Schedule Pressure

Konon dulu, jauh sebelum Microsoft Office menjadi sacred cash cow, Bill Gates berbicara di hadapan Word 1.0 Team: “I want the best word-processor ever, in 12 months!”

Belasan ribu programmer pun dikerahkan, untuk sesuatu yg sungguh ambisius, tapi di sela waktu yang terasa nggak masuk akal… “That was a no-win game,” kenang salah seorang dari team. Tiada hari tanpa overtime. Stress. Depresi. Dan menghadapi excessive schedule, tim programmer punya trik jitu: bila ada trade-off antara quality dan schedule, quality-lah yg musti dikorbankan. “Just throw out the code to the tester, and we’ll fix them later on.”

Proyek yg normalnya berlangsung 2 tahun itu, menurut seorang konsultan yg dipanggil untuk menganalisa proyek itu, pada akhirnya selesai di tahun ke-3. Why? “If only Bill Gates didn’t push that hard…”

Kalo tanya teman-teman programmer, paling nggak ada satu pengalaman menarik mereka ketika mereka benar-benar sangat produktif, sangat intense, yaitu: when you made fun things with no schedule at all. “No schedule at all?! But Watung, this is NOT right!” Yes, I know, but doesn’t it make you wonder?

Programming is the sheer joy of making things. It is NOT essentially different from the child’s first clay pencil holder “for Daddy’s office.” (Fred Brooks Jr., Mythical Man-Month)

Programming is fun by its very nature, dengan atau tanpa schedule. Don’t you think? Sesuatu yg inheren bagi mereka yg born to code. “But Watung, errr… you’re not going to expect children in our office creating their own clay pencil holders for their bosses, aren’t you?” What I’m trying to say is this:

Schedule pressure adalah motivator dan demotivator sekaligus.

Ada satu penelitian tentang ini, dan saya baru ngeh kasus Word 1.0 Project di atas setelah melihat grafik ini:

See that? Jika schedule terlalu longgar, motivasinya nggak terbangun, orang males-malesan. Jika terlalu ketat, orang akan melakukan hal-hal sekedar supaya nggak keliatan males-malesan (i.e. [Alt-Tab] EditPlus, [Alt-Tab] Yahoo!, …) Ada satu titik schedule scheme yg optimum - di antara average dan high-pressure. Grafik itu lebih jauh menjelaskan sesuatu yang menarik: begitu kita geser sedikit ke kanan pressure-nya, slope motivator jadi menurun tajam, drastis, mengarah ke situasi seperti kata teman Microsoft kita di atas: “that was a no-win game…”

Lesson learned: di software-projects (yaitu proyek-proyek yg melibatkan software developer), musti pikir dua kali kalo menerapkan schedule yg high pressure, yg wajar-wajar aja lah…

Good cooking takes time. If you are made to wait, it is to serve you better, and to please you. (Menu of Restaurant Antoine, from Mythical Man Month)

Janganlah kamu gerakkan lidahmu untuk Al-Quran karena hendak cepat-cepat (menguasai)-nya. Sesungguhnya atas tanggungan Kamilah mengumpulkannya (di dadamu) dan (membuatmu pandai) membacanya. (Quran [75]:16-17)

Sona, you were a musician and you used to play the lute. Tell me, Sona, did you produce good music when the lute string was well tuned, neither too tight nor too loose? (Buddha)

4 Comments »

Leave a comment

Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>