Thrashing

As a manager I strongly agree with this post. I’m currently responsible for taking a team whose old manager wanted to go back to being an ic. The team has a reputation for being slow, not being the best at architecture. So far I don’t really care about that. The problem is that no one at any level can even agree on what their priorities should be. When every standup you’re told to do something different of course you’re going to be slow. And this isn’t to bash the old manager this is coming from above him.

A manager’s job is first and foremost to manage tasks. I’ve instituted real sprints and they’ve started burning through the backlog. It’s not that agile is amazing it’s that structure is. There’s now a single on call person who is the target of sudden important bugs. Work doesn’t just fly in unannounced and blow up the whole team anymore. The team knows if I ask a question they can respond the next day.

It’s crazy to me how little many leaders I’ve encountered appreciate focus. I do think part of the problem is thrashing looks productive to some leaders. But it almost never is. There’s that quote: “slow is smooth, smooth is fast”. It almost always holds true.