Two weeks ago my father in law asked me what I was doing during my work day. He isn’t very technical so I paused for a minute to come up with the right response… “I direct a cruise ship”.
I didn’t need a technical answer because it really feels like my job, running a development team, is really all about making sure everyone is running in sync, on different tasks, but in the same direction.
Some days I feel like I’m pulling the ship with a rope held in my mouth while swimming in a stormy ocean. Better days are the ones where I can pick a spot on the map, get a GPS lock, and let it sail on autopilot because everyone knows what the end point looks like. The challenge is defining a crystal clear end point.
I frequently use another analogy that, as a team and product get larger it gets harder to build momentum. When it’s just one person and some code it’s easy to get the ball rolling.
Imagine that the ball is now bigger and there are 20 people pulling on the ball pictured here, but they are each pulling a different direction. The ball won’t go anywhere and your team velocity will suck.
I’m always trying to think about what feature work is pulling in opposite directions and needs to be dropped or moved so that everyone is working to get the ball rolling in the same direction faster. Over time, with a unified pull, the ball will get moving faster and the team velocity will increase dramatically.
So, that’s what I spend my day doing… communicating a consistent endpoint, trying to prevent work that pulls counter to this direction, and recognizing when someone has a good pull in front of the pack.