The main feature of the development order is complex staffing, distribution of people by projects. There are many people, they are different. There are many projects, they are also all different. The result is a multidimensional puzzle that always fits perfectly.

And if it didn’t work out? What then?

I will tell my story, how we coped with this problem and what tools helped us.

I invite you to read!

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Greeting! My name is Ilya Pracht, I am an experienced IT manager, trainer and consultant. Until recently, I managed a production outsourcing IT company (all developers, testers, PMs, there were 150+ people). And I know about staffing problems firsthand. My team and I did a lot in this direction.

By staffing, I mean a process, or even a group of processes, the task of which is the optimal distribution of resources, i.e. people according to projects. We have a whole department involved in this.

I want to tell our story, how we first got ourselves into trouble, and then tried to get out of it. How we introduced new practices, tested different tools. Which ultimately helped us get our employees excited about their projects.

This article is a text version my report at SaintTeamLeadConf2022.

Our story

The events about which the story will go took place in 2021, when the world moved away from the pandemic and the industry was experiencing a very rapid development. At that time, we were an international outsourcing company with development offices in the Russian Federation and a head office in New York. Worked on the American market. On average, we had about 30-35 projects going on at the same time, on which a total of 150+ people worked.

That year began for us with a large-scale reorganization of the company. We abandoned the matrix structure and completely restructured into a project structure. But it didn’t happen just like that.

Before the reorganization, we had everything like everyone else: the project office, which is responsible for all deliveries, and functional departments, on whose shoulders people management fell. The internal glue was precisely the staffing department, which tried to please everyone at once. Well, that’s the job.

The company had happy employees. The level of morale was 5+ out of 6, rotations were rarely required, 1-2 per month, and turnover did not even reach 10%. Very cool indicators for the industry.

By the way, I already wrote about how we measured timmoral in this article and that’s it in this article. You can read more there.

Of course, we didn’t get happy employees for free. We had a sprawling structure of curators and line managers, a huge number of extra-project activities that were useful, but far from necessary. As a result, the company was inefficient. Utilization barely reached 70%, and the cost of management reached 30%! We paid managers 30 kopecks for every ruble of an engineer’s salary. Too much, don’t you agree?

And everything would be nothing if it were not for the pandemic. We had difficulties with projects, with new sales, and the company had to start counting money. A quick decision was to reduce management and reorganize.

After the reorganization, the situation improved. We really removed a lot of activities and reduced the number of managers. As a result, utilization reached a record 90%, and the cost of management fell to 5-10%. Normal for the industry.

But our enthusiasm was shared in full. We removed a lot of things that had a great team building effect and kept employee loyalty at a high level. As a result, morale fell. It was already 4 out of 6 in the company, 5-6 rotation requests per month, 30+% turnover.

And it was 2021, the year of the big “Brownian movement” in the personnel market. We did not fundamentally stand out from the background of other companies, and hiring was difficult. Therefore, the situation was approaching a new disaster for us.

We did not want to return everything back, financial well-being did not allow it. Therefore, we focused on resource management and began to work closely on ensuring that employees can work where they enjoy this work. Looking ahead, I will say that this did not mean shuffling the teams and finding the perfect match between people and projects. It turns out there are other options.

Improvement of people management

First of all, we set out to find the optimal balance between employee care and the cost of this care. They decided to roll back a little, but only a little.

We introduced training and launched a corporate university. However, unlike the previous version, there was a more professional approach and more serious control over budgets.

We added HR. They hired professionals with a psychological background who really helped the managers, and did not become another person who asks “how are you?” once a month.

We brought back some off-project activities that were inexpensive but provided great value to the company: workgroups, internal meetups, etc.

And they did a good job on our IPR process. This was a key process for us, the entire corporate culture was based on employee development. We changed the frequency of meetings, made attestations twice a year, and also divided the branches of development into technical and team development. They used to be together and there was a mess and subjectivity of the managers. Now everything has been systematized.

Improvement of staffing

The next step was staffing. Let me remind you, we have accumulated such a large backlog of requests for rotations, 5-6 per month arrived. We started with him.

We did the rotations that we could do quickly and painlessly. The rest of the requests were divided into several priorities, and a clear process was drawn up on how to work with them further. Depending on the importance of the person for the project, the characteristics of the customer, the height of the entry threshold to the project, we allocated the SLA, and communicated everything to the employees.

We used to have a lot of “locked” rotations. Well, precisely for all the reasons listed above. Especially if the rotation was requested by the team leader. It hung on for months and years. There were no more “blocked” rotations. They were complicated and stretched over time, but even they were carried out.

As a result, we replaced as much as possible those who did not like it with those who liked it. And the rest were given a clear process of transparent rotations, and specific expectations and promises.

Our process of transparent rotations included only 4 main points:

• An employee can initiate a rotation

• Clear SLA

• Clear criteria for when you can and when you can’t

• Constant status updates

Improving the interest of projects

After working on staffing, we saw that many did not consider their project interesting, not because it was uninteresting. Many had some kind of information vacuum, filling which we received the cancellation of the rotation request. We realized that there was room for improvement, and we got down to business.

We have expanded the range of questions in timmoral about the project. They began to digitize information and carefully monitor it. It gave us an understanding of whether we are going in the right direction or not.

We started internal events so that people could talk about their projects and brag about them. Project fairs were held several times a quarter, where teams made small presentations. And they launched monthly digests, where they also talked about news from the projects, about the main successes and achievements of the teams.

The idea of ​​bragging inside quickly turned into the idea of ​​bragging outside. Corporate blogs and reports at conferences appeared, where employees could tell about the project not only to colleagues. All this was perceived very positively by people.

We dug into each project and got our internal processes in order. At the same time, we implemented ubiquitous Scrum, which is a separate big story. But it helped us focus on each team and make common, unified processes for work that made life easier.

We also launched and cascaded to all levels the process of finding technical improvements in projects. Delivery managers looked for big improvements, which they then sold to customers. Team leads looked for improvements to the architecture and technology stack, which were then included in the backlog and implemented. Engineers looked for code improvements and fixed technical debt. Everyone felt involved in the project, involved in the work on improvements. Everyone did their own work better, with their own hands.

We began to take into account the wishes of employees regarding technologies and tasks during staffing, added the possibility to note this in the corporate ERP system. Yes, staffing became more difficult with this information, and sometimes it was still necessary to persuade people to work with unloved frameworks. But we listened to the employees, and it was important to them.

The results

After about six months of intensive work, we managed to correct the situation. We reached a certain state of balance in which we continued to exist. Timmoral did not fall below 5 out of 6. Interest in projects (which we began to measure) also remained at 5 out of 6. There were rarely more than 2-3 rotation requests per month. And turnover equaled the industry average of 10-15%. At the same time, we were able to keep utilization at the level of 90% and the cost of management within 5-10%.

Then the year with the number 2021 ended and a new year with the number 2022 came. And it was a new test for us, but of a completely different nature. And I can say that all that we were able to do in 21 years helped us a lot to endure and pass all the challenges of 22 years.

I told you the story of one particular IT company. It is far from a fact that what has helped us will also be useful and applicable to everyone. I understand that very well. But the main idea that we came to ourselves will definitely be true for any company.

If you see difficulties with staffing, if people are not very satisfied with the work on their projects, there is no need to reshuffle teams, fix all processes or hire new staffing specialists. First of all, you need to work with people, understand what prevents them from enjoying their work, and give them that. Most often, small but important changes for employees will be received with great gratitude. And it will give a much greater effect with lower risks.

PS

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