Also I liked the point about carving out dedicated time for engineering autonomy. My org has always has set aside a week per quarter to do something similar to “hygiene week”.
💯. As a staff engineer, I've been motivating my teammates to think of OKRs as their minimum commitments, not maximum commitments, i.e. *leave some slack/room* for the customer project issues that come up (we are a ML Platform team, and our customers are data scientists) and for anything else they want to pick up. This approach (vs. filling entire quarter with OKRs) has made me more sane, and ironically, enabled us to be more proactive in addressing opportunities.
Jean, I have been trying for a long time to articulate this philosophy, and you've done it so well here - thank you for writing this. I'll be sharing often.
In my previous experience, I have implemented a similar approach by providing engineers with the freedom to work as they please. 50% of them were happy and showing a positive sign, the other 50% ended up doing nothing, they are using this as a reason to reject ad hoc coordination with another division...
Do you have any suggestions for addressing the issue of the unproductive 50%?
I really believe in the philosophy of this post but have seen the exact breakdown with the unproductive folks also having two categories: folks that it just doesn't occur to them to do anything worthwhile and folks that get disillusioned because they want someone else to do this sort of thinking for them, they want that comfort of a pre-prioritized backlog they pull from.
I too am curious how do you lead them to the promised land? I'm convinced these people have creative contributions to be unlocked, but I don't know how to free them from years of scrum thinking.
We could think of there being different degrees of whatever. Some folks may have the context and motivation to choose things not on your radar at all, while others may feel overwhelmed by the lack of structure and their version maybe just picking off a backlog or between two tasks. And honestly the same person may flop between those modes depending on what’s going on for them outside of work. As a manager I try to stay aware of what each person needs and what they have to capacity for
Great post Jean! “Space to do whatever” reminds me of when Dan Pink talked about why autonomy motivates us - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rrkrvAUbU9Y
Also I liked the point about carving out dedicated time for engineering autonomy. My org has always has set aside a week per quarter to do something similar to “hygiene week”.
💯. As a staff engineer, I've been motivating my teammates to think of OKRs as their minimum commitments, not maximum commitments, i.e. *leave some slack/room* for the customer project issues that come up (we are a ML Platform team, and our customers are data scientists) and for anything else they want to pick up. This approach (vs. filling entire quarter with OKRs) has made me more sane, and ironically, enabled us to be more proactive in addressing opportunities.
Jean, I have been trying for a long time to articulate this philosophy, and you've done it so well here - thank you for writing this. I'll be sharing often.
So glad it resonated!
In my previous experience, I have implemented a similar approach by providing engineers with the freedom to work as they please. 50% of them were happy and showing a positive sign, the other 50% ended up doing nothing, they are using this as a reason to reject ad hoc coordination with another division...
Do you have any suggestions for addressing the issue of the unproductive 50%?
Yes, I've seen this same outcome as well!
I really believe in the philosophy of this post but have seen the exact breakdown with the unproductive folks also having two categories: folks that it just doesn't occur to them to do anything worthwhile and folks that get disillusioned because they want someone else to do this sort of thinking for them, they want that comfort of a pre-prioritized backlog they pull from.
I too am curious how do you lead them to the promised land? I'm convinced these people have creative contributions to be unlocked, but I don't know how to free them from years of scrum thinking.
We could think of there being different degrees of whatever. Some folks may have the context and motivation to choose things not on your radar at all, while others may feel overwhelmed by the lack of structure and their version maybe just picking off a backlog or between two tasks. And honestly the same person may flop between those modes depending on what’s going on for them outside of work. As a manager I try to stay aware of what each person needs and what they have to capacity for