I’m on a quest to understand team productivity in software development. In other words, “How We Get Shit Done” (HWGSD).
This can be a bit controversial. For instance, what does it even mean to be a “productive programmer”? No matter how I answer, I’ll ruffle someone’s feathers.
But some aspects are more concrete — a little less scary. Let’s take meeting scheduling, for instance.
As Paul Graham says, some members of your team are managers. For the most part, their days are broken into hours and half-hours. Their meetings usually last 30, 60, or 90 minutes. If you want to have a meeting with them, it’s just a practical issue of finding a time.
But other team members makers: the programmers. They’re writing the code, getting creative, and problem solving. Their work isn’t robotic; it’s artistic and functional. Their fingerprints can be found on every line of code.
So, for a programmer, an hour is barely enough time to get into the zone, let alone make real progress. They might want to break their schedule down by by half-day, at most. Therefore, a 30-minute meeting with their manager would feel like an interruption, blowing their productivity for the rest of the day.
Alone, each type of schedule is fine. But together, they don’t play well.
To make matters worse, since managers are usually in positions of power, they can force everyone to conform to their schedules. The result: interrupted, annoyed, and unproductive programmers.
What’s the solution? As Paul Graham says, “[Use] the classic device for simulating the manager’s schedule within the maker’s: office hours.” Office Hours are chunks of time that programmers set aside for meetings. If Office Hours are placed at the beginning of end of the day, they can’t be an interruption.
This way, managers get what they need — brief face time with their programmers — and makers get what they need — long stretches of time to get shit done.
So simple, it might just work!
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Action items:
〉Take a moment to think: based on your job duties, are you a manager or a maker? What would your ideal schedule look like: open-ended or segmented by hour? How would your colleagues answer that question?
〉Work with your teammates to add Office Hours into the mix, making yourself (or your colleagues) happier and more productive.