Chapter 26. Write code, but not too much
I have worked with many team leaders, and one of the most difficult activities is balancing time spent writing code with other leadership activities. In an extreme case, writing no code leads to a lack of specific context for any direction you might want push the team. Even with the most positive of intents, without grounding in a system’s current state, any decisions you make might cause more work than needed. In the other extreme case, writing too much code probably means other important leadership activities are being neglected and any broader technical issues remain unresolved.
Circumstances often dictate the time you have to code. Your leadership role means representation in many more meetings. Time in meetings will pull you away from writing code. You’ll also find some of these meetings more ad hoc, making any coding effort difficult to do without interruption.
I’ve found that accommodating and balancing a team leader’s coding needs is easiest in teams practicing pair programming, as long as they also practice frequent rotation and collective code ownership. The idea is that you can work with your partner to design a solution, or, at least, agree on a direction to take for solving a problem. If you find yourself dragged off to meetings, then any functionality being built or changed doesn’t stop being developed, and you can rejoin with only a slight interruption to progress. Your team still enjoys the benefits of your specific knowledge about the code base, while you care for the other activities your role requires of you.
For teams who don’t practice pair programming, any time you find for coding is best spent on tasks away from the critical path, particularly if it’s likely to block others from completing their work. For some people, this might be a scary idea, but you need to have trust in the team, or at least ensure the team has the right mix of skills to tackle critical issues. Great team leaders delegate tasks early and have frequent design or code reviews to ensure overall standards are met.
Team leaders should seek critical technical debt that continually drags at the team, and look for ways to break down large chunks into smaller, more manageable chunks.
As tempting as it is for team leaders to take all the interesting stuff, teams excel when their leaders remove impediments and let the team work out the best way to get stuff done.
Roy’s analysis
This note is thoughtful. I agree with many things said here. Let’s take this note one step further, to the next level of leadership. What happens after you’ve implemented this note? The team performs nicely, but they still need you to be there, or everything goes to pieces. How can we alleviate that and move the team to true self-organization?
Whatever it is you’re doing that makes you unique and irreplaceable as a team leader is a burden that turns you into a bus factor. Teach those skills to the team to make yourself replaceable, and they can self-organize. For example, detecting important technical debt that holds people back is a skill that can be taught. Break up big problems into smaller problems—people can be coached to learn the ideas and detection techniques behind this.
If you agree that a leader’s job is to always remove impediments, then you’ve reduced their job to a snow shovel. I believe a leader’s job is to remove impediments during survival mode, teach the team how to remove impediments during learning mode, and watch as the team removes impediments in self-organizing mode.
PATRICK KUA works as an active, generalizing specialist for ThoughtWorks and dislikes being put into a box. He’s the author of the book Talking with Tech Leads (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2015). Patrick is often found leading technical teams, coaching people and organizations in lean and agile methods, and facilitating situations beyond adversity. He’s fascinated by elements of learning and continuous improvement, always helping others to develop enthusiasm for these same elements. You can find out more about him at www.thekua.com/atwork/.