The 2 %ers

This article is about something that I’ve only heard mentioned in Australian Rules Football. From a really early age, when I started playing Australian Rules Football, you would hear the coach repeat over and over again, in practice and before a game about the ‘2 %ers’ (no that’s not URL encoding).

‘Remember the 2 %ers you guys!’, ‘It’s all about the 2 %ers!’, ‘Don’t forget the 2 %ers!’

So what are the 2 %ers? It’s a reference to the small things that players can do during the game that support the team. It’s the stuff that players spend less than 2% of their time doing in the game.

It’s not making a big play or scoring a lot of goals, it’s being vocal on the field so your team mates know that an opponent is about to tackle them, or laying a shepherd (a screen) to keep a defender from tackling your team mate, or running extra hard to the next play to make sure that your team have more players at the ball than the other team.

Every coach I ever had for Australian Rules Football would mention it often, team mates would mention it and my Dad would remind me of it. It was important to not forget about those little things that makes the difference in a game.

Much like an Australian Rules Football team, an Engineering team (or any team within a company) is a made up of players and plays. There are the big plays like shipping a new feature, getting through all the work in a sprint or finding the root cause of a hard to pin down and nasty bug, but there are also the 2 %ers. The small things that individual players do that make the whole team function better.

Within a work team a 2 %er could be:

• Making sure you write an extra clear description for a team member so they aren’t left wondering what you meant.
• Being conscious of the time zone of your co workers and contacting them when they are in their work hours
• Responding to a message to let someone know that you got it.
• Coming prepared to a meeting based on what items in the agenda related to your area.
• Complimenting a co worker when you notice them do something really good.
• Highlighting areas to cut costs on things that are unnecessary but have gone overlooked.
• Sharing credit when there are team members who were really instrumental in delivering something you were praised for.
• Writing really good and consistent release notes
• Keeping documentation up to date
• Being timely with code review so another developer doesn’t have to wait that long to get feedback.

These things are typically hard to measure and are often not visible to the whole team, but they should be commended, encouraged and developed.

The whole team should look for other team members who do these 2 %ers and then do their best to call them out when they see them. Highlighting them and celebrating them will lead to everyone on the team being aware that this type of effort is pivotal to the teams success.

It there a 2 %er that you’ve witnessed a team mate do recently that deserves to be called out? Let them know, let you manager know or mention it in a team call.

It’s all about the 2 %ers!