Vitamin D for Engineering Teams: Visibility
Did you know that Vitamin D deficiency affects around 42% of people in the US and around 1 billion worldwide? Similarly, many capable engineering teams can suffer from a 'visibility deficiency,' making it hard to justify further investment and support.
Vitamin D is mainly absorbed when our skin is exposed to sunlight, and it is fundamental for overall health, specifically for bones, the immune system, and mood regulation.
Similarly to the importance of Vitamin D for our health, visibility is crucial for an engineering team’s success. An engineering team needs to get visibility across the company to secure support, justify further investments, and guarantee motivation among its team members.
Let’s first look at the benefits of visibility and Vitamin D, and then we will look at the risks of low visibility and how engineering leaders can help with this.
The Benefits of Vitamin D and Visibility
The first benefit of having the right Vitamin D level in our body is bone health. In the same way, visibility for teams strengthens the structure of a team. Having goals and priorities defined and visible to everyone can be the basis of a stable team. For example, at the start of each quarter, sending out an e-mail to adjacent teams outlining key projects, dependencies, and expected outcomes ensures visibility and alignment.
Second, Vitamin D facilitates calcium absorption, which is essential for cellular communication and function. Similarly, visibility for teams ensures that information flows effectively across teams, enabling better decision-making and overall awareness. For instance, having team members share what the team is building in the company’s tech talks can help with information flow.
Third, Vitamin D is essential for the immune system, protecting the body from illness. In a team context, visibility and alignment protect teams from miscommunication. For example, providing frequent project status updates and calling out project risks helps identify and address issues early.
Lastly, Vitamin D can help with mood regulation, while visibility can help boost team morale. Giving visibility helps with recognition and motivation. For example, calling out team members during company-wide All Hands can boost their engagement even more.
The Risks of Low Visibility
After looking at the benefits, what are the risks of low visibility and low Vitamin D levels instead?
Vitamin D deficiency can weaken bones and immune functions and cause depression, whereas a lack of visibility can decrease an engineering team’s impact. Let’s dive deep into some of the consequences that might be generated by low visibility:
The team is misaligned with business priorities, and projects in progress are scrapped because the team’s work might go unnoticed.
The team might struggle to secure resources for growth and innovation
Team members may feel undervalued, leading to lower morale and higher attrition.
Other teams may work on similar problems, and collaboration opportunities may be missed. For example, a team once spent months building an internal tool, and only after launch, the team discovered another team had developed a similar solution. A lack of visibility led to a lack of collaboration and wasted effort.
Engineering leaders must take proactive steps to avoid those risks - we’ll look at a few practical ways in the next section.
How to Provide Visibility for Teams
Here are a few strategic levers engineering leaders can pull to improve visibility.
Utilize Emails & Slack (or other IM tools ): These are easy but effective ways to provide updates and insights into what a team or organization is doing.
Incentivize team members to demo their work in open forums - i.e. All Hands or any forum with a broad audience.
Build a rapport with upper management through skip-level meetings- E.g., if you are an engineering director, you could ask for a monthly meeting with a VP or GM, and if you are an engineering manager, with the director or senior director. This could help shed light on what the team/org is doing.
Volunteer team members to take on cross-team initiatives. For example, if there is an initiative to foster genAI tools usage across the company, you could volunteer team members to showcase what has been done in the team.
Solicit team members to share their knowledge in company-wide tech forums, e.g. Tech Talks, etc. People could share what the team is building or innovating on.
Just as maintaining Vitamin D levels by spending time in the sun or taking supplements is essential for physical health, ensuring visibility is crucial for a team's success. Engineering leaders must proactively build visibility for teams to avoid being underfunded, or misaligned with company priorities.