 Hi, this is Jozapin Bhartia and welcome to another episode of TFL. Let's talk and today we have with us Christina Farni, VP of product at up level Christina. It's great to have you on the show. Yeah, great to be here. Thanks for having me Today the topic is to understand, you know People health especially when we look at today's word. It is the mental health people It's it's becoming a very interesting topic. But before we deep dive into this topic I would love to know a bit about the company as well and what led you to this Discussion today up level is an engineering intelligence platform So it helps engineering organizations make better data-driven decisions and iteratively improve how they deliver software or value or product to their end users and Ultimately deliver greater business value We are able to combine an understanding of your operational health and your execution health With your process health. So how well you're collaborating and then the kicker of what we're going to talk about today Is your people health? What are your people actually doing to deliver that software in there? Are they doing it in a sustainable way? Why? Are we talking about people health? What does it mean in today's word? We're once again Because of recession because of cost cutting teams are also becoming smaller We also talk about a lot of things are moving through developers pipeline earlier. We used to have like traditional it word silos now, you know You have to also learn a lot of skills people are working from home So I want to understand, you know, is it because of the whole the way the dynamics are changing or in general That you know, we should be talking about it. I think it's something that we should have been talking about the whole time I think the changes to industry Um our recent pandemic everyone having to learn to work remotely um Leaders not being able to just look over your shoulder and see what you're doing anymore But actually have to look at the output you're provide providing and so Fundamentally, I think this is actually going to be an improvement in how we deliver because we're looking at outcomes Rather than just how much time am I sense spending in my seat? Now what's important to consider as you think about um What you're looking at when you're looking at your people is you don't want to be just spying on them It's not about how many hours they're putting in Uh engineering is such a creative field Your greatest like aha moments often happen in the shower or when you're on a walk with your dog And so if you just can't measure it the same way That you measure General kind of creation of products the the their original pipeline and so I think it's really exciting that we're starting to look at these these metrics and Ultimately what we want to do is help people Help engineering organizations remove the burden on the people And so what that means is how do we reduce the toil? How do we make sure that people aren't spending their entire days in meetings? So that they then have to do their deep work time and their hard thinking time after hours Which means they're actually extending the total number of hours that they're working Because what we actually see in the data is that there is an inverse correlation between the amount of deep work time So am I getting enough time to actually get into flow to get into focus? At up level we measure that as a minimum of two hours of focus And so do I have enough deep work time to really solve these hard problems for my organization? Or am I getting interrupted all the time? Like maybe I have a two-hour calendar open space, but I'm getting interrupted non-stop in chat or um I'm context switching around too many different projects. I don't have focus So there's a lot of dimensions here, but ultimately what we want to look at is how do we help engineers? Right like reach their greatest potential and They're going to be happier and they're going to deliver better higher quality software for their organization Right, and then you're talking about the aha moment in those Socrates Eureka moment is you know One of those moments you know when you're in the bathtub you can get a great idea or find a solution I I don't want to name the organizations, but I was talking to an organization which is fully remote and they are also we also Is yes we because of remote we do have to look at you know the productivity But we also want to look at that you are not working longer hours. You're not working You know, so it should not have a negative impact on your mental health as well So as much as we want you to work. We also don't want you to Work because you're a valuable asset team member of our team as well So that is also a factor that I think today organizations are taking into consideration Can you talk a bit about because when I was listening to you it looks like more or less Of course, as you said, it's not spine, but it is very very data-centric data driven database so what kind of data you think that Executives need So that they have a very good pulse on the entire organizations or what kind of data you are providing They are seeking. I like to bucket this into three different categories again, your operations or execution health, uh, this can come in the form of Metrics like Dora Dora is starting to be a much more kind of accepted standard of how you measure Um, whether or not your teams are shipping We combine that with your process health So looking at volume of meetings your team has are we in too many meetings? Or do we just have really scattered calendars that look like swiss cheese that we've got to clean up and realign across the organization To help people get more focused time As well as sprint health kind of metrics And then the third and the very important piece to add in is your people health metrics, which we've started talking about today and so As an executive as a leader what you need to understand is what truly is going on across my organization because so often what we see Is executives or leaders are just so disconnected from what's actually happening Within their organizations. They don't really know what's going on And so as a leader, maybe i'm saying these are you know, we have these two initiatives that are the most important things our business could do And this is how we have to deliver value um And I expect that our organization is spending the majority of their time working on these initiatives But the reality is is that developers are spending 80 90 of their dev working time On customer support issues or keep the lights on work because things are just failing or You know systems are going awry And there's just such a big disconnect between what's actually happening And how and how developers are spending their time and what engineering leaders often understand Especially as you enter these really really large organizations so By starting from a place where I can actually understand what's happening across the organization How are people spending their time? How are we executing? How are we operating? And then how are my people doing to actually achieve that? Are we overextending or can we push a little harder? and having that clear picture Is key to having the ability to dig in and understand This is what I can do as a leader to help support my organization to help my organization improve No matter how well we're doing you can always get better And so what are the things that I can do to make it a better environment for an engineer for a developer? because then I'm focusing on creating a better environment and helping my team deliver more value I think a key of this is that we're not just building a tool for engineering leaders Because a biggest part of the disconnect is that we don't bring the teams along with us We need to solve for the organization As I've done so many different customer interviews talk to many many leaders as well as developers What you see is that actually Engineering leaders and engineering teams have the same problems because fundamentally they're organizational problems They just might be two sides of the same coin And so by solving for your entire organization And helping connect what's actually happening within your development teams To what do we need to do as a business as an engineering organization? We create a more aligned more focused more streamlined group I think one or two weeks ago. There was a big controversial story about where once again I don't know to name a company where you see you was on zoom call and it was more about you know She was totally disconnected from the the whole organizations So yes, there are a lot of leaders who are really into you know The health of their organizations, but of course if you look at in general Do you think this approach also make leaders talk to your CEOs? More empathetic towards their teams as well to help them actually understand That you know what their teams are going through so they can become more efficient leader as well I certainly hope so. It's what I believe. I think This is kind of an emerging field and an emerging category There's a lot of different players in the space taking on a few different lenses and a few different perspectives Um, my hope is that we can really bring a human centric approach to engineering organizations and engineering leadership and just how we build software because We're building software or we're building product for people And so by making it just making it a better better all around experience, uh, you'll build better product Um, so I really hope that these kinds of metrics do Create empathy understanding um, it's a lot easier to get frustrated and judgmental and um Impatient with things you don't understand and so by creating that understanding both within the leadership and within your team's Perspectives you can kind of connect the dots and create greater cohesion and Generally just have a more motivated and aligned organization. Since we are talking about data. Do you have any insight about? You know, when we look at the hard data on developer team health, what does it look like? What do you see today? What we see is that every organization is unique and has slightly different problems Although there's always kind of the same themes and same patterns that we look for within that data So it really depends on the context and so something that we work really hard at up level to do is how do we Help you understand what's going on in a way that allows you to add the context to the story of that data and so The patterns we that are emerging So I kind of shared one of the the big themes and patterns that we see is that there is an inverse relation between the amount of Deep work time people have and how much they're always on metrics are exceeding. So what that means is if my If i'm not getting enough hours during the day to do my deep work or during the week to do my deep work I will find that time after hours. And so that means my always on meaning How many hours i'm extending beyond a normal day? Will will extend so if I don't get deep work at work I get deep work in my own time and i'm i'm overworking myself To get that done and so the quality of my work may go down because that's a high contributor towards burnout um We also see a lot around uh meeting health developers spending just way too much time in meetings Just insane amounts of time in meetings And so helping to reduce that and as I said even organize calendars in a way so that i'm still getting focused time Even though I am in meetings because there is an important piece of being in meetings and collaborating and having live discussions You don't want to remove it entirely But you want to make sure you understand how are we spending that so we can break that down And look at the different types of meetings that you have am I spending 40 of our time in scrum meetings Is that okay because we're a scrum organization and that's what we would expect Or is that actually a really big problem and we want to bring that number down Do we have an initiative where we're trying to reduce knowledge silos across the organization? If so, I'd really love to see the volume of collaboration type meetings Uh pair programming type meetings go up and if I don't see that That's a really good way for me as a leader to understand that my teams aren't investing or collaborating in the way that I'm trying to drive change It allows me to actually measure What I'm trying to help the team improve upon Before we wrap this up, uh, I also want to talk a bit about you know from the from the leadership or if you look at CTUs What is your advice to them how they can create a kind of organization? You know as you mentioned so that you know the teams are more effective the health of the overall organization is also Better and that is good for overall sustainability for the whole ecosystem as well My number one advice is to create transparency and understanding in what you're looking at So by helping your development teams know what's happening across the organization They're going to be more bought in and more motivated to help you make that change So have building that trust building that transparency one just creates a more aligned organization and two Really builds trust with developers developers are incredibly suspicious of being tracked and monitored And so it's really important you show them. This is what we're looking at this We're doing this in support of you and to help you have a better experience And it also helps them be bought into change and so as an example I talked about meeting times So maybe your your entire organization just spending you know, you're not in too many meetings But your meetings are all over the place. So nobody's ending up getting deep work And so if you go down and make this broad policy and just say we're changing all of our meetings You have to change your calendars everybody is not you know We're going to have a focus day on this day of the week And so you have to change your calendars as a developer who might actually have enough deep work time They're going to be really frustrated. Hey, you're changing up my schedule. I have to go change how I'm working Why do I have to do this? This isn't my problem Instead what you can say is look at the pattern that we're seeing across the organization and the consequences This is having to us as a whole and us as a group We aren't getting enough deep work time. And so in order to help support our organization We're going to have this policy that we don't have meetings on a certain day You're going to have a developer who's much more bought in because they have that understanding of why this matters And it's not just about them and their schedules But it's about the organization as a whole and how they can contribute to a better working environment for their peers So That little story is again just to reiterate you need to build trust through transparency and visibility how you measure productivity is super multifaceted because Ultimately productivity in the dictionary is defined and you measure as the rate of output per unit input and output is one thing for engineering organizations, but the reality is what we want to look at is outcomes What is actually happening? um And so different ways of thinking about this are in other words that you can go and Really, I encourage you to lean into the dictionary definition things like a phishing efficiency Effect effectiveness Velocity or capacity Which one of those components is actually the problem my organization is facing? And by digging into the deeper layers of what's going on Helps you pinpoint and understand how I can support my organization the best Cristina, thank you so much for taking time out today and talk about this important topic Thanks for all those insight and also the advice there Yes, this that could most because it's like that could have been just an evil Not necessarily meeting at the same time When you meet people in person you can solve problems, you know in within minutes Which would have taken days just so so you know for different, you know kind of Situation different approaches needed. So thanks for sharing all those insights and as is allowed love to have you back on the show Thank you Thank you so much