human Resources Management: A Key Role

Natural attrition and turnover of staff is healthy for any organization. A company must ensure that they manage to retain the people they want to keep and for as long as they want them. It should be someone's job to make sure that nobody leaves unexpectantly. If anyone leaves like this, that manager has failed in his or her job. Through effective communication and human resources (HR) processes, and in an open, honest, attentive environment, this kind of surprise just shouldn't happen—if it does, something's gone wrong. Did the company not deliver on its promises? Did someone oversell the company's vision and then not deliver on it? Find out the departing employee is dissatisfied and then put steps in place to rectify the situation so that no one else leaves.

In other words, make sure that you have effective and efficient exit interviews, but remember that by the time you get to an exit interview, it's too late to "save" this person. They have already made up their minds to leave and will almost certainly already have another job lined up. Proactive management of your staff while they are employed is absolutely key to staff retention. Be aware of, and deal with, their issues before they get so big as to force them to look around for something else. In some circumstances, it will be right for all parties that the individual leaves. But if you know about it early enough, at least you have plenty of time to manage the situation and to recruit and train his or her replacement. In this way, it's a win-win for everyone, and you can mitigate any possible damage.

This HR management needn't be a full-time position, especially in a small company, but make sure someone is responsible for it and that they give it a very high priority.

Career Development

We carry out regular human resource reviews via discussions with our staff and questionnaires. Below are some of the issues that we, as a small(ish), distributed, software services company, have identified as being of prime importance.

High-quality communication is vital Here are some of the ways we ensure that we're giving our employees enough feedback:

• Each manager writes a monthly update for their area of responsibility, a monthly report to the staff.

• Only one developer writes a monthly report each month instead of everyone. This monthly report is comprehensive.

• Quarterly Technical Days are arranged and planned a year in advance. Technical Days are when all the developers get together for a whole day of technical presentations given by the staff to the staff.

• Monthly social get-togethers are arranged, and we schedule a whole year's worth in the calendarin advance.

• We're always available for ad hoc contact and impromptu discussions.

Reducing isolation: site visits and reviews A schedule of regular site visits and reviews by managers is necessary to evaluate employee performance. Each manager visits each developer a minimum of five times per year for full-day reviews. These visits are a mix of technical visits and more personnel-focused visits. The technical visits are in the minority, but regular technically-focused telephone conferences are also scheduled. The manager takes the opportunity to speak to the client on the visit, too, but this should not be the focus. The technical visit includes reviewing the work being carried out by the member of staff. Feedback is provided to the member of staff in writing. All site visits are written up and published so that all members of staff are kept in the loop. The entire program of visits and phone calls is scheduled into manager and staff calendars.

Tools to do the job It is necessary to provide a comprehensive toolkit for each member of staff that enables them to do a better job than anyone else around. This toolkit comprises a set of software tools and utilities provided on a number of CDs. Also included on the CDs are TMS's code libraries (see the appendix note on the TDF), coding standards, a copy of our Web site, and other useful documents. Basically, the toolkit contains everything "soft" that might be of immediate use to our developers.

Incentive We find that giving people a stake in the success of the company, whether through bonuses, shares, share options, profit sharing, and so on is absolutely vital to encouraging their productivity and their commitment to our mission.

Human resources It is necessary to have a formal process to ensure quality career development. We use two principal mechanisms:

• Personal Development Plans

• Performance reviews

These and other specific processes are discussed in the next section.

Personal development plans

The PDP is a contract between the employee and the company that identifies and agrees on specific developmental needs for the employee over a given period of time, the idea being that performance can be improved through these additional skills and experiences.

To facilitate the PDP, companies need to define a training and development policy. We would suggest something similar to ours, which is: "We will develop the skills of our employees at all levels, to meet the needs of our customers, both internal and external as well as the requirements of our business, taking into account the personal goals of our employees wherever appropriate."

First let's examine how training and development fits in with the PDP.

What is the difference between training and development? All training is development but not all development is training. Development is the bigger picture, within which there are formal elements of training. All learning experiences, including the formal elements, are called development. A PDP doesn't just concentrate on formal training courses, but includes any experience where the individual learns something.

How do I define the development needs of my staff? You should use and refer to a number of different sources. These include:

• The job description

• The performance review (both the Individual Preparation Form and the review form itself). The Individual Preparation Form is a form containing a set of performance and goal-related questions, which are answered by the person being reviewed and then read by the reviewer prior to the meeting. This form forces some pre-thought and pre-planning.

• Individual goals and targets for the year

• Company goals and targets for the year

Call these the "tools" if you like. Your PDP is pulling together all these development needs into one plan of action, linked to which should be an agreed upon set of objectives and outcomes that you and the employee expect to get from the development experience. In this way, you are able to justify the cost of any development against your development budget.

How can we ensure continuity of approach? Here are a few things we do at TMS to ensure continuity:

1. Everyone should use the same tools. All managers with direct responsibility for staff should use the same tools, and all staff should have the same opportunity to prepare their PDP. The PDP is last in line after:

   

   If any of the tools are missing or incomplete, then there is little point in attempting a PDP.

2. Everyone should use the same language. For companies with large development budgets and/or a large number of staff, it is useful to categorize the development needs as follows:

   • Soft skills: time management, stress management, assertiveness skills, presentation skills

   • Management development: management of supervisory skills, team building, leadership skills, finance for non-financial managers

   • Technical: Windows NT, Java, SQL programming, Object Oriented Design, NetWare courses

   • Commercial: marketing, finance, human resources

   • Quality: courses relating specifically to ISO 9001 procedures and processes

   • Professional qualifications: Certified Novell Engineer (CNE), MCSE, advanced degree, MBA, etc.

   If you break down your development budget into fields, it becomes easier to track and analyze your development spend against a particular category of development.

3. Everyone should categorize the development in the same way. For example, your categories should include mentoring/coaching, on-the-job training, training temporary replacements to fill in while staff is away, cross-departmental training, internal/external training, conferences/seminars, professional accreditations, industry-specific readings, writing for magazines and books, and orientation for new employees.

10 essential points for managers We would like to give credit here to Training and Development: Analysing the Need, Developing the Plan, and Implementing the Strategy by Sue Mathews. She suggests these 10 key objectives and strategies that managers should be sure to follow:

1. Keep everyone informed. When you introduce the idea of a PDP use a method that delivers the information quickly, accurately, and to everyone in the same way. Sound and effective communication is essential.

2. Clarify the overall and specific objectives. Overall objectives refer to the company's development strategy and objectives and specific objectives refer the individual's objectives, both job related and personal. Make sure that any development need identified can be linked to the achievement of company objectives, otherwise the development will not be cost effective. The individuals can see what the company is doing and how, and how their own development requirements fit in with the overall strategy and achievement of goals.

3. Make sure that everyone understands the expected outcomes. Communicate to staff that every development activity carries outcomes with it; that is, make sure the staff knows what is expected to be different as a result of the development experience, and that staff will be measured in relation to how well those outcomes have been met.

4. Realize that all problems cannot be resolved by training or development. Realize that some problems are not development issues but might be linked to other things, such as inadequate resources or inappropriate systems or structures. Lack of knowledge might contribute to these problems, but training and development will only deal with the symptom—not the cause—in such circumstances.

5. Set clear and measurable performance criteria. Make sure that all development activities perform to agreed upon standards and criteria before they are implemented and the cost is incurred.

6. Recognize that training and development are corporate issues. Bring training and development off the sidelines and into centerfield. Don't merely pay lip service to it or to PDPs: make sure that a senior manager or a director owns it, and put it on the agenda for management and board meetings and for one-on-one (1:1) meetings.

7. Development should not just be for the "stars" in the company. Development opportunities should be genuinely available for everyone; not just a few favored staff members. PDPs and the development budget must ensure that all staff have fair and equal access to development. If they don't, the PDP isn't working.

8. Don't make training and development an additional organizational "stressor." If you want staff to get the most out of their development opportunities, make sure that they are supported in managing their workload. If you don't ensure this, staff will not want to attend because of the sheer volume of work waiting for them upon their return—a major development demotivator!

9. Be prepared to sell your development ideas. Everyone should be prepared to sell the benefits of their development needs, because not everyone else will share their enthusiasm. Be prepared to think laterally about the best way of learning (this need not be just through formal training courses). All development ideas should be justified, because there will always be a cost attached.

10. Correlate the development activities with the bottom line. If you can clearly demonstrate how closely the development need or plan is to profit and other corporate issues, the more likely it is to be accepted. Always be prepared to argue the business case.

Other PDP notes

This section contains a step-by-step guide to identifying a development need for a principal accountability in the job description. The aim is to give the employee every opportunity to achieve individual goals and enhance performance in the job.

1. Write and jointly agree upon a job description for each role. Both the manager and the employee should sign to show that both parties agree to the content. The job description defines the job regardless of who fills the position, and as such, should remain relatively unchanged unless the needs of the business change.

2. Within the job description there will be a number of primary responsibilities. These are the key duties of the job (note that these do not cover every duty, just the main ones). Normally you would expect to see between five and eight duties depending on the seniority of the position.

3. Look at each primary responsibility in turn. Consider what goals or objectives should fall out of each primary responsibility. There might only be a few goals for some primary responsibilities, but others might have numerous goals. The goals are linked specifically to the person doing the job, and will therefore reflect their abilities and length of time in the position. Achievement of the goals should be linked to the performance review period whenever possible. Employees should have 12 months in which to achieve their goals, or as many months as possible within the performance review period. Obviously, if this exercise is not carried out until halfway through the review period, the goals must reflect the time the employee has to achieve them. Then decide how far in advance you are looking at development needs—a quarter, six months, or maybe the full year.

4. Transfer the goals to the PDP sheet.

5. For each goal, agree what development need or needs fall out of this. You're looking for any additional support or knowledge the employee feels they must have in order to achieve the goal. In other words, you're committing to this development (whatever it may be) so that the employee will be confident that he or she can achieve this goal within the time indicated. Development does not need to be a formal training course. Think laterally and look for the best way of satisfying the need.

6. Agree on a date by when this development should take place. Be realistic and link this date to the date by which the goal must be achieved. Obviously, the development process needs to take place well before the goal is to be achieved.

7. Decide who owns the action for ensuring that the development process is organized and takes place. If it's written down, there will be no confusion, and the person owning the action will make sure that the process takes place because they are accountable for it.

8. Agree with the employee what outcome is expected from the development experience. All development (even mentoring) will have a cost to the company and, so look at what return on investment can be expected from the cost incurred. Clarify the reasons why the development is necessary and double-check that the development decided upon is actually the most appropriate one to help the jobholder achieve the goal. Both parties now have something concrete to focus on now and at the post-evaluation stage.

9. The PDP should be on the agenda for review at every 1:1 meeting, just to see if any updates or changes need to be made. If a development process has been completed in between meetings, you need to complete the post-evaluation section and jointly agree how well the original objectives have been met. There will be occasions where the development process has not delivered what was expected, in which case you and the employee must agree what should be done. Don't hold the post-valuation meeting too soon after the development process—give the employee time to put their newly acquired knowledge into practice.

10. The employee owns the PDP, not the manager. The employees are the ones who should drive the process in conjunction with the manager, not the other way around.

11. When you get to the performance review itself, this form, along with your notes from every 1:1 meeting, will be invaluable. If this form has been completed properly, most of your preparation work for the performance review will be contained here. The ideal scenario is one in which every development process has taken place and every process has had the desired outcome, so every goal has been achieved or even over-achieved. If any goal has not been met, this form should give you a record of the reasons why. Whatever the reason, the circumstances should be contained in some way in this form.

12. You might want to modify this form for your customer. Agree with them what the primary responsibilities and the goals relating to the project are, and agree on development needs with them, if appropriate (you might even get them to share the cost). This form could serve as an excellent record of performance per project, and if the employee completes more than one project in a year, all the forms must be considered at performance review time.

13. This system will be of value only if regular meetings are held to review progress and if the preparation work is carried out in the first place, meaning that current and accurate job descriptions are prepared, primary responsibilities are agreed upon with the employee and reviewed regularly, and the goals are reviewed to ensure that they reflect the business needs as well as the needs of the individual.

Here's an example of a PDP within the six-month period between January and July 1998 and for goals that were set before January 1998.

Sample PDP

NAME: LES ARMWELK
JOB TITLE: HR MANAGER
DEVELOPMENT FOR THE PERIOD: JAN '98 - JULY '98
DATE OF REVIEW: 3/29/98
PRIMARY RESPONSIBILITY: Improve company recruitment process and recruit all new heads per Plan '98.
Goals	Development needed	By when	Owner	Outcome expected
Ensure that all new heads are recruited in time, at the right quality and cost.	Project management training (external)	End Jan '98	LA	Ability to project manage the whole company's recruitment process (100+ heads per year)
	Advanced Interviewing Skills course (external)	End Feb '98	LA	To participate in and make decisions on at least 50 percent of all second interviews by the end of March '98; 70 percent by the end of July '98.
	One-hour sessions with each departmental manager to understand and assess company's Headcount Plan	End Feb'98	LA	To be able to recommend to the Board the proposed recruitment strategy for each quarter in advance and to make recommendations for change to the Headcount Plan.
Introduce psychometric testing to the company's recruitment process by Aug '98	Research an appropriate battery of psychometric tests and present recommendations to the MD	Research complete by end May '98.	LA	To gain MD's approval for tests to be introduced at first presentation.
		Presentation to MD by end June '98		To have a working battery of tests in the company that adds value to the recruitment process.
		Presentation to all Dept Managers by end July '98.
POST EVALUATION
Development need	Actioned	Objectives met? yes/no	If no, next step	Actioned
Project management training external) by end Jan'98	YES	Will not be known until end of Plan year, but initial signs are good (Project Plan has been prepared).
Advanced Interviewing Skills course (external)	YES	YES Les is participating in 50 percent of all second interviews and is on course to exceed the 70 percent target by end July '98.
One-hour sessions with each department manager to understand and assess company's Headcount Plan	YES	NO Les requires more detailed financial training in order to understand departmental recruitment budgets	Two 1-hour sessions with the Finance Director on Profit & Loss and Budgeting & Forecasting	YES Completed by 15 March '98
Research an appropriate battery of psychometric tests and present recommendations to the MD	NO	NO Research is unlikely to be complete by end May '98	Research to be complete by end June '98.	YES
			Presentation to MD by mid June '98	YES

Performance reviews

The performance review is intended to summarize the development meeting (which can occur annually or more frequently) between the manager and each of his or her direct reports, during which each jointly reviews training and development activity and work achievements during the past review period and agrees to action plans for training, development, and work-related goals for the coming review period.

The review meeting itself should be seen as a two-way process: as a tool that enables you to assess past performance while also looking ahead at future goals. It helps to guide everyone towards optimizing their abilities so that the end result is that both company and individual goals are met.

The only way company goals can be met is if everyone carries out their own role properly, and so it follows that efficiency and effectiveness must be monitored on a regular basis. The manager and the company should provide every assistance to the employees to enable and allow for optimum performance.

There are many different ways of measuring performance, but the one used most frequently in performance reviews concentrates on measuring achievements against specific goals (or performance indicators). Within the job description are a number of primary responsibilities. From those, the employee and the manager agree to certain performance objectives, or goals, with the intention that shared goals result in a commitment to those goals. The performance of the employee is assessed against these goals over a specific period of time. The overall performance level for the period under review is summarized in one performance rating. Any percentage increase to salaries is directly linked to the performance rating as well as to the company's ability to pay (this is where the company's revenue and profit come in).

In general terms, the main purpose of a performance review system is summarized below, although not in any particular order:

• To review past performance

• To set performance objectives for the future

• To help improve current performance

• To set and agree on future goals

• To assess increases or new levels in salaries (salary levels can go down as well as up, or even stay the same, depending on performance)

• To assess training and development needs

• To assist in career planning decisions

It is another aspect of communication and an opportunity for you to build a closer relationship with your staff, and as such should be seen as a positive step forward.

The review meeting The following are guidelines for conducting the performance review meeting:

• The review should be a two-way discussion, controlled by the manager

• The meeting should be conducted with tact, diplomacy, sensitivity, and above all, in a professional manner

• The manager should never talk "off the record" during the meeting

• The manager should never make promises during this meeting unless they have been discussed and agreed upon beforehand

• The manager should not get drawn into discussing salary reviews during the main part of the review; rather, the manager should have an authorized percentage increase to give to the employee when they receive their performance rating. (After all, that's really what they're waiting to hear!)

• At the start of the meeting, the manager should briefly outline the format and structure of the meeting and give the employee an idea of the duration. (It's a good idea to schedule at least an hour per review meeting if the review period is six months; otherwise, schedule two hours if the review period is one year.)

• The manager should let the staff member know that he or she has reviewed all the 1:1 notes, as well as all client feedback, and their own individual comments in reaching the conclusions contained in the review form itself. Have these forms available during the meeting for reference purposes.

• The manager should work through each section of the review form in turn. The employee should be given the opportunity to comment on what the manager has said and make notes of their comments for the manager to consider before finalizing the wording of the review form.

• The manager should finish the review meeting with details of the overall performance rating and the percentage increase to be assigned to the employee's salary.

• The manager should let the employee know that he or she will write up the form and get it to them within two working days of the review meeting for them to sign. Once the manager has the review form back, he or she signs it and makes copies as appropriate.

Follow Up The manager is responsible for these action items after the review meeting with the employee:

• The manager should review his or her own handling of the review meeting as soon as possible, while things are still fresh in his or her mind.

• The manager should review those points where follow-up action has been agreed upon and ensure that the action happens.

• The manager should ensure that any follow-up action that he or she commits to during the review is documented and the individual informed.

The Individual Preparation Form and the review form don't cross-reference each other or follow the same lines in the questions they ask. This might make it more difficult to use any information from the individual preparation form in preparing for the review meeting.

1:1 meetings The objectives of regular meetings between managers and their direct reports are to provide a regular and focused opportunity for mutual communication, feedback, and exchange of information in the following ways:

• Goal setting, clarification, review, and update

• Performance feedback

• Review of training and development needs

• Communication of information to allow both the manager and the employee to improve their performance

• The upward flow through management of concerns, information, or requests for improvement

• Maintaining and improving the relationship between the manager and the employee

The frequency of the 1:1 meetings depends on the preference of the employee and the manager, but as a guideline, these meetings should be held a minimum of every six weeks, preferably every four weeks. More frequent meetings might be necessary for new employees or for staff undergoing difficulties or tackling steep learning curves. Each meeting should be long enough (usually an hour; no more than two) to cover difficult issues and build enough rapport for open and honest feedback (top down and bottom up). The meeting should be held where there are no interruptions, preferably on neutral territory. The style of the meeting depends on the individual concerned and the areas to be covered in each 1:1. The meeting can be semiformal, very formal, or informal. You might need to use different styles depending on the performance of the employee and the areas that you need to address. Most important is that the style is an effective one.

Try to keep to the same framework (per the template) so that a certain discipline is instilled into the meeting, and so the employee has a chance to prepare beforehand. The actual content of each meeting will vary depending on performance issues. Always agree on any follow-up actions arising from each 1:1. Give the employee a copy of any notes immediately after the meeting for his or her records and as a reference for the next meeting.

The 1:1 process is absolutely key. You should capture any PDP issues within the agenda for any 1:1 meeting. If you hold regular meetings and follow the agenda, your preparation for any performance review will be relatively simple. Similarly, you will give yourself an opportunity to address any problems before they become big issues. Managers who implement regular 1:1 meetings with their direct reports and conduct them properly can ensure an almost 100 percent zero-defect rate in appeals, performance review surprises, grievances, and disciplinary matters.

Project planning

Performance reviews should be viewed as a project, and as such, a project plan should be developed over the whole performance review period, culminating when all performance reviews are to be held. For the purposes of the table below, let's assume that the performance review period is a year that starts in March and ends in February with the review itself. A basic Critical Path Analysis might be as follows:

Preparation Work

Area	Action	Timeframe
Job descriptions and primary responsibilities	Write and agree upon job description with employee focusing on the primary responsibilities	End of Feb
Key objectives (or goals)	Isolate agreed-upon goals from each responsibilities and discuss the timeframe for achievement over the 11-month period with the employee Make sure that you also link the goals to the Individual Preparation Form Consider asking the clients to give feedback on the employee against the performance areas listed in the Individual Preparation Form; otherwise, you will have no objective feedback on performance in these areas other than the employee's own	End of Feb
1:1 meetings	Set up 1:1 meetings in your calendar for every month from March to January	End of Feb
Budgets	Board to agree on amounts to be assigned to (a) performance review increases for total company, and (b) percentage increases to be assigned to each performance rating	Dec

Preparation Over the Performance Review Year

Area	Action	Timeframe
1:1 meetings	Make sure that you hold regular 1:1 meetings with the employee every month to review progress and performance against every one of the goals and objectives Obtain regular feedback from the employee's client on his or her performance against predefined goals Rate the employee's performance against each goal every month using the same criteria as in the performance review form (for example, A, B, C, D) Make sure that the goals and timeframes are reviewed and revised in line with the changing business needs so that they are always current	Every month from March to Jan
PDPs	Identify any development needs that are agreed upon during these 1:1 meetings with either the employee or the client and transfer these needs onto the employee's PDP form, ensuring that the development process actually happens (this gives the employee every chance to achieve or surpass their objectives)	Every month from March to Jan
Booking performance review meetings	Book a review meeting in your calendar for every employee who reports to you. You should assume one review in the morning and one in the afternoon (more than this is too many in one day) Book an appropriate venue Let each direct report know the date, time, and venue for their review throughout February	First two weeks in Jan

Preparation Just Before the Performance Review Meeting

Area	Action	Timeframe
Individual Preparation Form	Each employee should complete and return their preparation form to you at least 10 working days before the performance review meeting	Mid Jan
1:1 meeting notes	If you have held 1:1 meetings every month and assigned a performance rating against each goal as you have gone along, you will have comprehensive records of performance throughout the year. You need only to average these to come up with a rating covering the whole year. It should be a simple process.	Mid Jan
Individual Preparation Forms	Read each person's Individual Preparation Form and determine (a) those areas where there is consensus of opinion between you and the employee, and (b) those areas where your opinions on performance differ. Where you differ in opinion, determine why and decide which opinion you will discuss at the review meeting.	Second two weeks in Jan
Client review forms or notes	Review all the client notes you have for the 11 months and compare these with your 1:1 notes and the Individual Preparation Form notes. As above, determine (a) where there is consensus between the client, you, and the employee, and (b) where the opinions differ Where there is a difference of opinion, decide which opinion you will discuss at the review meeting	Second two weeks in Jan
PDPs	Review the employee's PDP and make a note of any development that had been requested and agreed upon but that had not taken place.	Second two weeks in Jan
Appraisal form	You can either complete an appraisal form in note form or make comprehensive notes and complete the form after the review meeting. Remember that meeting the employee will still have a contribution to make at the meeting, so don't make it look as though you've already decided what will be included. Wait to hear the employee's side of the story before finalizing the form, although very little in that meeting should be a surprise to either you or the employee if you have held regular 1:1s	Two working days before the review

Follow-Up from the Review Meeting

Area	Action	Timeframe
Finishing the performance review	Write up the performance review form and send this to the employee for his or her comments and signature. As soon as you have their signature, you should sign the form as well. When this is done, the performance rating is authorized Give a photocopy to the employee and keep the original in his or her personnel file	No more than the three working days after the performance review
Assigning salary increases	Follow up with a semiformal letter to the employee stating (a) his or her performance rating (b) the percentage increase that has been assigned to this rating, and (c) his or her revised salary with effective date. The original goes to the employee and a copy goes into his or her personnel file Actual salary increases should be incorporated into your budget.	Immediately
Setting new goals	Sit down with the employee and mutually agree to new goals and objectives for the coming 11 months, and start the process all over again	Complete by mid-March, so that employees have 10.5 months to achieve new goals

The Effects of the Year 2000

Some companies are offering "golden handcuffs" (stock options) in response to the Year 2000 situation, meaning they hope the money will keep their employees around. Others are putting off the decision as to whether to offer cash inducements until the situation unfolds and possibly worsens. Many experts, however, feel that golden handcuffs will not have the desired effect. As we've said above, money, typically, will not be enough to keep people. People leave because of unsupportive management, lack of opportunity and/or a lack of fit between the company's and the person's values. A fulfilling career, challenge, and fresh skill acquisition are what keeps people. We feel that payments based on people staying is really a just form of bribery, and proper career development and training are more important in the long run.

What to Do When Someone Leaves

Of course, if you follow all the advice in this chapter no one will ever leave. Well, er, maybe they will. Inevitably an employee is going to leave sometime. When this happens you should treat this as a good opportunity to get some frank feedback about how the company has performed. For example, is the person leaving because they've been offered the job of their dreams elsewhere, or are they disillusioned with their current employer? (You!) If they're leaving for the latter reason, others probably are, too. This is your chance to find out.

People do come and go—that's life. Don't be disheartened if they go. Just treat it as a valuable opportunity, learn the lessons, and go back to Step 1 all over again!

Microsoft Certification and the Testing of Developers

Mark Pearce

Regardless of how much or how little they are paid, bad software developers are always extremely expensive. Hiring developers can all too often be a hit-or-miss affair. You talk to a guy, ask him some questions about his current and past work, and then ask him to answer a few ad-hoc technical questions. He seems personable, maybe even enthusiastic. Perhaps he stumbled over some of the technical questions, but he answered a couple of the others in convincing detail. He certainly seems to be able to "talk the talk," at least superficially. He knows all the latest buzzwords—COM+, MTS, ActiveX servers, polymorphism, etc. But if you don't have, for example, TMS's "Test from Hell," how do you know if the person that you're about to hire has constructed a facade of technical knowledge specifically to cover up his lack of real-world experience? And how do you measure him technically against the developer that you interviewed yesterday? Given the extremely large sums of money that can be commanded by developers nowadays, what would you give for some form of objective and comparable measurement of a candidate's job skills?

One approach is professional certification. Microsoft offers several different types of technical certification in their products, each designed to show a high level of competence in performing tasks related to the skill being tested. From our point of view, the most important qualifications are Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP) and Microsoft Certified Solution Developer (MCSD). The other popular qualification is Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE).

An MCP has passed a mandatory product exam, for our purposes either Visual Basic 4 or preferably Visual Basic 5 (exams #70-065 and #70-165, respectively). Note that these are due to be replaced in the latter half of 1998 with the new Visual Basic 6 exam. The MCSD certification is more advanced and aimed at developers who have to design and develop custom business solutions with Microsoft development tools and technologies. It consists of two mandatory core exams, Microsoft Windows Architecture I and II (exams #70-160 and #70-161), and two elective exams from a list that includes Microsoft Visual Basic 5 (#70-165), Microsoft Access for Windows 95 (#70-069), and Implementing a Database Design on Microsoft SQL Server 6.5 or 7.0 (#70-027 or #70-029). Finally, the MCSE qualification is aimed mainly at people who implement and support networked information systems with Microsoft NT and Microsoft BackOffice. It consists of four mandatory core operating system exams and two elective language/product exams.

Most of these exams cost $100 each to take, are closed-book and computer-administered, between 60 and 90 minutes in length, and consist of a series of multiple-choice questions. They are designed to test the specific skills needed for the job functions being tested. Obviously every job function requires different levels of skills, from memorizing facts to analyzing scenarios, designing solutions and evaluating options. The exams aim to measure a candidate's performance in these job functions rather than just a candidate's knowledge of a product or terminology. In my experience, the questions are, on the whole, well researched and well written and do indeed perform a reasonable job of measuring a candidate's specific job skills. Microsoft insists that none of the exams contain "trick" questions. So let's just say that occasionally a candidate has to read a question very carefully and probably several times—a few questions are more about reading comprehension than about knowledge of the product or skill.

While the exams do have some professional standing in the IT industry and are considered to be fairly demanding, they also have a couple of inherent drawbacks. The first is that each exam is designed to measure general competence in a particular area. Often more useful is the measurement of a specific competence, such as the use of DCOM or an understanding of how to implement ActiveX servers efficiently. As Visual Basic becomes larger and more complex, there is a need for developers who specialize in specific parts of the product. If you're building small teams, with each team specializing in one area, construct your own tests (verbal, written, or computer-administered) to measure thorough competence in that area. By all means follow the Microsoft test format if you want, but engineer your questions to concentrate on the specific areas you need. Refine the questions over time based on candidates' results and feedback. Eventually you will have a test suite tailored to your own requirements.

The second drawback is that the Microsoft exams all use a multiple-choice format. This enables computer grading of tests, without the need for human involvement. However, it is sometimes useful to present open-ended questions, such as asking a candidate to write Visual Basic code to solve a particular problem. Although these types of questions are more subjective and require expert human input to judge the answers, they can also give you more insights into a developer's thought processes and way of working than those questions that use the multiple-choice format. You can also ask more unusual questions. One of my favorites is to ask a candidate what question he or she would add to the test, and how would he or she answer their own question.

My advice is to use the Microsoft exams as a useful tool, and then supplement them with a test of your own design to refine your knowledge of a candidate's technical competence. Be prepared to spend some time constructing your test to ask the right questions in a non-ambiguous manner. You are likely to be paying any new hire tens of thousands of dollars, or even hundreds of thousands. It makes no sense to hire just on gut feelings or on inadequate testing.