Who Does Money Really Motivate?

Posted by Mike Ramm on October 24, 2007

I’ve been a manager for quite some time and I have always wondered how to motivate my people to work better but I have never got a good answer. Until recently, when I read Pawel Brodzinski’s post Money as a Motivator and David Carr’s 7 Reasons why Money is not the best Motivator. Pawel also referred to Rob Walling’s post Nine Things Developers Want More Than Money.

We all know Frederick Herzberg’s Two Factor Theory. There are motivation and hygiene factors that drive our job satisfaction. Here is my simple understanding of them:

motivation factors drive us to work more, to perform better, to be more creative
hygiene factors are the ones that their lack demotivates us and drive us to work less, to perform worse, and to be less productive and creative

Tags: hygiene factors, money, motivation
Filed Under Peopleware, The Role of the Project Manager | 6 Comments

Recommended Readings: Free e-book downloads

Posted by Mike Ramm on October 20, 2007

Jeff Atwood of Codding Horror wrote an article the other day called Why Does Software Spoil? where he gave his brilliant thoughts about the feature creep that spoils all software products. I was very impressed because I also have suffered of “feature overdose” and I think I am going to add my comments soon on this topic. Continuing the theme, yesterday Jeff wrote another article, where he recommended the Mark Minasi’s e-book The Software Conspiracy. Here the author examines in great detail the “feature paradox” - new features are used to sell software, but they are also the primary reason that software spoils over time.

You can download the book from its website - The Software Conspiracy.

Tags:
Filed Under Books, Business Analysis, Death March, Links, Project Management, Software Development | 2 Comments

Software Product Success Stories

Posted by Mike Ramm on October 8, 2007

Craig Brown of BetterProjects started a meme with the same title and tagged me to participate in it. He was inspired by a Scott Sehlhorst’s post at Tyner Blain.

I thought a long time before deciding to write something about it.

Why is it so difficult for me to write about successful products? Well, mostly because I spent most of my professional life working at project-oriented companies. Most of the projects I participated in were one-time shots and I don’t know what happened to those products - if they were ever used or if they were successful. And I can say that most of the companies operating in Bulgaria are outsourcing companies working this way. It is not their responsibility to care about the product. They only care about the current project - to be delivered on time, within the budget and within the defined scope.

Tags: customer relaionship, software product, success
Filed Under Links, Project Management, Software Development | 6 Comments