When executives ask what engineers are working on, they're signaling distrust in your process and team structure. Sell your Agile choice proactively through regular communication instead of waiting for complaints. Show stakeholders you considered alternatives, and reinforce your reasoning repeatedly to build confidence.
Chapters
Why are people here after 6 PM? Give me a list of what every engineer is doing. What is this Agile thing? Do we do Scrum? You ever get these questions? What we're gonna do today is actually we're gonna walk through like what they really mean when they're asking you those things. And once you know what they actually mean, like, what are we going to do about it? How are we actually going to get ahead of it and how do we actually address it? When they're asking for that, you know, frankly, it speaks to a level of— a certain level of distrust of actually that they don't really believe that the right people are actually assigned to the right projects. And that's probably the reason why things aren't going fast enough or that they could be going faster, that they actually don't believe that the organizational structure and the project assignment structure and the process you've chosen is the optimal one. And this usually actually comes about because they're disappointed or not happy with why something isn't done and the speed with which they thought it should have been done, right? And so they're questioning the process choice and the assignments and those things as the reason behind it. We're not doing a great job convincing, explaining this is what's actually happening. And really, the reality is you don't want to do it the day that we're already late, right? You need to do this well before. This means that you actually have to be selling the process, the team structure, the assignment structure on a regular basis, right? It probably means they don't buy into whatever agile methodology you've chosen, whether it's Scrum, Kanban, or whatever else. They probably don't buy into the way that projects are actually divided across the teams and how the teams are organized. And so, you know, we probably need to be actually projecting and convincing the structure on a regular basis with the CEO here. And does this mean weekly? No, it does not mean weekly. But it does mean that it needs some regular reinvestment in that stuff to actually get them to buy in. And when you're buying in, and by the way, like, like all things we do in the world, it's not just being like, hey, here's the one answer, let me just sell you on it. Nor is it to be obstinate and just say like, this has to be the answer. The answer is probably somewhere in between, right? Like my personal tip, bring a couple scenarios. Like you probably know the right layout or the right scenario, the right org structure, but bring A, B, and C, even though you know B is going to be there, because he or she will be much more convinced that you're making the right choice if they understand that you're deciding between A, B, and C. Sometimes you come in hot just saying, we're gonna do B. They're thinking in the back of their head being like, well, are you actually thinking through A and C? Like, 'cause I heard company, you know, a friend's company's doing A, another company's doing C, and you never even talked about it. Are you being smart in your decision? We all know you were, but it's probably important to show your work by presenting A, B, and C and saying you're choosing B. 'Cause more than likely they'll be like, well, they'll turn around and say, well, what do you think we should do? And you say B. Great, now they're bought into the alternatives and why you chose B.
