How often should a manager meet with his subordinate who is a team leader?

Question

Ours is a software concern and we have a team structured like so: manager->team leads->team members. We are following the agile programming model and trying to develop a product in a collaborative fashion. We have daily morning meetings with team members and their team leads to discuss progress and issues.

When it comes to TL->Manager, most of the time they do not have items to discuss on a daily basis since TL goals would be for weekly plan and such. Most of the time, we just discuss about resources and it is less technical. I just want suggestions on how the manager & team lead interaction should be and whether the current system we have is fine. Please share your thoughts or ideas.

Answer 1

As often as is needed. Some projects - those where requirements might be fluid or political reasons mean that regular updates are critical - require more on-going communication than others.

As a minimum I'd suggest that it would be a very odd week in which some meeting / discussion (possibly informal or in passing) wasn't needed.

Similarly I'd suggest any sort of regular daily meeting lasting longer than a few minutes would almost certainly be over the top.

Things to think about:

• Regular meetings can benefit all parties - if you know when they're going to be you can plan round them and if a PM / Team Lead knows when he's getting his next update he's less likely to pester.
• If you have a meeting make it clear what the purpose of the meeting is so people can prepare and/or opt out (though they should always give a reason why they're opting out, not just that they don't want to be there - though that is a useful sign that the meeting isnt' being seen as productive that you might want to look at).
• Often the meeting time is more intrusive than the meeting length. 11am and 3pm are dreadful times for meetings as the break up the productive stretch morning or afternoon. First thing or last thing are often better (or first thing in the afternoon).
• You can cover off a lot of what's covered in meetings in e-mail. Outline a template for regular updates (and timings). This allows the programmer / team leads to adjust the timing of the updates to their own schedule.
• The more people in a meeting the longer it will go on and the greater the proportion of time that is wasted.
• Face to face meetings to achieve things that other communications find difficult. Whatever you do have some - just keep them small and focused.

Answer 2

The best way to provide feedback would be to use the agile practices that already exists:

• Iteration demo. This is where the team demonstrates actual working software and explains how the iteration went. Everyone is invited and are free to ask questions.
• Big Visible Charts. Progress about the current iteration should be transparent and visible for all to see, including managers. They should only have to glance at the status board to get a feeling for how things are going.

That should be enough, really.

Besides, there is no "team lead" role in XP or Scrum. The fundamental roles are team members (programmers), customer (product owner) and coach (scrum master).

Answer 3

I'm in the same situation: teamleader with a 8 people team and a manager.

I discuss with the manager on a daily basis, and we go together to some meetings. Most of the meetings anyway either are political and I won't participate or are strictly technical and he won't participate.

I got a lot of insightful information from the book "The Effective Executive" of P.Drucker.

Note that in the book definition every programmer is an executive, because he have to take executive decisions.

Answer 4

once per week, as per The One-Minute Manager

Answer 5

Depends upon if you are referring to project management or personnel management. From the personnel management I've heard that most good managers will usually have a standing meeting once a week with their subordinates so there is time for to make sure everything is running smoothly and to provide an opportunity for mentor-ship.

From the project management standpoint, the team leader should meet with the manager as often as is needed to keep them up to date on the status of the project. Generally having a standing meeting is a good idea as it keep the upper level management from being surprised if there is a delay in the project.