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Ask HN: How do I get the most out of my team again?

2 points by some_manager ↗ HN
I'm a manager of developers (and a developer myself), and I always prided myself on getting the most out of my team.

We've had a number of people join, and the team has changed a bit in the last year. In the last few months our velocity has really dropped and I don't know how to get people working faster again.

I look at the closed tickets and there just aren't that many. They're all really capable devs but the throughput is really low.

What questions should I be asking myself? How can I help unblock my team? Should I be leading by example and cranking out ticket after ticket, to show them how it's done?

6 comments

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gingersnap
I think the first thing you should start with is to understand if there is less productivity or not, and then understanding why.

Can you see that the tickets closed are less during a similar time period last year? Does the same pattern follow all old developers, or is it the new ones that don't have the same productivity? Are the tickets actually equal as last year, or has complexity increased and therefore decreased speed? If there is a general decrease in productivity across the team including the senior developers, and you don't see any specific reason, then I would suggest talkin to the senior developers, highlighting what you see and start asking their opinions on it, what do they see have changed. So as bullets

1. Try finding out the reason why before taking action (and find out if there is an actual decrease). And trying find where the issue lie is it with individual or team, with skill or motivation, external changes or internal processes.

2. If you cant find the answers, start talking to the teams most senior developers

some_manager
Thanks for taking the time to respond.

From looking at my charts, I can see that the team is delivering about half the amount of story points per developer per week compared to this time last year.

Last year we were 2 juniors and 2 seniors. Since then we've hired 3 more seniors. We're delivering way less and finishing tickets way slower (4 weeks for a ticket now).

I don't think we've introduced any other blockers into our deployment processes, and the tickets haven't changed in complexity. The business hasn't changed and neither have the products.

What should I ask my seniors? It feels a bit bull-headed to just ask them "Why are tickets taking so long" but maybe that's what it takes?

ilkhan4
Yeah, maybe a little more tactfully, but I would ask that.

As a guess based on what you've said, are there too many seniors? Maybe folks are spending more time (over)designing or making sure they don't look bad in front of the others?

injb
I don't know your process or what your role entails but if you're responsible for output then you should be part of the process. We do scrum and my manager joins standup every day.

Are tickets taking longer than estimated, or are estimates higher than before?

Do you estimate as a team? You should be part of the estimation process.

If estimation is normal, the you should be finding out the first day that a given ticket is not on track. Get devs to make daily commitments and pay attention to when they are not met. What went wrong?

If you wait until the end of the estimated time and then ask why its not done, you will never get accurate answers. You have to track it more frequently than that.

gingersnap
I think the question should be seen as a problem you can solve together, more then an accusation. So maybe phrase it more like ”I’ve observed a change in output from the team. Tickets seem to be taking lounger time. It does not seem to be due to x,y or z. What do you think about it?” People always rather be part of the solution, not the problem, so better to invite them to solving the problem with you