A few years ago, my wife and I replaced all the windows in our home.

When it came time to install it, I figured it would take the better part of a week (it’s about 22 windows).

Instead, the company said, “Oh, it takes about two days.” I was skeptical but guessed they would send a larger crew or something than I had imagined.

On installation day, two guys showed up. Two! How were two guys going to replace all my windows in two days? To make it even better, I asked one guy, who responded, “We’ll replace all the windows today. Tomorrow is finishing work.”

And sure enough, they did!

Today's article is about what I learned from seeing how these two guys worked so well together as a team and how I think it can help us be more effective on our engineering teams.
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Team-Building Exercise

This week's exercise is about learning new ways to foot the ladder for your team.
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As mentioned in the article and the podcast, some immediate examples include

• Code reviews or doc reviews
• Answering questions in Slack
• Helping pair with a teammate for a tricky issue

But each team has different ways to help unblock each other's work. The task this week is to, well, ask!
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One of my favorite things to do when I have wrapped up work on something is to ask in the team channel, "Anything I can do to help someone move their story to done?"

Ask this question in your channel and ask your teammates individually, "Is there anything I can do to help out?"

Sometimes, the answer is no, which is fine. But keep asking! I've found that many engineers are skeptical of people offering help without a carrot on the end of the stick. They might just need to build some trust in receiving help.

When you do get answers, though, add them to your list of ways to help unblock or serve your team.

Because helping your whole team accomplish their work is some of the most important work you can do.

Here are some more resources from me to help you build better teams!​

Other Creators I Recommend

Daniel Schaefer Subscribe if you are a software developer that has the technical skills, but you're looking for opportunities to enhance your soft skills to advance in your career. Subscribe​

Build It Better Newsletter by Jonas Fleur-Aime Creating great software is not just about completing new features faster, submitting more pull requests, or fixing bugs. Every Wednesday I publish tips and tactics to help you meet tough deadlines, tackle tech debt, handle scope creep, manage stakeholders, make sure you're building what customers actually want, and more. I'll draw on what I've learned after spending 15 yrs as a software developer, Engineering Manager, CTO, and startup advisor. Subscribe​

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