Biggest productivity killers in the engineering industry(newsletter.eng-leadership.com) |
Biggest productivity killers in the engineering industry(newsletter.eng-leadership.com) |
Too many meetings, especially the recurring ones. Domination of spoken culture instead of written for collaboration.
Lack of proper sleep and rest. Working outside of your normal brain activity hours.
Sudden fire drills - "unforeseen" audit with deadline next Tuesday, a security vulnerability mentioned in TV and you needing to redeploy/upgrade everything ASAP.
I have sometimes wondered if this was just me. Glad to see it listed. I can’t count the number of times that “oh yeah, we talked about that and decided xyz” or “do you remember where we landed on abc in that meeting?” in a distributed environment.
I can’t force others to communicate about everything in writing, but I’ve learned to take detailed notes of my own thought processes and to write down everything important that happened in a meeting or conversation immediately after it finishes.
Same for me and even if you have notes you will get "thats not what i said", "thats not how i remember it", etc.
Does anyone actually care about what I'm doing, or are we just running out the clock.
- require engineers to present and justify engineering investments (and understand that what you don't accept has real costs) - have engineers estimate the work in the roadmap, and provide clear risks and possible mitigations - note all of the above means the goals are clearly defined first - not everything you wanted to accomplish may fit; be prepared to distinguish essential from good to have, and to change the order of your priorities. - have teams commit to dates based on estimates, a healthy error margin, additional responsibilities, meetings... - plans change, things happen, life happens, engineering is hard. It's OK, it's expected! Make sure there are clear communication channels from engineers to the top, and from the top to the engineers, so that expectations are adjusted as soon as possible, and maybe make further adjustments. - Communication should happen often. Be always available to listen, don't micromanage. - managers should protect engineers and said communication channels - managers and PMs do not set deadlines - don't hire cheap; hire motivated team players. - the primary role of your >Senior engineers is to be force multipliers (how is a whole different conversation), not to do superhero work - communication, communication, communication; you'd be shocked how much time is wasted by engineers being unsure how to proceed and not sure who to ask of if the question will be well received; there are no bad questions.
I feel like I could go on and on and expand on many of these.
Yes: multitasking hurts; yes, procrastination is bad; but beyond looking at each "issue" individually, engineering leadership should provide processes and culture that protect, motivate and facilitate success.
#1 Hacker News
Joking aside yeah that's perverse.
It probably costs 30+ minutes of productivity every time I run them
The book Accelerate is a good start.
Funny how the domain name is the answer of the topic in question
or one that I lived through: "We're switching from SQL Server to Oracle." That one burned a few years that could have been spent on new features or improvements.
No one:
IT infra: let’s move our repo platform to SaaS!
- Procrastination
- Issues from context switching and distraction
Is this ... ADHD?
SAFe agile
Really made me laugh.
#1 get a private office
This worked fabulously for me because it allowed me to "swap in" my work enough that I could avoid distractions.
And yes, I have ADHD.
Seems simple but it works.