Here’s an example we may be all too familiar with: a team is at the end of a sprint, and, in the 11th hour, right before a release, a critical defect is detected in the underlying Git code by a hero dev, saving the day and the sprint!
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Sounds great, right? Crisis averted!
However, while a good last-minute save is better than dealing with the fallout of a critical defect, what if this issue becomes chronic? What if, on a regular basis, your sprints involve a last-minute heroic save that averts disaster?
You may have an underlying issue that needs to be dealt with before another Hail Mary lands in your lap.
Are There Unhealthy Team Dynamics at Play?
The problem with waiting on a super-dev to save the day is that it encourages some team members to get lazy with their commits. If they suspect someone will swoop in at the last minute and catch their mistakes at the end of every release, why submit good Git commits at all? And what happens if your hero becomes tired of saving the day?
By relying on someone to fix every issue at the last minute, you as a manager may be nurturing bitter dynamics among your team members. It could be a sign of poor delegation or even micro-management and could be a symptom of issues that are festering on multiple levels.
For example, while saving the day in the short term, your sprint savior could be undermining feedback loops that build strong engineers over time. Team members “saved” by these individuals could begin to lose confidence in their work and backslide in their commit quality. Ultimately, a culture of laziness may crop up, and, as a manager, you might end up with an entire team of underperforming devs reliant on one (or a handful of) star performers that can only carry a whole project so far for so long. By relying too heavily on your overperformers, you may be pushing your best and brightest out the door while giving those with potential no reason to strive towards better Git commits.
How to Tell You’re Team’s Unbalanced
The first thing a good team manager needs to do, if they suspect there may be a dev or two maybe carrying water for multiple team members, is to recognize who’s waiting to “save the day” instead of handling assigned tasks. For example, your saviors likely will:
- Self-merge pull requests (likely right before a sprint deadline)
- Show a low regard for reviews (maybe others may not be providing substantive feedback, or perhaps the dev isn’t incorporating it into their commits)
- Showing low engagement on their tasks and high engagement on “saves”
- Attempting to manage the code review process
How to Avoid a Hail Mary Before a Deadline
The ideal process to commit submissions is to make them small and often while requesting reviews from time to time on larger projects. By following this process, you can gather feedback on the code early enough that minor problems don’t snowball into significant issues that need a last-minute save. If you have already spotted devs that desire “saving projects,” get them involved very early in the code review process and let them help catch these small mistakes, which will help them avoid more significant fixes down the line.
It’s best to help every team member avoid massive pull requests, especially when coming down to the wire at the end of a sprint. Engender a process that keeps pull requests small and often. This helps nurture collaboration, keeps devs from hoarding code, and shortens the review process (while making it easier to manage and provide feedback on).
Once you’ve recognized those devs that love a good save, don’t just stamp out Hail Marys. Instead, use their natural drive to fix as a way to strengthen the entire team by inviting them to provide actionable feedback to other team members. That way, you’re not just rewarding their naturally good behavior; you’re also using it to benefit the entire project in the long term.
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