
Ask HN: How do you make sure your team completes the tasks they commit to doing? - gravy
What kind of criteria should you set for the team to meet their commitments for the sprint? Do you punish underperformers or just give underperformers less responsibility? If that&#x27;s the case, how do you build up their confidence and velocity?
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davismwfl
If you are the team lead or senior person the first thing you do is don't let
the team or an individual member overcommit what can be done. Managing
expectations is the first rule before you ever get to team performance.
Because if you fail at managing the teams internal or external expectations
than the chances of failure go up dramatically.

Second, every team member needs to provide input on what is reasonable to get
done and to be clear on what the expectations are. If the team isn't bought in
leadership failure goes up for individuals and the team. So let's say the team
has bought in and you have managed expectations externally and not let the
team overcommit. Now you have someone that isn't meeting the expectations on
your daily/weekly validation steps. You now need to have a conversation about
why and what is happening. Is it maintenance on another project or component
that is causing it, are there other outside factors, or is the person just
behind because of a lack of proper skillset etc.

So essentially, if you are doing this right, you get team by in, manage
expectations internal as well as external and than you follow up regularly so
you don't have a team failure or even an individual fail without plenty of
attempts to fix it or prevent it along the way. And when you are doing this,
you aren't approaching team members confrontationally, you are getting
feedback, understanding by listening and than communicating. Sometimes people
do need a little kick in the butt (so far I've never met anyone immune to that
need at some point), but most other times people need to be heard, and have
clear expectations.

If you follow this, the teams' confidence and velocity almost automatically go
up drastically. Holding people responsible is absolutely required, but you
need to first have clear and managed expectations as well as communication.

