Professional Behavior

In an organization, it's important that management (of which you are now part!) presents a unified front. Behaving professionally as a leader has some differences to behaving professionally as a team member.

Sprint Evaluations

One of the key areas that this is reflected is during sprint evaluation, where you are interacting with another project manager's team. Some guidelines for professional interactions in that situation are

• Discussing the team's regular project manager should not happen under any circumstances.  If you feel that the team's PM has given them bad advice, or incorrect information, you should reach out to that PM and/or me directly with that feedback.  You should never undermine another project manager's credibility with their team, regardless of your opinion of their performance.
• You should never compare a team you are evaluating to any other team, including your own teams.  Showing the team you are evaluating another team's figma, or trello board, or commits, is not acceptable, even if you are doing it in an attempt to be helpful.
• While it is good to be strict, and you should be stress testing the applications you are evaluating (feel free to test outside of their defined acceptance testing for bug discovery!) you should not editorialize about the quality of their applications.  We have a rubric, it's clear, and you should follow it.  Please do not chuckle, say that it sucks, or in any other way appear to have an emotional investment in the process past executing it faithfully.
• When taking points in a category, it is your responsibility to be clear about why those points have been taken, and refer to the specific bug, task or story number, or commit that is occasioning the reduction.  This does not need to be exhaustive, but it does need to define at least one concrete example.
• If there is any evidence that you are intentionally misrepresenting a teams performance, for any reason, personal or otherwise, that is grounds for failure in the course.

This should not be seen as an exhaustive list, but hopefully will help guide your performance of these from a nontechnical perspective.

Dealing with difficult teams

Team projects can be stressful affairs. It is not uncommon for tempers to flare on occasion, or for misunderstandings or miscommunicaitons to occur and build into larger issues. Leading a team is also stressful, and that combination can be dangerous!

As a manager, you have a greater responsibility towards your behavior than your team. You are the one setting the tone that your team will pick up on and follow, and so your behavior needs to be more controlled and intentional, because it affects the group disproportionally. If you've ever heard the phrase "tone from the top", this is what it means. Your team will, sooner or later, likely be frustrated. You will too. In those situations, it's up to you to be the "bigger person".