Cracking the cadence of your software engineering 1:1s

As is the tradition for New Zealand based managers are coming back from a summer break I’m looking at all of my practices and thinking about where I might be able to do better this year. This year I’ve landed on more effective 1:1s. I’m a fan of LeadDev.com for topics like this and there are a wealth of resources about 1:1s there.

One video that I found particularly useful was a pancel discussion titled: Cracking the cadence of your software engineering 1:1s

The discussion is much more than just the scheduling (and every participant did something slightly different anyway)

• do your 1:1s weekly
• don’t skip, reschedule
• have a shared notes page to help ensure you’re both aligned on the takeaways and action items
• have a scorecard for yourself to assess the value and usefulness of your 1:1s
• some, maybe many people don’t want to do 1:1s, you need to show the value - do that by paying attention and following up outside 1:1s
• consider a non-regular schedule, especially if you have people you talk to who take more energy than others