Alberto Silveira, author, speaker and the head of engineering at LawnStarter, is dedicated to inspiring the tech leadership community.
Delayed time to market can impact potential revenue loss, missed opportunities for market share and decreased customer satisfaction. Not surprisingly, there is always pressure within software companies to ship as quickly as possible.
To put it into tangible context: According to a 2019 Gartner, Inc. survey, for 45% of product launches that are delayed, an average of 20% fail to meet their targets. However, the reason your company is not getting the desired ROI from your software teams may not be what you think. Let’s say the team is not delivering what you want when you need it. The question is, “Why?” Are they not fast enough, or are they not handing off the right thing?
As a chief technology officer and consultant to various software businesses, I’ve found two common culprits.
• The team is working on the wrong things. Often, it’s not about speed but focus on getting the right things out of the door.
• There is invisible work to be done. Your team is likely working hard on crucial things for the business beyond just coding or delivering new features.
Seldom is it the case that the team is avoiding work. More commonly, what happens is that the organization has poor communication and/or processes in place, and there’s no visibility into what is being worked on.
This leads to teams and individuals in which everyone is doing their best yet pulling in opposing directions. Picture a boat with oars going in different directions—uncoordinated and going nowhere even though everyone is busy. At this point, you are literally burning energy and moving in circles.
If your team is failing to produce deliverables, it’s often a result of your leadership approach, management structure or processes. How can you change this and get the software team to do what you need of them?
Leadership Fix: The Three-Step Trifecta
To tackle these challenges, leaders must rethink leadership and embrace three crucial principles. In my consultancy work, I always recommend starting at the top: preparing leaders to set up the culture and structure necessary for high-performance software teams.
1. Establish A North Star
Set a clear goal for everyone, every team and every department to follow. This North Star guides the entire organization and ensures everyone understands what needs to be done as well as why. This avoids confusion and keeps everyone aligned. If you don’t have a clear and well-defined vision that is broken down into small pieces that can be cascaded down to teams and individuals, that’s where you need to start. I’ve seen smaller, medium and larger companies struggle to set clear goals.
2. Streamline Communication
Communication is vital. Too many companies don’t prioritize this as they should, waiting until the organizational chart reaches a certain size (and chaos sets in). Build a communication strategy with standard definitions, establish specific channels and their uses and use a “single source of truth” for documentation and collaboration.
Regardless of your tool of choice, you must have one streamlined communication process in place—especially if you are working with distributed teams or nearshore staffing. Reflect on the importance, cost and value of each synchronous meeting you have. Many meetings can be combined or eliminated when the team’s communication flows as it should.
3. Embrace Data-Driven Decision-Making
It always fascinates me how many business decisions are made due to “gut feelings” or personal opinions. It is crucial for leaders to establish a culture of making fact-based decisions. The reasoning behind decisions should be logical and transparent. The more people understand how decisions are made, the better they will perform. Data-driven decisions promote a culture of empowerment that leads to trust, which results in higher efficiency and innovation.
Impact On Your Organization
The Gartner report also found that 78% of product managers who viewed improving collaboration internally as one of their top three roles experienced low product failure rates.
Implementing this trifecta should show positive results quickly. In three months, your software teams should have the clarity they need to increase deliverables. By six months, frustration should diminish, and key indicators should start to move in the right direction. By nine months, you won’t imagine operating without these principles.
By adopting, you won’t just be improving team dynamics; you’ll be laying the groundwork required to scale and bring your business to the next level.
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