The Secret: Why Your Engineering Team Hates You
It’s all your fault
Everybody loves status meetings. Why wouldn’t they? Your team is working hard every day; it’s only natural that they would want to share their accomplishments with you. Plus, it’s so simple. Your team always shows up on time, they each take less than 30 seconds to share, and you are out of there in 5 minutes.
Newsflash!
Your daily standups are causing your team to hate you. “What!? How can something so useful cause my team to hate me?” Here are the top 6 reasons why:
1. No one likes meetings after 6 pm.
Distributed teams are here to stay, but that doesn’t mean off-hour meetings should become a thing. You shouldn’t inconvenience some people on your team in order to make it more convenient for the rest. If anything you should aim to inconvenience everyone; that will get them to stop complaining.
2. You’re wasting their time.
When certain team members are allowed to show up late, the timely team members think you don’t value their time. It’s your job to make sure people show up on time. I know it’s not fun to take points off for being tardy, but it also isn’t fun waiting for Mike to stroll in 15 minutes after the meeting was supposed to start. Mike’s the worst.
3. I’m not getting anything out of it.
Despite your best intentions, frequently you will have at least one team member — you’re familiar with Mike — who fails to see the value of the status meeting.
This is especially troublesome because when Mike stops participating in the meeting, the value decreases for the rest of the team. Soon, the rest of your team will notice that Mike is no longer involved in the process, and, slowly, they will follow suit. As the project manager or scrum master, you need to show Mike the light.
4. Some people just won’t shut up!
As your team updates each other on what they have been doing, it’s easy to get caught up in the moment and overshare. As the team leader it is easy to miss this, since in your mind, the more you learn about your team, the better. Make sure the conversation follows the script of the standup:
- What did you do yesterday?
- What are you doing today?
- What is in your way?
This is your meeting. You have the power to determine how long or short it is. Try to keep it as succinct as possible. Aim for between 5 and 15 minutes.
5. Not scheduling individual issues for a later time.
If individual issues come to your attention during the course of the meeting, now is not the time to address them. Schedule a time to meet with the individual (undoubtedly Mike) and move on with the meeting. The other members of the team don’t want to sit through an issue that does not concern them.
6. Shootin’ the shit.
When gathering your whole team together, it’s only natural for them to want to catch up. Whether it’s talking about the game or a late night of degenerate gambling after a night of binge drinking at the bar, nip that shit in the bud. This isn’t recess. Standups are for keeping your team on the same page and working out your calves.
This is probably one of my biggest pet peeves. If they really want to catch up, they can do so after the meeting. That way those who do want to get back to work can. This is a good way to keep everyone happy without seeming like a Debbie Downer. She’s even worse than Mike.
I hope I haven’t rocked your world too much. If you aren’t prepared to go back to The Matrix, I suggest you look into supercharging your status meetings.
