TeamLead - our all: the most popular reports from HighLoad ++ 2017. Part 1
At HighLoad ++ 2017 there were a lot of interesting reports devoted to almost all aspects of the path of the team leader - from finding the same person among ordinary developers and to the details of the work and the subsequent movement to a higher level manager up to CTO.
For this review, we have selected eight of the most popular speeches.
The selected speeches are united by the fact that the participants expressed general thoughts about the problems of managing technological teams through the prism of personal experience, which, importantly, each had its own. And since the speakers work in different companies and on different tasks, the presented selection allows you to look at the problem from various points of view.
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Our speakers agree only on one thing: technology teams should be led by those who understand how it all works, so it’s easier to grow a team leader and a higher level manager within the team, rather than hiring an administrator and training him in technology.
A lot has been said about who the timlid is, what are his main duties and how he can solve certain administrative tasks. In this case, we do not pretend to complete the picture, but we would like to recommend videos of our best reports for viewing.
We have divided the review into two parts. In the first we will focus on the reports on the transition from the engineer (developer) to the Timlides, as well as on some tips related to the daily routine. In the second part, we will go further and discuss the development of a timblide as a higher level manager, and also look at the development teams and their typical problems from a different angle - through the prism of psychology.
Report Theses
In the first report from our digest, Andrey Ryzhkin (AGIMA) describes his own formalized procedure for growing timblids within the team, at the same time warning the developers about what will change in their lives if they switch to the “dark side”, i.e. in heads.
As many conference participants note in their reports, the newly minted timlid will have to get used to the fact that he has no time left for development and interesting tasks related to some kind of research. In addition, you will have to get out of the comfortable streaming mode of operation - to somehow get along in the world with parallel tasks arriving simultaneously via several channels, as well as with a large number of communications and planning. In his report, Andrei Ryzhkin gives some advice on how to cope with an unusual situation and not burn out under the pressure of responsibility, and maybe even keep a reserve for further development (although, according to his data, 90% of teammates stop at this level).
The report will be of interest not only to today's developers who are tagging at the TL, but also to managers who are trying to grow a replacement in the team. Andrei will help them to answer the questions: who should be taken in timblids? What qualities should I look for? Should I place these responsibilities on the best developer in the team?
According to the speaker’s experience, in order to predict the character’s likely success as a timlid, he only needs to possess three qualities: empathy for the team, determination and technical competence. But everything is not so simple: at the start, a timlid needs help, which can sometimes be provided through the right habits inside the team. One of the discussed examples is the so-called “sanitary day” (and in fact, the sanitary clock) - the time allotted for writing reports and planning. The practices adopted by AGIMA and described in detail in the report suggest which side in general can be used to tackle the problems of the Timlide.
Naturally, the other side of the issue, the “shoals” of an inexperienced team leader, is also considered, which can and must be fought (as one example is the love of burying in long tasks). During the questions after the report, they also discussed the process of teaching the rest of the team how to interact correctly with the team leader.
In addition, Andrei Ryzhkin proposed a list of references that would be useful for the future timlid. You will still find this link in the speaker’s presentation, but we decided to put it in our announcement.
Report Theses
The next report is for the Timlides. A potential adept of the "dark side" has already been identified in the team and thrown at the embrasure (that is, formally or informally put the team leader). But to say that he coped with the situation is still too early. And at this stage not only the help of the team and corporate habits described above, but also the self-development of the specialist will be required. This is what Artem Kalichkin (CFT Group of Companies) tells about, relying on his 11-year experience.
In the form of theses, Artem tells how to “not drown” in a new position: which sides of the self should pay attention to what to develop, and from which, on the contrary, give up.
The report dismantled the brightest "cockroaches" of beginner timblids: shutting out subordinates from any attacks from outside the team - "maternal instinct", suffering when adapting the engineer’s brain to administrative work, striving to make the best possible decision - "excellent student syndrome" on their own. On each of the listed patterns of behavior, the speaker stops in detail, describing it from several sides at once (why it’s bad for the team, company, and why it’s bad for the team leader) - experience at different levels of leadership is felt.
By the way, Artyom believes that almost immediately after the transition to the position of team leader, the specialist should start raising a deputy for himself. To help this process, he considers three of the five stages of cultivation of the future leader he has identified: identification, testing, and the beginning of the path. In essence, this is a slightly different view on the same problems that are described in the first report of our digest. For each of the stages, antipatterns of behavior and ways of coping with them are suggested.
Report Theses
The next report takes us to the topic of the daily duties of the team leader. Despite the fact that the HR department is involved in staffing in companies, the future immediate supervisor of a new employee should be involved in hiring - in the end, he will then lead this person. Stepan Ovchinnikov (Intervolga company) gives a squeeze of useful information about where to look and what to cling to the team leader, who was involved in the team gathering process.
The experience presented was obtained in a company with 60 employees (32 of which are programmers) implementing custom projects on Bitrix, which, as it were, limits its applicability. However, with certain reservations, these recommendations can be used in a variety of situations.
The speaker went through all the main points of work with the staff from the side of the team: hiring, motivation and even dismissal (although this is considered blasphemy in the modern world). He made recommendations that asking at an interview to reveal motivation and identify inadequate, suggested ways to maintain already hired employees in a state of increased motivation, suggested how best to dismiss a person so as not to disturb the rest of the team.
The value of the report is that it gives very specific advice on what to do in order to build a team and not lose it. For example, Stepan recommends that occasionally conduct informal conversations with colleagues to monitor their mood and notice emerging problems in time. Another useful recommendation is to constantly increase the complexity of tasks in order to save developers from boredom. And if for some reason it is impossible (to change technologies in most companies is not so easy), an employee can be allocated time for professional growth.
For other ideas, we recommend referring to the report. There all the recommendations are supplemented with very colorful life examples.
By the way, even here it was not without discussing the typical problems of a novice team leader, for example, the love of deep immersion in any question or fear of the dismissals of their subordinates. So from the point of view of the formation of the image of the Timlid report complements the previous two.
Report Theses
In his report, Anton Potapov (company Ingram Micro) draws an analogy between the development team and the problematic high-loaded application, in order to explain to the timid introverts how to understand the interaction of people. The specialist believes that, by analogy with how problems are solved in a software product, you can cope with team difficulties. And the examples given in the report are his personal experience in solving very specific problems.
In the report, for example, such a typical pattern as an overloaded timlide, which deals with small turnover and accumulates "technical debt" in front of the task to be solved, is analyzed. To eliminate this problem, by analogy with load balancing, the team identified the so-called Exception man, whose task is to serve all incoming calls, protecting the command from external stimuli. And in order to share the expertise in the team, the status of the Exception man became “rolling” (each “is on duty” for a week). This bore fruit and, by the way, aroused considerable interest among the audience present at the report.
Similarly, Anton dismantled other typical situations - team overload, which breaks deadlines, again, accumulates technical debt, offering crutches instead of normal solutions; the presence of people with unique skills that jeopardizes the solution of the problem with sick leave, vacations and dismissals; opaque development statuses, etc. For each situation, an analogy from the development world and its interpretation in terms of a command is offered. It also gives fairly obvious, but not always applicable tips, for example, using a single list of improvements.
The digest of the next batch of reports will be ready here in a couple of days. In the meantime, we want to remind you that the next stage of the exchange of experience on team leadership and leadership will be held in early February at the conference TeamLeadConf 2018 . There will be about 40 reports.
By the way, we posted videos of the ten most interesting performances last year on the conference website.
For this review, we have selected eight of the most popular speeches.
The selected speeches are united by the fact that the participants expressed general thoughts about the problems of managing technological teams through the prism of personal experience, which, importantly, each had its own. And since the speakers work in different companies and on different tasks, the presented selection allows you to look at the problem from various points of view.
')
Our speakers agree only on one thing: technology teams should be led by those who understand how it all works, so it’s easier to grow a team leader and a higher level manager within the team, rather than hiring an administrator and training him in technology.
A lot has been said about who the timlid is, what are his main duties and how he can solve certain administrative tasks. In this case, we do not pretend to complete the picture, but we would like to recommend videos of our best reports for viewing.
We have divided the review into two parts. In the first we will focus on the reports on the transition from the engineer (developer) to the Timlides, as well as on some tips related to the daily routine. In the second part, we will go further and discuss the development of a timblide as a higher level manager, and also look at the development teams and their typical problems from a different angle - through the prism of psychology.
How to become a team leader
Report Theses
In the first report from our digest, Andrey Ryzhkin (AGIMA) describes his own formalized procedure for growing timblids within the team, at the same time warning the developers about what will change in their lives if they switch to the “dark side”, i.e. in heads.
As many conference participants note in their reports, the newly minted timlid will have to get used to the fact that he has no time left for development and interesting tasks related to some kind of research. In addition, you will have to get out of the comfortable streaming mode of operation - to somehow get along in the world with parallel tasks arriving simultaneously via several channels, as well as with a large number of communications and planning. In his report, Andrei Ryzhkin gives some advice on how to cope with an unusual situation and not burn out under the pressure of responsibility, and maybe even keep a reserve for further development (although, according to his data, 90% of teammates stop at this level).
The report will be of interest not only to today's developers who are tagging at the TL, but also to managers who are trying to grow a replacement in the team. Andrei will help them to answer the questions: who should be taken in timblids? What qualities should I look for? Should I place these responsibilities on the best developer in the team?
According to the speaker’s experience, in order to predict the character’s likely success as a timlid, he only needs to possess three qualities: empathy for the team, determination and technical competence. But everything is not so simple: at the start, a timlid needs help, which can sometimes be provided through the right habits inside the team. One of the discussed examples is the so-called “sanitary day” (and in fact, the sanitary clock) - the time allotted for writing reports and planning. The practices adopted by AGIMA and described in detail in the report suggest which side in general can be used to tackle the problems of the Timlide.
Naturally, the other side of the issue, the “shoals” of an inexperienced team leader, is also considered, which can and must be fought (as one example is the love of burying in long tasks). During the questions after the report, they also discussed the process of teaching the rest of the team how to interact correctly with the team leader.
In addition, Andrei Ryzhkin proposed a list of references that would be useful for the future timlid. You will still find this link in the speaker’s presentation, but we decided to put it in our announcement.
Goth2Boss: Breaking and waste products when moving from engineer to tmlidy
Report Theses
The next report is for the Timlides. A potential adept of the "dark side" has already been identified in the team and thrown at the embrasure (that is, formally or informally put the team leader). But to say that he coped with the situation is still too early. And at this stage not only the help of the team and corporate habits described above, but also the self-development of the specialist will be required. This is what Artem Kalichkin (CFT Group of Companies) tells about, relying on his 11-year experience.
In the form of theses, Artem tells how to “not drown” in a new position: which sides of the self should pay attention to what to develop, and from which, on the contrary, give up.
The report dismantled the brightest "cockroaches" of beginner timblids: shutting out subordinates from any attacks from outside the team - "maternal instinct", suffering when adapting the engineer’s brain to administrative work, striving to make the best possible decision - "excellent student syndrome" on their own. On each of the listed patterns of behavior, the speaker stops in detail, describing it from several sides at once (why it’s bad for the team, company, and why it’s bad for the team leader) - experience at different levels of leadership is felt.
By the way, Artyom believes that almost immediately after the transition to the position of team leader, the specialist should start raising a deputy for himself. To help this process, he considers three of the five stages of cultivation of the future leader he has identified: identification, testing, and the beginning of the path. In essence, this is a slightly different view on the same problems that are described in the first report of our digest. For each of the stages, antipatterns of behavior and ways of coping with them are suggested.
Everything a team leader needs to know about hiring and firing
Report Theses
The next report takes us to the topic of the daily duties of the team leader. Despite the fact that the HR department is involved in staffing in companies, the future immediate supervisor of a new employee should be involved in hiring - in the end, he will then lead this person. Stepan Ovchinnikov (Intervolga company) gives a squeeze of useful information about where to look and what to cling to the team leader, who was involved in the team gathering process.
The experience presented was obtained in a company with 60 employees (32 of which are programmers) implementing custom projects on Bitrix, which, as it were, limits its applicability. However, with certain reservations, these recommendations can be used in a variety of situations.
The speaker went through all the main points of work with the staff from the side of the team: hiring, motivation and even dismissal (although this is considered blasphemy in the modern world). He made recommendations that asking at an interview to reveal motivation and identify inadequate, suggested ways to maintain already hired employees in a state of increased motivation, suggested how best to dismiss a person so as not to disturb the rest of the team.
The value of the report is that it gives very specific advice on what to do in order to build a team and not lose it. For example, Stepan recommends that occasionally conduct informal conversations with colleagues to monitor their mood and notice emerging problems in time. Another useful recommendation is to constantly increase the complexity of tasks in order to save developers from boredom. And if for some reason it is impossible (to change technologies in most companies is not so easy), an employee can be allocated time for professional growth.
For other ideas, we recommend referring to the report. There all the recommendations are supplemented with very colorful life examples.
By the way, even here it was not without discussing the typical problems of a novice team leader, for example, the love of deep immersion in any question or fear of the dismissals of their subordinates. So from the point of view of the formation of the image of the Timlid report complements the previous two.
Team as a highly loaded system
Report Theses
In his report, Anton Potapov (company Ingram Micro) draws an analogy between the development team and the problematic high-loaded application, in order to explain to the timid introverts how to understand the interaction of people. The specialist believes that, by analogy with how problems are solved in a software product, you can cope with team difficulties. And the examples given in the report are his personal experience in solving very specific problems.
In the report, for example, such a typical pattern as an overloaded timlide, which deals with small turnover and accumulates "technical debt" in front of the task to be solved, is analyzed. To eliminate this problem, by analogy with load balancing, the team identified the so-called Exception man, whose task is to serve all incoming calls, protecting the command from external stimuli. And in order to share the expertise in the team, the status of the Exception man became “rolling” (each “is on duty” for a week). This bore fruit and, by the way, aroused considerable interest among the audience present at the report.
Similarly, Anton dismantled other typical situations - team overload, which breaks deadlines, again, accumulates technical debt, offering crutches instead of normal solutions; the presence of people with unique skills that jeopardizes the solution of the problem with sick leave, vacations and dismissals; opaque development statuses, etc. For each situation, an analogy from the development world and its interpretation in terms of a command is offered. It also gives fairly obvious, but not always applicable tips, for example, using a single list of improvements.
The digest of the next batch of reports will be ready here in a couple of days. In the meantime, we want to remind you that the next stage of the exchange of experience on team leadership and leadership will be held in early February at the conference TeamLeadConf 2018 . There will be about 40 reports.
By the way, we posted videos of the ten most interesting performances last year on the conference website.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/346760/
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