Seeking Status
We need to talk about status.
No, not that kind of status – leverage, title, caste. I mean figuring out what's going on with your projects without 1) seeming like a micromanager, or 2) spending all your, and your team's, time in meetings.
I assume most leaders reading this started in a technical or functional role. It's rare to graduate from university and land a team lead or first-level manager role (although it does happen). More likely, you worked as an individual contributor (IC), then at some point made the decision – or it was made for you – to lead/manage the team. I worked as an IC software engineer for 14 years, then worked my way up the management ladder (with some diversions, see Spreading Yourself Too Thin), for the next 24. As a leader, I pride myself on avoiding micromanagement if at all possible, because I have been micro-managed and it doesn’t feel good.
To be clear, asking people for status is not micromanagement. Micromanagement is telling them what to do, unsolicited, and in a level of detail that is too prescriptive and explicit for their experience.
Use the right forum for status. And that is not your 1:1s because a) that can feel somewhat like micro-management, and b) is not a good use of dedicated time with your team member. One-on-ones should be used for building relationships, providing help unblocking (if they ask for it), and for development and growth. I won’t elaborate on this too much here, because there are so many good writings (here, here, and here are a few examples) about how to conduct effective 1:1s.
Project and program review meetings are a better forum for getting status. However, you must take care to ensure that these do not become rote or untruthful. If team members feel they can only tell the boss the “good news”, or if the same status shows up at every meeting, then you might be wasting time.
The best way to get status is to self-serve: determine it yourself. If you are a first-line manager or a tech lead manager, you are already doing this. But if you are middle or upper management:
Read/watch the CLs, PRs, bugs and hotlists, Kanban, and dashboards.
Attend any Agile framework meetings that the team uses (as an observer, not a participant).
Ask to receive copies of certain team emails, such as sprint reviews and retrospectives.
Leverage your technical knowledge. If you were an engineer on this program, how would you figure out what's going on? Remember, you know how to do this; you used to be an IC. By seeking status yourself, you're making the best use of the team’s time and ensuring you’re not getting filtered news. And you’re saving your 1:1s for the topics that matter most for your employees: their growth and development.
Now there may be those who say, “I don’t have time to figure out all that status myself!” And if that’s you, I’d ask you, are you seeking too much detail for your job level, team size, or scope? It might be good to reflect on why that is. Are you prioritizing the urgent and critical projects? Acknowledge that not all programs can have equal importance, as true crises exist. And if you are a manager of managers, getting the right level of detail is easier than you may think. Trust your directs to know the status of their programs and to ask you for help if they need it.
If they're not asking, it’s going well.
