February 22, 2019 at 13:47Anachronisms, crunches, bad organizational structure: three pains of team lead in a corporation
The role of team lead in a corporation is (relative) stability. You can be sure that in a month the leadership will not dissolve in the fog along with the money of investors, leaving your photo to decorate the site of the scandalously bankrupt startup. You find yourself in a respectable company with an understandable product and transparent conditions under the Labor Code of the Russian Federation. But do not expect that you will find yourself in a fairy tale.
Alexander Polomodov, development manager for attraction management at Tinkoff.ru, continues to tear off the rake that can wait for team lead in a new workplace. In the last articlehe talked about work in startups; Today we are talking about the pains of team leaders in a large company. What to do if the company operates, as in the last century, what to ask at the interview, so that at work it would not be excruciatingly painful, how (and whether or not) to fight against a rigid organizational structure - all this under the cut.
Timlid’s natural desire is to be at the forefront of technology, to gain new experience, to work in an environment that promotes development. In a large company, all these expectations can be broken into a well-established corporate structure. The product is a cash cow, which brings a stable income, no one wants change.
Especially a lot of people, as if frozen in molasses, accumulate in enterprise. They work like in a budgetary organization, from paycheck to paycheck, and there’s nothing to dream about startup dynamics here.
Decision. To realize, accept and love. There is no other way out. In a startup, many processes can be tailored to fit your needs, but in a large company this is problematic.
So that the situation inside is not a surprise, it is worthwhile to find out in advance what you are subscribing to. If you ask the right questions, you will tell the necessary at the interview.
Ask if this is a new position or replacement, and how it formed. Find out from future colleagues what tasks and with what technology stack they solve. Ask why of all the available alternatives this one was chosen: because this stack is optimal for solving problems, or because the management said, and the team silently suffers, but cries into the pillow at night. Ask if there is an element of creative freedom in the development, or if you need to do everything strictly according to the instructions that the conditional enterprise architect let down.
These are key questions that will help you understand what year the team lives and how free it is in making decisions.
Once in the organization, the team leader begins to work in the same rhythm with everyone on a great product. A large release looms on the horizon, and the Timlid injects himself like a rower on a galley, and the drum battle drifting above the deck is faster. Just get out of rhythm, and colleagues are already looking askance.
Such a culture forms over time. After a couple of hard workings, the majority of performing employees decide that they have done too much and go where they can establish a work-life balance and not be ravens. Only the most enthusiastic natures remain, and when there are most of them in the team, pressure from the team greatly enhances the effect.
Such a culture makes life difficult in two directions at once. Firstly, it is very easy to burn out yourself. Secondly, it is likely that one after another employees will burn out - just one of those who are most inclined to get involved.
Timlid offers such a specialist to take a vacation, and he replies that he will work another month, he will finish the feature and rest there. A month passes, the feature is closed, the developer’s face becomes distinctively green, but an interesting new task has arrived, and he can’t take a break: “New Year is coming, I'll go somewhere for the holidays.” On January 5, it turns out that he probably didn’t leave the office either: “finally, no one bothers, you can do whatever you want.”
The timlid looks at it and thinks: “I am a workaholic, he is a workaholic. How can I help him? I did what I could. " It is impossible to force an adult to rest.
Decision. You can get an approximate idea of whether virus processing is waiting for you at the interview. You should ask how the deadlines are set, whether there are external commits. For example, if an advertising campaign on federal TV is planned for the release of a new feature, time slots are redeemed in advance, and there are simply no options - the release should take place before the start of the campaign. It would be nice to understand who draws up the release plan: one Product Owner with whom you can find a common language, or a couple dozen people (then it’s bad). It is also important who evaluates the terms - product or team.
If you have turned a blind eye to all the red flags and have already come to the company where irregular working hours have become a norm option - keep in mind that there is no silver bullet for such cases.
Timlid needs to learn how to feel the team and tell upstairs how long they can work in forced mode: for example, “we are ready a week before the release, but for six months - sorry, no.”
Only in quantum physics can a particle and antiparticle appear, and then collapse and disappear without a trace. Tasks and deadlines for their implementation are not taken from the vacuum. There are always people who are responsible for future plans. It is important to find a common language with them and learn to work.
For good Product Owners, all features are prioritized, categorized. They can juggle timing, which means they can soften many deadlines. This does not mean that all the Wishlist businesses fall into sprints, but that tasks that meet the interests of the business and which can be implemented by the existing team fall there. The Healthy Owner Product Owner makes itself a bottleneck and withstands the volume of Wishlist that are being developed, while the smoker Product Owner, together with users, creates additional pressure on the timlid and makes it a neck to cut off all unnecessary.
It is also important that the team has a way to relax collectively. Do not want to relax one by one - that means you will be together. During a joint trip to the bar, the team leader can take off feedback - to understand which of the employees is how busy, who has what pains.
In the matrix management structure, efficiency losses often occur at the boundaries between departments and divisions. This happens even if modern methodologies are used, and work processes are bureaucratic.
A typical case.If a project requires hundreds of programmers, the personnel issue is solved by expanding the number of languages used. In theory, a monolithic product breaks up into separate services that will communicate through the API. If you do not divide the architecture of this system into logical parts in advance, then people from both teams will work on each component, and the result will be the same as engravings with mythical animals: the body of a hare, deer horns. The product will work and develop, accordingly, will also be slower than it could if, subject to the unity of technology or competent architecture planning.
It may happen that four departments worked on the service, your team coped well with its part, and the product did not take off and the project was canceled. Most likely, you will not be appointed guilty, but this is not easier: you all year spent a whole team working on this work, invested and hoped that the business task would be solved, and now all these efforts have gone to waste.
Decision.Fighting the system is pointless - use it. But, escalating the problem up, do not expect that they will immediately hear you.
Before you offer something, figure out if the company has a global goal to put the current situation in order. Not nominally, but really, investing in this, including the resources of the company.
If there is such a desire, then determine who can help you with this within the company, what resources will be allocated for this, and what level of product and process quality people want to achieve. You will have to understand the architecture of the target system and the structure of the company, how they fit together and what prevents them from functioning as a whole.
Learning from best practices will help. From the reports on testing and infrastructure it is easy to understand how they work in Google, Amazon and Netflix. There is nothing supernaturally complicated in their approaches; they can be used at home.
Then you can contact the technical manager of the business area, not only with a plan for a radical restructuring of processes, but with something relatively simple: “Now that we are not synchronized, we, like a swan, cancer and pike, are not moving anywhere. Let the tester, as before, report to the main QA, but receives tasks from the API team, integrates into it. This will help automate testing normally, release more often and reduce time to market. ”
Selling such ideas, increasing the cross-functionality of the team, setting up people and showing in practice that it works, you earn karma and reputation in order to gradually transform the corporate culture, step by step.
At first, working in a large company resembles Sisyphus labor, but perseverance brings results, and one day the team leader gets a level up: “It works great! Let's scale your experience. Find yourself a deputy, collect the second team, and you will be a team leader with the team leader. ” But this is a different level, other problems and a different story.
Alexander Polomodov will speak at Theamlead Meetupat Digital October March 1st. The meeting’s agenda includes employee assessment and motivation, speakers from Tinkoff, AGIMA, CSSSR and Digital HR. Alexander will tell you how to hire and motivate employees in attracting Tinkoff.ru. And also Alexander - curator of the Teamlead Weekend intensive ; the next course will be held March 23-24.
Alexander Polomodov, development manager for attraction management at Tinkoff.ru, continues to tear off the rake that can wait for team lead in a new workplace. In the last articlehe talked about work in startups; Today we are talking about the pains of team leaders in a large company. What to do if the company operates, as in the last century, what to ask at the interview, so that at work it would not be excruciatingly painful, how (and whether or not) to fight against a rigid organizational structure - all this under the cut.
1. Boredom is mortal, but all the rules
Timlid’s natural desire is to be at the forefront of technology, to gain new experience, to work in an environment that promotes development. In a large company, all these expectations can be broken into a well-established corporate structure. The product is a cash cow, which brings a stable income, no one wants change.
Especially a lot of people, as if frozen in molasses, accumulate in enterprise. They work like in a budgetary organization, from paycheck to paycheck, and there’s nothing to dream about startup dynamics here.
A characteristic phrase: “Why these experiments? Money flows without them. ”Another negative scenario is as if to be on the team of a relativistic starship. In the yard of 2019, and here they use waterfall without iterations and do not know about modern methods of software development, the possibility of creating a CI / CD pipeline and test automation. You have been assigned the responsibility, but nobody is going to implement your ideas and change established practices. In order to break the tradition, your authority is not enough.
Decision. To realize, accept and love. There is no other way out. In a startup, many processes can be tailored to fit your needs, but in a large company this is problematic.
So that the situation inside is not a surprise, it is worthwhile to find out in advance what you are subscribing to. If you ask the right questions, you will tell the necessary at the interview.
Ask if this is a new position or replacement, and how it formed. Find out from future colleagues what tasks and with what technology stack they solve. Ask why of all the available alternatives this one was chosen: because this stack is optimal for solving problems, or because the management said, and the team silently suffers, but cries into the pillow at night. Ask if there is an element of creative freedom in the development, or if you need to do everything strictly according to the instructions that the conditional enterprise architect let down.
These are key questions that will help you understand what year the team lives and how free it is in making decisions.
2. Crunches, crunches, crunches
Once in the organization, the team leader begins to work in the same rhythm with everyone on a great product. A large release looms on the horizon, and the Timlid injects himself like a rower on a galley, and the drum battle drifting above the deck is faster. Just get out of rhythm, and colleagues are already looking askance.
The characteristic phrase: “Came at ten in the morning, left at ten in the evening. Something he breaks away from the team - the testers stayed all night. ”A typical case. Actual story from the gaming industry. Rockstar Games has always specialized in AAA games and tore the charts. So the rock stars decided to open the inner kitchen and it turned out that working there for 18 hours was in the order of things. And it seems like no one even complains, but from the side the working conditions look wild.
Such a culture forms over time. After a couple of hard workings, the majority of performing employees decide that they have done too much and go where they can establish a work-life balance and not be ravens. Only the most enthusiastic natures remain, and when there are most of them in the team, pressure from the team greatly enhances the effect.
Such a culture makes life difficult in two directions at once. Firstly, it is very easy to burn out yourself. Secondly, it is likely that one after another employees will burn out - just one of those who are most inclined to get involved.
Timlid offers such a specialist to take a vacation, and he replies that he will work another month, he will finish the feature and rest there. A month passes, the feature is closed, the developer’s face becomes distinctively green, but an interesting new task has arrived, and he can’t take a break: “New Year is coming, I'll go somewhere for the holidays.” On January 5, it turns out that he probably didn’t leave the office either: “finally, no one bothers, you can do whatever you want.”
The timlid looks at it and thinks: “I am a workaholic, he is a workaholic. How can I help him? I did what I could. " It is impossible to force an adult to rest.
Decision. You can get an approximate idea of whether virus processing is waiting for you at the interview. You should ask how the deadlines are set, whether there are external commits. For example, if an advertising campaign on federal TV is planned for the release of a new feature, time slots are redeemed in advance, and there are simply no options - the release should take place before the start of the campaign. It would be nice to understand who draws up the release plan: one Product Owner with whom you can find a common language, or a couple dozen people (then it’s bad). It is also important who evaluates the terms - product or team.
If you have turned a blind eye to all the red flags and have already come to the company where irregular working hours have become a norm option - keep in mind that there is no silver bullet for such cases.
Timlid needs to learn how to feel the team and tell upstairs how long they can work in forced mode: for example, “we are ready a week before the release, but for six months - sorry, no.”
Only in quantum physics can a particle and antiparticle appear, and then collapse and disappear without a trace. Tasks and deadlines for their implementation are not taken from the vacuum. There are always people who are responsible for future plans. It is important to find a common language with them and learn to work.
For good Product Owners, all features are prioritized, categorized. They can juggle timing, which means they can soften many deadlines. This does not mean that all the Wishlist businesses fall into sprints, but that tasks that meet the interests of the business and which can be implemented by the existing team fall there. The Healthy Owner Product Owner makes itself a bottleneck and withstands the volume of Wishlist that are being developed, while the smoker Product Owner, together with users, creates additional pressure on the timlid and makes it a neck to cut off all unnecessary.
It is also important that the team has a way to relax collectively. Do not want to relax one by one - that means you will be together. During a joint trip to the bar, the team leader can take off feedback - to understand which of the employees is how busy, who has what pains.
3. Knock on the system
In the matrix management structure, efficiency losses often occur at the boundaries between departments and divisions. This happens even if modern methodologies are used, and work processes are bureaucratic.
A typical case.If a project requires hundreds of programmers, the personnel issue is solved by expanding the number of languages used. In theory, a monolithic product breaks up into separate services that will communicate through the API. If you do not divide the architecture of this system into logical parts in advance, then people from both teams will work on each component, and the result will be the same as engravings with mythical animals: the body of a hare, deer horns. The product will work and develop, accordingly, will also be slower than it could if, subject to the unity of technology or competent architecture planning.
A characteristic phrase: "If the three teams are responsible for the development of the compiler, then the compiler will be three-pass."The complexity of communications is compounded by a complex subordination structure. For example, a tester is assigned to a unit that automates testing throughout the company. The framework written in this unit is generally not suitable for a specific team and its tasks, but if you want it or not, you have to hammer the screw with a hammer.
It may happen that four departments worked on the service, your team coped well with its part, and the product did not take off and the project was canceled. Most likely, you will not be appointed guilty, but this is not easier: you all year spent a whole team working on this work, invested and hoped that the business task would be solved, and now all these efforts have gone to waste.
Decision.Fighting the system is pointless - use it. But, escalating the problem up, do not expect that they will immediately hear you.
Before you offer something, figure out if the company has a global goal to put the current situation in order. Not nominally, but really, investing in this, including the resources of the company.
If there is such a desire, then determine who can help you with this within the company, what resources will be allocated for this, and what level of product and process quality people want to achieve. You will have to understand the architecture of the target system and the structure of the company, how they fit together and what prevents them from functioning as a whole.
Learning from best practices will help. From the reports on testing and infrastructure it is easy to understand how they work in Google, Amazon and Netflix. There is nothing supernaturally complicated in their approaches; they can be used at home.
Then you can contact the technical manager of the business area, not only with a plan for a radical restructuring of processes, but with something relatively simple: “Now that we are not synchronized, we, like a swan, cancer and pike, are not moving anywhere. Let the tester, as before, report to the main QA, but receives tasks from the API team, integrates into it. This will help automate testing normally, release more often and reduce time to market. ”
Selling such ideas, increasing the cross-functionality of the team, setting up people and showing in practice that it works, you earn karma and reputation in order to gradually transform the corporate culture, step by step.
At first, working in a large company resembles Sisyphus labor, but perseverance brings results, and one day the team leader gets a level up: “It works great! Let's scale your experience. Find yourself a deputy, collect the second team, and you will be a team leader with the team leader. ” But this is a different level, other problems and a different story.
Alexander Polomodov will speak at Theamlead Meetupat Digital October March 1st. The meeting’s agenda includes employee assessment and motivation, speakers from Tinkoff, AGIMA, CSSSR and Digital HR. Alexander will tell you how to hire and motivate employees in attracting Tinkoff.ru. And also Alexander - curator of the Teamlead Weekend intensive ; the next course will be held March 23-24.