[TYPO3-dev] FLOW3 / TYPO3 5.0

[Erik Svendsen]

I wasn't thinking about writing anything in this thread, but as one of 
the few with main education in social science (Master Deegrees), and 
also with work experience as both consultant and researcher in the area 
of organizational behaviour, team development, project management etc, I 
find it necessary to point out some "facts"

Den 27.04.2010 15:42, skrev Irene Höppner:

>
> Ok... ppl believe that productivity increases, if you give ppl more
> money. That's correct for tasks that do not need to much cogitation and
> creativity. Once you need cogitation or creativity it's wrong (watch the
> video). Productivity decreases. The problem is pressure. In case of
> bonuses the pressure is more subtle then in case of time pressure. It's
> about intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Nevertheless bonuses are used
> (we do as well). This is a question of widespread "believe" (because
> everybody believes it and we don't have a good alternative) that we can
> find pretty often in history.
> One reason probably is, that is much more difficult to find reasonable
> and countable and understandable goals that are not about a deadline in
> many cases. Another problem is to get the goals of the customer matched
> to the goals of the developers.

First, Dan Pink is correct, but a 18 min. presentation isn't enough time 
to present the complexity of motivation factors. Neither is what Dan 
Pink is saying anything new, in organizational behaviour science most of 
it is well known "facts" from 45 - 50 years ago (Thorsrud, Emery, 
Likert, McGregor).

But there is no clear scientific evidence that pressure decreases 
productivity, neither increases it. The "tests" Dan Pink is referring to 
is to simple to give an answer that can be used on every situation. The 
"tests" are correct, but as all "lab" tests in social science they 
aren't representative for real world scenarios. All that science can 
tell is that it depends on the task, cultural background, eduction, the 
person itself and so on. Personally I have done "tests" with team with 
partly opposite results of the tests Dan Pink is using as sources.

But most of the research tells that "pressure" increases productivity 
when the pressure is at the right level, and the team/person doing the 
job has a real influence on the level of pressure. When intrinsic and 
extrinsic motivation working together. So research tells that deadlines 
(as goals), when reachable, challenging and agreed upon, may spur both 
productivity and creativity. But of course, deadline can't be the only 
goal. Other goals as quality, personal fullfilment etc has also to be 
defined.

Research also tells that intrinsic and extrinsic motivation works 
together. My own research (metastudies) on team performance and 
motivation tells clearly at without some important extrinsic motivation 
factors - the team is going to underperform. Without these extrinsic 
factors the intrinsic motivation disappear or changes in a way that 
kills performance very often.

As you, I don't think economical incentives are doing any good (at 
most). Not because they don't motivate most people, but mainly because 
they motivate wrong behaviour. But this is also extremely complex, and 
research hasn't been able to give any clear answer. But economical 
incentives, especially group based, works even in areas where cogitation 
and creativity are important. And the support in research is mostly 
strong in favour of rewarding systems enhance effectivnes (productivity) 
in teams/groups when the reward are group based. Reward could be other 
things than money.

Also when it comes to creativity, research are indifferent when it comes 
to deadlines and other types of pressure. What looks to be partly a 
factum is that "pressure" in idea phases reduces number of ideas and the 
quality, and "pressure" in the decision phase gives better decisions. 
But on the other hand, how creativ work are organized and type of 
creative processes, organizational culture etc, look to be more 
important than "pressure" or lack of. Some extremly creative 
organizations works mostly on deadlines and time constraint. But you can 
be sure that the employees has much more freedom in their daily work 
than most of us.

>
> Yes, sure do we working with time constraints. It's a pity, but I can't
> change the things ppl believe in, and I can't teach all customers in
> finding alternative usefull goals. They wouldn't even understand the
> idea because they "believe" something different.
>

Most of the customers has business where deadline and time constraint 
are important. If you aren't finished with a new product at right time, 
you are probably out of business next year. I suppose Apple had a 
deadline (tight) on iPad. If they had missed that deadline and launched 
iPad in november 2010 it's possible that iPad had missed it's 
opportunity window. And there is a lot of example of good software which 
has missed it's opportunity window.

Off course it's a trade-off between time constraints, money and quality. 
And maybe other factors. And sometimes the window of opportunity is big 
enough to don't use deadline as the ultimate goal.

And they don't "believe", for a lot of customer, time constraint are far 
to important to take it lightly.

> All this is not that much about FLOW3. It's a complete independent topic.
>
> But I believe that with FLOW3 we can do it better then the mainstream.
> We have a very high intrinsic motivation here. So we have the chance to
> get a great product. Trying to put too much extrinsic motivation on top
> of it, is a risk... imho... not what the mainstream thinks, I know :-).

As said before, intrinsic and extrinsic motivation works together when 
done right. Therefore it's a much bigger risk depending on only 
intrinsic motivation. Without knowledge in detail, I don't think the 
development of TYPO3 Phoenix/FLOW3 is only depending on intrinsic 
motivation. For instance is feedback and peer review powerful types of 
extrinsic motivation - often more effective than rewards.

But I'm pretty sure that TYPO3 Phoenix/FLOW3 could have been done faster 
and with at least same quality with a higher level of extrinsic motivation.

>
> Greets,
> Irene

Regards

Erik Svendsen