What do you do if your team is struggling and you need to prepare for the future?

Let's say your development team is struggling with features implementation as well as development testing as both of these need quality time. In feature development utilize re-use code that can save you some time. Schedule meeting to have brain storming and fostering trust within team. Share what you know can be faster to implement and follow others where they expertise the work. Make use of tools like Copilot, ChatGPT, Gemini where team has less experience to save cycle time. Like in case of writing UT for Dev testing, these tools can save potential time. Plan new strategy when you see something not working they way expected.

You need to find out the reason. Is it understaffing? Is it unrealistic demands? Is it longer working hours? Is it the environmental factors (IT systems, office environment, etc)? Is it office politics? Is it remuneration not keeping up with inflation and cost of living? Have a frank discussion with the team one-on-one. Once you have pinpointed the reasons, you need to start working on both a short-term remedial plan and a long-term one. Make sure you communicate to your team that you acknowledge their struggles and you are working on solutions. However, don’t make promises you cannot keep. Leaders who fail to keep promises lose their team’s confidence quite fast.

As we follow the above, we also need to have a personal reflection of your leader skills. A good leader can take a weak team far but a bad leader with good members can't go any far. As for the team, look out for elements of failure that tend to pull down the rest. Don't forget group dynamics as leadership moves hand in hand with management. Adapt to changing technologies from day to day

By this stage you need to have an open a dialogue. Make sure the team feels safe to come forward with issues. However if they didn’t, you need to solicit their feedback. Begin with one-on-ones which may allow some to speak more openly than a team meeting. Ask open ended questions and actively listen and take notes. Look for recurring themes in the complaints to determine the common factors. Have a team meeting and discuss the collective feedback. Acknowledge their issues, and give them a tentative time table of resolutions. Whatever that is within your purview and whatever needs higher management approval. Take it up with management if you need authority for some actions. Don’t delay doing so and make sure you keep them accountable.

It’s always best to find out the issues before they happen, by being involved with the team and having your fingers on the pulse, also by fostering a safe, open-communication environment and checking in regularly. This way you may be able to identify potential issues before they cause the team to struggle. However sometimes some unexpected extrinsic factors may have a near-immediate effect and cause some struggles before you can address them. When that happens, remember that implementing swift solutions is the next best thing since prevention wasn’t practically possible.