Growing

Articles and guidance on how to use incremental improvement to build a team’s superpowers. Inspect and adapt approaches to being better each day.

Tools and techniques to help run each client project more smoothly and successful than the one before.

There are 38 posts filed in Growing (this is page 7 of 8).

Client expectations of the inspect and adapt process

Originally posted as a thread to Twitter (X) October 2023

Let’s compare a sports situation with software dev best practice. There was recently a huge failure in the refereeing of a football match. A decision was made that processes should have corrected. Gary Neville here is saying refereeing is difficult & sorry should be enough here.

[quote tweet from Gary Neville definding the referee]

In software development we do ‘inspect and adapt’. That is we look at our processes and find ways to improve. We’re transparent about failure and actively look for places we can evolve.

A ‘sorry but’ wouldn’t be acceptable. “Oh there is a demand for speed so we’ll fail occasionally” and “that’s just the way it is”

The least we’d offer is…
Sorry
…and here is why it failed
…and here is what we’ve done to improve the situation

When you don’t offer those things, people (clients or stakeholders) will go looking for the improvement / failure themselves

And that is exactly what has happened with the football VAR failure. Where no change is promised, a change is demanded. It’s a valid ask, and a basic expectation of the consumer of any service. Here that’s refereeing.

Offboarding as a priority

There is nothing quite like the heart sinking feeling other team members get when a developer announces they’ll be leaving a small team.

Mild panic sets in, and everybody looks to each other for reassurance. Yet that moment is the right time to switch mindsets to focused offboarding. Ensuring the remaining members are left in the best state possible to continue their great work.

Team size is critical here. One developer leaving a team of five often has a huge impact relative to a developer leaving a team of 20. Small teams need to run offboarding in a way that acknowledges this size frailty and mitigates the short and long term risks associated with developer churn.

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Fuelling Your Team

What we eat plays an important role in our ability to focus. Our choices around what and when we eat and drink affects our productivity, energy and general mood. It directly impacts the quality and quantity of our output at work. It compounds within small teams and has an even greater effect.

It’s been shown that those who form new habits around drinking plenty of water and eating the right foods see a better version of themselves within just a few days. Measurably better.

These simple insights into diet aren’t new information though. Most people are already aware that more water, less salt and less sugar are recommended for health and mood. People don’t do their body damage intentionally, but through choosing the path of least resistance when it comes to workplace food and drink habits.

The moral dilemma is of course, do we have any right influencing these choices and the diets of those we work with?

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