**7. Methods of increasing maturity and reliability of an unstable team**

The illustration just presented demonstrates the development of the maturity of the company, which sought to achieve stability through the using of a suitable methodology and organizational solutions. The analysis of this experience makes it possible to present the method of overcoming instability problems that was obtained as result of the company development. It is based on using some indicators important for effective evaluation of the company:


We do not consider here indicators related to the economic evaluation of the company: profit, profitability, costs, and so on. For the choice of methods of strategic planning and evaluation of the solutions to be adopted, we recommend the reader to refer to the special literature (see, e.g., [11]). At the same time, we emphasize the importance of using economic indicators for monitoring the state of processes in the company and in the case of unstable teams.

How selected indicators are measured depends on the characteristics of the company and its projects. However, to increase the company's maturity and, in particular, to overcome the problems associated with instability, it is necessary for key employees to agree on how to use the adopted indicators to evaluate the company's performance.

Ignoring these problems leads to the degradation of the company and, ultimately, its destruction. Most of the programming teams whose activities we observed sooner or later were forced to go through the process of reorganizing the spontaneous processes and reach the maturity level, which in the CMM classification is called repeatable. Unfortunately, some of them lost their independence and in fact became an external unit of the large companies, forgetting about their initial plans and intentions. In this respect, NetGon is one of the few good exceptions.

For NetGon company, the first indicator changed significantly. If during the first year of the company's existence, there were about 30% of unsuccessful projects on average, by the end of the year, the percentage of such projects stabilized at 10%. The second indicator has grown. The share of projects that last more than 2 months has increased to 30%, whereas before the reorganization of the development processes, the company could not afford more than two such projects (one of them is an initiative project). The third non-quantitative indicator is very important for assessing the quality of the company. It can be estimated by the number of stopworking employees from a group of constantly working developers, but taking into account their importance for the company's activities. There were no such employees in NetGon. To determine the fourth indicator, key employees should take into account not only the current needs but also the development strategy adopted for the company. Using this information, they assess the need for the development of the company's personnel and, thus, establish qualitative and quantitative parameters for the process of attracting additional employees. This information serves as a guide for the fifth indicator: deviation from the specified parameters is undesirable. Today, in NetGon, the only task of attracting external developers is to test them as candidates for the constantly working developers. This is considered as an element of the company's personnel policy.

solutions. The analysis of this experience makes it possible to present the method of overcoming instability problems that was obtained as result of the company development. It is based on using

• Conformity of constantly working developers to the qualification requirements of the ex-

We do not consider here indicators related to the economic evaluation of the company: profit, profitability, costs, and so on. For the choice of methods of strategic planning and evaluation of the solutions to be adopted, we recommend the reader to refer to the special literature (see, e.g., [11]). At the same time, we emphasize the importance of using economic indicators for

How selected indicators are measured depends on the characteristics of the company and its projects. However, to increase the company's maturity and, in particular, to overcome the problems associated with instability, it is necessary for key employees to agree on how to use

Ignoring these problems leads to the degradation of the company and, ultimately, its destruction. Most of the programming teams whose activities we observed sooner or later were forced to go through the process of reorganizing the spontaneous processes and reach the maturity level, which in the CMM classification is called repeatable. Unfortunately, some of them lost their independence and in fact became an external unit of the large companies, forgetting about their initial plans and intentions. In this respect, NetGon is one of the few good

For NetGon company, the first indicator changed significantly. If during the first year of the company's existence, there were about 30% of unsuccessful projects on average, by the end of the year, the percentage of such projects stabilized at 10%. The second indicator has grown. The share of projects that last more than 2 months has increased to 30%, whereas before the reorganization of the development processes, the company could not afford more than two such projects (one of them is an initiative project). The third non-quantitative indicator is very important for assessing the quality of the company. It can be estimated by the number of stopworking employees from a group of constantly working developers, but taking into account their importance for the company's activities. There were no such employees in NetGon. To determine the fourth indicator, key employees should take into account not only the current needs but also the development strategy adopted for the company. Using this information, they assess the need for the development of the company's personnel and, thus, establish

some indicators important for effective evaluation of the company:

• The stability indicator of a group of constantly working developers.

the adopted indicators to evaluate the company's performance.

• Growth or decrease in the requirement to use optional developers involved.

monitoring the state of processes in the company and in the case of unstable teams.

• The share of complex projects in the company's works.

• Percentage of unsuccessful projects.

178 Management of Information Systems

ecute and perspective projects.

exceptions.

We pay considerable attention to the discussion of maturity indicators, because the use of them by key developers allows *to identify and understand the problems of the team that, in particular, hamper the involvement of the good developers*. In its essence, this is the first step toward increasing the maturity and reliability of an unstable team.

The second step toward increasing the company's maturity is *to identify the risks that arise from unsatisfactory indicators and to collect proposals for mitigating them*.

The work of the team with the optional developers involved is always associated with certain risks for the project. First of all, these are unjustified expectations of performing the tasks with due quality and in a timely manner. *Mitigating of this risk is usually attained with entering into contracts with third-party developers* and, if agreements are reached and formalized legally correctly, this can guarantee against financial losses.

Unfortunately, the contract cannot provide for threats related to inaccurately or incompletely formulated requirements for the program project and, possibly, to the tasks proposed for outsourcing. In such cases, the company has a natural need for a suitable methodology for the project activity. *The introduction of such a methodology is one of the important methods for increasing the company's maturity*.

Adequate project methodology only contributes to mitigating risks, but does not exclude them. Interacting with constantly working and optional developers, the project manager can and should apply other *well-known techniques for risks mitigation.*<sup>1</sup>

Permanent contact with employees and prompt correction of decisions are one of the conditions of the risk mitigation policy. When solving tasks of optional developers involved, the opportunities for the contacts with them are significantly limited. Therefore, *the tasks proposed for outsourcing should be set so that the expected results are useful, regardless of the possible changes in the projects that are being implemented*.

The teams that we were able to observe often made mistakes due to the failure to fulfill this condition. Some of them had to abandon the use of the optional developers involved. And this can be considered as a radical method for solving instability problems. However, those of them that correctly evaluated failed were able to determine what tasks can and cannot be outsourced. As a result, they got quite good opportunities for effective using of outsourcing. For example, NetGon today trusts up to 60% of project works for the optional developers involved and, accordingly, reduce the costs of development. Thus, *the thoughtful selection* 

<sup>1</sup> This topic is beyond the scope of this chapter; for its study, we recommend the publication of [12] on the MITER resource (https://www.mitre.org/) and other sources to which it refers.

*of tasks for the optional developers involved mitigates the risks of inefficient use of outsourcing by unstable teams*.

This statement is necessary, but not a sufficient condition for the success of using outsourcing. If the team does not care about managing the implementation of external tasks, the effectiveness of third-party developers can significantly decrease. That is why we single out a special production function for the project, whose purpose is to monitor the performance of external works. This function is related to the role of the *personnel coordinator, whose definition we consider as the base of the proposed approach to increasing the maturity and reliability of the unstable team*.

The role of the personnel coordinator can be distributed between key or constantly working developers, but for each optional developer involved or for a group of such developers who are jointly performing a task, there should be a single supervisory coordinator. The area of responsibility of the coordinator includes communications with optional developers involved and the management of outsourced tasks. It represents to the team both the results and the progress of the tasks. If necessary, the coordinator organizes staff training for both optional developers involved and, possibly, other employees.

The successful development of any company depends not only on the maturity of the projects development processes but also on the attractiveness to potential developers. An important component of success is the formation of an inviting reputation: caring for employees, creating comfortable working conditions, providing opportunities for professional development, career prospects, and so on. This is very important for a company that, in conditions of instability, seeks to increase its maturity. Although the issues of reputation enhancement are beyond the scope of this chapter, we note that the ASD methodology, which we discussed earlier, is very productive in conditions of instability. *Three phases of the project: considering, cooperative, and learning, which involve all developers, create conditions for the active joining external employees with the team members*.
