SWENG 505 Lecture 6: Antipatterns

1. SWENG 505 Lecture 6: Antipatterns Dr. Phil Laplante, CSDP, PE

2. Today’s topics • Antipatterns • Management Antipatterns • Environmental Antipatterns

3. Patterns and antipatterns • Patterns as positive models of problem solving have become popular. • Experts base reusable solutions to recurring problems on their wealth of experience. • It’s a natural form of problem solving we use all the time. • But we all know that you learn from your mistakes…why not document recurring mistakes, and ways to correct them?

4. What is an Antipattern? • Antipatterns are Negative Solutions that present more problems than they address • Sometimes they are consciously applied, sometimes they are accidental. • Antipatterns bridge the gap between management theory and the toxic situations we encounter day-to-day. • Understanding antipatterns provides the knowledge to prevent or recover from them.

5. Well-known Antipatterns Antipatterns are all around us. They’re often used as tools for social control. SOCIAL Antipatterns • Criminal • Terrorist • Pervert • Drug Addict/Pusher • Heretic/Witch • Dilbert’s Pointy-Haired Manager SOFTWARE Antipatterns • Spaghetti Code • Stovepipe System • Analysis Paralysis • Design By Committee • God Class • Mythical Man Month • Death March Project

6. What kinds of Antipatterns are out there? • Architecture Antipatterns • Development Antipatterns • Management Antipatterns • Environmental Antipatterns • …

7. Management Antipatterns (Brown)

8. Antipattern format • Name • Central Concept • Dysfunction • Vignette • Explanation • Repair: • Band-Aid • Self-Repair • Refactoring

9. Management Antipatterns • Management antipatterns are the result of bad managers, management teams, or executives. • In some cases, it might just be tolerating or amplifying the debilitating behavior of another team member, such as in Golden Child, Rising Upstart, or Warm Bodies. • At other times it is a misguided, incompetent, or even malicious supervisor.

10. Management Antipatterns • Absentee Manager • All You Have Is A Hammer • Cage Match Negotiator • Doppelganger • Fruitless Hoops • Golden Child • Headless Chicken • Leader Not Manager • Manager Not Leader • Managerial Cloning

11. Management Antipatterns • Metric Abuse • Mr. Nice Guy • Mushroom Management • Plate Spinning • Proletariat Hero • Rising Upstart • Road to Nowhere • Spineless Executive • Three-Headed Knight • Ultimate Weapon • Warm Bodies

12. Absentee Manager • Any situation in which the manager is invisible for long periods of time – either on premises (hiding) or away from the premises. • Refactoring: Someone has been designated as the absentee manager’s eye’s and ears. Find them and try to work through them. Don’t be an enabler.

13. All You Have is a Hammer • One-dimensional management where the same techniques (e.g. theory X, Y) is used on all subordinates. • Refactoring: The best managers know what motivates each individual and uses the appropriate technique. Someone needs to coach the hammer-wielding manager to adopt a varied management approach. Sometimes you can inform the manager of what motivates you.

14. Cage Match Negotiator • When a manager uses a “victory at any cost” or “I’m right, and you are wrong” approach to management • Refactoring: Rationalize with the manager. Show him how a situation can be win-win. Focus on interests not positions; reframe problems and situations to make mutual benefit the focus.

15. Doppelganger • A manager or colleague who can be nice and easy to work with one moment, and then vicious and unreasonable the next. A Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde personality that dominates a manager’s style. • Refactoring: • Approach the Doppelganger en masse rather than individually (strength in numbers). • Stand up to them using one of the techniques we described for handling the Bulldozer or Exploder personality type. It is possible that by showing some resistance, the negative personality will retreat.

16. Fruitless Hoops • Requiring endless (often meaningless) data before making a decision. • Refactoring: Be persistent. In a sense, just as the data driven manager is trying to exhaust you, you try to exhaust them with data. Of course it takes less energy to ask for data than to get it, and if the data driven manager isn't really looking at the data you probably can't win. But if the data driven manager is honest, then eventually you might wear him down.

17. Golden Child • When a manager provides special responsibility, opportunity, recognition, or reward to a member of their team based on a personal relationship with the individual and contrary to the person’s actual performance. • Refactoring: Depends on your goal…eliminating the injustice or coping with it. Elimination takes time and politics; coping comes from awareness and subtlety.

18. Headless Chicken • The manager that’s always in a panic-stricken, fire-fighting mode. • Refactoring: Somehow, the manager has to realize they are headless. Maybe a close confidante can tell them. Maybe they realize it on their own. But if they don’t come to their senses, the organization (that manager, anyway) is doomed and the only other solution is to put the chicken out of his misery.

19. Leader Not Manager • Being a great leader doesn’t necessarily mean being a great manager. • Refactoring: Planning and administration must be performed. Either the leader must learn to do it, or a administrative associate must be found.

20. Manager Not Leader • The manager that is proficient at their administrative and managerial duties, but lacks leadership ability. • Refactoring: Leadership requires vision, charisma and motivational skill. These are hard to teach or learn; leaders emerge naturally. The MnotL must find a like-minded leader to assist them, organizations must work to identify and mentor natural leaders.

21. Managerial Cloning • Middle managers tend to act like their bosses over time. • Refactoring: Middle managers have to resist this temptation. Subordinates must confront their managers when this situation is created. Organizations must seek to promote or hire diverse, complementary staff.

22. Metric Abuse • Malicious or incompetent use of metrics causes havoc. • Refactoring: Shed the light of truth on the misuse. Recalibrate the organization by using reference metric data. Identify metrics that trace back to business goals.

23. Mr. Nice Guy • Managers who focus on being too nice, end up disappointing everyone and failing in their duties. “He who tries to please everyone pleases no one.” • Refactoring: The manager has to learn, or be taught, how to make tough decisions that sometimes impact people negatively.

24. Mushroom Management • Management fails to communicate effectively. “Keep them in the dark, feed them dung, watch them grow… and cut off their heads when you are done with them.” • Refactoring: Assume that it is not easy to change management behavior. Therefore, you will need to insist on information “in order to get your job done.” Eventually, they should get the message.

25. Plate Spinning • An insincere manager can distract his critics from the real problems by dispatching employees on a series of meaningless and time-consuming tasks. • Refactoring: Confront the manager and ask for documentation of the purpose of the exercise. Use this information to build a case against him or break him of his habit.

26. Proletariat Hero • The “everyman” worker is held up as the ideal, when in reality, he is a prop being used to mask inadequacies of management. • Refactoring: As with many management Antipatterns, the light of truth has to be shone on the situation. The everyman has to be revealed for his mediocrity and management has to be shown to be inadequate.

27. Rising Upstart • Potential star managers cant wait their time and want to forego the requisite time to learn, mature and find their place. This can sometimes be through ignorance, they don’t know what they don’t know; and sometimes it is through impatience, they know what others don’t know. • Refactoring: Mentor the upstart, if they are willing to be mentored.

28. Road to Nowhere • Lack of a plan causes confusion and absence of leadership. • Refactoring: The best managers clearly develop and articulate a plan, get buy-in for the plan, then so to it that it is executed, providing resources and encouragement and adapting the plan if necessary. How you communicate this reality to a planless manager is the tricky bit. But some form of intervention is needed or the situation will end in a death march.

29. Spineless Executive • A manager isn't prepared to face up to bad news. Instead he sends an underling to take the rap. Or, he is over-conciliatory -- anything to try to keep everyone happy. But the result is usually that no one is happy. • Refactoring: The manager has to be brought to face reality. This will take boldness on the part of the subordinates

30. Three-Headed Knight • The indecisive manager. In reality, decision-making is half management, half leadership, so the absence of the ability or stomach to make decisions means you're neither manager or leader. • Refactoring: Usually such a three headed manager has to be identified by higher management or self-identified and taken out. Otherwise, you can try to reconcile the manager by asking probing questions.

31. Ultimate Weapon • Phenoms that are relied upon so much by their peers or organization that they become the conduit for all things. • Refactoring: Organizations must not allow individuals to become indispensable. Use KM techniques to institutionalize important company knowledge, evenly distribute responsibilities and duties, cross-train the staff and don’t forget to mentor the phenoms.

32. Warm Bodies • The worker who barely meets the minimum expectations of the job and is thusly shunted from project to project, or team to team. • Refactoring: Identify and rectify. The sad truth is that there are many more Warm Bodies than Rising Upstarts or Ultimate Weapons so firing them might not be viable. Recognize how to best utilize them, help them find what they can and enjoy doing.

33. Environmental Antipatterns • Ant Colony • Atlas Shrug • Autonomous Collective • Boiling Frog Syndrome • Burning Bag of Dung • Buzzword Mania • Deflated Balloon • Divergent Goals • Dogmatic About Dysfunction • Dunkirk Spirit • Emperors New Clothes • Fairness Doctrine • Fools Rush In • Founderitis

34. Environmental Antipatterns • French Waiter Syndrome • Geek Hazing • Institutional Mistrust • Kiosk City • Mediocracy • One-Eyed King • Orange Stand Economics • Pitcairn Island • Potemkin Village • Process Clash • Rubik’s Cube • Shoeless Children • Worshipping the Golden Calf

35. Ant Colony • The appearance of working for the common good is merely that, an appearance. Under the surface not everyone is interested in the greater good, particularly when that greater good conflicts with personal advancement. • Refactoring: The subersives and self-centered individuals have to be called out, sometimes directly, other times subtly.

36. Atlas Shrug • Organizations that have had too much recent success lose energy and focus, thereby failing to make additional achievements. • Refactoring: In Built to Last, Collins and Porras identified a number of characteristics that distinguished visionary companies from those that were simply very good. The two that apply here are: • Good Enough is Never Good Enough, • Big Hairy Audacious Goals. • Stir things up. Sometimes, causing a little chaos can lead to a burst of creativity and break an organization out of its malaise.

37. Autonomous Collective • The myth of equality and uniformity in organizations can lead to inaction, decay, and downfall. • Refactoring: The organization will languish unless leaders lead and followers follow. Call for accountability from the leadership and trust that they will do the right thing.

38. Boiling Frog Syndrome • Gradual negative changes in the work environment are too subtle to be noticed, until it is too late • Refactoring: Recalibrate the frog, recalibrate the environment, leave.

39. Burning Bag of Dung • An outgoing manager leaves a situation that is so bad, there is no way to resolve it without getting dirty or burnt. • Refactoring: Sound the alarm that the problem exists. Get involved with collective reform. Assist the new management in identifying root causes.

40. Buzzword Mania • Organizations become obsessed with buzzwords they probably don't really understand. Related to Brown's blowhard jamboree. • Refactoring: Call out the abusers of the buzzwords. Say things like “what does that mean?”

41. Deflated Balloon • Sales are down. Existing staff and computing equipment is underutilized. Many cubicles are empty. • Usual Consequences: Increasing demoralization and exhaustion of the staff. • Refactoring: Downsize staff. Break the lease and rightsize the physical plant.

42. Divergent Goals • Everyone must pull in the same direction. There is no room for individual or hidden agendas that do not align with those of the business. • Refactoring: Depends on if the divergence is accidental or intentional. • Accidental: Clearer communication of the core mission and strategic goals and causal relationships tracing those goals down to the day-to-day operations is needed. • Intentional: Hidden agendas are insidious. Need to discover why they exist. Are all stakeholders represented in the core mission? Are influential people seeking personal glory over group achievement?

43. Dogmatic About Dysfunction • Obsession with an incorrect, or inefficient, technique or process. Using the wrong techniques or the right techniques wrongly doesn't imply failure, but it might impact time, budget, error rates or other quality attributes needlessly. • Refactoring: Everyone has to recognize his limitations. Sometimes a mentor or friend can help calibrate the situation.

44. Dunkirk Spirit • Despite terrible planning and awful decision-making, valiant efforts by the people in the trenches get the job done, but management takes the credit. • Refactoring: You can’t always get the credit you deserve. Take solace in the success of the organization. Eventually, the real heroes will be found out. Source: http://www.adls.org.uk/

45. Emperor’s New Clothes • Classic case of no one wanting to point out the obvious, embarrassing truth about a situation or person. • Refactoring: You must be brave and point out the obvious! “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!”

46. Fairness Doctrine • Blind obsession with fairness and uniformity in management can be used as an excuse to avoid dealing directly with problematic people. • Refactoring: Sometimes people fail, underperform, or are downright evil. They have to be dealt with directly. Indirectly attacking individual problems with broad strokes leads to resentment. Point this out to your manager. Let them know that the situation is not escaping the attention of others.

47. Fools Rush In • When organizations rush into a new business line, opportunity or acquisition as opposed to a slow, thoughtful, and deliberate approach. • Refactoring: Planning, obviously. Be aware of your own personality: Are you Perceiving? Do you make decisions quickly and impulsively? If so, seek feedback from Judging types. Assume you’re wrong and prove otherwise.

48. Founderitis • When the founder of a company has difficulty letting go when the company grows beyond his skills. • Refactoring: Develop a succession plan that everyone knows about. Get a respected third party respected to talk with the founder about the negative culture. Learn to accept the situation. Leave the company.

49. French Waiter Syndrome • Managers, staff, or both are surly and interpersonal dynamics are bad all around. • Refactoring: Retraining to improve the group dynamics can help. When necessary, misfits and troublemakers need to be removed.

50. Geek Hazing • Novice software engineers are assigned mundane tasks rather than more challenging tasks from which they can learn. • Refactoring: Re-education and attitude adjustment. • Education involves 1) correcting the mistaken notion that the generation of reports is the province of beginners alone and 2) providing training alternatives for beginners. • Attitude involves a re-thinking of the problem that occurs in all disciplines; the idea that some tasks are beneath the status of the experienced.