One of the important factors that impact the success rates of software projects’ being pretty low in our sector (This rate is 30% all over the world) is that all the work is being done by humans. In general, commitments about completion of the work are being made with respect to a stated time, specific budget and a list of features, disregarding a complex factor such as human. Turnover of an employee in a job averagely varies from 12 to 30 months in Turkey.
Let’s asses the cost, risks, and impact on projects of this turn over.
- Looking for a new employee, interview and recruitment process investment when someone quit the job,
- Average adaptation time of the new works to the environment and the cost of work that is hindered at this time
- Required time for the new employee to reach full capacity
- Here, if we sum on month basis, employee switch costs averagely 4-8 month salary to the company according to the salary. Just because of this reason, 30% more salary can be suggested to a worker who wants to quit the job. Let’s add the risk of inadequacy of the new employee and his/her probability of the disrupting the team’s harmony.
Lastly, let’s evaluate the impact of turnover period on project’s time cost and possibility of the project to lose time-to-market advantage and therefore formation of a dramatic competition disadvantage from the project perspective. And if we take this perspective a sector scale and think that turn-over is being experienced constantly, (the abundance of the career firms also indicates a high rate of turnover) we are, as a sector, always in case of loss.
We can see the following subjects as the reasons for Turn-over;
- The inefficiency of wages policy and career opportunity in the company, Software’s not being perceived as an occupation,
- Decreased Self Esteem of the employee due to fast paced and therefore low quality work
- The company’s being perceived as a place where the worker cannot work for a long time, in given business culture
- The company’s perspective of the employee as replaceable component
- Office policing of the management, its struggling to manage people,
- Loyalty’s being a figure of fun in given business culture.
We know that the success rate is much higher in agile processes. Most of the reasons mentioned above can be eliminated by the processes used. A good team and successful projects satisfy everyone unless there are serious problems in the company culture. I think that the organizations that prefer agile processes and provide the sustainability will gain extra power in fight against turnover. The reason for the low motivation seen in the people who transfer from agile processes to conventional methods is because of this fact.
Ahmet Akdağ, Co-founder, ACM
Biography
Ahmet Akdağ – CSM, PSD, PSM I, PSM II, PSMT, PSPO I, PSPO II
Ahmet Akdağ serves as ACM’s Managing Partner and is one of the founders of the Association of Agile Software Development. After graduating from Bilkent University with an Electrical and Electronics Engineering degree, he recieved an MBA and masters degree in IT. He began his career as a software engineer for Turkey’s largest project in the insurance industry and became a professional R & D team leader in the business world before joining ACM. Currently, he works as a Professional Scrum Master Trainer (PSMT) at ACM in many projects using Agile practices (international level certified from Scrum.org, Scrum Alliance) and as a consultant finding solutions for customers as they keep up with the advancements in technology.
