Achieving the Perfect Balance: Context Switching and Horizontal Focus vs. Vertical Focus

Introduction

As a software developer team lead, one of the most significant challenges you face is maintaining a delicate balance between your responsibilities to your team and your coding tasks.

In this article, we will explore the dynamics of context switching and the contrasting requirements of horizontal and vertical focus, providing insights on how to find that elusive equilibrium.

Horizontal Focus: Navigating the Team's Needs

When you take on the role of looking after your team, you are often immersed in what we call "horizontal focus." This means you're responsive to requests across various communication platforms, like Slack, Teams, and WhatsApp. Your primary objective is to support your team, unblock and enable them to focus on their development tasks.

Your horizontal focus responsibilities may include:

1. Assisting with Configuration Changes: Helping team members with configuration adjustments to ensure smooth development workflows.
2. Troubleshooting Bugs: Lending a pair of experienced eyes to identify and rectify bugs in the code.
3. Design Patterns: Guiding your team in implementing effective design patterns for cleaner and more maintainable code.
4. Explaining the Bigger Picture: Providing context and explaining why certain services must adhere to specific protocols and standards.
5. Boosting Confidence: Building your team's confidence in their abilities by offering guidance and support.
6. Code Review and Refactoring: Reviewing code, making it more readable and efficient, and explaining the changes made.

Vertical Focus: Uninterrupted Concentration

Conversely, "vertical focus" requires periods of uninterrupted concentration. During these times, you delve into tasks that demand deeper thinking and exploration, often lasting from few hours to a few days.

In vertical focus, your time is dedicated to activities such as:

1. Application Design: Crafting high-level design plans for your software applications.
2. Decision-Making: Building decision matrices to determine technology stacks, deployment pipelines, and other critical development aspects.
3. Core Functionality: Developing core functionalities that define the success of your projects.
4. Technology Exploration: Researching and evaluating different technologies that could benefit your projects.
5. Automation: Identifying processes that can be automated and scripting them for efficiency gains.

Striking the Balance

Balancing horizontal and vertical focus is a challenge, but it's vital for a software development team lead. It's essential to acknowledge the stark contrast between these two modes of work.

While in horizontal focus, context switching and interruptions are more acceptable.

In vertical focus, any disruption can severely affect your concentration and productivity, taking anywhere from a few minutes to several hours to recover focus.

To find the right balance:

Horizontal Focus

Avoid becoming a "headless chicken" running around trying to please everyone. Prioritize tasks based on their urgency and importance to maintain order and effectiveness.

Vertical Focus

Communicate effectively with your co-workers and peers. Explain why undisturbed time is necessary, and if there's an emergency, make it clear they can contact you. Block out time in your work calendar to protect your vertical focus sessions.

Conclusion

In conclusion, achieving the perfect balance between horizontal and vertical focus is an ongoing process that requires self-awareness, effective time management, and clear communication. By recognizing the distinctive demands of each mode and implementing strategies to maintain equilibrium, software development team leads can maximize their productivity and support their teams more effectively.