How to get a team to collaborate more?
Posted by driftking428@reddit | ExperiencedDevs | View on Reddit | 30 comments
I've recently(ish) joined a team. I was told there would be pair programming and they everyone works together. But, that's not really the case.
I suggested to my manager a meeting where our team could share things they are working on, and ask questions, get advice etc. We had something like you at my old job that worked pretty well.
The first few weeks it worked pretty well. People shared things they were stuck on. The team leads helped them out. We all learned. It was pretty much what I had envisioned.
Fast forward a few weeks and nobody seems to want to share. My team is ~80% offshore. We have this meeting on Thursday toward the end of their shifts and right at the beginning of ours. I really think most of the people are too embarrassed to ask for help in front of the rest of the team. But I know people need help, I know there getting help somewhere, it just seems that doing it on a call with 15 people is overwhelming. At my old place we only had 5 or 6 people and we are an in the US and pretty tight knit.
How can I change this meeting to get people to participate? I've openly said that I will share a problem every week if nobody else will and I've done that a few times but today only 3 people came, a leaf who was required to be there, an intern, and myself.
Do any of you do anything similar? I just feel like I have so much to learn and I hate going to one person and asking for help over and over. A forum like this could really speed up my learning and the team's understanding if done properly.
Thanks!
IAmADev_NoReallyIAm@reddit
Where is the offshore team located? I ask because I previously ran an offshore team at my previous job and ran into a cultural difference, where asking for help was seen as emasculating. It got to the point where I had two developers in the same room next to each other that ended up describing to me the same problem. I tried to reiterate the issue back to them multiple times back to them in the hopes that they would go "oh, hey Joe is also having the same problem, let's get together and see if we can collaborate" ... but no... they couldn't do that.... one day I'd had enough and lost my shit with them and let them have it. Wasn't a problem with them again after that.
Anyways, bottom line is that it might be a cultural difference as to why there's a reluctance to share. Depending on where the team is located and the overall culture, one thing you could try doing is having a Happy Hour one day. We do that on a regular basis. We get the various teams together informally over Teams for a "totally about work" meeting get together. It lets us get to know each other on an informal basis which we've found to help open up the lines of communication. Works really well.
Saki-Sun@reddit
I spend a lot of my time making sure the team are appreciated. Highlighting individual members strengths. Pairing where I can. My goal is to make it a safe place to work so no one is embarrassed to ask questions or take risks.
15 people is a very large group to attempt to do that with, I would suggest you start smaller.
driftking428@reddit (OP)
I agree 15 is large. With an optimal meeting it's hard to know how many to expect. Really we have like 5 teams of ~6.
Thanks for being a reasonable person. I'll see if I can figure out a way to make the meeting smaller. Maybe we breakout into two calls if 8+ people join.
CooperNettees@reddit
this meeting is something that benefits you but does not sufficiently benefit others.
we know it does not sufficiently benefit others, as they do not want to come to this meeting.
whether they are shy, busy, lazy, whatever, doesn't matter. they voted with their feet.
i think rather than try and solve the general problem for everyone, you should focus on trying to solve the problem you have specifically in a way that people are more likely to engage with.
i can say for sure i would never attend this meeting. I already know no one is going to be able to help me with the problems I have. so really, its just me being there to help them. but i need to do my work. so why go.
however, if someone asked a q in slack, i would answer it in slack async. if they really werent understanding it, i would send links to related code or docs. if they were still struggling, I would consider pairing with them to show what i mean.
that way if i can help them with 15s to 20s of my time, and thats enough. thats all ive put in. but if i cant, then i put a bit more in. then im only meeting synced up when its needed. rather than on a weekly basis.
driftking428@reddit (OP)
I agree with most of this.
The reason I'm holding out hope for this is that last week there were 15 people on the call and it's optional, that's most of our team. I think they were all hoping to learn something.
I get the impression that many of them are simply too embarrassed to share their screen and show their problems.
I get why the more tenured members wouldn't want to join. However, one of them is required to come on a rotation. The others are not obligated.
Clearly I don't know exactly where everyone is at with their knowledge of our stack. But I'm in the code all day and I am getting that I'm not the only one who is learning. I'm one of few people with years of frontend experience. Even as a newer team member people ask me for help in React.
Again, I get your point that this meeting benefits me and not everyone else. But we've had some successful ones. I really think if we changed the agenda, it broke into smaller groups, or had a topic in advance this meeting could be a success.
JimDabell@reddit
If they are stuck on something, why would they wait all week for a get-unstuck meeting? Why are you so convinced this is down to embarrassment and not because it’s not a good solution?
driftking428@reddit (OP)
To be honest this meeting was born out of a miscommunication between my manager and I.
He was asking if there was anything we did at my old company that I wished we did here. I told him because we were a smaller group and we were more specialized, front end and back end vs full stack, we'd have a quick daily meeting to go over our PRs because we didn't really fully understand each other's code. For example I was the only React dev on my team so I'm order for my PRs to get approved it made sense for me to at least give a brief description of what the PR does.
My manager took my idea and created this meeting which is once per week and has too many people on it.
I'm here for suggestions. I'm trying to make it better. Do you have any ideas?
CooperNettees@reddit
why are you so attached to this meeting format? its just not efficient. even if its well attended, i am certain you can do better.
if you can tell, why not git blame, see who did it and then reach out to them with some ideas on how it could be done differently? or the opposite, if you dont know, look at the code to see how others approached things and ask them?
heres another idea. cancel the meeting and see if anyone says they miss it or want to bring it back. if no one says they want it, then dont bring it back, try something else.
driftking428@reddit (OP)
I'm not attached to the meeting format. I'm here asking for suggestions on how to improve it.
I literally have no meetings where I see anyone else's code. Sometimes I'll meet with a colleague to pair. But I'm just trying to get people to share ideas a little bit.
You haven't offered much but criticism.
CooperNettees@reddit
ive offered you plenty of actual suggestions. do you need a meeting to see someone elses code? cant you just... read it?
driftking428@reddit (OP)
We're not gonna see eye to eye on this. That's ok. I'm coming to a team where everyone is already set in their ways. They all have the person they message for help.
I don't know who's good at what. I'm unfamiliar with half of the stack. I think it's weird to work with 20 some people and never talk about what we're working on with them.
Maybe your meeting isn't the answer. But I want to hear from people about things they struggled with and work together on things.
The meeting is optional. I'm just trying to improve it. Maybe it won't work.
dbxp@reddit
Isn't that already collaboration? It sounds to me that your issue is more that you specifically are out of the loop as people are communicating around you. I think you might have to work out what your team really needs from you because ATM they seem to be bypassing you.
driftking428@reddit (OP)
I'm new to the team. Everyone has their established connections. I'm just trying to make more of my own. I have a couple of people I can rely on. I'd just like to have better insight into the test of my team.
CooperNettees@reddit
i dont really get it though. why not just read the code to get this information? or ask people who to message for what
if you wanna just hang out and talk about what you're working on, do a all day meeting people can join and leave whenever.
driftking428@reddit (OP)
I'm just used to more communication and collaboration. We don't have daily stand-ups.
effectivescarequotes@reddit
Take it from someone who has worked on a lot of different projects with a lot of different people.
You can't really change the culture of a team without massive turnover. If most developers like keeping their heads down and working, then forcing interaction, especially interaction built around sharing problems is just going to annoy everyone.
You tried something, it worked for a bit and then faded as inertia won. The real question here is are you happy working on this team or do you need to move on?
driftking428@reddit (OP)
I hear you. It's not that bad. My last three companies were just way more collaborative. We'd get on calls and put our heads together. Discuss new things we learned etc.
I do have people I can reach out to. The meeting is optional. If almost nobody comes to them we'll just stop.
I won't push anyone too hard. Not so I have the power to push anyone.
BoBoBearDev@reddit
The meeting sounds exhausting. Eveyeone just fake smile and fake claps, but no one actually wants to attend.
Hosting a meeting for technical stuff is stupid because people have no interest in the topic because they either already know the answer or they will never run into the problem or they will still ask around when it happens.
Unless you are some actual operator of the software or competitor's software that can help devs to design a better UX, no one cares.
BertRenolds@reddit
15 people?! Fuck no. That's a massive nope.
originalchronoguy@reddit
This is really hard to do for some people. I run a tiger team that has high velocity where we do pair, mob programming and a lot of ad-hoc collaboration. This specific team thrives on a lot of face to face.
The org sees this as very good as they see results of high quality, big impactful deliverables done at high velocity and speed. Now, they want it employed elsewhere and it doesn't work.
I get parachuted to help teams and those teams just can't work that way. And forcing it on them doesn't work either.
You need willing participants to make the experiment work. Some things just work better in smaller doses.
dbxp@reddit
I imagine in a tiger team you've all got similar skill levels and you have a good spread of skills. In a regular product team its easy for there to be a dev who's a dead weight in a mob programming situation as they don't bring anything unique to the table, it's very easy to get into the situation where one senior is doing all the work.
mamaBiskothu@reddit
Interesting you mention tiger teams and from what you're saying looks like it works. We might be creating one ourselves. Any thoughts gotchas or tips? Also any resources to read up on?
valence_engineer@reddit
In my experience, make sure you can actually hire a tiger team and not just a team of regular devs (by company standards) that you then expect to do more. That means you need a way to hook them be it money, freedom, management, culture, etc.
driftking428@reddit (OP)
Thanks. Part of me just think I need to bite the bullet and bring something to ask every week.
Worst case, I get help from the leads on the new things I need to learn.
Best case, other people start to see the benefits and start to participate.
nricu@reddit
yeah, you breaking the ice and making questions will maybe lead to more questions from other people.
dbxp@reddit
I would be more specific in what your after 'collaborate more' isn't really measurable and could push towards just presenteeism in meetings. It's very likely there's collaboration going on that you're not seeing in DMs.
marmot1101@reddit
Our team of 5-6 devs collaborate a lot on mobile calls. I don’t find it to be the most effective for me. I can’t parse 5 peoples worth of opinions simultaneously and be thoughtful about it. More than that seems like it would be someone raising a topic, 2-3 people dominating the answer and probably arguing about it, the rest off camera doing other work or internetting and wishing they were doing anything else.
I’d try leading by example. Grab 1-2 people and work through something. Repeat with another 1-2 people on something else later. Lather rinse repeat. Make sure to tell your manager you plan on doing it so it doesn’t appear like you’re trying to get others to do your work.
driftking428@reddit (OP)
This isn't a bad idea. Thanks.
Howler052@reddit
We've started a book club for our 8 person diverse backend team. We're covering software architecture and programming practice books. It's been working well for us. Everyone chimes in with their own stories, experiences and frustrations. It's been a common ground for a bunch of antisocial, diverse group of people with different social and religious beliefs.
driftking428@reddit (OP)
This is a good idea. It makes certain that people have a topic every time.
One of the leads asked if I wanted to study for an AWS certification with him. I could make a group for that.
That covers most of what I don't understand about our code too.