It’s hard to pick a single best work by Joel Spolsky , but if I were forced to, I’d pick “The Joel Test: 12 Steps to Better Code .”1 It’s his own, highly irresponsible, sloppy test to rate the quality of software, and when anyone asks me what is wrong with their team, I usually start by pointing the questioner at the test. Start here.
It’s a test with 12 points, and, as Joel says, “A score of 12 is perfect, 11 is tolerable, but a 10 or lower and you’ve got serious problems.” More important than the points, his test clearly documents what I consider to be healthy aspects of an engineering team. Yet there are other points to be made. So it is completely in homage to Joel that I offer the Rands Test.
I was employee number 20 at the first startup I worked at, and the first engineering lead. Over the course of two years, the team and the company exploded to close to 200 employees. This is when I discovered that growing rapidly teaches you one thing well: how communication continually finds new and interesting ways to break down. The core problem centers on the folks who’ve been around longer and who also tend to have more responsibility. As far as they’re concerned, the ways they organically communicated before will remain as efficient and simple each time the group doubles in size.
They don’t. A growing group needs to continually invest in new ways to figure out what it is collectively thinking so anyone anywhere can answer the question, “Am I clear on what the hell is going on?”
The Rands Test: 11 Possible Points
Let’s start with bare-bones versions of the questions, and then I’ll explain each one.
Do you have a one-on-one?
Do you have a team meeting?
Do you have status reports?
Can you say “no” to your boss?
Can you explain the strategy of the company to a stranger?
Can you explain the current health of business?
Does the guy/gal in charge regularly stand up in front of everyone and tell you what he/she is thinking? Are you buying it?
Do you know what you want to do next? Does your boss?
Do you have time to be strategic?
Are you actively killing the Grapevine?
Note
While I’ll explain each point from the perspective of a leader or manager, these questions and their explanations apply equally to individuals.
Do you have a consistent one-on-one where you talk about topics other than status? (+1)
I think you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who would suggest one-on-ones are a bad idea, but the one-on-one is usually the first meeting that gets rescheduled when it hits the fan. I’m of the opinion that when it hits the fan, the last thing you want to do is reschedule one-on-one time with the folks who either are responsible for it hitting the fan or are the most qualified to figure out how to prevent future fan hittage.
Furthermore, as I will discuss in Chapter 7, “The Update, the Vent, and the Disaster,” conveyance of status is not the point of a one-on-one; the point is to have a conversation about something of substance. Status can be an introduction, status can frame the conversation, but status is not the point. A healthy one-on-one needs to be strategic, not a rehashing of tactics, status, and data that can easily be found elsewhere.
A one-on-one is a weekly investment in the individuals that make up your team. If you’re irregularly doing one-on-ones or not making them valuable conversations, all you’re doing is reinforcing the myth that managers are out of touch.
Do you have a consistent team meeting? (+1)
The team meeting has all the requirements of the one-on-one—consistency and a focus on topics of substance—but don’t give yourself a point just yet.
Status does have a bigger role in a team meeting. As I’ll talk about shortly, the Grapevine is a powerful beast, and a team meeting is a chance to kill messages it transmits. I have a standing agenda item for all team meetings that reads “gossip, rumors, and lies,” and when we hit that agenda item, it’s a chance for everyone on the team to figure out what is the truth and what is a lie.
After that’s done, my next measure of a team meeting is, Did we make tangible progress on something of significance? I don’t know what you build, so I don’t know what’s broken on your team, but I do know that something is broken, and a team meeting is a great place to not only identify the brokenness, but also to start to discuss how to fix it.
If you’re killing lies and fixing what’s broken in a team meeting, give yourself a point.
Are handwritten status reports delivered weekly via e-mail? (–1)
If so, you lose a point. This checklist is partly about evaluating how information moves around the company, and this item is the second one that can actually remove points from your score. Why do I hate status so much? I don’t hate status; I hate status reports.
My belief is that e-mail-based status reports are one of the clearest and best signs of managerial incompetence and laziness. There are always compelling reasons why you need to generate these weekly e-mails. We’re big enough that we need to cross-pollinate. It’s just 15 minutes of your time.
Bullshit. The presence of rigid, e-mail-based status reports comes down to control, a lack of imagination, and a lack of trust in the organization.
I want you to count the number of collaboration tools you use on a daily basis to do your job—not including e-mail. If you’re a software engineer, I’m guessing it’s a combination of version control, bug tracking, wikis, CRM, Slack, and/or project management software. All of these tools already automatically generate a significant amount of status regarding what has tactically gone down each week.
When someone—my boss or someone who outranks me—asks for a status report, my first thought is, “I’m already generating piles of status on these various tools; why not just look at those?”
Well, there’s a lot of noise in those tools. So write a report that takes out the noise—collaboration tools are built around reporting. The status information is out there. In what managerial textbook does it say it’s a good idea to distribute the task of figuring out what is going on to the people who are performing the work? That’s, like, your job.
Well, what I really want is your high-level assessment of the week. Three things that are working, three things that aren’t, and what we’re going to do about it. OK, now we’re talking. I can do a strategic assessment of the week, but why don’t we just put that at the beginning of the one-on-one? That way when you have questions (and you will), we can have a big fat debate.
But I’d like to have a record I can review later. Super, feel free to write down anything we talk about.
Yes, status reports are a hot button for me. I’ve written hundreds of them and each time I’ve begun one, I start by thinking, “Why in the world do I feel like I’m performing an unnecessary act?” Status reports usually show up because a distant executive feels out of touch with part of his or her organization, and they believe getting everyone to efficiently document their week is going to help. It doesn’t. E-mailed status reports say one thing to 90 percent of the people who write them: “You don’t value my time.” This leads me to my next point . . .
Are you comfortable saying “no” to your boss? (+1)
Perhaps a better way to phrase this point is, Do you feel your one-on-one with your boss is somehow different than every other meeting you have during the week? Part of a healthy communication structure is when information moves easily around the team, organization, and company, and if you walk into a meeting with your boss always on your best behavior and unwilling to speak your mind, I say something is broken.
Yes, he is your boss, and that means he writes your annual review and can affect the trajectory of your career, but when he opens his mouth and says something truly and legitimately stupid, your contractual obligation as a shareholder of the company is to raise your hand and say, “That’s stupid. Here’s why . . .”
Easier said than done, Rands.
OK, don’t say “it’s stupid.”
Here’s the deal. I believe that leaders who think they’re infallible slowly go insane with power created by the lie that being wrong is a sign of weakness. I screw up—likely regularly—and I’ve been doing various forms of this gig for 20 years. While it still stings when I stumble upon or others point out my screw-ups, I’d sooner I admit I fucked up, because then I can figure out what I really did wrong, and that starts with someone saying “no.”
Can you explain the strategy of your company to a stranger? (+1)
Moving away from communications, this point is about strategy and context. If I were to walk up to you in a bar and ask what your company did, could you easily and clearly explain the strategy?
This is the first point that demonstrates whether you have a clear map of the company in your head, and you might be underestimating the value of this map. If you’re a leadership type, chances are you can draw this map easily. If you’re an individual, you might think this map is someone else’s responsibility, and you’d be partially correct: it is someone else’s job to define the map, but it’s entirely your responsibility to understand it so you can measure it.
As you’ll see with the following questions, the Rands Test isn’t just about understanding communications; it’s about understanding context and strategy. How do you think the employees of HP and Netflix feel given the strategy flip-flops recently? Safe or suspicious? Let’s keep going . . .
Can you tell me with some accuracy the state of the business ? (Or could you go to someone somewhere and figure it out right now?) (+1)
It’s a brutal exaggeration, but I think you should independently judge your company the same way that Wall Street does: your company is either growing or dying. Have you ever watched the stock price of a publicly traded company the day after they announce that they are going to miss their earnings numbers? More often than not, no matter what spin the executives have, the stock is hammered. It’s irrational, but what I infer when I see this happen is that Wall Street believes the company has begun a death cycle. If the executives can’t successfully predict the state of their business, something is wrong.
I realize this isn’t fair, and there are myriad factors that contribute to the health of the business every single day, and I encourage you to research and understand as many of those as possible. But when you’re done, I’d also like you to have a defensible opinion regarding the state of the business, or at least a set of others whose opinions you trust.
This is a picture that you are constantly building, and this is an easier task if you’ve given yourself a point on the prior question regarding company strategy. If you have a map of what the company intends to do, it’s easier to understand whether or not it’s doing it. This leads us to . . .
Is there a regular meeting where the guy/gal in charge gets up in front of everyone and tells you what he/she is thinking? (+1) And are you buying it? (+1)
My previous point regarding context involves the person in charge. In rapidly growing teams and companies, there’s a lot going on—every single day. When the team was small, the distribution of information was easy and low-cost because everyone was within shouting distance. At size, this communication becomes more costly at the edges. Directors, leads, and managers—these folks tend to stay close to current events because it’s increasingly their job, but it’s also their job to take steps to keep the information flowing, and it starts with the CEO.
On a regular basis, does your CEO stand up and give you his impressions of what the hell is going on? Whether it’s 10 or 10,000 of you, this is an essential meeting that
Gives everyone access to the CEO
Allows him/her to explain their vision for the company
Hopefully allows anyone to stand up and ask a question
If the value of this meeting isn’t immediately obvious to you, I’d suggest that you are one of those lucky people who already has a good map of the company, as well as a sense of the state of the business. That’s awesome. Here’s a bonus point for you: does the CEO’s version of the truth match yours, or is he/she in a high Earth orbit with little clue as to what is actually going on? Give yourself a point if it’s the former, and if it’s the latter, what does that say about the state of the business? Growing or dying?
Can you explain your career trajectory ? (+1) Bonus: Can your boss? (+1)
Next, switching gears a bit, give yourself a point if you—right this very moment—can tell me your next move. You’re already doing something, so explain what you’re going to do next. It’s a simple statement, not a grand plan. “One day, I’d like to lead a team.”
Part of a healthy organization isn’t just that information is freely moving around; it’s what the folks receiving and retransmitting it are doing with it. You’re going to mentally file and ignore a majority of this information, but every so often a piece of information will come up in a one-on-one, a meeting, or a random hallway conversation, and it will be immediately strategically useful for you to know what you want to do next.
Angela got a promotion and her team is great, and I’ve always wanted to be a manager.
Jan just opened a requisition, and his group is working on technology I need to learn.
They fired Frank. That creates a very interesting power vacuum . . .
You can argue that even without a plan you’d make the same opportunistic leap, but I’ve found that having a map is usually a better way of getting to a destination.
There’s a bonus point here as well. Does your boss know what you want to do next? She likely has even more access to the information moving around the company, and whether she likes it or not, she has equal responsibility to figure out how to get you from here to there.
Do you have well-defined and protected time to be strategic? (+1)
If you gave yourself two points on the prior question, congratulations. I think you’re in better shape than most, but there’s one more point: Are you making progress toward this goal? Can you point to time on your calendar or even just in your head where you are growing toward your goal?
I like being busy. Like really busy. Like getting in, grabbing a cup of coffee, and suddenly finding the coffee is cold, it’s 6:00 p.m., and I forgot to eat busy. Busy feels great, but busy is usually tactical, not strategic.
If you have time in which you’re investing in yourself while at work, and your boss is cool with it—give yourself a point.
Are you actively killing the Grapevine ? (+1)
When Grace walks into your office, you know she knows something by the look on her face. She moves to the corner of the office and starts with, “Did you hear . . . ?” and the story continues. It’s a doozy, full of corporate and political intrigue, resulting in your inevitable response: “No. Way.”
Being part of a secret feels powerful. In a moment, the organization reveals a previously hidden part of itself, and in that moment you feel you can see more of the game board. So, that’s why they fired him. I was wondering. Grace finishes with the familiar, “Don’t tell anyone,” which is ironic since that’s precisely what was asked of her 15 minutes ago.
There is absolutely no way you’re going to prevent folks from randomly talking to each other about every bright and shiny thing that’s going on in your company. In fact, you want to encourage it. One-on-ones and meetings are only going to get you so far. The thing you can change is the quality of the information that’s wandering around the company.
In the absence of information, people make shit up. Worse, if they at all feel threatened, they make shit up that amplifies their worst fears. This is where those absolutely crazy rumors come from. See, Kristof is worried about losing his job, so he’s making up crazy conspiracy theories that explain why the man is out to get him.
Without active counter-investment, the Grapevine can be stronger than any individual. While you can’t kill the Grapevine, you can dubiously stare at it when it shows up on your doorstep and simply ask the person delivering it, “Do you actually believe this nonsense? Do you believe the person who fed you this trash?” Rumors hate to justify themselves, so give yourself a point if you make it a point to kill gossip.
A Start
Like the Joel Test, the point of the Rands Test is not the absolute score, though the score provides good directional information. If you got an 11, I’d say you’re in a rare group of people who have a clear picture of their company and where they fit in. Between 8 and 10, you are likely troublingly deficient in either communications, strategy, or your development—it depends where the points are missing. Less than 8 and I think you’ve got a couple of problems.
There are a lot of different scenarios I expect folks to find themselves in as they explore these questions, which is why it’s tricky to prescribe specific action. Your company may be doing well, but you may be unhappy and have no clue what you want to do next. You might love your job, but have no idea whether the company is actually growing. Your course is dependent on what you care about, and the Rands Test points out good places to start.