Great Boiled Peanut Debate With Art

Lessons Learned As A
Leader At Leidos

That is a lot of 'L's...

How It Came to Pass

Jeff

Team (30+)

Before

After

Jeff

T03

T05

Team (10-15)

Team (10-15)

More problems

• Little to no guidance if Jeff is not there
• All questions go up to Jeff. If he's not there, then you wait...
• Sprint is made from Jeff. If he gets busy, you have no tickets to work.
• Retros completely ineffective. No one is held accountable for action items.
• Everyone in their own little world.

If Jeff is gone / busy, who answers questions?

Why not me?

What I wanted

• No dumb questions
• Accessible
• No problems, only lessons learned
• Everyone has a strength
• Everyone has a speed
• Patience and understanding

So it began

• Night and day difference, totally different world
• Nervous about everything
• Overload of the work.
• Took on TOO much
• Indecisive caused issues for team
• Stress caused a minor break down.
  • Talked to Jerry to realign myself
  • Recommend this!! It really put me back on track

Successes

• Feedback given daily to developers
• Scrums efficient and lean
• Retros happen and are effective
• Action items from retros are actually worked towards
• Little downtime on tickets.
• Questions answered as quickly as possible, or given guidance enough to keep working

Failures

• Lack of vision can create problems.
• Unfamiliarity with the tools
• Uncertainty of my new position
• Difficulty handling the amount of traffic
• Not identifying problems faster and correcting coarse.

Overall

• Wouldn't trade it for nothing
• I've got a lot of growing to do
• But I'm excited to see where this goes
• I got a beard out of it

Thanks!