HACKER Q&A
📣 revtreeleaf

Is being on multiple teams manageable?


I am working on three scrum teams at the moment in a lead role. That means I have calendar events for 3 daily stand-ups per day and each team has planning sessions, retros and other scrum ceremonies. I've been doing this for the last few months.

After SCRUM ceremonies, time allocated for ad-hoc meetings, time set aside for some other ad hoc stuff, I only have a couple of hours per team per week.

This is madness right? I've tried to bring it up with my manager and tell her that it isn't working. I have brought up the fact that context switching destroys any productivity and that I feel that I am accomplishing nothing other than attending meetings. I have brought up that I can't properly support the engineers on the team and that I can really only give them moral support and act as a sounding board for some issues they may face.

The advice given to me was to make a mini plan for my own time and to define the role I am in myself. This confuses me because it doesn't actually solve my issue that my time is spread too thin.

I was told I could choose to attend stand-ups where I had proper updates but as soon as I tried that I had a scrum master asking if I can resume going to the meetings. There's also an expectation that I know what the teams are doing.. so going to the stand-ups make sense in that regard (especially when WFH).

I can sense one team feeling let down by me and the fact that I can't spend any time working with them. Issues come up that should have been addressed in the past but there is no time to address them.

My real main issue is that time just flies by and I am learning nothing and accomplishing nothing. I am looking for feedback to understand if this is normal in a senior(-ish) role. Am I not thinking about it correctly? Or is this a bad way to work?

  👤 wrink Accepted Answer ✓ 

  This is madness right?
Yes, sounds like it

  My real main issue is that time just flies by and I am learning nothing and accomplishing nothing
If you are constantly bustling between meetings, needing to context switch between teams/products/features, it will make it more difficult to make headway/improvement in any one direction (sense of stagnation)

  The advice given to me was to make a mini plan for my own time and to define the role I am in myself. This confuses me because it doesn't actually solve my issue that my time is spread too thin.
Sounds like you can give yourself a title promotion, how about Principal Software Architect :) (just kidding). More seriously, one suggestion (other than reducing scope of responsibilities) might be to have the 3 teams nominate a go-between; you could then do a daily sync with each team's nominee and hopefully these syncs could reduce the amount of time spent you need to sit in the meetings yourself (to help free up some bandwidth, at least)
👤 PaulHoule
People who move to senior positions often feel like the work they are doing is not as productive as they were doing before, even if they are doing OK by the judgement of the people around them.

You "sense" that one team feels let down. How does your manager feel about your work? Have you been an advocate for that team with your manager? (e.g. not just "i am overwhelmed" but "i don't have the resources to give Team X" what it needs.) Can you help team X by letting something else slide or getting people to be more self-sufficient?