Pitfalls and Best Practices in Requirements Engineering and Management - Requirements Engineering and Management for Software Development Projects - page 201

Another aspect to be noted is that the organization provides a platform for the
employees to stay motivated. It includes a decent wage, working conditions,
chances of career advancement, policies for fair treatment of employees and so on.
Then it behooves the managers to utilize that platform to motivate the staff by
providing unbiased and fair treatment, fair allocation of workload, prompt griev-
ance handling, and so on.
Topics are written on employee motivation and morale and it is not desirable to
include all that material in this topic. Interested readers are advised to read a good
book on the subject.
Now the pitfalls into which organizations fall in the matter of employee
motivation are as follows. The first pitfall is to never give any rewards or rec-
ognition. Large organizations are especially known for adopting this practice.
Their argument is that the salaries include a component of the reward and yearly
salary hikes are the rewards. Stability of employment is the reward. Perhaps,
financial rewards may not be needed but a public recognition would go a long way
in motivating a person. Administering recognition and rewards without a trans-
parent policy on an ad-hoc basis is one other major pitfall. Another is to give the
reward and recognition to the same person successively, under the justification that
the individual is a super performer. Giving the reward three times consecutively
would certainly demotivate all others. Another pitfall is to shy away from
administering negative rewards. Negative rewards are the ones that prevent selfish
working and promote teamwork.
Best practices are as follows. The organization needs to have a transparent
system of recognition and rewards. The rewards, perhaps, need not necessarily be
financial in nature. These are administered at regular intervals of time. These are
fairly administered without any bias and based on objective data which each of the
contestants can verify and agree with. It is ensured that the reward and recognition
is given to as many employees as possible. No single individual receives the same
reward more than twice consecutively.
14.2.6 Quality Assurance
Quality assurance goes a long way in ensuring that the deliverables of the
requirements engineering activity are defect free in the first place and strive for
excellence in the second place. Many organizations argue that quality assurance
does not add quality but only verify that it exists. So it is a cost which can be
avoided. The philosophy of Total Quality Management (TQM) advocates placing
emphasis on the process than on inspection and testing. True enough. But look at
QA as you would look at the existence of a police department. The police may not
be able to prevent a crime from occurring nor can it solve every crime. But its
mere existence inhibits many a prospective criminal from committing a crime.
Similarly the existence of a quality assurance function improves the diligence of
the performers from injecting defects into the deliverable.