Team & Project Management

What Makes a Great One-on-One?

This article discusses the importance of one-on-one meetings with reports as a manager. It suggests that managers should establish a sense of trust with their reports by being friendly and engaging in conversations. It also suggests that managers should ask their reports about their projects and engagement level, and provide timely feedback for their growth. Finally, it emphasizes the importance of scheduling 1:1s without any meetings before or after, and rescheduling them if missed.

Leading Your Team in Stressful Situations

When a major performance issue with an app needed to be fixed in less than two days, the app team was faced with a stressful situation. The leader stepped in to pause the chaos, requested a room for the team to work together, and asked the CEO and other leaders to show their appreciation for the extra effort. The leader also took ownership of the situation and motivated the team in a genuine way. By the end of the day, the team was able to get the work done and the experience was remembered as one of the fondest memories. To manage stressful situations, it is important to step back, take ownership, and motivate the team in a genuine way.

Destressing the Software Delivery Cycle

When joining a project with a customer who was unhappy and software being rushed to release, the team was under high-stress. To destress the team, a project manager documented what the customer expected and prioritized tasks. The team then set a steady release date to improve the customer experience and reduce the number of bugs. After a month, the team regained the trust of the customer due to the high-quality software delivered in a predictable manner. The learnings from this cycle were that it is difficult to break the stressful cycle when in the middle of chaos and that it is important to understand team dynamics to create a customized solution.

How to Align Various Internal Stakeholders and Their Requests

At my previous company, I created a template in Jira to help manage requests from internal stakeholders. The template included requirements for each request, listed stakeholders, and a due date. This allowed us to be more proactive and plan our resources accordingly. I also learned that documenting requests and frequent communication can help with aligning expectations.

Growing Through Different Engineering Lead Roles

This article outlines the three steps to becoming a tech lead: gaining the trust of the team through competency and integrity, and being a mentor figure to fellow engineers. It also discusses the challenges of transitioning to a tech lead manager role, such as juggling technical work, project management, and people management. The author suggests that new leads should reach out to notable leaders in their organization for mentorship, and that the best solution for productivity challenges is to find the right technical work to grow their ceiling without bottlenecking their team.

Building a New Team in a Foreign Country

This is a story about the experience of traveling to India to build a team for a Swedish company. There was a significant cultural gap in terms of working style, and the team had to adjust their expectations and onboarding process. Through dedicated mentoring and pairing, the team was able to train their new recruits to think more about test-driven development and software architecture, and give them the opportunity to attain a level of success that is difficult to come by in India.