# Ben Mancini's Manager Readme **Development Lead at Redgate** # Ben Mancini Readme # My role I'm the Development Lead for the DB DevOps programme which covers 3 teams: -  - Team U.P  - The High Rollers - Oracle I'm responsible for 3 main areas as part of my role: -  - Delivery responsibility for the programme of work - this means delivering the programme of work agreed between us as a development team, our stakeholders and what was defined in our strategy document. I use project management techniques supported by agile expertise to ensure we do this in a timely, agile first manner whilst providing opportunities for us to learn and develop as a group. - Operational responsibility for the 3 teams - this means ensuring our processes and procedures are as effective as possible for the work we are doing. It doesn't just mean telling teams to use Scrum or Kanban. It can be educating teams on the benefits of a backlog, helping create visual representations of the work or supporting the Technical Leads with new ideas and experiments to encourage an environment of continuous improvement in everything that we do. - The people management and pastoral care of the teams - I have direct people management responsibility for the Technical Leads and Product Designers assigned to the programme and overall people responsibility for the team members that report to our Technical Leads. This means ensuring frequent 121's and PDP's with my direct team take place and that the same is done for the teams reporting to my direct team members.  We operate against a set of OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) which are reviewed quarterly by the team and our stakeholders. I'm measured on the above 3 areas by my manager and the overall success of our programme to deliver against the strategy we agree. # What do I value most? **What does helping me look like? ** The best way to help me is to be honest and transparent about the work we need to do. Mistakes will always occur and this is to be expected, being open and honest about it and talking about what we can do to learn from it are what I look for. I also love people suggesting experiments we can try in order to continuously improve - if you have a suggestion, share it! **What is my process for handling conflicts? (and how you can do it yourself)** Positive conflict in a team is good and its one of my signs for a healthy team i.e. a team that can have healthy disagreement on the way forward. Unhealthy conflict is  where we either don't want to talk about the elephant in the room OR we spend every waking hour talking about a problem and can't agree a way forward. My approach is to work with you to break the problem down into its basic parts and aim to reach a level of consensus as a group. If this isn't possible then i'll encourage us to disagree and commit on a way forward. **What weaknesses of mine should the team know about, and how can they help me improve?** I'm not an engineer (And never will be) so when you're explaining technical solutions to our customers problems i'll be looking for you to explain it in simple terms - the chances are if you can't then an average customer is going to struggle to understand what we've done as well - KISS is my mantra  # My Expectations **How should people set time with you? ** My diary tends to fill up quickly with meetings and discussions so if we don't have time scheduled, pop over and see me at my desk and the chances are that i'll be able to speak to you there and then. If you need to schedule time with me then I tend to start early, so booking time earlier in the day is likely to be better. **How do you define "Done"? ** Done for me is not when a PR has been merged. Done for us (And more importantly our customers) is when our work is in our customers hands and being actively used.  **When should people be available and how? (e.g. work hours, availability via chat/phone etc.)** We operate a flex model around our working hours and apart from core hours (11-3 each day) I ask you to use common sense and your discretion. Provided your 40 hours are done I don't mind how they are done. When it comes to WFH i'm cool with this (I use it myself) but I ask that you check in with your line manager in advance to see that nothing is being planned for the day you propose to WFH.  # 1:1s **When do you usually have 1:1s with your team? ** I have 121's with my direct team every 4-6 weeks alongside a weekly 30 minute catch up to discuss how they and their team are getting on. For PDPs these are generally agreed every 3-6 months depending on the objectives agreed and we'll revisit these regularly through our 121 meetings. **Who should lead the 1:1 ? ** Our 121's are an opportunity for you to share the things you feel have gone well and the things you want to work at making even better. I ask that you put sufficient prep into these sessions beforehand.  I'm not measured on how successful our 121s are, merely that we have the opportunity to have at least one 121 every 3 months. Its your career we are discussing in these sessions so you'll get out what you put into these meetings. I'm there to facilitate the discussion and coach you through issues. (Not to do all of the prep for you!) **What should be the main focus during that time?** I'll cover off a couple of key themes: -  - How you're feeling right now - What has gone well over the last month? - What could go even better next time? - What I can do to help you? - What progress you've made on actions agreed in our last 121 - Discuss any feedback I've collected for you or been sent # Personality quirks **What are the individual quirks that anyone working with me should know about? ** I love people management and coaching. I'm also a massive geek when it comes to new ideas, techniques and experiments around agile ways of working. Its why i'm doing this instead of the thing I wanted to do at college and almost went to Uni for. So if you have ideas, thoughts or read something about a new technique then i'm all ears! Doing coaching and 121's takes a fair bit out of me so don't be surprised if I seem a bit burnt out after a heavy 121 or PDP session. I just need time to refuel afterwards (Which is why I try to spread our 121's out over a day or week) I talk bluntly about where I feel you, me or the team are right now. I'm not for airs and graces and call a spade a spade. Don't be offended if I'm direct about things. My intention is never to talk us down, its to learn and see what we can do better next time. I love seeing teams become autonomous and high performing. I've got quite a bit of experience of working with teams and departments that others felt were 'a bit broken' and helping them to become better. That doesn't mean that i'm working with you right now because I feel you're a bit broken! - but there is always room for us to do even better! I also have a love/hate relationship with speaking at conferences. I love the ability to talk and share my experience with others, but I also have a huge case of imposter syndrome when it comes to public speaking, which makes it pretty hard to prepare for these conferences. I'm working on this in 2018 and hope to be better at coping and preparing with public speaking over the next few months. You can read more about my experiences of this on my blog page on LinkedIn. Outside of Redgate I founded and help run a monthly meetup group around Agile, lean and coaching. Cambridge Agile Exchange has been running for about 12 months now and has proved to be a really successful and supportive group for people new to agile and coaching, all the way up to experienced coaches and agilists. If you'd like to know more about this group, come and speak to me! # Where to focus on your first 90 days? **What does effective on-boarding look like on your team? ** In your first 3 months you'll have an active probation plan with me or your manager. We take these seriously at Redgate and we'll do everything possible to support you through these goals.  So success to me is where you are progressing through these probation goals well. If you're an existing team member who is just new to our team then i'll be looking for you to integrate yourself into how we work in your first month or two and i'll be extra keen to hear your thoughts on what you think works well and not so well from a teams processes and practices perspective.  New joiners are our freshest eyes and ears in our teams and spot the things we who have been here a while have stopped seeing so feedback, feedback, feedback! **How can they tell if they're doing a good job in their first 30 days? ** Because we will tell you! Feedback is really important to how we work and i'm always keen to share feedback on what is going great and the things we need to keep working at. So if you are doing a good job you'll know about it immediately as we encourage an environment of 'in the moment' feedback. On the flipside if there are things we need you to work at then you can expect me and my team to also feedback on these areas and support you on getting better at them.