'Twas ever thus

Prioritisation things

Maybe your team is stuck on a never-ending project and you’re hearing things like:

We’re not taking on new work until we’ve got this migration over the line.

The end of October is a hard deadline.

It’s looking great, but it’s not ready to put in front of customers yet.

Or perhaps a stakeholder or product manager has got their mind set on specific requirements:

We need the new system to be functionally identical to the previous one.

It’s more important that we get this implemented than that we worry about things like cyber security or accessibility!

We don’t need to buy that software - Nicolai can build it for us.

Or your team’s prioritisation decisions are based on some very human factors:

I’m prioritising this ticket because Pavlina seems very upset that it’s not been done.

All 3 of these options have good and bad things; I can’t decide!

I didn’t have time to work on your performance review last week because I spent all week approving people’s expense claims!

Team culture things

Your team tries really hard to be a fun and friendly place. But when things are busy, maybe you start hearing things like these?

Hardly anyone comes to the fun activities we organise!

Everyone here is so nice, but it’s hard to get work completed.

We’re all too busy fighting fires to even start thinking about strategy.

I hate Jira! Why do we have to use it?

Angela is off sick, so we can’t complete that until she comes back.

Communication things

Perhaps your team members aren’t always up in each other’s stuff:

I don’t really know what it is that Santosh does here.

I didn’t know Igor was also working on the login page issues!

Honestly, I just let Hari talk because I don’t really understand what he is saying.

Our team and our project are great; I wish the stakeholders would get it!

Let’s start a group DM to talk about that.

Or it’s not always possible to operate in a self-guided way at work:

I know we need documentation, but we don’t have time to work on it right now.

Remind me: what did we decide about the cache integration again?

I didn’t ask for help with the flange coupler because I didn’t know who to ask.

Engineering things

Engineers sometimes have a reputation for bending reality in their status updates. Have you heard things like this?

We just need to write the tests and then we’ll be done.

I can do that for you in an afternoon! [Weeks pass…]

I spent all of yesterday helping Xenia get set up with her development environment.

Or everything is sunshine and roses until code finds itself in production:

Last week’s massive release has broken everything and rolling back is not an option.

But it worked on my computer!

Inclusion things

Everyone wants a diverse and inclusive team, but sometimes you might hear things that suggest that isn’t always the case:

Yes, yes. Our team is almost all white men but that’s because they’re the only people who apply to work here!

Maria never wants to be the one to present at our team demos.

We prepare a demo every sprint, but the only people who come are members of our own team!

I talk to Kazuki on Slack all the time but I don’t even know what they look like!

It’s always the same people talking in meetings.

Or maybe people aren’t getting their individual needs met at work and you hear phrases like these:

I feel guilty that I was sick last week so I’m going to work extra this week.

Honestly, I don’t know if you can take a holiday next week; we’ve got a big release coming up.

Reinhard said something really inappropriate in yesterday’s team meeting but his line manager isn’t doing anything about it!

We need people to come into the office at least 1 day each week.

Have you heard these in your workplace?

Have you said some of them yourself? Have you maybe even been convinced that this is the only way a tech team can really operate?

Over the coming weeks here on this blog, I’ll be diving into some of these cultural and technical challenges in the workplace and what can be done about them - they all absolutely can be fixed with the right tweaks!

Please be sure to subscribe (email newsletter, RSS, LinkedIn, Bluesky) for hopefully some surprising knowledge that might help you and your team to be more productive, more inclusive and more fun.

Or you can book a free 30-minute call with me and we can talk about your workplace specifically!