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At the end there is a summary if that.

I have been working on the efficiency of programmers for many years. I tried a bunch of methods, both read from books and invented, made several cases and wrote thousands of lines of code to automate all this. And everything seemed to be nothing, but something was missing all the time in my equation.

I could not understand the wild leaps of this very effectiveness, first of all, on my own. I keep track of my effectiveness for several years, in a single coordinate system, and all the time I observe just terrible changes. No, well, there are jumps when changing jobs, positions, programming languages - adaptation, time to study, etc. But why does efficiency jump with a seemingly constant context?

At first I thought that the matter was in me. Well, I’m such a fool, I can’t work stably. Then leaps in the work of the team began to catch my eye, which I lead - again, wild, 2-3 times. Not to mention the differences in the effectiveness of individual programmers.

Here everything seems to be in place, without much change. The methods of work do not change, the qualifications are only growing, the tasks are homogeneous, both in complexity and volume. But here the efficiency jumps and that's it.

Then he led to one coordinate system the effectiveness of the different teams with which he worked, and again I see a significant difference - both in absolute values and in stability. Some teams grew stupid all the time, while others rode all the time, along a frantic sine wave.

The answer came by chance. It's all about the mood.

Thanks GEF

Accidents, of course, are not accidental. The idea came up with the study of such a thing as formative assessment - this is an approach to pedagogy that originated in the West in the middle of the 20th century and is now being strongly attracted to our education through the introduction of new federal educational standards. In general, you can write a lot about formative assessment, in the context of IT - for example, one of the key ones there is considered a flexible approach, known to us as agile. True, agile appeared 50 years later, but I won’t guess who it was written off from whom. In the formative assessment, they also wrote off, at the same Deming. According to research results, incl. of my own, formative assessment improves learning outcomes. Not very direct - so, by units or tens of percent. Now new techniques are being made of it, like EduScrum, but not the point.

So, one of the key principles of formative assessment is a favorable, constructive, open atmosphere. Moreover, it is a cause, not a consequence. That is, the atmosphere must be created. The mood must be created.

Here it dawned on me. Well, I did just that - I created the mood.

Clown Leader

As a leader, I almost always behaved like a clown, or an animator, or a host. I was always enraged if people were in a bad mood, and I figured out how to improve it. It is desirable so that for a long time, i.e. don't do this go-go-gee-gay every day. And so, you know, systemically - charge and do not touch for some time.

I paid a lot of attention to mood in the first team, where I was engaged in efficiency (I talked about this in the video ). And then, having switched to another team, I forgot about it. The effect was especially pronounced in the third team, where no one knew me at all. It was something like this.

Bad mood

I came, so I’m saying - dudes, right now I’ll raise your efficiency, and no matter what you think about it. Well, they were a little scared, their heads bent and began to obey me. I applied the easiest methods to use, mainly controlling, and the results jumped by 40%. Beauty, I thought, right now, as trample! But it didn’t flog.

In the second month we got a terrible failure. In the first month, people were afraid to raise their heads, worked under pressure, and in the second they let go. There was no mood, I did not create it. Thought that ... What was he thinking?

Now I understand - I thought that there was already a mood. Because in the last team I invested so much in it, first consciously, and then on the machine, that I completely forgot about the mood. About the need to do this work, daily.

The third month gave an even greater failure, including in my personal results. Fourth - I thought they would fire me altogether. And he couldn’t understand everything - damn it, what’s wrong? The methods are gorgeous, they always worked, people from me no longer shy away, accept, support, want to work better. But nothing comes of it.

And then, again, quite by accident, a strange thought occurred to me.

Man from the past

For some reason, I thought that the team just did not believe me. Well, that you can work at times more efficiently. Even if you have before your eyes an example of your own leap. And he decided to call a dude from the previous team to meet them.

Dude easily agreed - he is sociable, proactive, always glad to meet new people. In addition, he has already become a respected specialist in our region, has accumulated serious personal experience working with people.

And here I am sitting, listening to how he talks about our dream team, and I almost didn’t let a tear go. Was it really that cool? It just seemed to me over the past years and the thorns of haters that it wasn’t that, that I invented all this myself. But no, it was.

After this meeting, some kind of fracture happened. First of all - with me. I remembered the mood with which we did all this. And his regular mood-creating work. And flooded.

Depends on the mood

I have not changed anything in the methods of control, management, task distribution, assistance, etc. Changed only the methods of creating mood. And in the same month, we doubled - and, to that jump, which was 40% higher. What is important, the result was measured in money, in income, and not in any parrots (even though I love them).

All the guys in the team broke their highs. Or in another way - everyone has done more than ever. Well, I thought, there will still be a recession - just a good month.

So no, the next month is an increase again, + 10% to the previous one. And then it got even more interesting.

Magnet

Around us were people who refused to work with me. Well, with me, who in the first months forgot about the need to create a mood. These people looked at us for the first month, and decided to get hooked closer. Well, just get hooked, because we have fun.

And in the second month they asked us to join our team. Two reasons were mentioned: fun and money. I liked the mood with which we worked. And the growth of indicators, which linearly affected the growth of salaries.

So, in the third month we doubled - both due to “defectors” and due to new people whom we began to pump hard, sometimes forcefully, and due to the joining of “lying” employees.

Growth continued, both in terms of performance and team size. And it continues to this day. Just because of the mood.

Loss of mood

Then came self-isolation and udalenka. The possibility of live communication has disappeared, and with it the ability to create mood. Well, I don’t know how to do this by telegram, but I don’t like talking on the phone.

I thought, that's it, the end. But no, I got out. The loop of the previously created mood worked, and the hastily built remote work management system, thanks to which now you can no longer return to the office. But that's another story.

But still, the mood is not enough. Moods, as the implementation of key managerial competence. I hope that we will soon return to the office and again create the mood. In the meantime, let the system work.

If you're interested, I’ll tell you about the methods of creating the mood another time — it seems to me that they are unique to everyone, so I won’t be personally helpful to you.

Summary

The efficiency of programmers jumps a lot, even if the context does not change.
A key element in improving efficiency is mood.
The mood must be created, it is not created.
One mood can increase efficiency at times.
Long regular work on the mood of the team creates a stable “residual” mood.

More fun. I'm serious