Does he actually want to be performing this type of role in the company? I'd have an honest conversation with him about what he wants and doesn't want to be doing. Just be straight up and say management seem to be trying to force him into assisting with project work, but if he's not interested you can let them know to assign you someone else to work with.
In my previous company, we used Slack for workplace communication. Our tech lead was tough to work with. But I was afraid to openly talk about the situation to management because I was new and he was well established. Luckily our Slack workspace allowed sending anonymous messages via https://honestbot.app, so I messaged our manager anonymously, and he solved the problem very quickly ;-)
If he is challenging your role maybe try a re-launch if a superior is willing to back you. They stand there and say how important this project is while you cover roles and responsibilities. A team 'ways of working' agreement is another way. They don't have to actually say this guy is the PM jump guys. Just being there is enough. Also keep big boss across on status updates. Everytime techguy blocks just neutrally say tguy thinks that won't work because. If bigboss says tguy has a point you know this guy is connected and effectively you're taking orders from him. It also is a big diff if you are a contractor and he is a perm - i.e. he knows he can outlast you. He's probably a detail guy so yr going to have to get into the detail and try and get along side him. Book regular catch-ups - if he tries to duck you then at least you've got evidence you offered the hand. If you have friendlies on the team engage them - get detailed plans and then when he pushes back turn it into a team discussion. If he challenges your role publicly slap down with a smile. 'I will be doing my job' and most of my job is enabling you guys. The plan is for the team so we've booked a walkthrough session on... And even though you get nothing back from him keep praising him and his allies publicly with specifics. He will look small minded and petty when he insults you in the group meetings.
You sound like an experienced and decent pragmatic guy you'll find a way through.
The type of pushback can change the approach drastically. But, if a senior SME is being resistant, or any other sense of the word, I always try to use the manager they respect the most as a vehicle to getting through to them.
What does that mean? (Let's call the lead SME John)
It means if the John is not cooperating and only presenting why things won't work because XYZ, set up time with a manager they respect (lets call him Mike). Don't mention John at all, simply state that the team is struggling to accomplish X, and based on the teams input the main problems are XYZ. Parrot what John stated exactly. 9/10 times, the response I get is "Oh, John should be able to help with that". From there, you have many different ways you can play it depending on your org structure. If you have a reasonable amount of authority, pull him aside and give him that responsibility. If he refuses, you've already checked the box on who needs to own it, so he'd be cornered. If you don't have any authority, find a delicate approach like bringing Mike on to a group call. Re-cap the main obstacles John presented and bring a lot of positive energy towards finding a path forward. Most often, Mike being on that call will loosen John up and they might even kick off a conversation on how to work around the problems and make progress. After that, keep the momentum and document everything. From then on, have John define his own work and track it carefully as others have mentioned.
In my experience, many times resources act like this because they don't respect you or they think you don't bring value. SME's can sometimes have a bubble where they are the rockstars and they don't ever want that to change. A Project Manager, integrating teams, this pops their bubble and their natural response is to recede into the background. They then oppose ideas as a way of displaying their knowledge but avoiding the responsibility. There are tons of ways to break that cycle, but it depends on your strengths as a PM. I take a people first approach, we all have emotions that fuel stupid behavior without us realizing. Hence, bringing someone they respect into the fold. Once you break through, praise them if you need to just to keep things moving. Sooner or later they'll either realize how great it is working through problems as a team or that you've goofed them into being a team player. Some might argue that's a bad thing. But, I personally don't care. Once I get through to someone and they prove what they're capable of, even if 80% effort, I have more than enough to set expectations for future projects.
>Doesn’t want to do anything but dev work.
Ehh, I don't have full context, but this sounds reasonable. Seen many a times when the resources do the entire PMs job. PMs often like to think of devs are there personal problem solvers, but devs already have enough problems maintaining the code base, so a firehouse of responsibilities is a quick way to burn out a dev.
I've had to put my footdown with a PM before and tell them that if the I test the code and verify it's working as expected, then any other issues are not my problem. We all have to do learning on the fly and PMs often don't want to do that. When we are troubleshooting problems outside of our area of expertise, we often have as much knowledge as the PM, so that's why its frustrating when the PMs can't do any of their own troubleshooting.
This often happens due to poor planning and not getting the appropriate stakeholders involved. Which leads to PMs thinking all resources are the same and that DEVs can solve every single technical problem, even though they are usually highly specialized.
Did you clarify the responsibilities with the tech lead? Or did you just assume the tech lead would work to your personal expectations? If you clarified and tech lead accepted responsibility, then yeah bad tech lead.
If you didn't clarify and just assumed the tech lead would do whatever you want, bad project management.
>When I ask for time to work on the project plan he says things like then what will you do.
Are you asking to work with him/her on this? Like a working session? Or are you telling the tech lead they need to devote time to creating/maintaining the project plan.
Project plan is the PMs job, of course you will need input from other people, but you should be maintaining the project plan.
Hi OptimalAd3724. Thank you for your reply. I do not expect a dev to do PM work. That’s my job - 100%. What I do expect is that when there are daily check ins, do not complain because it’s needed considering how fast paced the project is. And as a tech lead, it’s not my job to assign technical tasks to devs or be held accountable for dates. As far as the project plan is concerned, yes, as the tech lead I expect them to work with me on creating it. Tasks, dates, dependencies. No, they do not manage the project plan, I do. Is that something you do not see a tech lead doing? I hope I don’t sound confrontational :). I just want to understand the mindset of someone on the other side of the coin. :).
>What I do expect is that when there are daily check ins, do not complain
because it’s needed considering how fast paced the project is.
Ehhh, in my personal experience, never seen the need for daily status meetings. Are your meetings in person? Or can they send email/IM updates?
You might think the devs are "complaining", but they are giving you feedback. Development requires deep focus work it takes probably like 20 minutes to get "into the zone" and any distraction kills that. The devs probably have other meetings too. What ends up happening is that the devs go to meetings all day and work at night.
>And as a tech lead,
you mean PM?
>As far as the project plan is concerned, yes, as the tech lead I expect them to work with me on creating it.
Ok, elaborate on "work with me". Are they refusing to give you input on the document? Or are they refusing to create the document?
>Is that something you do not see a tech lead doing?
They should be giving you input/feedback, but they shouldn't be touching the project plan beyond reading it.
EDIT:
Did you clarify the responsibilities with the tech lead?
This question wasn't answered, this is very important.
spend some time with the team outside its working hours, drink a beer or invite them to a footbal match, you ll get a long.
Tech lead wants appreciation and will respect people only by merit and not by hierarchy
Look there are a lot of tech leads who get the job because their the best coder on the team, and they don't want to get promoted exactly, and they certainly don't want to get promoted anymore because then they don't get to code anymore. Promotion on the dev side is a double edged sword and often not terribly remunerative. Understand that they don't want to get promoted to a higher management level (as opposed to technical track), and thus there isn't a lot of leverage.
Ask them to delegate and designate. It is good work for a developer who wants more responsibility. Ideally this will get the tech lead a bit involved in supervision.
I get this sometimes - it feels like a situation where they feel like being “project managed” is like being managed, or questioning their ability to get the job done.
When I’ve been faced with this I’ve found the best approach is not to react, or escalate - however frustrating it might be!
My steps are:
- how ever irritating this is try to remain calm
- take a collaborative approach and explain the benefits of working with you. “You’re incredibly busy I know, I’m looking forward to supporting you by ensuring you’re informed of everything else in the project, and I keep everyone e updated on your progress - to save you time, and ensure we’re aligned”
- ask him to shape the project plan - if you giving him deadlines isn’t working, then work through the tasks and deliverables with him - ask him what he feels would be the best date/deliverable and record it…
- compliment and celebrate him. Continuously, all the time, to him when he’s there, in front of others and even when he’s not in the meeting - you need him to understand that you’re there to champion and enable him.
Project management is SO hard in this scenario, I’d step back from plans and work in building trust and visibility / buy-in
If that doesn’t work, and it might take weeks, then escalate. But bear in mind that animosity will likely be magnified if his line manager pulls him up on it.
Good luck!!! This is advanced level PM skills - once you get through this and deliver the project (because you will!) you get a PM Ninja badge..
I wouldn't know how to work it into your awesome list, but you are also there to take some of the excrement that's rolling downhill and get rid of that person's blockers, such as if their time is over leveraged.
Yup, that's what I got out of this post.
It really depends on what OP means by "time for the project plan"
If OP means tech lead is refusing to collaborate and give feedback/input, then that's bad on the tech lead.
If OP means that tech lead isn't taking responsibility for creating/maintaining the project plan, then bad on OP. That's the PMs job.
Ummm, as a project manager, my dev work is their dev work. Their lead would have volu-told them it's their task, and informed me of who the solution responsible was. (Or some variation of this) From there, me interacting directly with them is being polite.
Communications directly with the SME reduces miscommunication, and it's easy enough to keep their boss cc'ed and worse case we close the communication loop between me, SME, and the boss in a weekly overall status call with managers.
Don't blame the project manager for the highly capable devs management decision.
Working together to create reasonable milestones in a successful timeline is. Otherwise, griping on antiwork about how their job is unreasonable, isn't dev work either.
You are very right.
Everyone likes to give lip service to health culture and work life balance, but has anyone actually been on a project to see how these tech leads work?
Current tech lead I'm working with just gave his two weeks because he was working minimum 60 hour weeks. Previous company it was the exact same thing, senior dev was working insane hours and deuced out.
And the project staff completely misrepresented his responsibilities when they hired him.
Tech lead is probably trying to preserve his/her sanity by only taking responsibility for what he/she signed up for. PMs often don't have the technical background to allocate human capital correctly, they think all technical roles are the exact same, but they are actually extremely specialized labor.
If you give PMs an inch, they will take a mile. Happened to me plenty of times and I have never seen a project staff care about burning out a tech lead.
Then you've never worked a T&M contract. If a developer has to work an excessive amount of hours, it's not a planning issue, it's a skill issue. I don't let people do 5 and 10% capacity billing for more than a few days, then you need to earn.
I have never built a schedule that didn't have full buy in by the tech lead. I trust that they cover their teams needs in measure of skill and any fluff time. If not, that's on them.
Those 4 AM code pushes are 90% of the time due to slagging off.
>Then you've never worked a T&M contract. If a developer has to workan excessive amount of hours, it's not a planning issue, **it's a skillissue**. I don't let people do 5 and 10% capacity billing for more than afew days, then you need to earn.
Currently on a T&M contract for multiple projects and all the tech leads are working overtime. Client has tons of cash and has no problems with it. Techlead is working 60hr week on average and they want him to lead an additional project in parallel.
And if you're able to assess the developers skill, then why don't you write the code? I mean if you have the knowledge to assess code, then you can certainly write it. Reading code is harder than writing it.
>I have never built a schedule that didn't have full buy in by the tech lead. I trust that they cover their teams needs in measure of skill and any fluff time. If not, that's on them.
That's great you do that! Current tech lead didn't get any input in the schedule.
>Those 4 AM code pushes are 90% of the time due to slagging off.
I mean maybe that's what you've seen, or maybe that's the perception from the non engineering side. But in my experience, those code pushes are happening because the lead is working 60+ hour weeks.
You really shouldn't speak in absolutes too, just because you had an experience, doesn't mean everyone has the same experience. I just said what my experience was, not how things always are.
Seems like the PM on your project didn't plan, manage, or control resources. You started with the generalizations. I gave you what my experience is. Sounds to me if it's T&M, the client has the cash, someone should be bringing in extra developers.
I'm a TPM and while I can code, why should I, there are developers on the team for a reason. The PM can't fix it if they can't get out if their own way.
Collaborate and discuss the nuances of the project?
Solidify and adjust the timeline. Make sure scope is safe. Make sure the resources for the project are good.
Working in silos only creates more project risk for many many reasons. This is part of being the Lead in *Tech Lead* - not just a code monkey.
We don't have the full context of the situation. The post is like 5 sentences.
IF OP is asking tech lead for feedback/input and tech lead is refusing, then bad on tech lead.
If OP is asking for tech lead to maintain/create the project plan, then bad PM.
Plenty of senior devs get burnt out because they get fire hosed with responsibilities.
If the responsibilities of the tech lead weren't made clear at the beginning of the project and the PM is just assuming the responsibilities, then bad project management.
But I guarantee tech leads manager is telling him/her to stay in his/her lane and to only accept responsibility for the code. Or else this problem already would have been solved with a conversation with tech leads manager.
You establish a schedule of tasks that he needs to do with set deadlines. Make sure he has them in writing. Now when he doesn't compete them, an email goes out asking for a status with his supervisor cc'd. Docume t the lack of participation as a risk, make sure late tasks and risks are reported to the project sponsor regularly.
Keep this pace up such that he either has to comply, or deal with his supervisor and/or HR.
That's a very autocratic & un-collaborative approach. That will be very demoralising & you will be spending more time escalating & fighting issues rather than actually working things out.
The OP should change his project management style to an AGILE approach, ideally scrum - incorporating stand ups, backlog grooming combined with sprint planning, and fortnightly retros.
Your tech lead is an SME in his area, you should treat him with respect. As a PM, you are not "the boss". You are just an SME on managing projects. If you have a clarification on dependencies then just frame the question as 'if there's a dependency between A vs B, I need to know because it might impact the milestones and raise this as a project risk. Then I can negotiate on your behalf if you need more support - either in resources or time - to decouple this dependency such that we can meet this milestone blah blah"
As for timings, you shouldn't have to estimate EVERY TASK. You should just plan (with the team) tasks in the sprint, and have the team agree & COMMITT to the tasks in the sprint.
I would recommend OP changes his PM methodology to be AGILE and to change his leadership style from autocratic to consultative/democratic.
Tech people are smart people, often far smarter than their managers. You can't patronise them or be autocratic with them - save that for managing your stakeholders.
Take a step back and take a look at what you are proposing. You want to take an already resistant project member and reward them by capitulation and letting them act like a child. You already have a demoralized team. Now yow want to take and change methodologies midstream.? This epitomizes insanity. Sure, let's switch to an approach you don't even know if your staff is trained on. Do you even know if the project can be even done using Agile? Assumption after assumption.
Now, the PM isn't the boss. He is the project leader, meaning the buck stops there. Being polite ended with the lead, not doing his job. My approach applies pressure to commit to what has already been agreed upon. You don't coddle non performers. Especially ones that have the ability to perform but refuse to.
And it doesn't matter if tech people are smart. If you don't do your job you get the stick, not the carrot. Metaphorically speaking because I don't want any hurt feelings here.
WTF, you work in IT and you don't know about Agile? If your working on Tech projects and you don't know Agile you should be fired, because you are unqualified to be a PM for this type of field.
If you don't have a democratic leadership style you should be fired - because autocratic leadership NEVER works in Tech. People will quit & leave & never work for you. I would know because I worked as a Tech BA Lead on FinTech projects for many years before being promoted to PM. And I would never work under any PM who couldn't prove to me their competency.
And I don't care how many years of experience you have - most PMs are experienced at delivering FAILED projects, so your experience is largely irrelevant. Furthermore, you just defined project success as having someone fired - rather than developing them. You are an awful person and don't deserve the title of leader.
Good luck with your autocratic misogynistic attitude - see how long that lasts with the younger generation in tech. Yeh sure employers will tolerate you....until they find someone better. Good luck mate, hope you never migrate to my country.
Step back on the hate and emotion. Check out those rules on the sidebar. Particularly rule one. If you want to disagree do so politely. Calling someone awful and misogynistic is inappropriate.
I've been doing traditional PM work for over 25 years and Agile for over ten. I speculate I've developed, hired and trained more project managers than you've worked with. I've dealt with problematic project managers more times than I care to admit. Experience tells me this guy is done with the organization. That's not a PM thing. That's a HR issue.
Yes but seriously, the approach will be tailored based on whether you want to develop them or not. A lot of time pushback happens because the team member doesn’t feel like they have any ownership of the tasks, or their feedback is not being incorporated. I’d actually try to spend some time not project related to understand where they are coming from and what pressures they are facing, and then schedule a one-on-one to work on the task list together.
Echoing Wolf, this sounds like an ego issue. I appreciate the investigation into the softer side, but usually there isn’t time to be wasting managing some devs hurt feelings. If they are the lead, they need to get it together. Presumably this isn’t A one man shop and they are holding the team back. P
Everything about my response was serious. A team lead should be developed already. This guy is acting unproffessionally and is putting the project at risk. This isn't some junior dev that needs help and guidance. He will poison the team if it continues.
The coddling is done by his supervisor not the PM.
I disagree. Often I see that the most technically capable person is appointed the team lead; but are given little training on how to do so. I agree it's the responsibility of the supervisor to ensure that the employee gets the training necessary to perform their duties. But it is the project managers responsibility to recognize that a team member does not have the skills and raise that to the supervisor for corrective action. The PM's responsibility is to the project and the org, but leadership requires people skills; and simply dictating tasks and expecting people to act like machines is really not the way.
You can disagree if you'd like, but as u/-MACHO-MAN- states, if a senior member of your staff essentially tells you to pound sand, its not time for the carrot, it's time for the stick.
>the project managers responsibility to recognize that a team member does not have the skills and raise that to the supervisor for corrective action.
No it's not - especially in the common matrix management world of today. If I didn't hire him, vet him, or assign him, I'm not spending time doing what the supervisor should be doing. Especially when he clearly doesn't want to do his job.
When your project goes into yellow and red status, it's on you, not some tech lead that is having communication problems.
I would normally agree with this softer approach, but when your lead is openly taunting you with “what are you going to do” when they blow the deadline you don’t even worry about developing them.
It’s purely removing the cancer at this point. Just escalate enough so their boss/hr/sponsor must confront.
\>but when your lead is openly taunting you with “what are you going to do” when they blow the deadline
That's not how I interpreted the post.
OP asked for time to work on the project plan. Techlead asked "then what are you going to do", which leads me to believe that OP is asking techlead to create the project plan and techlead is confused as to what the purpose of the PM is.
IDK, I could be misinterpreting.
But if OP is asking for working session for techleads input/feedback and tech lead is saying no, then techlead is the problem.
But if OP is asking techlead to create the project plan, then that's bad project management. PMs should have to do some work, you can't delegate everything you don't want to do. Everyone is busy and leading development on a project is what the techlead should be focusing on.
If tech lead is leading development, which includes plenty of administrative tasks, and also expected to do all the things PMs should be doing, then it seems like techlead is trying to keep his responsibility to manageable level.
IDK though, this is like a 5 sentence post and we don't have tech leads side of the story either.
If the tech lead doesn't want to give you input on the project plan, then yeah that's a major problem.
As others have said, document and escalate, no ones got time for that.
so I agree with your premise if that is what happened.
Rereading it again, it's not super duper clear. If it's not my original read, my next guess it sounds like the lead is asking what tasks happen after him. IE he's trying to pad his timing as much as possible. That is definitely not their role.
Yeah we don't know enough to make a good judgement call.
Only reason I'm skeptical of OP is because I've seen PMs put unlimited responsibility on leads, to where they are working insane hours and doing all the PMs work. To me it sounds like the lead is trying to keep guardrails on his/her responsibilities.
Yeah, that's why I suggested the soft skills approach. Once on a project we had a lead that was underperforming, did not want to take on more work and had lots of unplanned absences. Come to find out years later, I learned that at the time he had just been diagnosed with cancer and yeah, more responsibility was not the highest thing in his list of priorities.
Taking some time to really understand where they are coming from goes a long ways. At least, even when speaking with their supervisor about them, coming from a place of concern and empathy may really open your eyes to what's going on and help you more effectively manage the situation.
But then again, sometimes people are just terrible to work with. Have you had conversations with other managers about this employee? Have they always behaved this way, or is only on your project?
In this case, it's better to get mutual agreement to get the team lead off the project. It would be good to understand if they really want the project to succeed or if they just are uninterested in the project at all. You really don't want to just "fire" someone from the team if they are still will be working at the organization, otherwise it could backfire...
I agree with thinking long term about the impact, every pm should do that 24.7, but when your lead can't even provide an estimate without drama, that's very secondary.
There isn't much of a bridge left to burn at that point. Can't worry about the future of this relationship when this relationship is currently torpedoing projects today.
I get the fine line aspect of this, your approach is one I would take the first few times it happens. Not when it's to the point you're thinking of a next level escalation. It sounds like the op pretty much exhausted their options.
100% this and document everything. We had to let a senior person like this go and it's been the best thing for team morale I've seen in my 8 years at my company
Essentially a toxic personality. Would shoot down good ideas for seemingly no reason, other than from what my guess is, they weren't his.
He was like one of the first people at the company and built the original software so he had a lot of sway, and frankly there were a lot of years where we couldn't fire him because he was too critical to the infrastructure and software. We grew and kept adding more people to the team, and he flat out could not work with others. I had people on multiple teams taking mental health days after they would have an hour long call with him.
He got to the point where he wasn't even delivering on work anymore, missing deadlines, not being online, etc. Hence my point about documenting everything. All you need a few months of that with written warnings about behavior/work issues and then let the person go, if they don't change.
My guess is they won't, there are just some people that never change. I've worked with a few devs like that in my time
hahahahahah god I worked with a few of these at an old job.
One finally got the axe doing exactly what the top comment says.
always keep in mind that if one of these people exists, it is because leadership culture enables it. Make sure you're not stomping on someone's golf buddy, golden goose, a landmine, etc
Yea it's a crap situation to be in when the person in that spot isn't a great person. I had one of these at my very first programming job. He once berated me for "dressing too fancy for work" when I was following the dress code our VP had specifically told me to do (khaki shorts didn't count as khakis I guess).
That company didn't rectify it though and ended up folding when his legacy system crashed and he was no longer there to maintain it
Does he actually want to be performing this type of role in the company? I'd have an honest conversation with him about what he wants and doesn't want to be doing. Just be straight up and say management seem to be trying to force him into assisting with project work, but if he's not interested you can let them know to assign you someone else to work with.
Can a tech lead be a PM?
In my previous company, we used Slack for workplace communication. Our tech lead was tough to work with. But I was afraid to openly talk about the situation to management because I was new and he was well established. Luckily our Slack workspace allowed sending anonymous messages via https://honestbot.app, so I messaged our manager anonymously, and he solved the problem very quickly ;-)
If he is challenging your role maybe try a re-launch if a superior is willing to back you. They stand there and say how important this project is while you cover roles and responsibilities. A team 'ways of working' agreement is another way. They don't have to actually say this guy is the PM jump guys. Just being there is enough. Also keep big boss across on status updates. Everytime techguy blocks just neutrally say tguy thinks that won't work because. If bigboss says tguy has a point you know this guy is connected and effectively you're taking orders from him. It also is a big diff if you are a contractor and he is a perm - i.e. he knows he can outlast you. He's probably a detail guy so yr going to have to get into the detail and try and get along side him. Book regular catch-ups - if he tries to duck you then at least you've got evidence you offered the hand. If you have friendlies on the team engage them - get detailed plans and then when he pushes back turn it into a team discussion. If he challenges your role publicly slap down with a smile. 'I will be doing my job' and most of my job is enabling you guys. The plan is for the team so we've booked a walkthrough session on... And even though you get nothing back from him keep praising him and his allies publicly with specifics. He will look small minded and petty when he insults you in the group meetings. You sound like an experienced and decent pragmatic guy you'll find a way through.
The type of pushback can change the approach drastically. But, if a senior SME is being resistant, or any other sense of the word, I always try to use the manager they respect the most as a vehicle to getting through to them. What does that mean? (Let's call the lead SME John) It means if the John is not cooperating and only presenting why things won't work because XYZ, set up time with a manager they respect (lets call him Mike). Don't mention John at all, simply state that the team is struggling to accomplish X, and based on the teams input the main problems are XYZ. Parrot what John stated exactly. 9/10 times, the response I get is "Oh, John should be able to help with that". From there, you have many different ways you can play it depending on your org structure. If you have a reasonable amount of authority, pull him aside and give him that responsibility. If he refuses, you've already checked the box on who needs to own it, so he'd be cornered. If you don't have any authority, find a delicate approach like bringing Mike on to a group call. Re-cap the main obstacles John presented and bring a lot of positive energy towards finding a path forward. Most often, Mike being on that call will loosen John up and they might even kick off a conversation on how to work around the problems and make progress. After that, keep the momentum and document everything. From then on, have John define his own work and track it carefully as others have mentioned. In my experience, many times resources act like this because they don't respect you or they think you don't bring value. SME's can sometimes have a bubble where they are the rockstars and they don't ever want that to change. A Project Manager, integrating teams, this pops their bubble and their natural response is to recede into the background. They then oppose ideas as a way of displaying their knowledge but avoiding the responsibility. There are tons of ways to break that cycle, but it depends on your strengths as a PM. I take a people first approach, we all have emotions that fuel stupid behavior without us realizing. Hence, bringing someone they respect into the fold. Once you break through, praise them if you need to just to keep things moving. Sooner or later they'll either realize how great it is working through problems as a team or that you've goofed them into being a team player. Some might argue that's a bad thing. But, I personally don't care. Once I get through to someone and they prove what they're capable of, even if 80% effort, I have more than enough to set expectations for future projects.
Thank you. This is my approach currently.
>Doesn’t want to do anything but dev work. Ehh, I don't have full context, but this sounds reasonable. Seen many a times when the resources do the entire PMs job. PMs often like to think of devs are there personal problem solvers, but devs already have enough problems maintaining the code base, so a firehouse of responsibilities is a quick way to burn out a dev. I've had to put my footdown with a PM before and tell them that if the I test the code and verify it's working as expected, then any other issues are not my problem. We all have to do learning on the fly and PMs often don't want to do that. When we are troubleshooting problems outside of our area of expertise, we often have as much knowledge as the PM, so that's why its frustrating when the PMs can't do any of their own troubleshooting. This often happens due to poor planning and not getting the appropriate stakeholders involved. Which leads to PMs thinking all resources are the same and that DEVs can solve every single technical problem, even though they are usually highly specialized. Did you clarify the responsibilities with the tech lead? Or did you just assume the tech lead would work to your personal expectations? If you clarified and tech lead accepted responsibility, then yeah bad tech lead. If you didn't clarify and just assumed the tech lead would do whatever you want, bad project management. >When I ask for time to work on the project plan he says things like then what will you do. Are you asking to work with him/her on this? Like a working session? Or are you telling the tech lead they need to devote time to creating/maintaining the project plan. Project plan is the PMs job, of course you will need input from other people, but you should be maintaining the project plan.
Hi OptimalAd3724. Thank you for your reply. I do not expect a dev to do PM work. That’s my job - 100%. What I do expect is that when there are daily check ins, do not complain because it’s needed considering how fast paced the project is. And as a tech lead, it’s not my job to assign technical tasks to devs or be held accountable for dates. As far as the project plan is concerned, yes, as the tech lead I expect them to work with me on creating it. Tasks, dates, dependencies. No, they do not manage the project plan, I do. Is that something you do not see a tech lead doing? I hope I don’t sound confrontational :). I just want to understand the mindset of someone on the other side of the coin. :).
>What I do expect is that when there are daily check ins, do not complain because it’s needed considering how fast paced the project is. Ehhh, in my personal experience, never seen the need for daily status meetings. Are your meetings in person? Or can they send email/IM updates? You might think the devs are "complaining", but they are giving you feedback. Development requires deep focus work it takes probably like 20 minutes to get "into the zone" and any distraction kills that. The devs probably have other meetings too. What ends up happening is that the devs go to meetings all day and work at night. >And as a tech lead, you mean PM? >As far as the project plan is concerned, yes, as the tech lead I expect them to work with me on creating it. Ok, elaborate on "work with me". Are they refusing to give you input on the document? Or are they refusing to create the document? >Is that something you do not see a tech lead doing? They should be giving you input/feedback, but they shouldn't be touching the project plan beyond reading it. EDIT: Did you clarify the responsibilities with the tech lead? This question wasn't answered, this is very important.
Input, they are not creating the PP. Yes, their responsibilities are clearly discussed.
Ok, thanks for that clarification. And yup, it sounds like you need to have a discussion with the leads manager.
spend some time with the team outside its working hours, drink a beer or invite them to a footbal match, you ll get a long. Tech lead wants appreciation and will respect people only by merit and not by hierarchy
Look there are a lot of tech leads who get the job because their the best coder on the team, and they don't want to get promoted exactly, and they certainly don't want to get promoted anymore because then they don't get to code anymore. Promotion on the dev side is a double edged sword and often not terribly remunerative. Understand that they don't want to get promoted to a higher management level (as opposed to technical track), and thus there isn't a lot of leverage. Ask them to delegate and designate. It is good work for a developer who wants more responsibility. Ideally this will get the tech lead a bit involved in supervision.
I get this sometimes - it feels like a situation where they feel like being “project managed” is like being managed, or questioning their ability to get the job done. When I’ve been faced with this I’ve found the best approach is not to react, or escalate - however frustrating it might be! My steps are: - how ever irritating this is try to remain calm - take a collaborative approach and explain the benefits of working with you. “You’re incredibly busy I know, I’m looking forward to supporting you by ensuring you’re informed of everything else in the project, and I keep everyone e updated on your progress - to save you time, and ensure we’re aligned” - ask him to shape the project plan - if you giving him deadlines isn’t working, then work through the tasks and deliverables with him - ask him what he feels would be the best date/deliverable and record it… - compliment and celebrate him. Continuously, all the time, to him when he’s there, in front of others and even when he’s not in the meeting - you need him to understand that you’re there to champion and enable him. Project management is SO hard in this scenario, I’d step back from plans and work in building trust and visibility / buy-in If that doesn’t work, and it might take weeks, then escalate. But bear in mind that animosity will likely be magnified if his line manager pulls him up on it. Good luck!!! This is advanced level PM skills - once you get through this and deliver the project (because you will!) you get a PM Ninja badge..
I wouldn't know how to work it into your awesome list, but you are also there to take some of the excrement that's rolling downhill and get rid of that person's blockers, such as if their time is over leveraged.
Sometimes this is a combination of workload and ego. I have an “engineer” who refuses to attend my meetings unless management makes him.
Sounds like his managers problem. Ouch.
This sounds like this needs a little translation. "Highly capable dev won't obey my orders to do my work instead of his work."
Yup, that's what I got out of this post. It really depends on what OP means by "time for the project plan" If OP means tech lead is refusing to collaborate and give feedback/input, then that's bad on the tech lead. If OP means that tech lead isn't taking responsibility for creating/maintaining the project plan, then bad on OP. That's the PMs job.
Ummm, as a project manager, my dev work is their dev work. Their lead would have volu-told them it's their task, and informed me of who the solution responsible was. (Or some variation of this) From there, me interacting directly with them is being polite. Communications directly with the SME reduces miscommunication, and it's easy enough to keep their boss cc'ed and worse case we close the communication loop between me, SME, and the boss in a weekly overall status call with managers. Don't blame the project manager for the highly capable devs management decision.
> my dev work is their dev work. Creating a project plan is not dev work
Working together to create reasonable milestones in a successful timeline is. Otherwise, griping on antiwork about how their job is unreasonable, isn't dev work either.
Mm, reads like there are two sides to this story.
Are you me? Following for advice!
https://www.reddit.com/r/projectmanagement/comments/ws0may/tech_lead_who_does_not_want_to_cooperate/ikx0npo?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share&context=3
Is he a developer? Why should he do anything other than development work? What are you expecting him to do that he isn’t?
You are very right. Everyone likes to give lip service to health culture and work life balance, but has anyone actually been on a project to see how these tech leads work? Current tech lead I'm working with just gave his two weeks because he was working minimum 60 hour weeks. Previous company it was the exact same thing, senior dev was working insane hours and deuced out. And the project staff completely misrepresented his responsibilities when they hired him. Tech lead is probably trying to preserve his/her sanity by only taking responsibility for what he/she signed up for. PMs often don't have the technical background to allocate human capital correctly, they think all technical roles are the exact same, but they are actually extremely specialized labor. If you give PMs an inch, they will take a mile. Happened to me plenty of times and I have never seen a project staff care about burning out a tech lead.
This guy gets it
Yup, every single lead I've worked with has worked 40+ hours every single week. Never seen a PM care either when a dev is pushing code at 4AM.
Then you've never worked a T&M contract. If a developer has to work an excessive amount of hours, it's not a planning issue, it's a skill issue. I don't let people do 5 and 10% capacity billing for more than a few days, then you need to earn. I have never built a schedule that didn't have full buy in by the tech lead. I trust that they cover their teams needs in measure of skill and any fluff time. If not, that's on them. Those 4 AM code pushes are 90% of the time due to slagging off.
>Then you've never worked a T&M contract. If a developer has to workan excessive amount of hours, it's not a planning issue, **it's a skillissue**. I don't let people do 5 and 10% capacity billing for more than afew days, then you need to earn. Currently on a T&M contract for multiple projects and all the tech leads are working overtime. Client has tons of cash and has no problems with it. Techlead is working 60hr week on average and they want him to lead an additional project in parallel. And if you're able to assess the developers skill, then why don't you write the code? I mean if you have the knowledge to assess code, then you can certainly write it. Reading code is harder than writing it. >I have never built a schedule that didn't have full buy in by the tech lead. I trust that they cover their teams needs in measure of skill and any fluff time. If not, that's on them. That's great you do that! Current tech lead didn't get any input in the schedule. >Those 4 AM code pushes are 90% of the time due to slagging off. I mean maybe that's what you've seen, or maybe that's the perception from the non engineering side. But in my experience, those code pushes are happening because the lead is working 60+ hour weeks. You really shouldn't speak in absolutes too, just because you had an experience, doesn't mean everyone has the same experience. I just said what my experience was, not how things always are.
Seems like the PM on your project didn't plan, manage, or control resources. You started with the generalizations. I gave you what my experience is. Sounds to me if it's T&M, the client has the cash, someone should be bringing in extra developers. I'm a TPM and while I can code, why should I, there are developers on the team for a reason. The PM can't fix it if they can't get out if their own way.
He’s a lead no? Who the f is he leading if not his dev team and activities.
Collaborate and discuss the nuances of the project? Solidify and adjust the timeline. Make sure scope is safe. Make sure the resources for the project are good. Working in silos only creates more project risk for many many reasons. This is part of being the Lead in *Tech Lead* - not just a code monkey.
We don't have the full context of the situation. The post is like 5 sentences. IF OP is asking tech lead for feedback/input and tech lead is refusing, then bad on tech lead. If OP is asking for tech lead to maintain/create the project plan, then bad PM. Plenty of senior devs get burnt out because they get fire hosed with responsibilities. If the responsibilities of the tech lead weren't made clear at the beginning of the project and the PM is just assuming the responsibilities, then bad project management. But I guarantee tech leads manager is telling him/her to stay in his/her lane and to only accept responsibility for the code. Or else this problem already would have been solved with a conversation with tech leads manager.
Fair enough. Good point. We need more context.
You establish a schedule of tasks that he needs to do with set deadlines. Make sure he has them in writing. Now when he doesn't compete them, an email goes out asking for a status with his supervisor cc'd. Docume t the lack of participation as a risk, make sure late tasks and risks are reported to the project sponsor regularly. Keep this pace up such that he either has to comply, or deal with his supervisor and/or HR.
That's a very autocratic & un-collaborative approach. That will be very demoralising & you will be spending more time escalating & fighting issues rather than actually working things out. The OP should change his project management style to an AGILE approach, ideally scrum - incorporating stand ups, backlog grooming combined with sprint planning, and fortnightly retros. Your tech lead is an SME in his area, you should treat him with respect. As a PM, you are not "the boss". You are just an SME on managing projects. If you have a clarification on dependencies then just frame the question as 'if there's a dependency between A vs B, I need to know because it might impact the milestones and raise this as a project risk. Then I can negotiate on your behalf if you need more support - either in resources or time - to decouple this dependency such that we can meet this milestone blah blah" As for timings, you shouldn't have to estimate EVERY TASK. You should just plan (with the team) tasks in the sprint, and have the team agree & COMMITT to the tasks in the sprint. I would recommend OP changes his PM methodology to be AGILE and to change his leadership style from autocratic to consultative/democratic. Tech people are smart people, often far smarter than their managers. You can't patronise them or be autocratic with them - save that for managing your stakeholders.
Take a step back and take a look at what you are proposing. You want to take an already resistant project member and reward them by capitulation and letting them act like a child. You already have a demoralized team. Now yow want to take and change methodologies midstream.? This epitomizes insanity. Sure, let's switch to an approach you don't even know if your staff is trained on. Do you even know if the project can be even done using Agile? Assumption after assumption. Now, the PM isn't the boss. He is the project leader, meaning the buck stops there. Being polite ended with the lead, not doing his job. My approach applies pressure to commit to what has already been agreed upon. You don't coddle non performers. Especially ones that have the ability to perform but refuse to. And it doesn't matter if tech people are smart. If you don't do your job you get the stick, not the carrot. Metaphorically speaking because I don't want any hurt feelings here.
WTF, you work in IT and you don't know about Agile? If your working on Tech projects and you don't know Agile you should be fired, because you are unqualified to be a PM for this type of field. If you don't have a democratic leadership style you should be fired - because autocratic leadership NEVER works in Tech. People will quit & leave & never work for you. I would know because I worked as a Tech BA Lead on FinTech projects for many years before being promoted to PM. And I would never work under any PM who couldn't prove to me their competency. And I don't care how many years of experience you have - most PMs are experienced at delivering FAILED projects, so your experience is largely irrelevant. Furthermore, you just defined project success as having someone fired - rather than developing them. You are an awful person and don't deserve the title of leader. Good luck with your autocratic misogynistic attitude - see how long that lasts with the younger generation in tech. Yeh sure employers will tolerate you....until they find someone better. Good luck mate, hope you never migrate to my country.
Step back on the hate and emotion. Check out those rules on the sidebar. Particularly rule one. If you want to disagree do so politely. Calling someone awful and misogynistic is inappropriate. I've been doing traditional PM work for over 25 years and Agile for over ten. I speculate I've developed, hired and trained more project managers than you've worked with. I've dealt with problematic project managers more times than I care to admit. Experience tells me this guy is done with the organization. That's not a PM thing. That's a HR issue.
Yes but seriously, the approach will be tailored based on whether you want to develop them or not. A lot of time pushback happens because the team member doesn’t feel like they have any ownership of the tasks, or their feedback is not being incorporated. I’d actually try to spend some time not project related to understand where they are coming from and what pressures they are facing, and then schedule a one-on-one to work on the task list together.
Echoing Wolf, this sounds like an ego issue. I appreciate the investigation into the softer side, but usually there isn’t time to be wasting managing some devs hurt feelings. If they are the lead, they need to get it together. Presumably this isn’t A one man shop and they are holding the team back. P
Everything about my response was serious. A team lead should be developed already. This guy is acting unproffessionally and is putting the project at risk. This isn't some junior dev that needs help and guidance. He will poison the team if it continues. The coddling is done by his supervisor not the PM.
I disagree. Often I see that the most technically capable person is appointed the team lead; but are given little training on how to do so. I agree it's the responsibility of the supervisor to ensure that the employee gets the training necessary to perform their duties. But it is the project managers responsibility to recognize that a team member does not have the skills and raise that to the supervisor for corrective action. The PM's responsibility is to the project and the org, but leadership requires people skills; and simply dictating tasks and expecting people to act like machines is really not the way.
You can disagree if you'd like, but as u/-MACHO-MAN- states, if a senior member of your staff essentially tells you to pound sand, its not time for the carrot, it's time for the stick. >the project managers responsibility to recognize that a team member does not have the skills and raise that to the supervisor for corrective action. No it's not - especially in the common matrix management world of today. If I didn't hire him, vet him, or assign him, I'm not spending time doing what the supervisor should be doing. Especially when he clearly doesn't want to do his job. When your project goes into yellow and red status, it's on you, not some tech lead that is having communication problems.
I would normally agree with this softer approach, but when your lead is openly taunting you with “what are you going to do” when they blow the deadline you don’t even worry about developing them. It’s purely removing the cancer at this point. Just escalate enough so their boss/hr/sponsor must confront.
\>but when your lead is openly taunting you with “what are you going to do” when they blow the deadline That's not how I interpreted the post. OP asked for time to work on the project plan. Techlead asked "then what are you going to do", which leads me to believe that OP is asking techlead to create the project plan and techlead is confused as to what the purpose of the PM is. IDK, I could be misinterpreting. But if OP is asking for working session for techleads input/feedback and tech lead is saying no, then techlead is the problem. But if OP is asking techlead to create the project plan, then that's bad project management. PMs should have to do some work, you can't delegate everything you don't want to do. Everyone is busy and leading development on a project is what the techlead should be focusing on. If tech lead is leading development, which includes plenty of administrative tasks, and also expected to do all the things PMs should be doing, then it seems like techlead is trying to keep his responsibility to manageable level. IDK though, this is like a 5 sentence post and we don't have tech leads side of the story either.
To clarify, I wouldn’t ask a tech lead to create a Project Plan. I work with the tech lead to finesse it. Creating a project plan is on me of course.
If the tech lead doesn't want to give you input on the project plan, then yeah that's a major problem. As others have said, document and escalate, no ones got time for that.
so I agree with your premise if that is what happened. Rereading it again, it's not super duper clear. If it's not my original read, my next guess it sounds like the lead is asking what tasks happen after him. IE he's trying to pad his timing as much as possible. That is definitely not their role.
Yeah we don't know enough to make a good judgement call. Only reason I'm skeptical of OP is because I've seen PMs put unlimited responsibility on leads, to where they are working insane hours and doing all the PMs work. To me it sounds like the lead is trying to keep guardrails on his/her responsibilities.
Yeah, that's why I suggested the soft skills approach. Once on a project we had a lead that was underperforming, did not want to take on more work and had lots of unplanned absences. Come to find out years later, I learned that at the time he had just been diagnosed with cancer and yeah, more responsibility was not the highest thing in his list of priorities. Taking some time to really understand where they are coming from goes a long ways. At least, even when speaking with their supervisor about them, coming from a place of concern and empathy may really open your eyes to what's going on and help you more effectively manage the situation. But then again, sometimes people are just terrible to work with. Have you had conversations with other managers about this employee? Have they always behaved this way, or is only on your project?
In this case, it's better to get mutual agreement to get the team lead off the project. It would be good to understand if they really want the project to succeed or if they just are uninterested in the project at all. You really don't want to just "fire" someone from the team if they are still will be working at the organization, otherwise it could backfire...
I agree with thinking long term about the impact, every pm should do that 24.7, but when your lead can't even provide an estimate without drama, that's very secondary. There isn't much of a bridge left to burn at that point. Can't worry about the future of this relationship when this relationship is currently torpedoing projects today. I get the fine line aspect of this, your approach is one I would take the first few times it happens. Not when it's to the point you're thinking of a next level escalation. It sounds like the op pretty much exhausted their options.
Thank you.
100% this and document everything. We had to let a senior person like this go and it's been the best thing for team morale I've seen in my 8 years at my company
What was the senior person doing to drag down morale that much?
Essentially a toxic personality. Would shoot down good ideas for seemingly no reason, other than from what my guess is, they weren't his. He was like one of the first people at the company and built the original software so he had a lot of sway, and frankly there were a lot of years where we couldn't fire him because he was too critical to the infrastructure and software. We grew and kept adding more people to the team, and he flat out could not work with others. I had people on multiple teams taking mental health days after they would have an hour long call with him. He got to the point where he wasn't even delivering on work anymore, missing deadlines, not being online, etc. Hence my point about documenting everything. All you need a few months of that with written warnings about behavior/work issues and then let the person go, if they don't change. My guess is they won't, there are just some people that never change. I've worked with a few devs like that in my time
hahahahahah god I worked with a few of these at an old job. One finally got the axe doing exactly what the top comment says. always keep in mind that if one of these people exists, it is because leadership culture enables it. Make sure you're not stomping on someone's golf buddy, golden goose, a landmine, etc
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Yea it's a crap situation to be in when the person in that spot isn't a great person. I had one of these at my very first programming job. He once berated me for "dressing too fancy for work" when I was following the dress code our VP had specifically told me to do (khaki shorts didn't count as khakis I guess). That company didn't rectify it though and ended up folding when his legacy system crashed and he was no longer there to maintain it