Why it's important to have a sync as Engineers
Spoiler alert: It builds rapport and ensures success in projects.
When I joined my current company as a backend engineer, one of the first things I did was setting up a weekly sync with the other backend engineers in my team.
I was met with a bit of resistance when I set this meeting up at first, which I expected. As engineers, we are really protective of our time and focus, and I respected that.
In response, I asked the other engineers to try it out for just one month.
Here’s what I learned from this process and why I feel it’s super important for every engineering team to have a sync just with engineers.
❌ Resistance
I mentioned earlier that I was met with a bit of resistance.
Like I said, this is natural. We all want to protect our time and focus, and the thought of yet “another meeting” in the calendar sounds dreadful, even to me.
But I knew this was important especially because the team mostly works remotely, so we needed to have some booked time together.
I was able to overcome the resistance by doing 3 things:
Keeping the meeting frequency down to just once a week.
Keeping the meeting time down to just 15 minutes.
Keeping the meeting focused only on backend engineering.
This signalled to the other engineers that it’s very low commitment, and that it was only 15 minutes of their entire week, so it wasn’t difficult to convince them to stick with it.
Once we persevered with the weekly sync meetings, I found that the other engineers who were initially resistant became huge advocates for the meeting making sure it happens every time.
💡Learnings
After a few weeks of these meetings, I noticed a few really positive outcomes:
During our daily standups, we were able to point out the progress of our other backend engineers’ tickets if they were on leave or unable to make it to the meeting.
We were able to build rapport as a backend engineering team, and we were able to get to know each other more on a personal level rather than just professionally.
The meetings started lasting longer because we were enjoying the process of working together as a team.
These positive outcomes really allowed us to become more in-sync as a team. We were working as one unit and we were avoiding silos.
Not only were we able to deliver our work much quicker, we were also able to ensure the work we delivered was of high quality.
This is extremely important when working with your team remotely.
🔑 Key Takeaways
Schedule some time with your fellow engineers. This is especially important if your team is working (mostly) remotely.
Try to make it a low commitment meeting. I knew I would be met with resistance, so I scheduled just a 15-minute chat once a week.
Scheduling a sync like this really helps with working together as a team and avoiding silos.
Scheduling a sync like this also really helps to build rapport in the team. Again, really important if you’re working remotely.
Thank you for reading this article!
If you enjoyed this article, please give it a ❤️. It is very much appreciated!
If you think someone else would gain value from this, then feel free to share this post. 🔁