Best Practices for Minimizing Harm from Layoffs and Downsizing

by Capers Jones

Editor's note: This Executive Update is an excerpt from Chapter 1 of the author's book Best Practices in Software Engineering (McGraw-Hill, forthcoming 2009); Chapter 1 discusses 50 best practices. Here, we present the first topic: best practices for minimizing harm from layoffs and downsizing. As the recession deepens, layoffs, downsizing, and bankruptcies will increase in number. Past recessions indicate that these activities are often handled so poorly that they result in loss of operational efficiency for a period of years. There are no perfect solutions for downsizing, but cautions are provided for common problems.