Following My Own Advice

I received a pleasant surprise this morning when one of my temporary employees thanked me for helping create some structure for the team I'm acting as interim manager for.  The team is new, and its long-term scope is still being defined, so it doesn't surprise me that there's some initial chaos.  Even the universe required a few fractions of a second after the Big Bang before it began to follow the laws of physics.

I'm always hesitant to suggest too many guidelines for capable individuals for fear of stifling their potential.  Imposing Agile guidelines in particular can easily devolve into an exercise in micromanagement, where every story must conform and every stand-up must be withstood.

But, as I said no sooner than yesterday, sometimes constraints help boost creativity.  Turns out reasonable structure helps.  That, and reinforcing the concept of a well-timed 'no.'  I've got a team of 3 people subject to the operational demands of an entire engineering org.  Realistically, if we don't explicitly say 'no' to the demands on our time, we'll be doing it implicitly anyway.

Sometimes (sometimes) I should listen to me.

 Until next time, my human and robot friends.