Learning to delegate as a team grows

Problem

A few years ago, I was under a lot of pressure because I was managing a team of three people that I had to grow to a team of ten people in six months, and we had several features to develop at the same time. Due to this pressure, I had to delegate entire projects to my team members. I asked one of my engineers to work on the backend architecture of our API. He was responsible for the whole project (i.e. design, implementation, and planning). After a couple of weeks, I realized the project was not moving forward. The engineer was struggling to prioritize, to respect the deadlines that we had fixed, and to talk with the right people.

Actions taken

I made sure I was very accessible and offered my help. We had regular conversations about the project and I asked: "What do you need for this project to move forward? What are your deadlines? How can I help you?". You have to offer your help regularly to help people in this type of situation. I also tried to give some guidelines to the engineer by asking him questions, instead of telling him what he should do. My goal was to make him think of solutions for himself. I gave him some time to progress. I knew that he was intelligent and that he would be able to deal with this project if I gave him some time. It took me around six months before I felt he was totally reliable. He's now a tech lead, and also one of our best engineers.

Lessons learned

As a manager, it is often hard to start delegating. You are not supposed to control everything anymore, but you are still responsible for everything, so you have to find the right balance. I think delegating requires you to trust the person you are delegating to and also requires you to trust their ability to progress. If you don't there is a risk that you'll end up micromanaging. One of the main dangers is delegating too much at first. I wish I had delegated my engineer smaller tasks first, instead of directly giving him a critical project.

"What do you need for this project to move forward? What are your deadlines? How can I help you?"

"Delegating requires you to trust the person you are delegating to and also requires you to trust their ability to progress."