Improving Team Efficiency

"Do more with less" - a mantra that all managers like and agree (even though, they secretly hate it :D due to the pressure that this puts them under!).

Nevertheless, a very important aspect in any team work and is something that every team head needs to work on continuously.

The following are the four aspects I focus on to achieve this in my software teams:

1. Training
2. Trust building
3. Tech upgrade / automation
4. Process perfection

Here are my few bits on each of the above.

Training

According to me, the best trainings are simply a dialogue on the following two between the trainer and the trainee:

1. What do you observe?
2. What do you feel?

Often trainings are reduced to simple brain dumps of the trainer. I have found this to be of low effectiveness - both as a trainer and the trainee. On the other hand, when the trainees are evoked and they get to speak and they are taught experientially, then, I have found the trainings to be much more effective.

I have done training for junior developers, senior developers, performance engineers, product owners and architects! In all these, when the sessions are lively and interspersed with stories, and dialogues both on the content of the topic and the content of the trainees' emotional space, then, the trainings become very effective.

For example, I often bring in stories from famous psychological experiments like Asch's conformity experiment, Stanley Milgram current shock experiment, story of Indra and Virochana / story of Nachiketa from the Upanishads, Take it deep philosophy of Dhoni, theory of human performance from Yoga etc.

Trust

Corporate spaces are transactional spaces. Creating a win-win equation there is a hard task but is probably the most important job of the team owner. When team members genuinely feel seen an experience the win-win in a space of transparency, trust naturally grows. Conducting trainings and talking about career aspirations of team members and creating opportunities based on these conversations, I have seen, creates trust. Its a gradual and organic process.

The challenges here are emotional unconsciousness of the team lead themselves, existing degree of office politics and sheer time availability. Of these three, the first is the most debilitating. Therefore, the foundation for this is honest confrontation of oneself for the team lead.

Tech upgrade / Automation

In a world about to be taken by storm by AI, all teams need to aim for fantastic automation. But, this requires, time and investment - from the team owners and the business investors. There could often be a lot of legacy issues that come in the way. Like a typical product, returns are initially very low in this but as we cross the magical threshold, returns become high.

Typical challenge here is that the person with automation skill often does not understand the existing system and the person who understands the existing system often does not have the needed skills to bring in automation. Cracking this conundrum is often the toughest part.

Process Perfection

At the bare bones level, to me this is extremely deep role clarity and smooth co-working of roles. Scaled Agile and other software development methodologies play a nice role here. But, in my experience, these only offer a broad framework. The team owner has to do a lot of effort to ensure the product pipeline is well oiled. This requires, lot of conversations and increased understanding of the system in terms of current state of people, process & technology.

Like in the case of automation, the person who is skilled in Scaled Agile seldom has any interest about the existing system (and often is not interested either) and likewise, the person who has system knowledge often does not understand and may even be resistant to new approaches. Cracking this conundrum is another challenge that team owners face!

While these are four distinct entities, they are interconnected in myriad ways. Its truly the skill and the vision of the team owner to invest in this while taking care of current fires and BAU issues. I find this to be a challenge that motivates me every time I go to work!