Why a weekly status is important?
Why JIRA boards are not enough.
Hey there! 👋🏼
In preparing for the year to come, these past weeks, I've shared tools that will help you build the foundations of 2023: how to support your promotions with a brag document, how to create your team's mission and vision and a little insight on procrastination.
Today I want to talk to you about a minimal artefact we use that yields fantastic results: the weekly status.
I'm sure you're reading this right now and have a very doubtful look. Be patient. This will make sense 😝
Every week, I ask my leads and managers to break down their team's week into three categories:
Green: What went well
Amber: What should we pay attention to or didn't go to plan
Red: What didn't go well, and we'll probably need to act
With this information, I choose the most critical items and pass them along in the combined weekly status for my area.
What do I expect to see in the report?
Let me start by saying that many things happen outside the sprint board in JIRA. A world of events is not displayed perfectly in a sprint or kanban board from decision logs, documents, meetings, Slack messages, Zoom calls, etc.
Apart from the regular status updates of initiatives or pending issues, I want to see the events happening on the sidelines in this report. What really affects the life of the team.
How do I choose what's important to add to my weekly status?
I have a couple of priorities I focus on and why:
Incidents: it's essential to provide information about what didn't go well as concisely and as detailed as possible.
Key initiatives status: It's relevant to provide information on key initiatives.
Cross-team announcements: If it's going to affect many teams, I will definitely pass it along.
How does this report help Engineering Leaders evolve?
The goal of this report is more than just passing information along until it reaches Senior Leadership. It's about changing how Engineering Leaders face the universe surrounding their team.
When Engineering Leaders start, I see them very focused on task work. On how they delivered task X or Y. That is important, don't take me wrong. But what I want here is for them to step back and pick more high-impacting information.
The evolution I see as time goes by is incredible. I get to see the growth of this Leader every single week by what they write and eventually by they signalling the difference between information for me to know and information that should be passed along.
This report helps Leaders evolve and mature their vision of their team, how it impacts the company and how other teams affect it.
How to report incident information?
Incidents happen. We don't want them to happen, but they do.
I want to see information about this incident in the weekly status. But even the way you describe the incident can be tweaked and optimised.
If you try this method, make sure you get the following information:
When the incident started
When the incident concluded
The post-mortem link
Were customers affected? Do we have an estimate of how many?
Any other relevant information that I should have about the incident?
Well, that's it from me. This was a short one, but this is a crucial tool for managing teams. The weekly status can be applied at all levels of leadership.
Not only you practice how to pass along relevant information, but you'll also have a historical account of what happened during this week.
And when the time comes for a yearly review, the weekly status will be crucial!
Let me know what you think about this!
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Have an incredible week! 💪🏼
Parada 👊🏼 A Leader's Mindset