Software development is a fast-paced environment. It's an endless cycle of improvements, making it hard to gauge whether your team is truly thriving. How can you tell if your technical team is on the right track?
Measuring success is tricky business. Unsure whether it's time to bring in a tech expert? Here are telltale signs that your engineers are in trouble.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Missed deadlines
Think this sounds obvious? You may only have that clarity when you aren't deep in a project.
When you're there in the thick of it, all sorts of explanations come up: Maybe you hit an unexpected roadblock. Maybe an emergency derailed the project as your team hurried to fix a new issue instead of working on the material they were initially assigned.
Whatever the reason, review why your team missed deadlines. If projects are consistently delayed, and especially if the product delivered was below expectations, your team is in trouble.
2. High turnover
Are engineers frequently leaving your team? Time to find out why morale is low. It could be anything from poor communication to burnout. If your devs display high levels of stress, fatigue, or disengagement, it's time to reevaluate.
Here are some details to look for:
A great engineer has an uptick in bugs or a drop in code quality.
Your team is staying quiet; avoiding suggesting improvements or taking initiative.
There's silence in meetings, fewer questions, and lack of discussion.
Peers are venting in private chats to each other instead of addressing issues constructively.
Sudden resignations. If top engineers leave, others may be inclined to follow.
Increased sick days & time off, especially without notice.
A lack of passion; they're doing the bare minimum and showing less enthusiasm.
More friction between team members or between the team + leadership.
Overwork without results; Long hours but little real progress.
Honest insights from departing employees that highlight unaddressed issues.
3. Bottlenecked decision-making
When a new decision needs to be made, who makes it? How long does it take? Your team may be great engineers, but they might have difficulty articulating their current challenges or aligning with other departments.
If there is any uncertainty about who has task authority, you're facing an issue. Poor communication only causes further confusion and delays.
4. Failure to adopt best practices
Don't avoid the hard work and research it takes to follow best practices.
Whether its outdated tools, a lack of automated testing, or a resistance to modern dev trends, lack of quality will eventually rear its ugly head: Increased technical debt, frequent bugs, and more. Your team will struggle to grow the product, infrastructure, or team size if it doesn't have a proper foundation.
Look for inefficient workflows, like a lack of clear objectives, or poor adherence to Agile or Scrum.
5. The Knowledge Silo
Every team has its best players. But if key individuals on your team are the sole holders of critical knowledge, failure is only a sick or vacation day away.
Your current team should be proposing and experimenting with new ideas and solutions, otherwise innovation is stalled.
If they aren't, how do we fill the knowledge gap?
Introduce a knowledge base or wiki (this could be in Confluence, Notion, or even a well-organized GitHub repo) to store key information. You may have to request the key individual to document the missing critical processes/architectures into this base.
Make documentation updates a recurring task, not a one-time effort.
Pair programmers / Shadowing days.
Rotate responsibilities
Host internal knowledge sessions (& record these for future reference)
Mandate cross-training
Make knowledge-sharing part of performance evaluations
6. Solutions have been temporary
You may have tried one, five, maybe dozens of third-party consultants already. But if they've only provided temporary fixes rather than building internal capabilities, you need an expert.
Sometimes you need a 3rd-party viewpoint on a confusing situation. An outside voice can reassess how the team works together. Bring in someone who will address your team's progress, processes, and dynamics, like one of our experts here at BearPeak.
This is the part where we toot our own horn, because we've seen quite a few dev teams dealing with a range of issues, and we know how to help. If you're interested in how our process works, let's chat! An intro call is free, with no strings and no stress, just insights: Let's talk about your team.
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