Every new year, goal-setting season inevitably arrives. Whether you use OKR or KPI, it's time to think about what you'll accomplish this year. I want to organize some thoughts I have while looking at the development team, and as a member of that team.
Invisible Achievements
The development team's work isn't easily visible. Launching new features gets some attention, but things like refactoring, increasing test coverage, or improving deployment pipelines can easily look like nothing was done from the outside.
When servers run well, it's taken for granted. When there's an outage, people ask why. Only those involved know how much effort goes into maintaining a bug-free system. That's why development teams often feel unrecognized.
But when you think about it, being invisible means things are running well. A profession whose presence is only revealed when problems occur—in some ways, it's similar to firefighters.
Time to Expand Boundaries
Looking at the Plab development team these days, they're accomplishing so many things. The titles of backend developer and frontend developer are becoming meaningless as they do app development, server engineering, security, and QA simultaneously. With AI automation work added on top, the scope of work keeps expanding.
In the past, there would have been specialists for each area. But now we're in an era where one person wears multiple hats. It's burdensome, and sometimes I wonder if this is right. But on the other hand, growing through experiencing these diverse areas is also true.
Not Being Alone
Development seems like solo work, but it's thoroughly a team effort. Code I write gets reviewed by colleagues, and my code builds on top of code colleagues wrote. When one person is absent, the rest have to cover. When one person makes a mistake, everyone cleans up together.
In this structure, trust between team members is more important than you'd think. The belief that what that person is responsible for will be done well. The psychological safety that you won't be blamed for making mistakes. These things need to be in place for a team to function properly.
Gathering five people with excellent development skills doesn't automatically make a good team. Five people of ordinary skill who trust and respect each other often produce better results.
At the Crossroads
Honestly, this isn't an easy time. We need to learn new technologies, tackle unfamiliar areas, and in that process, we fail and feel frustrated. What's needed at this crossroads is teamwork. Challenges that are hard to handle alone become manageable when the team does them together.
It's Okay Not to Be Perfect
Developers often have perfectionist tendencies. If code doesn't feel right, they revise it again and again. There's no perfect code. What you thought was the best today often looks embarrassing six months later. That's growth, and that's natural. If you did your best today, that's enough.
In Closing
Working on a development team isn't easy. Technology keeps changing, requirements keep increasing, and schedules are always tight. But we have colleagues to work with. This year won't be easy either, but we'll get through it anyway. As we always have. Go, dev team!
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