Cell leads

[Fox (Fox Danger Piacenti)]

@anon46505572

I’m also a relatively junior developer, so keep in mind.

Could have fooled me, @anon46505572 . I’ve seen you pull off some crazy shit!

I’m feeling more confident after reading the responses of @jill , @adolfo , @anon46505572 , and @tikr that this is an idea that is worth pursuing. In fact after reflecting on it, I had the same thought that Adolfo did here:

@adolfo

there is nothing in the handbook that prevents cells from just giving all those roles (sprint planning manager, sprint manager, epic planning manager, recruitment manager, sustainability manager) to a single person.

In fact, if I recall, the handbook even specifically says that a person may have multiple roles.

@adolfo

In the BTR group we use “lazy consensus” for process decisions, which basically amounts to somebody suggesting something and if nobody in the group objects in a reasonable timeframe, the suggestion is adopted in the form of an ADR. It has worked reasonably well for the roughly 10-person group. I imagine something similar could work for each cell, with the obvious differences that instead of an ADR we’d have a PR to the handbook, and that @antoviaque and @braden have implicit veto power.

I think this is a solid approach to this problem.

@adolfo

Any objections to handling this at the cell level? This could lead to small variations in how each cell works, but that may be a good thing. At the very least, if only one cell takes the idea up, it’ll serve as an experiment.

As far as I’m concerned, cell-level experimentation is a key feature of cells that we have leveraged before and should continue to do.

@anon46505572

It could be ‘for each role or area of specialisation, at least N members must know everything’ where N is however high we want the bus factor.

For clarity, I wasn’t expecting EVERY cell member to know how to do anything, but was expressing the need to retain this degree of redundancy. My fear was that we would centralize too many cell planning features without redundancy, which would lead to a potential hierarchy forming by virtue of there being one specialist that had outsized control over cell direction.

There are a handful of questions that I think we need to address for this role’s case:

1. Does anyone on the @team actually have an interest in taking this position? We’ve talked in theoretics about having someone from the team fill this role, and it seems to me that would still be the best option, but one thing I’m reading between the lines is that this person is going to ‘do all the things we don’t want to do’, which means this person will likely have to be hired out. Then again, as pointed out, I was probably the only one on the team willing to take the BizDev role for my own reasons. Maybe someone has (as of yet) unstated reasons for wanting this position.
2. If we DO hire outside it’s worth noting that this position is going to look a lot like middle-management to most applicants. It’s going to take some work to craft the role in such a way that it comes clear what responsibilities/powers this person has and how they fit into the organization so they understand it to be a support role. @jill may be correct that the idea of managers not introducing hierarchy should be considered an outdated concept, but how far has this new paradigm penetrated the market? Everywhere I’ve worked aside from here, managers have been hierarchical.
3. How will redundancy be assured? I feel like keeping the three separate roles would still be a good thing, and we just assign them to one person in practice. Then, we have other team members be backup, who are kept abreast of their slice of process. If this person goes on vacation or is hit by a bus, we’d still have our redundancy. And we’d also have additional voices to push back on decisions that would otherwise tend to be unilateral because only one person had a bunch of the knowledge.

The main thing that prevents hierarchies from forming is the ability for other team members to act as a check on power. Hierarchies form as a matter of course when not actively planned against. So having redundant access and understanding of processes is going to be key here, even if we have one person be the driver of this role. If we can solve that I have no issue with this role being made.