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An Engineering Team Where Everyone Is a Leader

blog.pragmaticengineer.com

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Re: An Engineering Team Where Everyone Is a Leader

#51

Post by yibg »

motohagiography wrote: post #4

Regarding all these alternative ways of organizing, what's wrong with a leader taking responsibility, delegating it where feasible, and selecting for team members to whom they can delegate responsibility with confidence? Taking direction or orders from a manager is only ever stressful if that manager doesn't take accountability for their decisions and directions. I'm not sure the solution to that is a new framework w…

There is a spectrum though between the leader taking all the accountability and team members taking all the accountability. The leader can be accountable for pointing in the right direction and providing sufficient resources while the team members can be accountable for the execution.

Reality is no single person is going to know enough to solely be responsible for everything. A manager of a sizable team is not going to know the details enough to know the right approach for everything.

I’m a big fan of providing context to team members and having a dialog instead of just delegating everything top down. But in this kind of environment accountability can still be made clear.

Re: An Engineering Team Where Everyone Is a Leader

#52

Post by watwut »

klenwell wrote: post #30
watwut wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, massive disaffection with typical management is what leads to schemes like this. Especially when it comes to non-technical management, they are not equipped to do any of what you wrote. Not that technical management would be great or something. I am not fan of "everyone is leader" organization, but I am aware that contemporary management is not capable of all that much. > Team members don't need to be "heard,"…

> I do actually want my opinions, ideas and preferences to be heard. If I think that I am not being heard, I prefer to change the team so that I am heard. I think this is a valid expectation. At the same time, it can lead to conflict and confusion if not itself managed effectively. One thing we've done with our team that I think has addressed this pretty well is RFCs (Request for Comments). This is mainly for team pr…

The scheme described in the article does much more. It gives you not just ability to express yourself on card, but also ability to make decisions in limited area and have responsibility for them.

I don't think being assigned task or issue is same as "being leader". In article it is more about subprojects themselves having responsible people - and people having responsibility for subprojects. So there is not one team leader responsible for everything, but various people responsible for their smaller parts and changing teams.

It is not about everyone agreeing with everything and having all they want. It is much more about autonomy and accountability - which are the core motivators in normal people management theory and there is not reason to think IT people are so different that they don't need them.

Re: An Engineering Team Where Everyone Is a Leader

#53

Post by proc0 »

motohagiography wrote: post #4

Regarding all these alternative ways of organizing, what's wrong with a leader taking responsibility, delegating it where feasible, and selecting for team members to whom they can delegate responsibility with confidence? Taking direction or orders from a manager is only ever stressful if that manager doesn't take accountability for their decisions and directions. I'm not sure the solution to that is a new framework w…

Top down management doesn't work in software engineering unless you are in an industry that does not value creative solutions (which is possible, some industries want extreme reliability and this means less exploration for solutions). In other words, what is the point of giving instructions/directions to someone who is supposed to be a problem solver (a.k.a. engineer)? There is no point to hire problem solvers and then give them specific solutions to your problems.

Re: An Engineering Team Where Everyone Is a Leader

#54

Post by nicoburns »

motohagiography wrote: post #31
crimsonalucard wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Team members don't need to be "heard," or need sympathy from managers, they need confidence that their leadership understands the environment they work in, takes responsibility for decisions, and gives them direction based shared competence. This is 100% the worst advice. It's a sign that you are a bad leader. There are two components of leadership. Managing up and managing down. In order to gain a leadership positi…

Can appreciate the reaction, but management and leadership aren't therapy. There is only one component of leadership, and it is the definition: it is the effect of being followed. You can't fake it because it is an effect, not a result. It only happens with willingness in others that is the result of trust, earned through establishing legitimate authority. Management is literally the effect of compromise between comp…

I'd argue that good managment can often be quite close to therapy (albeit a little less personal). Getting the best out of people starts with understanding where they are coming from, what their needs and desires are, and ensuring that as a group, they are meeting each others.

Leadership is a different thing.

Re: An Engineering Team Where Everyone Is a Leader

#55

Post by koonsolo »

motohagiography wrote: post #4

Regarding all these alternative ways of organizing, what's wrong with a leader taking responsibility, delegating it where feasible, and selecting for team members to whom they can delegate responsibility with confidence? Taking direction or orders from a manager is only ever stressful if that manager doesn't take accountability for their decisions and directions. I'm not sure the solution to that is a new framework w…

> Team members don't need to be "heard,"

For leadership, correct. For management, false.

In software engineering, the people who know are at the bottom, so you better listen to them when you need estimates, technical solutions, architectural insight, etc.

Throw away your 1-on-1's at your own peril. As a manager you should make sure your team members can do their job, and that includes listening to the problems they face.

As a leader you set the course, so day-to-day operational things are indeed less relevant.

Re: An Engineering Team Where Everyone Is a Leader

#56

Post by jdmichal »

kempbellt wrote: post #47
BurningFrog wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about the counterargument that 10 heads are better than 1?

Not always. In many cases 10 heads = 9 people criticizing/undermining 1. Effective teams are built on people who trust and respect each other. Leadership must be recognized by a majority of group members for any person to take the lead - and any person can lead at any time if they have the group's best interests in mind and are able to demonstrate that.

This is the basis of the book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. A dysfunctional team will tear itself apart given run of the place. There's a lot of ground work that has to go into getting a team to the point where they can even enact what's in the article.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Five_Dysfunctions_of_a_Tea...

There's also a lot of work that goes into maintaining delegations at this level. I really like this article, because this part is actually covered in relatively high detail. Normally it's not addressed at all... "Just delegate!"

Re: An Engineering Team Where Everyone Is a Leader

#57

Post by jdmichal »

hcarvalhoalves wrote: post #39

> where everyone can be a leader - and everyone would act as an owner I suspect these are different things. Everybody can have a sense of ownership? Sure (e.g. common goals, employee owned companies, options, etc). If everybody is leading (at the same time), nobody is. It's good if anyone can assume leadership at any given moment, though. Tacit leaders are more important (and respected) than explicit ones. Appointing…

> Tacit leaders are more important (and respected) than explicit ones. Appointing a leader rarely works.

There are different use-cases for intrinsic and extrinsic leadership. Some actions work better when executed by one or the other.

Re: An Engineering Team Where Everyone Is a Leader

#58

Post by DoofusOfDeath »

zackify wrote: post #19

The places I’ve worked at where “everyone is a leader” ends up with 1 person feeling adamant about something. And everyone else disagreeing, but then saying: sure whatever, we will do it that way. Nobody wants to have conflict and nobody is in charge. Leads to a lot of very bad decisions imo.

Agreed. In my one experience with "self-organizing" teams, there was one individual who always got his way because he was so unpleasant otherwise. IMHO that had a terrible impact on the resulting software.

Re: An Engineering Team Where Everyone Is a Leader

#59

Post by titzer »

Any management strategy that is based on the assumption that everyone is the same and wants the same things and can act the same way is doomed to fail. I didn't see a single sentence about this person listening to and adapting to his team members as individual people. Some people might mumble the words, but aren't really interested in being leaders at all.

> Initially, my team was a team of eight engineers, from juniors to more senior members. Two years later, I have a team of triple the size, where most people have led a significant project, with mentorship/coaching support from a more experienced leader.

Huh. Two years. TBH that is not long enough to understand the sustainability of this approach. It's frustrating that people shout from the rooftops after one success like this.

There is some good advice in this post, but its hubris is galling. I would encourage the author of this post to continue growing and learning, maybe go through a failure or two, before speaking up.

Re: An Engineering Team Where Everyone Is a Leader

#60

Post by 6nf »

madrox wrote: post #42
motohagiography wrote: post #4

Regarding all these alternative ways of organizing, what's wrong with a leader taking responsibility, delegating it where feasible, and selecting for team members to whom they can delegate responsibility with confidence? Taking direction or orders from a manager is only ever stressful if that manager doesn't take accountability for their decisions and directions. I'm not sure the solution to that is a new framework w…

I say this as an engineering director and someone who takes a lot of pride in my ability to do all the good things you describe: what's wrong with it is that bad management is hard to dislodge. Bad managers will never admit they're bad; they have bad employees. It's really hard for upper management to tell the difference. The early signs of bad management look a lot like bad employee performance. It takes time for a…

> Bad managers will never admit they're bad; they have bad employees. It's really hard for upper management to tell the difference.

Speaking from upper management, I don't care for managers who blame their employees when things go wrong. They should have replaced those bad employees before things went wrong. That manager is on the way out if he's working for me.

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