'What are the engineers working on?' | CEO Translator (Ep. 1)

This is episode 1 of Jellyfish's "Questions Engineering Leaders Get Asked" series. In this episode Andrew Lau - Jellyfish Founder and part-time CEO Translator translates what CEOs really mean when they ask "What are the engineers working on?"

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Transcript:
"Why aren't people here after 6:00 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? We're going to do today is actually, we're going to walk through what they really mean when they're asking you those things. And once you know what they actually mean, what are we going to do about it? How are we actually get ahead of it? And how do we actually address it.

When they're asking for that, frankly, it speaks to 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 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 in 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 what else they probably don't buy into the way that projects are actually divvied across the teams and how the teams are organized. And so, we probably need to be actually projecting and convincing this 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 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's probably somewhere in between, right? My personal tip, bring a couple scenarios. 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's going to be there. Because he or she be much more convinced that you're making the right choice if they understand that you're deciding to A, B, and C. Sometimes you would come in hot just saying, "We're going to do B." They're thinking in the back of their head being like, "Well, are you actually thinking through A and C? As I heard a friends' 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. Because more than likely 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."