Anachronism, crunchy, bad organizational structure: three pains of a timlid in a corporation
The role of team leader in a corporation is (relative) stability. You can be sure that in a month the management will not dissolve in fog along with the investors' money, leaving your photo to decorate the site of the scandalously bankrupt startup. You find yourself in a respectable company with a clear product and transparent conditions for the Labor Code of the Russian Federation. But do not expect that you will find yourself in a fairy tale.
Alexander Polomodov, head of development in the management of attraction in Tinkoff.ru, continues to tear covers from the rake, which can wait for the timlid in the new workplace. In the last article, he talked about work in startups; Today we are talking about tmlidov pain in a large company. What to do if the company works as in the past century, what to ask at the interview, so that at work it would not be excruciatingly painful, like (and whether) fighting a rigid organizational structure - about all this under the cut.
The natural desire of the team leader is to be at the forefront of technology, to gain new experience, to work in an environment that promotes development. In a large company, all these expectations can break up over the corporate structure that has been established over the years. The product is a cash cow, which brings a stable income, no one wants change.
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Especially a lot of people, as if frozen in molasses, accumulate in the enterprise. They work like in a budget organization, from paycheck to paycheck, and there is nothing to dream about the dynamics of a startup.
Decision. Realize, accept and love. There is no other way out. In a startup, many processes can be customized for themselves, but in a large company this is problematic.
So that the state of affairs inside does not come as a surprise, it is worthwhile to find out in advance what you are subscribing to. If you ask the right questions, you will be told about the interview.
Ask for a new position or replacement, and how it was formed. Further learn from future colleagues, what tasks and with the help of a stack of technologies they solve. Ask why any of the available alternatives have chosen this one: because this stack is optimal for solving problems, or because the management said, and the team silently suffers, but at night cries in the pillow. Ask if there is an element of creative freedom in the development, or do you have to do everything strictly according to the instructions that the conditional enterprise-architect let down.
These are key questions that will help to understand in what year the team lives and how free it is in making decisions.
Once in the organization, a team leader begins to work in the same rhythm with everyone over a great product. A major release looms on the horizon, and the timlid grunts like a rower on the arcade, and the drumbeat spreading over the deck is getting faster and faster. Only you get out of rhythm, and colleagues already look askance.
Such a culture is formed over time. After a couple of tough reworkings, most of the performers decide that they have managed too much, and go where they can work-life balance and not be white crows. Only the most enthusiastic natures remain, and when there are most of them in the team, the pressure from the team multiplies the effect.
Such a culture makes life difficult in two directions at once. Firstly, it is very easy to burn out yourself. Secondly, it is likely that employees will burn out one by one - just one of those who are most inclined to get involved.
Timlid offers such a specialist to take a vacation, and he replies that he will work for another month, finish the feature and rest there. The month passes, the feature is closed, the developer’s face acquires a distinctly green color, but a new interesting task has arrived, and it can’t take a pause: “New Year is coming, I’ll go somewhere for the holidays”. On January 5, it turns out that he probably didn’t leave the office: “at last, no one bothers, you can do everything you wanted.”
The timlid looks at it and thinks: “I am a workaholic, he is a workaholic. How can I help him? I did what I could. ” It is impossible to force an adult person to rest.
Decision. You can get a rough idea of ​​whether virus processing is waiting for you, even at the interview. It is worth asking how the deadlines are set, whether there are external commits. For example, if an advertising campaign on federal TV is planned for the release of a new feature, time slots are redeemed in advance, and there are simply no options - the release should take place before the start of the campaign. It would be nice to understand who makes the plan of releases: one Product Owner, with whom you can find a common language, or a couple of dozen people (then it’s bad). It is also important who estimates the time - product or team.
If you have closed your eyes to all the red flags and have already come to the company where an irregular working day has become a standard option - remember, there is no silver bullet for such cases.
Timlid needs to learn how to feel the team and report upstairs how long they can work in the forced mode: for example, “we are ready a week before the release, but half a year - sorry, no”.
Only in quantum physics can a particle and an antiparticle appear, and then collapse and disappear without a trace. Tasks and deadlines for their implementation are not taken from the vacuum. There are always people who are responsible for future plans. With them it is important to find a common language and learn how to work.
For good Product Owners, all features are prioritized, categorized. They know how to juggle with deadlines, which means they can soften many deadlines. This does not mean that all the wishes of a business fall into sprints, which means that tasks that meet the interests of the business and which can be implemented by the existing team get there. A healthy person’s Product Owner makes the bottleneck itself and maintains the amount of women they want to go into development, while the smoker’s Product Owner, together with the users, creates additional pressure on the team leader and makes him cut off all that is superfluous.
It is also important that the team have a way to collectively relax. If you do not want to relax alone, then you will be together. During a joint hike in a bar, a timlid can take down feedback - see which employees are how loaded, who has any pain.
In the matrix management structure, efficiency losses often occur at the boundaries between departments and divisions. This happens even if modern methodologies are used, and workflows are bureaucratic.
Typical case. If a project requires hundreds of programmers, the personnel issue is solved by increasing the number of languages ​​used. In theory, a monolithic product falls into separate services that will communicate through an API. If the architecture of this system is not divided into logical parts in advance, then people from both teams will work on each component, and the output will be the same as on engravings with mythical animals: the body of a hare, deer horns. To work and develop the product, respectively, will also be slower than it could if observing the unity of technologies or competent planning of the architecture.
It may happen that four departments worked on the service, your team coped well with its part, but the product did not take off and the project turned off. Most likely, they will not appoint you to blame, but this is no easier: you’ve spent a lot of work on this work for a year, invested and hoped that the business problem would be solved, and now all these efforts have been dust.
Decision. To fight with the system is pointless - use it. But, escalating the problem to the top, do not expect that they will immediately hear you there.
Before offering something, sort out if the company has a global goal to put the current situation in order. Not nominally, but really, investing in it, including the resources of the company.
If there is such a desire, then determine who will be able to help you in this within the company, what resources will be allocated for this and what level of product quality and processes people want to achieve. You will have to understand the architecture of the target system and the structure of the company, how they fit together and what prevents them from functioning as a whole.
This will help the study of the best practices. From the reports on testing and infrastructure is easy to understand how they work in Google, Amazon and Netflix. There is nothing supernaturally complicated in their approaches, they can be applied in themselves.
Then you can turn to the technical head of the business area, but not with a plan for a radical restructuring of processes, but with something relatively simple: “Now that we are not synchronized, we are like a swan, cancer and pike are not moving anywhere. Let the tester, as before, report to the principal on QA, but he receives tasks from the API team and integrates into it. This will help to automate the testing normally, release more often and shorten the time to market. ”
By selling such ideas, building up the cross-functionality of the team, setting up people and showing in practice that it works, you earn karma and reputation in order to gradually, step by step, transform corporate culture.
At first, work in a large company resembles labor of Sisyphus, but perseverance brings results, and one day the team leader gets the level up: “Great! Let's scale your experience. Find a deputy, gather a second team, and you will be a timlid with a timlid. ” But this is another level, other problems and another story.
Alexander Polomodov will speak at the Teamlead Meetup at Digital October on March 1. On the agenda of the meeting - assessment and motivation of employees, there will be speakers from Tinkoff, AGIMA, CSSSR and Digital HR. Alexander will tell you how employees are hired and motivated to attract Tinkoff.ru. And Alexander is the curator of the intensive teamlead Weekend ; The closest course will take place on March 23-24.
Alexander Polomodov, head of development in the management of attraction in Tinkoff.ru, continues to tear covers from the rake, which can wait for the timlid in the new workplace. In the last article, he talked about work in startups; Today we are talking about tmlidov pain in a large company. What to do if the company works as in the past century, what to ask at the interview, so that at work it would not be excruciatingly painful, like (and whether) fighting a rigid organizational structure - about all this under the cut.
1. Mortality boredom, and all the rules
The natural desire of the team leader is to be at the forefront of technology, to gain new experience, to work in an environment that promotes development. In a large company, all these expectations can break up over the corporate structure that has been established over the years. The product is a cash cow, which brings a stable income, no one wants change.
')
Especially a lot of people, as if frozen in molasses, accumulate in the enterprise. They work like in a budget organization, from paycheck to paycheck, and there is nothing to dream about the dynamics of a startup.
The characteristic phrase: “Why are these experiments? Money flows without them. ”Another negative scenario is like being in the team of a relativistic starship. In the courtyard of 2019, and here they use waterfall without iterations and are unaware of modern software development techniques, the possibility of creating a CI / CD pipeline and test automation. You have been given responsibility, but no one is going to implement your ideas and change established practices. In order to break the traditions, your credibility is not enough.
Decision. Realize, accept and love. There is no other way out. In a startup, many processes can be customized for themselves, but in a large company this is problematic.
So that the state of affairs inside does not come as a surprise, it is worthwhile to find out in advance what you are subscribing to. If you ask the right questions, you will be told about the interview.
Ask for a new position or replacement, and how it was formed. Further learn from future colleagues, what tasks and with the help of a stack of technologies they solve. Ask why any of the available alternatives have chosen this one: because this stack is optimal for solving problems, or because the management said, and the team silently suffers, but at night cries in the pillow. Ask if there is an element of creative freedom in the development, or do you have to do everything strictly according to the instructions that the conditional enterprise-architect let down.
These are key questions that will help to understand in what year the team lives and how free it is in making decisions.
2. Crunchy, crunchy, crunchy
Once in the organization, a team leader begins to work in the same rhythm with everyone over a great product. A major release looms on the horizon, and the timlid grunts like a rower on the arcade, and the drumbeat spreading over the deck is getting faster and faster. Only you get out of rhythm, and colleagues already look askance.
Characteristic phrase: “He came at ten in the morning, left at ten in the evening. Something he breaks away from the team - testers stay all night. ”Typical case. The actual story of the gaming industry. Rockstar Games has always specialized in AAA games and ripped the charts. So the rock stars decided to open the internal kitchen and it turned out that it was 18 hours to work there. And it seems like no one even complains, but on the part of the working conditions look crazy.
Such a culture is formed over time. After a couple of tough reworkings, most of the performers decide that they have managed too much, and go where they can work-life balance and not be white crows. Only the most enthusiastic natures remain, and when there are most of them in the team, the pressure from the team multiplies the effect.
Such a culture makes life difficult in two directions at once. Firstly, it is very easy to burn out yourself. Secondly, it is likely that employees will burn out one by one - just one of those who are most inclined to get involved.
Timlid offers such a specialist to take a vacation, and he replies that he will work for another month, finish the feature and rest there. The month passes, the feature is closed, the developer’s face acquires a distinctly green color, but a new interesting task has arrived, and it can’t take a pause: “New Year is coming, I’ll go somewhere for the holidays”. On January 5, it turns out that he probably didn’t leave the office: “at last, no one bothers, you can do everything you wanted.”
The timlid looks at it and thinks: “I am a workaholic, he is a workaholic. How can I help him? I did what I could. ” It is impossible to force an adult person to rest.
Decision. You can get a rough idea of ​​whether virus processing is waiting for you, even at the interview. It is worth asking how the deadlines are set, whether there are external commits. For example, if an advertising campaign on federal TV is planned for the release of a new feature, time slots are redeemed in advance, and there are simply no options - the release should take place before the start of the campaign. It would be nice to understand who makes the plan of releases: one Product Owner, with whom you can find a common language, or a couple of dozen people (then it’s bad). It is also important who estimates the time - product or team.
If you have closed your eyes to all the red flags and have already come to the company where an irregular working day has become a standard option - remember, there is no silver bullet for such cases.
Timlid needs to learn how to feel the team and report upstairs how long they can work in the forced mode: for example, “we are ready a week before the release, but half a year - sorry, no”.
Only in quantum physics can a particle and an antiparticle appear, and then collapse and disappear without a trace. Tasks and deadlines for their implementation are not taken from the vacuum. There are always people who are responsible for future plans. With them it is important to find a common language and learn how to work.
For good Product Owners, all features are prioritized, categorized. They know how to juggle with deadlines, which means they can soften many deadlines. This does not mean that all the wishes of a business fall into sprints, which means that tasks that meet the interests of the business and which can be implemented by the existing team get there. A healthy person’s Product Owner makes the bottleneck itself and maintains the amount of women they want to go into development, while the smoker’s Product Owner, together with the users, creates additional pressure on the team leader and makes him cut off all that is superfluous.
It is also important that the team have a way to collectively relax. If you do not want to relax alone, then you will be together. During a joint hike in a bar, a timlid can take down feedback - see which employees are how loaded, who has any pain.
3. Knock on the system
In the matrix management structure, efficiency losses often occur at the boundaries between departments and divisions. This happens even if modern methodologies are used, and workflows are bureaucratic.
Typical case. If a project requires hundreds of programmers, the personnel issue is solved by increasing the number of languages ​​used. In theory, a monolithic product falls into separate services that will communicate through an API. If the architecture of this system is not divided into logical parts in advance, then people from both teams will work on each component, and the output will be the same as on engravings with mythical animals: the body of a hare, deer horns. To work and develop the product, respectively, will also be slower than it could if observing the unity of technologies or competent planning of the architecture.
The characteristic phrase: "If three teams are responsible for developing a compiler, then the compiler will be three-pass."The complexity of communications is exacerbated by the complex structure of subordination. For example, a tester is assigned to a unit that automates testing in the entire company. The framework written in this unit is not suitable for a specific team and its tasks, but you don’t want it - you have to hammer the screw in with a hammer.
It may happen that four departments worked on the service, your team coped well with its part, but the product did not take off and the project turned off. Most likely, they will not appoint you to blame, but this is no easier: you’ve spent a lot of work on this work for a year, invested and hoped that the business problem would be solved, and now all these efforts have been dust.
Decision. To fight with the system is pointless - use it. But, escalating the problem to the top, do not expect that they will immediately hear you there.
Before offering something, sort out if the company has a global goal to put the current situation in order. Not nominally, but really, investing in it, including the resources of the company.
If there is such a desire, then determine who will be able to help you in this within the company, what resources will be allocated for this and what level of product quality and processes people want to achieve. You will have to understand the architecture of the target system and the structure of the company, how they fit together and what prevents them from functioning as a whole.
This will help the study of the best practices. From the reports on testing and infrastructure is easy to understand how they work in Google, Amazon and Netflix. There is nothing supernaturally complicated in their approaches, they can be applied in themselves.
Then you can turn to the technical head of the business area, but not with a plan for a radical restructuring of processes, but with something relatively simple: “Now that we are not synchronized, we are like a swan, cancer and pike are not moving anywhere. Let the tester, as before, report to the principal on QA, but he receives tasks from the API team and integrates into it. This will help to automate the testing normally, release more often and shorten the time to market. ”
By selling such ideas, building up the cross-functionality of the team, setting up people and showing in practice that it works, you earn karma and reputation in order to gradually, step by step, transform corporate culture.
At first, work in a large company resembles labor of Sisyphus, but perseverance brings results, and one day the team leader gets the level up: “Great! Let's scale your experience. Find a deputy, gather a second team, and you will be a timlid with a timlid. ” But this is another level, other problems and another story.
Alexander Polomodov will speak at the Teamlead Meetup at Digital October on March 1. On the agenda of the meeting - assessment and motivation of employees, there will be speakers from Tinkoff, AGIMA, CSSSR and Digital HR. Alexander will tell you how employees are hired and motivated to attract Tinkoff.ru. And Alexander is the curator of the intensive teamlead Weekend ; The closest course will take place on March 23-24.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/441300/
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