The Whip and the Carrot

“Work harder! Work faster!”

Has anyone ever asked this of you and your team? How did it make you feel? Did it motivate or demotivate you? Did it inspire or discourage you?

Software engineering, like many other forms of technological and scientific work, can be opaque to those that are not skilled in it. While you can watch a stonemason carve a statue, it can be difficult to see the progress of development work. “Just what exactly are all these people doing all day? They look pretty relaxed, right? Can’t they just work harder and get this over the line quicker?”

I’m sure you’ve been in this position. Let’s pretend you’re there again.

Be objective and consider the other side of the argument: Why were you and your team asked to work harder or work faster? What is it exactly that the outside observer feels that your team is lacking?

Why your team is asked to work harder

Here are a number of reasons that you may hear as to why your team isn’t “working hard enough.” Typically it stems from a mismatch in what the external observer expects to see from your team compared to what is actually happening.

• Lack of visible output: Perhaps the team hasn’t delivered anything in a while that is visible to the observer. This could be because the team had a poorly defined project or has been subject to unrealistic expectations, bad luck, poor prioritization, and so on. Often it’s entirely not their fault. It can even be because they are doing a lot of behind-the-scenes work with infrastructure, technical debt, or refactoring.

• Lack of “hustle”: The external observer may feel that there are particular behaviors that a team should exhibit, such as starting early, working late, being publicly present in communication channels, or some ...