Everyone Leads a Project (ELAP)
“…We can all be leaders and, in fact, it’s best when we all are leaders. Leadership is not some mystical quality that some possess and others do not. As humans, we all have what it takes, and we all need to use our leadership” — L. David Marquet, Turn the Ship Around!
Leaders to Leaders vs Leaders to Followers
It’s not unusual as a Leader to be expected to tell people what to do. In some cases even how to do it. Maybe even what tool to use, what the sequence of execution should be, which resources to use, etc.
This process looks very much like giving commands and order of execution to computers. The computer in this case is a follower, doing what we say.
It’s an amazing follower — the best there is!
Leader to follower is the perfect setup for human to computer relationship. But what about human to human setup? Don’t we want a bit more than just a follower connection from our team members?
Humans are (still :) ) way more capable than computers in terms of creative thinking. Why limit this connection to simply following instructions.
How about a style of communication where you as a Leader present your team with a problem and they tell you how they’d solve it?
They instantly become an owner of the idea.
Empowering solutioning promotes deeper understanding of the original problem. But it also builds an autonomous team. You have asked them to think about the problem and by coming up with a proposed solution they now understand the essence of it. They are in charge!
Any future obstacle is a lot easier to resolve because the Project Lead understands the background and context of the problem. In this setup communication stops being a one way street, your associates will deliver more; a lot more.
They’ll be able to breakdown and articulate ideas to their team resulting in more efficient execution. Moreover your associates will be able to translate the idea more vividly to their team thus execute it more efficiently.
You role is to be an initiator and an advisor.
10–90
To quantify just how much more will come from your associates, 10–90 is closer to the actual ratio of effort between experienced leader (problem initiator) and person solving the problem.
At Florence, we’ve discovered Tech Lead expertise is needed for about 10% in the initial planning of a given project. In these 10% Tech Leads make sure that the idea that is presented doesn’t have any big pitfalls or potential design flaws in the planning phase.
The rest is up to the Project Lead. They give an initial technical design of the project, organize the team to work on implementation, ensure initial estimates are within scope, raise any red flags along the way etc.
Tech Leads are always available and ready to support the team when needed. That help stays within the 10%. Project Lead was the creator of the problem solving idea and often able to tackle any impediments along the way. The project lead understands the idea because they thought about how to resolve it.
ELAP
Everyone Leads a Project. At Florence everyone’s expected to be able to lead a technical project. Interns, juniors, seniors, etc. How can someone with 6 months of experience lead a project!? Let’s break the project down and see what someone with 6-months experience will be facing. There are couple of areas of each project:
- technical design
- team implementation distribution
- implementation
- team synchronization (project management)
- communicating deadlines feasibilities and blockers
Complexity varies within these areas and from project to project. In the traditional approach organizations will limit less experienced employees to the implementation part.
But why limit less experienced folks to just this area? At one point of their career they will be exposed to all areas. This is when they become tech leads. But the transition, in the traditional approach, is abrupt — people haven’t worked on any other areas outside of implementation. This is the main reason why it’s very common to hear “They’re an amazing engineer but struggled a lot when they started to lead the team”. Of course they struggled. They never had a chance to try it before.
How about we expose people early to all areas of project execution. There are projects with low complexity in all areas. Those are perfect for interns or juniors. Very early they get exposed to most aspects of software delivery which require more than just implementation. This promotes early and accelerated growth. More importantly, get the whole picture of what sits behind a delivered feature, product, integration etc.
By exposing people to the whole picture early, they will learn faster how a particular decision affects the whole delivery process.
Exposing less experienced people to a wide range of challenges also carries its risks. Projects may be underestimated. Some aspects of a project may be more complex than anticipated. That’s why support from a tech lead is crucial for success.
Career Steering
One important benefit of the ELAP setup is the opportunity for identifying career preferences. The early exposure to all aspects of a project will help team members discover how they want to steer their career.
Whether they choose a path toward software architecture, process organization or project management will be based on their own experience and not on a blind choice.
For any fast growing company this is one of the most important aspects for scaling a team — being able to grow and develop people by their own preferences and in areas that they thrive.
Florence’s development department has been working on this setup for over a year. We’ve experienced increased output and ability to deliver a wider variety of projects with the same team . Our less experienced team members are growing their expertise faster and are able to tackle more complex problems earlier than before; our more experienced team members are solidifying their expertise and growing into more advanced leadership roles.
