TeamOut

teamout

No startup starts with a tester. Then 2 years later, that startup can't release a new feature for their biggest customer ever unless they rewrite the whole thing with a big bang. It's painful to watch this over and over again. There are simple things to do to keep the sanitary quality of our software, so you don't end up in this situation. First, embrace your fears. Engineers are brave people, and we won't readily admit we have concerns. But we have, and the sooner we admit and share those concerns, the sooner we'll prepare to face them. How We Build Software Today We're in so much of a hurry that we're always late. There's no time for testing. There's no time for unit testing. There's no time for refactoring. Well, there will never be enough time to do it right while we keep sabotaging ourselves as engineering teams. We're asked how much time it will take, and we keep excluding unit testing, manual testing, and even API testing and refactoring from our estimations. So we build software like this: Quick and dirty Not quick, still dirty Quick and happy diagonal path tested Everything else is considered an edge case. (There's no such thing as an edge case.) Few of us are even braver to say no to quick or dirty and build software fast and stable. What you should cut from your estimations is the scope, not the quality. What do you know about the quality of that component you're working on? You know it's fragile, but you don't want to touch it because it's very fragile. You've done this long ago, you barely touch it, it should work. You don't know it's fragile. There are no tests and nobody to test and expose how fragile it actually is. Are you happy dealing every day with this dirty software? Are you happy making compromises with the quality of your work every day, knowing it's far from good? Coping with "we don't have time to clean" and still being late because it is dirty and you can't possibly move on without cleaning it up. you're at your next job interview. What will you brag about in your current job? That you can perform under pressure and do late-night fixes? They will love you for that, but they will also ask you why you didn't do something about it. Maybe it wasn't your job. Imagine There were team leads and engineering managers to make those decisions. If it were up to you, you would've done something. You told them the code needs refactoring, and you need to plan time for the tech dept at every retro, and nobody listened. Well, guess what - you don't need permission. The quality of your work depends on you only. Nobody can force you to write crappy code. Time pressure is a short-term excuse. Quick and dirty solutions delay the entire project and cost more than if you do it right the first time. You Will Never Fix It Later Are you willing to make that difference? Then, here is what to do: get disciplined. I'm sorry, but there's no other way around it. And it should be at all levels. What should be your first steps to building code with higher quality? Implement Logging and Alerting There are tons of tools for logging and alerting. This is the first thing to do. Your software is crashing, and you're completely unaware. Find a solution that allows you to easily create tickets from the exception alerts and mark them as "known" or group them once they're reported. Build a Team Routine to Watch and Report the Alerts If you think it's dull, let me ask you: Are you deep in the zone during your entire workday? After all the meetings and the heavy programming work, you need to ease your concentration a little. Well, browsing through the alerts channel is way better than browsing through any other channel. Just click the "Report a ticket" button or the "Mark as known" button. And if you got intrigued, you'd probably fix one or two ones. Here comes the biggest argument - we can fix a couple, but we're writing tests that someone needs to confirm, we need to deploy, and this generates more unplanned work for the team. The PM will yell at us that we're not working on the high-priority items but gold-plating small alerts. The Team with all the "M" roles in it agrees about that. Publish a rule of thumb - "If it looks small and low-risk, and there is absolutely no other work in progress, just go for it and fix it. We can handle one or two small alerts fixed "out of scope" per Sprint, along with the planned ones." That's it, very simple. Start Cleaning the Logs and Alerts One by One In addition to the occasional fixes, plan the cleanup properly. Note that by planning, I mean allocating daily/weekly time for fixing them . You'll waste more time evaluating their priority than fixing the first 5. So, just start fixing. regardless of their severity or priority Make sure there is one alert for each developer, or if you're mobbing most of the time, set a daily timeslot for alerts. And I would do it first thing in the morning because otherwise, you'll never do it. Again, it's not a new feature, and it might seem as if it eats the time from your critical priorities, but your critical priorities are already late because of those hidden issues. You're already late! Remove All Empty Try-Catch Statements and Let it Crash! While alerts and logging will expose a lot, they won't be able to log what you hide. So stop sweeping your problems under the carpet. What crashed 2 years ago, and you didn't know why is completely different today. Let it crash, and fix it. It probably won't even crash the same way, or it's not crashing even, so one way or another, your code will be in a better shape without those. Start Writing Unit Tests Right Now I mean it. You're working on some code right now. Then nothing stops you from writing a unit test. Oh, I see! There's no infrastructure ready for unit testing, is there? Come on! You're going to delay that wannabe feature anyway. You don't need more than a day to set up the unit test framework and your CI to run the tests. Just do it. Start TDD for Bug Fixes "We don't know what's the problem and how we're going to fix it. We can't write tests for code that doesn't exist yet." My dear developer, the purpose of testing is to check a hypothesis. That's valid for testing in general, not only for software testing. So what you need to write a test for is not the code. You need the expected behavior and result. Now, if user stories are vague and unclear and you're not ready to start writing tests against the user stories, I have a solution for this too, but before that - start writing test-first code for bugs. There is a component of the bug description called "Expected result", and the steps to reproduce are your test case. So you already have the test case in front of you. Now, code it first before you start coding the fix. Test-Driven Development is writing a test that validates you've done the right job, not that you've done it right. Unit tests verify whether you've done it right. Draw a Coverage Roadmap Test automation and tech debt have similar tragic destinies - they are never started because "we can never cover everything, we can never clean up everything, it's too much of an overhead. We don't have time for that." Hear me out: you don't have to automate everything! But you definitely must automate your mission-critical elements - high-priority use cases, critical infrastructure, and core functionalities. Call it what you like, but the business relies on 20% of your code and infrastructure, and your customers are using 20% of your features. You see where I'm going with this. You don't even need to start writing automated tests for these features right now. What you need to do first is prioritize them. Get together as a team in front of your high- and low-level architecture diagrams. There aren't any, are they? Or the ones that exist are a photo of a whiteboard taken 2.5 years ago? I know. Yes, you need to spend half a day and get these up to date. The good news is that there are fun tools to help you, so you wouldn't need to maintain it manually. Do some research. You're an R&D team, after all, right?! Don't Aim for Full Coverage - Aim for Low Risk and High Confidence Instead While diagraming your up-to-date architecture and infrastructure, add notes or circles, or bold or paint red all the places that are: Mission-critical for your business and software Desperately in need of refactoring, or you'll keep postponing that other mission-critical feature all the time. Constantly breaking and eating your time fixing them is pretty much in vain because they'll break again in a couple of days. When the drawings are ready, sit with your team and brainstorm what needs testing for all these circled components. Don't fall into the trap of "this is too much! We must stop all other work to cover all of this!" You don't have to cover all of this at once. But you need a plan. Now, open another board, and start writing your Testing Goals. Examples: Cover all fetch-data API requests for success and failure so you know that you don't send bad requests, and if it fails, it fails because of the vendor. Outline the mission-critical user journey. Break it down into units. Write the unit tests. When the test pyramid was invented, a unit meant a component, not a method, so it covered functionality, not methods and classes. Identify the traffic jams, and decide how you are going to untangle them. Plan to do it right. Your quick and dirty code will remain dirty with dirty tests. I intentionally used a coverage Map and not the testing Pyramid because... at this stage, when you don't have any tests in place, manual or automated, you're not ready for the Pyramid. Many teams have the wrong impression that they have first to achieve 96% unit test coverage, and then move to the integration tests and so forth. The problem with modern unit test coverage is that we test Methods and Classes, not functionalities. Even more teams start with UI automation, which is equally wrong. That's actually the worst thing you can do, and it's doomed to fail. So don't start from the top or from the bottom of the Pyramid, but build a risk map instead. Some features might need extensive integration testing, other features might need extensive UI testing, and the next portion might indeed be a core feature that everything depends on (another red flag, though), and you have to cover it from top to bottom fully. Or it's a data collection service, and you need to focus on the performance of the APIs, for example. Build a map of your software hotspots that need heavy testing. Then think about how you can automate that testing. You Can't Progress in Quicksand and Only You Can Pull Yourself Out of There Let’s wrap it up. If you spend half of your life working at a place without testing, the code is in bad shape, and you don’t have time, you keep making compromises because “you don’t have time”. You’re not entirely happy, or at least you’re pretty indifferent – they pay, it’s their call, and it’s not your decision. That’s just sad. I’m sure you’re not proud of your job. And you might even wait for the next unicorn to recruit you where you’ll love the job as well as the cause. Well, things changed a lot last year, didn’t they?! We yet again learnt that unicorns don’t exist. You need to be an outstanding developer to remain hired. Companies figured out that they could throw away people regardless of their contribution. Still, there are engineers that a company will do everything to keep. To be one of them, you need to drive change and constantly prove that the business depends on people like you. Everyone can write crappy software, but the really good ones not only write excellent software with joy but also inspire others and spread the code-quality culture. You can’t progress in quicksand, and only you can pull yourself out.

You’ll Never Fix It Later - How to Pull Your Team Out of the Quicksand

আপনি পরে এটি কখনই ঠিক করবেন না - কীভাবে আপনার দলকে কুইকস্যান্ড থেকে বের করে আনবেন

Sie werden es später nie mehr reparieren – So ziehen Sie Ihr Team aus dem Treibsand

Nunca lo arreglarás más tarde: cómo sacar a tu equipo de las arenas movedizas

Vous ne le réparerez jamais plus tard - Comment sortir votre équipe des sables mouvants

आप इसे बाद में कभी ठीक नहीं करेंगे - अपनी टीम को क्विकसैंड से कैसे बाहर निकालें

後で修正することはありません - チームを流砂から引きずり出す方法

나중에 고칠 수는 없습니다 - 팀을 유사에서 끌어내는 방법

Você nunca vai consertar depois - como tirar sua equipe da areia movediça

Daha Sonra Asla Düzeltemeyeceksiniz - Ekibinizi Bataklıktan Nasıl Çıkarırsınız

Sau này bạn sẽ không bao giờ sửa được - Cách kéo nhóm của bạn ra khỏi cát lún

你以后永远不会修复它 - 如何将你的团队从流沙中拉出来

Agile is Worth Improving

DevOps for Beginners: Navigating the Transition from Traditional Development

154 Stories To Learn About Work

260 Stories To Learn About Team Productivity

148 Stories To Learn About Team Management

Let’s say you’ve got eight people on one of your engineering squads. Your daily standup takes 15 minutes a day. That’s 75 minutes per week or roughly 3,750 minutes per person. You’ve got eight people, so that’s 30,000 minutes each year for your team or 500 hours. That works out to about 12.5 weeks spent in daily standup for your team. If your average engineer is earning $75,000, then you’re spending about $18,000 each year on your daily standup (not to mention opportunity cost, which is a whole topic in itself). But if your daily standups take 30 minutes, it costs you $36,000. And if you have ten squads like this in your company, that’s $360,000. So we sure as heck better make our standups count! Five ways I see companies waste time in standups (there are more) The is envisioned as a 15-minute pulse check, but it often morphs into a parade of distractions, irrelevancies, and just plain inefficiencies. daily standup Company A The back-end engineering team at Company A religiously congregates every morning around their Scrum board. The standup never exceeds 15 minutes. But their updates are a monotonous loop of "I did X, today I'll do Y" – an agile charade with . In fact, the engineers don’t even have sprint goals. The product manager prioritizes the backlog, but there are no two-way conversations happening. zero alignment with sprint goals Problem 1: No alignment with sprint goals Anecdotally, an engineer at a FinTech firm recently told me, . “Strategic alignment comes from our initiative. Personally, I take the initiative to ask about it, but not everyone does that” Lack of alignment with sprint goals leads to a lack of direction and purpose, causing team members to operate in isolation rather than as a cohesive unit working toward a shared objective. This inefficiency wastes valuable resources and could derail other tasks that are critical to the project. It also impacts stakeholder satisfaction and puts the team out of sync with broader strategic objectives. The very foundation of the Scrum framework is to inspect progress toward the Sprint Goal. Daily Scrums are designed for task updates and as opportunities to adapt and pivot towards achieving that Sprint Goal. Without this focal point, the team misses out on critical chances to adjust course while eroding cohesion and motivation. Company B Company B has a fully distributed, remote team scattered across 9 hours’ worth of time zones. Ada, from Poland, finds that the live standup in her afternoon takes her out of her flow at peak concentration time. Brent in San Francisco grumbles about needing to log in early while juggling kids who haven't yet been sent off to school. And Clem, who, due to caregiving responsibilities, often misses the live standup, has to catch up through meeting reruns and often misses the chance to contribute. Problem 2: Operational Inefficiencies The logistical gymnastics needed for live standups often means getting in the way of engineers’ personal lives or interrupting their workflow. Time-zone clashes? Check. Is the flow state broken? Double-check. Is everyone mildly irritated? Triple-check. Problem 3: Lack of Flexibility More like one-size-fits-none. Failing to adapt the standup format to cater to diverse needs and lifestyles often leads to dissatisfaction and poor adoption. And when you're remote, that dissatisfaction can quietly fester into full-blown detachment. Company C For Company C, the “daily standup” is something of a Proustian endeavor. Complex topics are discussed ad nauseam, sometimes taking up to 45-60 minutes a day. Today, Luis and Zaynab spend 15 minutes dissecting a problem, leaving everyone else twiddling their thumbs or heading off to their second screen to multitask. 15 minutes turned out not to be long enough to fix it, and they decided to continue their chat later – but not until they’ve wasted a collective 120 working minutes of engineering time for everyone else. A few of the team members are introverted, and the forum doesn’t feel like a good one for them to share their thoughts. They get meeting fatigue alongside the inevitable information overload. Problem 4: Redundancy and Overload When standups turn into mini-hackathons or ad hoc troubleshooting sessions, important issues either get glossed over or spiral into time-consuming digressions. We all end up stuck in this labyrinth of futile discussion, staggering out with meeting fatigue and information overload. Problem 5: Engagement At this point, people are emotionally checked out. The more vocal become inadvertent meeting hoggers, while others feel their contributions being sidelined. It's a fertile ground for a toxic culture that breeds disengagement and kills morale. How asynchronous standups (sort of) help None of the scenarios we covered above captures the intended spirit of a stand-up meeting, which is to streamline the workflow and foster cohesion among team members. It's time to part ways with practices that suck the productivity out of our workday. So, let’s consider asynchronous stand-ups. If you’re not familiar with daily standups, Nick Omeyer wrote a great article about this. Traditional work schedules don't account for the natural ebb and flow of human energy, let alone the strain of managing personal lives alongside work commitments. Asynchronous stand-ups check a lot of boxes for the modern workforce. Where Asynchronous Stand-ups Shine 1. : Time zones become irrelevant. Whether you're dialing in from Tokyo or Texas, you have an equal seat at the virtual table. Universal Participation 2. These stand-ups play by your rules, allowing you to time your updates according to your personal work rhythm, not the other way around. Your Pace, Your Place: 3. Bid farewell to meetings that drag on and interrupt your flow state. Asynchronous stand-ups are short and to the point. Efficiency: 4. Think of it as an automatic diary of team updates. There's no need to chase minutes or compile reports; it's all there. Documented Progress: 5. The chance to craft your update promotes clear and concise communication rather than on-the-spot, often incoherent chatter. Quality Over Quantity: However, relying solely on asynchronous standups might not address all the complexities of collaboration effectively. In the current landscape, artificial intelligence stands prepared to seamlessly integrate into your existing communication tools. It can adeptly monitor and comprehend your projects and objectives, capturing the essence of decisions and activities that mold them. Unlike humans, who grapple with the inability to retain every detail and extract the pertinent elements, AI remains unhindered by these constraints. Our memory is finite; we lose sight of our goals and overlook occurrences, all due to the limitations of time. AI, on the other hand, operates outside of these confines, positioning it as a far superior contender to succinctly summarise daily events or provide insights into ongoing matters. Getting Asynchronous Stand-ups Right Asynchronous stand-ups work when everyone’s on the same page about how to do them at your organization. Always ensure everyone understands what’s expected of them and how to go about their asynchronous stand-up. Insist on a clear format that focuses on completed tasks, work in progress, and any roadblocks. Stay Consistent: Asynchronous doesn't mean antisocial. Urgent matters should be highlighted for immediate attention. A virtual pow-wow can still happen if needed. Flag for Follow-up: Establish a window within which all updates and responses should be posted to maintain momentum. Time Frames Matter: Identify a procedure for raising and addressing urgent issues promptly. Clear Paths for Emergencies: Making AI alternatives work Human memory has its limitations. We're bound to forget, overlook, or downright miss out on crucial updates. AI doesn't share these shortcomings. To make the most out of this tool, just stick to some collaboration fundamentals: Open Dialogue: Transparency is key. Holding the majority of discussions in private channels or direct messages is generally not advisable unless there's a specific reason, like confidentiality concerns or data protection. Use Your Tools Effectively: Whether it's , keeping your Jira boards current, or meticulously documenting workflows in Notion, encourage correct tool usage across the board. The beauty of AI is its ability to draw smart conclusions from the data it's given. crafting well-structured Git commits By actively participating in an AI-enhanced asynchronous stand-up, your team stands to gain significantly. AI tools can highlight important activities and provide clear answers to any queries about ongoing projects. I’m working on a solution Stepsize AI is your AI alternative to the manual daily standup (whether synchronous or asynchronous). It can also be used to support or supplement a daily standup. observes your activity across your systems of record, such as Slack, Linear, Jira, and GitHub. Then, it surfaces what matters in one powerful, easy-to-read team sync update. Stepsize AI ‍ It reflects on your activity and delivers insights humans often don’t spot, like risks or opportunities. Plus, it can answer questions about your activity, so you don’t need to take your colleagues out of their flow. The understands everything happening in your product engineering org and surfaces what matters. Stepsize AI Operational Intelligence Engine Its Daily Standup feature automatically generates accurate and precise daily standup reports, which team members can edit and update so they can use their time better. Stepsize AI can also create all kinds of other reports, including. Daily team syncs Sprint and Kanban reports Executive summaries I may be biased, but I’ve already seen the incredible impact of this AI on software organizations – it’s been a substantial driver in creating alignment, boosting productivity, cutting meetings, and more. Also published . here

We Need to Stop Wasting Time With Our Daily Standups: Make Them Count

Burnout. It sucks the life out of our people, and in turn, our projects. I’ve learned hard lessons about how insidious it can be. So I want to share the strategies to prevent burnout and improve productivity that has made a difference in my teams. Thought 1: Work-life balance is more than just an equation It’s fair to say that the term "work-life balance" has been heavily scrutinized over the last couple of decades, often criticized for suggesting a binary choice. While the emerging perspective – that there is value in maintaining a healthy divide between professional and personal life – is certainly valid, it is not a one-size-fits-all solution. Here's my take on it. I think that for leaders and employers, separation of work and life should be the , but not enforced. default This is an inclusion issue as much as anything else. It's about acknowledging life’s complexities – parents with young kids at home, those caring for a loved one, and those caring for their mental health. Conversely, some people thrive in the fluidity between their professional and personal lives, viewing both as integral parts of their existence. Neither approach is inherently superior, and neither should be disproportionately rewarded or penalized. If we've done our job in selecting the right individuals for our team, we should have faith in their judgment to decide what's best for them. When our team members feel understood and supported in their unique work-life approach. This leads me to… The case for open-ended working hours The 9-5 routine assumes peak workplace productivity throughout the day. But we’re not machines, and our natural rhythms of productivity can be as diverse as our personalities. Some among us are morning folks, hitting peak productivity with the first rays of the sun, while others find their stride in the tranquillity of the night. So why are we sticking to a one-size-fits-all work schedule? The – ROWE – . Results-Oriented Work Environment can work It’s different from flexible working. It throws the clock out of the window and empowers people to manage their own time. And it’s . Ok, it isn’t right for every type of team out there. backed by evidence But for an Agile software team? I think it’s a near-perfect use case. Agile methodologies inherently embrace change and value individuals and interactions over development processes. And, importantly, they focus on delivering software and value. That aligns perfectly with ROWE. And Agile teams – consisting of diverse roles with different tasks and productivity cycles – are well-accommodated by ROWE, too. Employees in ROWE workplaces have decreased work-life conflict, reduced turnover, and increased job satisfaction. By acknowledging our team members as unique individuals and not productivity machines, we're cultivating an environment that mitigates burnout. More than that, it promotes balance, happiness, and exceptional output. Because ultimately, it's not about how many hours you're at work, but the quality of work you deliver. Making ROWE work ROWE comes with risks. Knowing what they are will help you mitigate them. – Coordination becomes more burdensome when people work different hours in different ways. Use asynchronous collaboration tools such as and to keep people on the same page. Consider establishing “core hours” where people are available to meet or collaborate. 1. Collaboration challenges daily standup tools AI agents Less structure means a risk some team members may not manage their time efficiently. Set clear expectations, measurable goals, and frequent feedback. Base these in project management tools for visibility, and keep everyone accountable. 2. Maintaining accountability. Sometimes, team members put undue pressure on themselves to deliver, which can, in turn, lead to burnout. Foster a culture of balance by encouraging people to set and respect their own boundaries, and discourage overwork. Resist the temptation to give credit to those that work more. 3. Potential for overwork. Thought 2: The communication drain Software development , particularly in large, multifaceted, or cross-functional teams. can present insidious communication and collaboration challenges These persistent obstacles can drain engineers, squandering valuable time, and in bad cases, sow discord. While Agile methodologies are designed to enhance team collaboration, they can sometimes intensify these issues. The truth is that good collaboration in complex situations That’s not because some of us fall short at something. It’s that no human is physically capable of remembering every company and team goal, tracking every activity that happens, and simultaneously being aware of every back-and-forth, risk, and opportunity. isn’t in human nature. But there are things we can do to mitigate it. Informal communication channels are underrated Sure, stand-ups, sprint planning, and retrospectives are essential to align the team toward shared objectives. But promoting spontaneous conversations, both work, and non-work related, gets people on the same wavelength. Casual chats about new technologies, swift brainstorming sessions on an elusive bug, or a non-work-related catch-up enhance team relationships. Having mutual understanding makes you more likely to have an effective, burnout-free team. Psychological safety I advocate for decision-making autonomy. It trims communication and boosts involvement and ownership. It’s an essential ingredient for happy, fulfilled employees. We need psychological safety to enable a team to take calculated risks, learn and innovate. Here’s how I think about psychologically safe environments: Where it makes sense, you can redefine outcomes not as successes or failures, but as experiments with hypotheses to prove or disprove. Treat every outcome or conclusion as valuable. “Failure” is fine. Appreciate those who make big calls, take risks, challenge the status quo, or bring up difficult issues. Reward courage. Others feel safe to do the same when leaders show their fallibility and share their learning process. Demonstrate vulnerability. Leverage communication tools Collaboration in complex software development teams comes with a certain amount of built-in pain – even if it’s just trying to keep up with what’s happening. There’s sometimes a natural resistance to change around tools, but many engineering leaders I know . Engineers generally love them, and it forces teams only to have meetings about the things that matter. swear by them They’re also a big win for distributed and remote teams. Daily standup tools. Instead of spending 30 minutes covering mostly trivial ground, contribute asynchronously, and have more focused meetings about any crucial points. Retro tools. These can be async too. Spend time only on the most salient ideas. Tool ideas: Try EasyRetro or Miro Retrospectives Meeting summarisation. There’s no reason to still be rewatching whole meetings. Tool ideas: Grain for meeting recording, segmentation, and transcription. Otter for AI summarization. Human collaboration has a built-in weakness. It’s not possible to execute at work and keep up with what happens. And I believe this problem now has a solution – . I’m building it with my team at Stepsize. CollabGPT AI-driven collaboration. CollabGPT is the AI collaboration companion that surfaces what matters, effortlessly. CollabGPT surfaces the activity and insights from all the tools your team uses to collaborate, including , GitHub, Jira, and more. Slack Its architecture means it can form long-term memories by observing and reflecting on activities from all your tools. It uses this to provide precise, insightful summaries and answers to any question. Thought 3: A real learning culture Pretty much every organization they promote continuous learning. In my experience, very few actually do. says For example, they might have half a day of learning hours each week. Maybe it’s called Innovation Time or Upskilling Time. In practice, practically none of their engineers use it. Why? Simply, pressure to deliver is incompatible with it. As a leader, you must guard these learning hours zealously. Make learning time regular, and protect your team from unnecessary meetings during this time. Assure them they won’t be penalized for not working on their projects. These hours are non-negotiable for all stakeholders. Protect learning time. Show your team you’re not just advocating for continuous learning, but show you’re a learner yourself. Share what you’re learning, and why. Your team is more likely to mirror your attitude. Lead by example. We have Slack channels dedicated just for people to share what they’ve learned, and for sharing articles, podcasts, or whatever it might be on topics relevant to others. Promote peer-to-peer learning. Teams often formalize this as a Personal Development Plan. You can call it what you want – what matters is that you’re invested in your team’s learning and helping them explore and commit to learning goals. Accountability. Putting it together These are not simple changes to implement. They require a shift in perspective and a willingness to buck a few norms. But they’re worth it, every day of the year. I can’t overstate the importance of the role of tools and technologies in assisting with these issues. Collaboration tools and AI-driven solutions can make a massive difference in how we collaborate. We're building CollabGPT, the AI companion for your software projects. CollabGPT simplifies collaboration by giving you consolidated, meaningful insights into everything happening across your projects. It offers powerful insights, actionable suggestions, and immediate answers to pressing questions; all pulled from the context around your projects from Jira, GitHub, and Slack. Also published here.

Guarding Against Burnout in Software Teams

How do you get better as a manager? You can use feedback from your manager, inputs from your team, and outcomes you achieve as a measure of your performance, but by themselves, they do not help you get better. Without a system in place to measure yourself and actively monitor how you’re doing, you cannot determine areas that need your attention and the steps you must take to improve. Every day, multiple things vie for your attention, and you make hundreds of , some good and some bad. Some consciously and others subconsciously. Do you take time to analyze your decisions? Are you aware of what gets your attention? With so much feedback around you (both direct and indirect), how do you separate signal from noise? decisions Generally, I see two reasons why most managers are not able to improve: They are unable to ask themselves the right questions They lack the humility required to be truthful You aren’t asking the right questions if those questions don’t make you uncomfortable. Avoiding tough questions keeps you within your comfort zone, but your growth is often one step outside it. Humility to speak the truth and stay honest is another hard thing. Blaming someone or something else helps you avoid the reality of how you’re doing. Without the willingness to acknowledge your imperfections and accept you’re a work in progress, you can never improve. Your truth is often a version of your story, a story that suits you and makes you feel good. Humility requires questioning it. To improve, you need a repeatable system. My MOTs, as I call them are a monthly improvement exercise. Years of putting it into practice, adjusting, and adapting got me excellent results over the years. All it needs is a commitment to do it every month by purposefully setting time aside. moments of truth Asking these 9 questions every month and using the data to implement 1-2 action items per month is enough. You don’t need drastic changes or sudden improvements. Being effective in implementing a change requires time and effort. Doing 1-2 changes every month is not only less scary, but it also maintains the balance between utilizing what works and doing experimentation. 9 questions to ask yourself to be a better manager What’s my process to prioritize and how well do I prioritize? What’s your framework for saying yes to something and no to something else? How do you know the impact of your decisions? Actively evaluating the factors you take into account during prioritization is essential. Do you determine the “why” of doing something? Do you evaluate its relative importance compared to your other priorities? Do you measure how it fits into your goals? Do you consider the opportunity cost of doing or not doing something? The art of management lies in the capacity to select from the many activities of seemingly comparable significance the one or two or three that provide leverage well beyond the others and concentrate on them - Andy Groove Some people have the tendency to incline towards the negative, thinking they are doing worse than they are and others exaggerate their prioritization skills. The only way to know how well you prioritize is to put your hunch to the test with this exercise. Look at everything you prioritized last month: Put a score against each activity 1-5, 1 being the lowest priority and 5 being the highest priority. How many of your high-priority activities actually turned out to be impactful? How many of the low-priority activities that you deprioritized turned out to be far more valuable later? What were your decision criteria? What factors did you take into account? What did you miss? Where was most of your time spent doing? Attending to the urgent or prioritizing the important? If your team spends a lot of time in the firefighting mode resolving one issue after another, that will only keep them busy. They won’t be productive or create the impact that they are capable of making. Looking at the process you use to prioritize can get your team out of the rut and move them toward excellence. How is my team performing? This may seem like a very subjective question unless you define how you measure performance. Success criteria, as I like to call it, must be defined and aligned with each team member. The first big part of your job as a manager is to ensure that your team knows what success looks like and cares about achieving it - Julie Zhuo When the manager hasn’t communicated what’s expected of the employee, how can the employee live up to those expectations? How can people make the right decisions when they don’t even have a sense of their direction? Many managers make the mistake of measuring it just against the tasks accomplished. It shouldn’t just be about accomplishing specific targets. Consider the following (as examples) while defining success criteria for your team: How many of the decisions in which you are involved should be made independently by your team? What’s blocking them from making these decisions themselves? What’s the quality of your team's decisions that they make independently? Of the tasks delegated, which ones require constant intervention? What’s missing for them that you need to step in? How many of the tasks that you save for yourself are great opportunities for your team? What’s blocking you from giving them to your team? How’s the relationship between team members? Is it transactional or do they trust and support each other? Using the success criteria keeps you close to the reality of how you’re doing. It also gives you the opportunity to improve your team’s effectiveness by identifying where they are lacking and taking measures to implement appropriate changes. Do I take responsibility? How do you react when things don’t go so well or don’t work out the way you expected? Do you take responsibility or look for a target to blame?* Problems have to be solved, not managed. You can’t get away with burying them, minimizing them, reorganizing around them, softening them, or assigning blame somewhere outside your responsibility. You have to make real and effective changes - Colin Powell Not taking responsibility for the outcomes makes you defensive. You feel like a victim, and spend time agonizing over your situation instead of focusing your time and energy on finding solutions. Think about all the conflicts, disagreements, and disappointments from the last month: What was your reaction? How much time did you spend on being defensive as opposed to finding solutions? What caused you to behave this way? Were you fearful of others' judgment? Do you find it hard to face criticism? Do you believe others will find you incompetent? Your behavior has a huge impact on how your team behaves when faced with similar situations. Acknowledging the fears that prevent you from taking responsibility and practicing courage is the only way to get rid of negative emotions and replace them with constructive action. Do I lead by example? Do you only talk the talk or also walk the walk? You can’t have a different set of rules for yourself and your team. Just like your goals, your fundamental principles on how things are done, and what behaviors are acceptable to have to be aligned. When you say one thing to them and do something entirely different yourself, it leaves your people feeling conflicted as they find it hard to know what to trust. For example, if you tell your team to have healthy work-life boundaries, but end up calling them late in the evening or sending them emails in the night, what should they trust? You have to lead by example. Say the thing you’re going to do yourself and do the thing you said you would do: What are the instances in which you said something and then did a completely different thing yourself? In how many of those cases did you actually inform your team on why you behaved this way? Did your team understand your decision and supported you? Do you take criticism well? Do you encourage a feedback-rich environment and actively ask for feedback? If you don’t, don’t expect your people to do the same. As a manager, your actions ring louder than your words. Be careful about what you say and the things you do. What are my people hearing? Note that the question is not what you’re communicating, but what they are hearing. Good communication isn’t about how well you say something. It’s about how well the other person perceives it. When the message is important, to reinforce it you need to say it out loud multiple times. You can’t say it once and expect it to stick. You can’t blame them if they didn’t understand something well. You have to provide clarity in the way they understand and ask questions to validate it. Look at the last month or the last week: What kind of issues turned out to be communication gaps? What reason did you attribute to those gaps? What’s the real reason? What changes can you make to reduce such gaps? Look at the communication architecture of your team - how information is exchanged, how people respond, how something is validated, and how closure is sought. If you look closely, you’re likely to identify many things that can improve. What isn’t working? There are many things you might be doing right, but I hope you agree that there’s always scope for improvement. Spend zero time on what you could have done, and devote all of your time on what you might do - Ben Horowitz How do you identify things that are not only important but clearly aren’t working? For example, giving aggressive deadlines might be leading to team exhaustion and , lack of clear requirements might be causing rework, and constant reshuffling of priorities makes your team unproductive. burnout Do this: Prepare a list of things that are hurting your team's productivity, outcomes, and hence impact. Stack ranks them in order of priority. The exercise should guide you to come up with the top 3 changes you want to implement in your team. Now you shouldn’t go and impose these changes on your team. That never works. Rather, ask each member of your team to do the same exercise. Better do it together and then pick the top 3 common changes that will bring the most value to your team. When your team is part of the decision-making, it’s much easier to put these ideas into action. Most of the time what gets your attention is what’s visible and right in front of you. However, making a meaningful change often requires confronting the difficult hidden problems that hurt your team’s productivity and degrades their performance. What role does my ego play in decision-making? There will be many instances where your ideas won’t be the best or you won’t know something. When you’re concerned with making the right decision, you won’t let your ego get in the way. You will accept what you don’t know and seek alternative opinions. Confidence in your ability to make the right decision with the humility to doubt your knowledge and your methods will make you consider other people’s suggestions as opposed to relying only on your intuition. However, trying to be right will make you do just the opposite. With your ego in the way, you will try to hide your ignorance. You will be hesitant to say “I don’t know.” You will ignore other people’s ideas when they are better than yours to avoid looking incompetent. The first rule is not to fake anything. You have to be humble, and you can’t pretend to be someone you’re not or to know something you don’t. You’re also in a position of leadership, though, so you can’t let humility prevent you from leading. It’s a fine line, and something I preach today. You have to ask the questions you need to ask, admit without apology what you don’t understand, and do the work to learn what you need to learn as quickly as you can. There’s nothing less confidence-inspiring than a person faking a knowledge they don’t possess. True authority and true leadership come from knowing who you are and not pretending to be anything else - Robert Iger To identify how you’re doing in this department, think about some of your recent decisions and answer these questions: How did you react when others had better ideas than yours? Did you accept when you were wrong? Did you acknowledge when you didn’t know something or did you try to hide it? Making the right decisions has less to do with your own knowledge and competence. It requires self-awareness and openness to acknowledge the gaps in your understanding and the curiosity to fill those gaps. How do I collaborate? Cross-functional collaboration is a very important skill. Employees who are able to collaborate with different types of people and successfully drive a project to completion stand out. When executed well, collaboration is a gift. However, bad execution often turns it into a mess. Knowing how your team collaborates gives you the opportunity to make it better. For example, the wrong estimation can impact integration and cause the whole project to delay. Arguing endlessly over inconsequential decisions hurts their productivity. The challenge is not to eliminate conflict but to transform it. It is to change the way we deal with our differences - Roger Fisher Think about it: Are your team members cooperative and collaborative with other teams and functions? What’s their relationship with people outside their team? Do they only work within the boundaries of their team or take time to build relationships and understand other aspects of business? What gaps do you see based on how your team collaborated in the past? What mistakes did you notice? What steps can you take to prevent them from happening again? Effective collaboration is a superpower. Invest in helping your team members build this skill. What do I do to maintain my sanity? Management is tough. There isn’t a rule book for all the decisions you need to make and all the steps you need to take. You will make plenty of mistakes on the way. You will have a hard time getting your ideas heard and convincing others. The uncertainty of your decisions along with the daily struggle to make things happen can be quite taxing on your personal health and mental well-being. Unless you learn to take care of yourself, you can’t maintain your sanity. Practicing self-care as a manager isn’t just necessary, it should be your topmost priority. Identify if you’re practicing self-care by asking these questions: Do you prioritize your health by exercising, and eating healthy meals or do you ignore it by giving an excuse that you don’t have time? Have you identified clear boundaries by defining what matters so that you don’t end up spending all your time at work and slip away from other things that you also value? Are you focused on proving your worth by being good or on learning and growing by getting better? When it comes to competence and success, do you apply a different set of rules to yourself and others? When things go wrong, do you turn to self-doubt, blame, or self-criticism or seek clarity and action? When struggling to prioritize your well-being, remember this: You can’t be a good manager without being good to yourself first. Asking these nine questions every month will help you identify hidden problems, acknowledge your team's strengths and give you the perspective you need to be flexible, to adjust and adapt. Getting better as a manager isn’t only about knowing how you’re doing. It’s also about taking action. This monthly exercise will help you do just that. Moments of Truth Previously published . here

9 Questions Every Great Boss Should Answer

It's no secret that data privacy is top of mind for many businesses and consumers alike. In light of recent data breaches and the (GDPR) going into effect, it's more important than ever for companies to take steps to protect their customers' data. One way to do this is by implementing a consent management solution. This blog post will outline the business requirements for a consent management solution. General Data Protection Regulation What Is a Consent Management Solution? When you operate a website, you need to obtain consent from your visitors for various activities such as . A consent management solution is a software platform that helps organizations to obtain, track, and manage consent from individuals. third-party cookie inventory The solution may be used to obtain consent for various purposes, including marketing communications, data processing, and Cookies. The consent management solution may also help organizations to meet their legal obligations under data protection legislation, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). A consent management solution typically includes a consent form builder, consent workflow management, and reporting. The solution may also integrate with other business applications, such as Customer Relationship Management (CRM) or Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems. Many consent management solutions available can help you be CPRA compliant, and each has its unique features. Good examples of consent management solutions to help one be CPRA compliant includes , , and . Osano OneTrust Mine PrivacyOps Why You Need a Consent Management Solution for Your Business There are many reasons why you should consider using a consent management solution for your website or app. Here are just some of the benefits: A consent management solution can help you automate the process of collecting and managing consents from your users. This will save you time and resources and allow you to focus on other aspects of your business. You will be able to collect and manage consents more effectively: With a consent management solution in place, you can track which users have given their consent for each type of data processing and easily remove any user who withdrew their consent. This gives you greater control over your user data and helps you to comply with data protection regulations. You will have greater control over your user data: With a consent management solution, you can create custom consent forms tailored to your specific needs. This means you can collect the exact information you need from your users and ensure they understand what they agree to. You will be able to create custom consent forms: A consent management solution allows you to keep track of consents over time, so you can see how your users’ preferences change and adapt your marketing and communications accordingly. This helps you to build long-term relationships with your users based on their changing needs and interests. You will be able to track consents over time: A consent management solution can generate reports on the consents that have been collected, which can be useful for auditing and compliance purposes. This data can also be used to improve your marketing and communications strategies. You will be able to generate reports on consents: Many consent management solutions offer integration with other systems, such as CRM or email marketing platforms. This allows you to automate processes and workflows and makes it easier to manage your user data across different platforms. You will be able to integrate with other systems: By using a consent management solution, you can make sure that only relevant information is displayed to each user, based on their preferences and consent. You will be able to improve your website’s usability: You will be able to comply with data privacy regulations such as GDPR and CCPA. You will be able to build trust with your visitors by demonstrating that you value their privacy. Differences Between Consent Management and Preference Management Consent management is the process of gathering, storing, and managing consent from individuals. It typically includes obtaining consent from individuals for using their data and keeping track of when that consent was given. Preference management is managing an individual's preferences around how their data is used. This includes allowing individuals to change their preferences at any time and ensuring that those changes are reflected in how their data is used. Both consent management and preference management are important parts of . However, preference management is often seen as more important because it gives individuals more control over how their data is used. As a result, preference management is often given priority over consent management when it comes to data privacy compliance. data privacy compliance What Are the Key Features of a Good Consent Management Solution? When it comes to data privacy, consent management is key. A good consent management solution will help you collect, manage, and store consent from your customers and website visitors. Here are ten key features to look for in a consent management solution: The consent management solution should be easy to get started with for everyone, regardless of their experience. Even novice users should be able to use it easily. Ease-of-use: It should be transparent with no hidden features that could leak the data of the users. Transparent: It should be accessible anytime, anywhere The ability to collect consent electronically: This is important for compliance with GDPR and other data privacy regulations. Reliable: This helps you ensure that you have a record of when someone gave their consent. The ability to track when and how consents were collected: This helps you keep track of who has given their consent and when they did so. The ability to store consents securely: This is important for giving people control over their data. An easy way for people to withdraw their consent: This is important if you have a large number of consents to manage. The ability to manage consents at scale: This helps you automate the process of collecting and managing consent. The ability to integrate with other systems: This makes it easy for you and your team to use the consent management solution. A user-friendly interface: This ensures that you can get help when you need it. Robust customer support: This helps you get the best value for your money. A competitive price: How Much Does a Consent Management Solution Cost? Source A good consent management solution will cost you depending on your needed features. The integration can be done in-house by your development team, or you can outsource it. You'll also need to consider the monthly or annual maintenance costs. These can range from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand, depending on the size and complexity of your website or app. In addition, you should factor in the costs of any training that may be required for your staff. Overall, a consent management solution is an investment that will pay for itself many times over in terms of time saved, , and increased sales. reduced customer complaints The Time It Takes to Implement a Consent Management Solution in Business The timeframe for implementing a consent management solution will vary depending on the size and complexity of your business. However, there are a few factors that can help to determine the timeline for your implementation. First, consider how many employees will need to be trained on the new system. The more employees that need to be trained, the longer the implementation process will take. Consider how much customer data will need to be migrated to the new system. This data migration can be time-consuming, so it is important to factor in this time when planning your implementation. Finally, consider the customization level required for your consent management solution. A more complex solution will take longer to implement than a basic one. Considering these factors, you can develop a realistic timeline for implementing your consent management solution. Dangers if You are Not CPRA Compliant Source If you are not compliant with CPRA, you may be subject to civil and/or criminal penalties. The California Professional and Rehabilitation Act (CPRA) establishes requirements for the use of confidential information by state and local agencies. The CPRA also gives individuals the right to access records containing their own confidential information. In order to ensure compliance with the CPRA, state and local agencies must adopt policies and procedures governing the use of confidential information. These policies and procedures must be designed to protect the confidentiality of the information and to ensure that it is used only for authorized purposes. In addition, state and local agencies that knowingly violate the CPRA may be subject to administrative sanctions, including suspension or revocation of their licenses. Conclusion In summary, the consent management solution that businesses should use must be easy to use if businesses want customers to actually give their consent. If it is too difficult or complicated, customers will not bother and will just opt out. The solution must also be transparent. A transparent consent management solution will help build trust between businesses and customers.

Business Requirements for a Consent Management Solution

Stories, News & Mentions about TEAMOUT

Teamout’s Stories on HackerNoon