On a positive note, we just had a sprint retrospective today and the entire team gushed with praises for each other and we all agreed that team morale is great, and that we are accomplishing great things despite all the challenges we had been facing recently. I attribute this to a few things I’ve observed. First, we do have some extremely dedicated engineers who lead by example rather than granted authority. This garners huge respect for those members and makes everyone work that much harder so that they don’t disappoint anyone. Second, we have extremely positive non-technical members (PO, TL, SM) who are very encouraging, respectful, and willing to go to bat for anyone. Thus, we feel empowered and trusted. Third, we course correct, a lot. If there are problems and/or mistakes, we own up to them and focus on the solution. We face problems head-on instead engaging in finger-pointing and deflection. It’s honestly the best team I’ve ever worked with, and I will be sad when that has to end. I’ve worked on extremely toxic teams where all of the above what the exact opposite of what I just described and it usually ends in failure (through attrition, project realignment/cancellation, etc.). Oh, and the source of the toxicity is usually ONE person, but it spreads like a disease.
My first “real” job the director sat down with me and said “Look, everyone fucks up. It’s ok, someone just fucked up and we are all running around now because of it. Just be honest when you do it and everything will be fine.”
He was right, his department was great to work in. No recrimination for honest fuck ups (I took down a national banks ATMs for a few hours once).
It was a great place to work and everyone was better / more productive because of it. People were positive, honest, and adults!
Years later we joined a larger company. They acquired another company who had 3x the people doing half the work…. They were all about blame and recrimination. Their productivity was absolutely related to their culture. They were so follow the process / afraid of getting blamed (and people got blamed for no reason) that they were terrible / found the worst ways to work.
Yeah, I was almost afraid to post my comment because it could indeed seem sarcastic to someone not in the situation, but I assure you it was genuine. We’ve had sprints where everyone was frustrated, exhausted, and morale was low, and they made it known, so I trust that they’re being honest. That being said, I also don’t think that gushing with meaningless praise all the time is necessarily good either.
