Team Responsibilities

Are they following your standards (you have coding standards, right)?

Could someone else pick up their work and make changes or fix bugs in a reasonable amount of time? In other words, is their code clean and easy to understand?

Does their code have good performance or does it execute more slowly than it should? If it is slow, is it because they're written inefficient code or is it because the system is being overtaxed? If it's inefficient, help them get the tools and knowledge needed to fix it.

Everyone creates bugs. But do they have significantly higher bug counts than everyone else? If so, find out why. Are they not getting the support they need? Are they working from unclear specs? Or is their code just really buggy? If it is, help them improve their coding/testing process so they can write fewer bugs, and catch more of those they do create before they check them in.

Do they stay on task? Speaking personally, it is very easy to become distracted by non-work related things. Sometimes everyone needs a little break to allow their brain to re-frame a problem. However, there needs to be a good balance between cogitating and screwing around.

Are they putting in the the minimum amount of work they feel is required or are they picking up new tasks when they finish ahead a schedule? Be sure to see above about the 40 hour work week.

Are they staying on top of their bug count? It's a nice fantasy to assume that all bugs will be fixed before anything else. In the real world that doesn't always make sense. But it's important that their bugs are dealt with in a reasonable amount of time, and they don't allow too many bugs to accumulate. When that happens, you pay for it later.

Are they doing a good job of prioritizing tasks? This is especially important when they have multiple tasks for the current milestone. Very rarely does someone just have a single task that they're working on for a long period of time, so it is necessary for everyone to be able to prioritize more important tasks first. If they aren't, make sure they have all the necessary information. The onus is on you, their manager, to keep them well informed so they can make good prioritization decisions.

Are they supporting other team members by making a comfortable environment to ask questions? Are they answering questions promptly? Make sure everyone is participating as a team member.

Are they asking for help when they need it? If not, find out why not. Do they not feel comfortable asking or are other team members not supporting them? Find out and address the issue.

Are they asking for help in a reasonable amount of time? A simple metric I use is, don't spin your wheels for more than 2 hours. If you're still stuck after 2 hours, ask.

Are they letting appropriate parties know when there are issues? For example, when a task is taking longer than expected, is production and their lead aware of it? What about the people who are dependent on the feature? This is especially important when there are dependencies.

Are they letting appropriate parties know when a task is finished? If design is waiting on a particular feature, they need to know as soon as it is available. Don't let finished features be dropped when they're done. There needs to be a positive hand off when a task is completed.

Are they creating a comfortable environment where people enjoy collaborating with them?

Are you monitoring the quality of work that your team is doing? Make sure you are doing regular code reviews and checking that your team is hitting the quality bar.

Are you monitoring the stability of your team's work? Make sure bugs counts are reasonable and staying under control.

Is everyone on your team staying on task and completing tasks in a reasonable amount of time?

Do you have a rough idea as to how feature completion is trending for your team?  Do you know if you are behind, ahead, doing OK?

Are you representing your team and making sure  that everyone has a reasonable amount of work and clear requirements for their tasks? If not, work on adjusting the schedule and getting them more information.

Are you always available to talk? "I'm too busy" is never an appropriate response to "I need to talk to you." I can't stress this enough. Make the time. It's one of the single most important aspects of being a lead in my opinion.

Are you giving regular feedback? You should be doing this every two weeks at a minimum, both when things are good and when there are accountability issues.

Are you raising red flags when tasks get behind schedule? If something is going to slip, the sooner everyone knows about it the better. That way, schedules and expectations can be adjusted accordingly. Like Miss Wintour says, no one likes surprises.

Are you clearly communicating goals and responsibilities to your team? Make sure they are clear what their tasks and priorities are, and what their responsibilities are.

Are you fostering career growth? Make sure your team members have challenging work and are getting the support they need.

Do you know your team members' strengths and interests and assign work accordingly? Have a good grasp of everyone's experience levels and set reasonable expectations based on that. This means give people challenging tasks and scheduling appropriately. My feeling is that you should always be challenging people with harder problems. Even though in the short term it might take someone longer, long term they will be happier and they will grow. This also means that you need to communicate your expectations, especially with junior people.