Stop hiring for the sake of having a larger team.
Maybe there's a fresh perspective on how to solve boost delivery
Hey there! 👋🏼
As a brand new Engineering Leader, you'll quickly challenge yourself to improve your team's delivery.
Refrain from assuming that you can't do anything with your team; that the only answer is requesting more people and scaling up.
There's so much more that you can do!
Scaling might seem the most straightforward route, but it's often not! And not the most effective.
But for leaders away from the team's development cycle, the math appears linear: more people = faster delivery.
Following this approach leads to the following:
Low performing teams
Low happiness levels
Low retention
Bringing more people into the problem will create more unhappy and unproductive people in your team.
Hiring without having your flow optimised only increases the problem.
Start by assuming you have a great team! You most probably do.
But for some reason, your team, working at their highest level, is not delivering what you would expect.
Why not analyse where your team is spending most of their time and optimising that step of the cycle?
After a few iterations, you'll end up with a truly optimised process, a great way of working, that only then is ready to scale up.
Focus on what matters. Where is your team spending most of their time?
First, split the work items of your team into the value created. If your team spends a lot of time on automatable tasks, then your goal is to make time for the team to automate those tasks.
Removing these types of tasks produces the best outcomes as it removes workload and improves the happiness of the team that doesn't have to deal anymore with repetitive tasks.
Review the development process and see where the team is stuck waiting. You'll quickly see trends and bottlenecks in your process that can and should be optimised.
This is also a great way to connect with your team and feel their daily pain and struggles.
Reducing waiting times = faster cycle time + happier team
No more hiring just for the sake of hiring
I hope this brings a fresh perspective on how to look at where the problem lies.
It's not on the number of people in your team but on how inefficient the process is.
Changing your mindset unlocks this thought process for most problems.
Analyse the process, review the flow and start by assuming it can be improved. It would be best if you threw more people into the mix only after going through this analysis.
If, after all of this, you still feel you need more people to deliver, then you are confident of what effect it will create.
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Have an incredible week! 💪🏼
Parada 👊🏼 A Leader's Mindset