Description
Highgroove Studios is a Results Only Work Environment. ROWE is based on the premise that giving employees complete control over their time is the best way to increase productivity in the workplace. We have no set hours (no 9-5), all meetings are optional, and the only thing that matters is Results. We’re also an Agile Ruby on Rails development shop, and we think they go hand in hand.
Abstract
“Results-Only Work Environment is a management strategy where employees are evaluated on performance, not presence. In a ROWE, people focus on results and only results – increasing the organization’s performance while creating the right climate for people to manage all the demands in their lives — including work.” — Go ROWE Official CultureRX Site
ROWE was pioneered at Best Buy and now exists in many companies: Gap, Girl Scouts of America, Syvantis, and more. In a ROWE, people work where they want, when they want, so long as the work gets done. Eureka! It sounded too good to be true. If a big company like Best Buy could do it, we wondered if a small (7 person) company like us, at Highgroove Studios, could do it too. So we read the book, talked to another company in town that was ROWE, debated about it a lot, and decided that it fit in with how we developed software, and that it was how we wanted our company to be.
When we first implemented ROWE, it was tough. We kept sliding back down the path of scheduling meetings, and being inconsistent with what real results we required (40 billable hours doing Ruby on Rails is not the right answer, BTW). The toughest thing for us, and still is today, is defining what results really do matter, and what results just don’t.
We’ve all been there before — it’s the morning, we were up late, our mind just isn’t there. But the night before, we were on fire. Code was just streaming out, our test suite was growing, the code was being refactored, and we were on a roll. Why would a company require productivity to happen from 9 am to 5 pm, when we know that sometimes productivity happens on a Tuesday night, or a Sunday morning? Why would a company that bills its clients for business value, only when business value is delivered, expect that it only be delivered during normal business hours? These were many of the questions we had to ask before fully implementing ROWE.
In this talk we’ll share how we first learned about ROWE, our first attempt, our failed attempts and policies, and our success with ROWE. We’ll show how they fit in nicely with doing Agile development, and specifically with using smart tools like Ruby on Rails and frameworks that save time and make us more efficient.
Speaker
Charles Brian Quinn
President and Developer at Highgroove Studios. A former road-warrior consultant to Fortune 500 companies and government agencies around the world, with real-world knowledge and experience in building web applications and launching products. He has worked with organizations such as Deloitte & Touche, Accenture, Wells Fargo, The New York Times, the Municipality of Durban in South Africa, and startups of all sizes. He is also the lead instructor of the Ruby on Rails Bootcamp class at the Big Nerd Ranch, a premiere technology training facility, a contributing author to The Rails Way, and contributes to several popular Ruby gems and libraries.