I was talking with a developer friend recently about the developer productivity issues his company was dealing with.
In a nutshell, the CEO is pushing the devs to release faster and faster without properly enabling them to do the work.
The messaging screams: “Hit all your deadlines even while you’re putting out fires. no. matter. what.”
…get the work done faster AND better AND make sure that nothing breaks AND go to these meetings AND do your mandatory training AND fix this bug now AND AND AND…
You get the point.
I’m sure the CEO isn’t intentionally trying to undermine his developers but it’s happening nonetheless.
The heart of the matter is that he’s afraid.
He’s afraid that if he lets up on the pressure, the developers will slow down. If he doesn’t continually push for more, the work will go undone and the business will suffer.
This fear is understandable.
In today’s fast paced world, “perfection at speed” is expected. If there is a bump in the road it could be a mistake that costs thousands… hundreds of thousands… millions of dollars.
The pressure is on.
What other choice does this CEO have??
…I’m glad you asked
He could:
* Survey his devs and seek to understand what’s holding them back.
* Look at his org structure and see if it’s aligned in a way that streamlines feature delivery.
* Be more transparent in his communications, encouraging his devs to rally to the cause.
* Improve requirements and user story processes to avoid rework and incomplete features.
* Remove distractions causing his devs to context switch.
I could go on and on.
The point is that he has options.
He doesn’t have to let the fear run wild.
If its too time consuming or cumbersome to uncover the friction and bottlenecks himself, he could get help outside the organization…
That’s all for now.
If this has struck a chord, reply and let me know your experience. I’d love to hear from you.
