You Cultivate the Discipline<\/span><\/h2>\nThis is the most important part of your\u00a0job. \u00a0You’re supposed to look after the\u00a0discipline\u2013make sure it is as strong as possible.<\/span><\/p>\nUnfortunately, this most important aspect of your\u00a0job is often strangled by the two less important headings that I will get into below.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nCultivating discipline breaks down into these subheadings:<\/span><\/p>\n\n- Define the discipline distinctly. That is, look after the elements of the discipline that are unique to it.<\/span>\n
\n- Identify “bright spots” in the organization and try to grow them. Much of this learning comes from one-on-ones.<\/span><\/li>\n
- Identify valuable wisdom in the general industry, and try to bring it in.<\/span><\/li>\n
- Create your\u00a0own signature systems based on all received wisdom and your\u00a0own needs.<\/span><\/li>\n
- Recognize and champion better practices, techniques, technology, and tools.<\/span><\/li>\n
- Identify function-wide release criteria (or Definition of Done\u00a0elements)\u2013a general checklist of recommendations and requirements for release.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n
- Define the discipline as part of a broader development practice.<\/span>\n
\n- Collect better practices for planning.<\/span><\/li>\n
- Collect better practices for estimating.<\/span><\/li>\n
- Collect better practices for forming high-performing teams.<\/span><\/li>\n
- Collect better practices for bug management.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n
- Disseminate all received wisdom.<\/span>\n
\n- Provide trainings for discipline members.<\/span><\/li>\n
- Provide conferences for discipline members.<\/span><\/li>\n
- Provide documentation.<\/span><\/li>\n
- As much\u00a0as possible, be a living reference of the discipline.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n
- Evangelize the discipline.<\/span>\n
\n- Break down barriers within the discipline group.<\/span><\/li>\n
- Break down barriers external to the discipline group.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n
- Optimally staff the discipline.<\/span>\n
\n- Develop a permanent recruiting machine.<\/span><\/li>\n
- Hire high-quality, well-matched developers.<\/span><\/li>\n
- Grow existing staff by work assignment.<\/span><\/li>\n
- Grow existing staff by direct feedback.<\/span><\/li>\n
- Evaluate existing staff using 360 degree reviews.<\/span><\/li>\n
- Grow existing staff by routine coaching.<\/span><\/li>\n
- Grow existing staff by frequent performance reviews incorporating actionable (specific, timely, doable) and broadly collected feedback.<\/span><\/li>\n
- Guide underperforming staff to better performance or a better fit elsewhere.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Of course, all of that discipline will only benefit the organization if its power is brought to bear on the opportunities facing it.<\/span><\/p>\nYou Leverage the Discipline<\/span><\/h2>\nWhen there are problems you may find people commonly reach out to functional\u00a0managers as a quick fix. Often, people ask you\u00a0to do what your\u00a0directs and their scrum\u00a0teams\u00a0are ultimately tasked with doing. Immediate needs often starve the long term cultivation efforts.<\/p>\n
If the discipline and organization is operating well then this element of your\u00a0job shouldn’t take much time. It is the actual developers, after all, that really deliver on\u00a0the promises of the discipline. You should:<\/span><\/p>\n\n- <\/b>Staff funded projects.<\/b><\/span><\/li>\n
- <\/b>Penetrate the discipline.<\/b>\u00a0For example, facilitate ad-hoc connections into the discipline. You should know a lot about who is doing what inside the discipline so you can help connect people-with-needs to people-with-know-how. You may\u00a0be unable to solve problems completely this way because developers in the discipline are all assigned\u00a0somewhere<\/i>. It often takes the cooperation of the Product Owner\u00a0on the other side of the connection in order for problems to really be solved by making connections.<\/span><\/li>\n
- <\/b>Advocate improving existing projects and eliminating debt.<\/b>\u00a0 Your\u00a0directs may work on many\u00a0different Scrum Teams. Utilize well-thought-out questions during one-on-ones to pick the minds of the developers themselves. As you\u00a0identify potential improvements train them on how to get those improvements on their product’s backlog. \u00a0If they need help facilitate that discussion with the Product Owner.<\/span><\/li>\n
- <\/b>Insist on low bug-counts.<\/b>\u00a0Again, with many\u00a0scrum teams you can’t have detailed knowledge about each one’s bug backlog. You can\u00a0look at the counts in the bug tracker\u00a0and counsel with your\u00a0people. \u00a0This is often\u00a0effective on its own. Understand your\u00a0prerogative to insist on more time for bugs.<\/span><\/li>\n
- <\/b>Insist on availability.<\/b>\u00a0Follow a pattern similar to how you\u00a0deal with bugs. Train your\u00a0people to care about uptime (which they largely care about already) and let them do the actual work on the uptime issues. \u00a0Real solutions require that the team own the problem. Monitor the uptime issues and train them on the resources they have to pursue\u00a0the issue, including\u00a0yourself.<\/span><\/li>\n
- <\/b>Insist on definition of done.<\/b>\u00a0The discipline has its own\u00a0issues that ought to trickle into every story’s definition of done. I18n, for example. \u00a0Of course, when a potential acceptance criteria doesn’t apply then the team can ignore it on a story by story basis.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
You Are an Employee At-Large<\/span><\/h2>\nYou’re still an employee. There are several elements of your\u00a0job that simply come by virtue of being employed:<\/span><\/p>\n\n- <\/b>Participate on other teams.<\/b>\u00a0For example, a triage or 5 whys team; a committee\u00a0for\u00a0Manager Training.<\/span><\/li>\n
- <\/b>Mentor others.<\/b>\u00a0I mean this in both the informal neighborly-advice way that many people use it, and the formal Mentoring relationship as defined by Manager Tools.<\/span><\/li>\n
- <\/b>Penetrate the org.<\/b>\u00a0That is, know how the system works and help people work it. \u00a0This can be a full-time job itself.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
You Must Cultivate Cultivation<\/span><\/h2>\nThat’s\u00a0the job as I see it. The biggest challenge\u00a0I’ve seen myself is that Leveraging and Employee At Large activities often\u00a0smother Cultivation activities. Your\u00a0mantra must be “Cultivate Cultivation.”\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A functional\u00a0manager’s job breaks apart into three handy headings: Cultivate Discipline Leverage Discipline Employee At Large<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[8],"class_list":["post-24","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-executive","tag-function-management","wow fadeInUp","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.managerjs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.managerjs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.managerjs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.managerjs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.managerjs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.managerjs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34,"href":"https:\/\/www.managerjs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24\/revisions\/34"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.managerjs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.managerjs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.managerjs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}