GY

Being a leader of a young-people’s team (and with this I’m not referring to the inner child we all have) requires both to know about them and to understand the way they interact with the agile methodologies.

Who are they? The Generation “Y” or also know as the “Millennials”, “The Internet Generation”, or even “The Google Generation” is the one comprising  the demographic segment borned between 1981 and 1997. And they are now entering the global workforce.

It’s the MTV and “All Stars” Generation who experienced the end of the Cold War, the spread of non-traditional family models and the technology revolution. There are the young people who couldn’t conceive life without technology (SMS, mobile phones, IPods, Reality Shows and Internet 2.0) and who probably wouldn’t also live without it.

The strong sense of group identification through which they build their personal identity has become one of their most forceful features (who haven’t heard about “urban tribes”?). The Generation Y doesn’t think in a future based on a single job (unlike previous generations), nor they think in a long-term plan. Their life plan is “today”, they are curious, they love to experiment, to change jobs and “not take sides”.

For some reason and unlike the previous generation, they Gen Y feels unenthusiastic for public participation and doesn’t accept the traditional authority figures, being more collaborative than hierarchical.

What is important to bear in mind when working with them in the software development, but also in any other kind of job?

  • They have a very low attention span and get bored easily. Thus, not-to-long tasks which bring frequent outcomes are strongly recommended. This doesn’t mean they are not willing to work, by contrast, they’re really enthusiastic, but need immediate gratifications (as they received during their childhood).
  • They ignore long-term plans, strictly defined scopes. They have an affinity with both incremental planning and development in which they want to participate actively.
  • Gen Y is willing to learn, and they keep up quite well with technologic advances, this is something very positive to grasp new concepts and ways of working.
  • Impatience: They cannot wait to get a better position, even though they have just started and they haven’t gained experience enough. They need help in controlling their anxiety.
  • Gen Y is used to chaos, and doesn’t feel uncomfortable with confusion. This represents an advantage when considering the constant changes today in businesses. However, they require both a strong coaching to lead them and an environment which accepts these changes to keep them focused on objectives continually being defined.
  • Flexibility (may be too much). The variety of options they have at the reach of hand makes them think that if they don’t get what they want by one mean, they can get it by another. This affects directly their job as far as when picking a job, many of them don’t work “because they need to” but “because they want to” and timetables, job requirements, salary and expectations become crucial to decide whether to stay or go.
  • “Multi-tasking”. Gen Y has developed an ability to deal with more than one issue at a time. What could simply be considered as an advantage can turn into an drawback because of their lapse of concentration and the delay rooted on multi-tasking activities, contrary to a work focus on one single thing at a time.

They are still too young. Even though they look like as know-it-all people by the way they ussualy introduce themselves, the Generation Y people don’t rely on a vast labor experience, and we don’t know exactly what to expect from them. Furthermore, their recent introduction to the job market and the way they behave could generate integration conflicts with previous generations. Thus is necessary to understand how they work and to keep alert for the sake of the team.

With its pros and cons, Generation “Why” is here to stay and agile methodologies will grow with them, retrospective after retrospective, taken their input into account and being shaped based on their behavior. Definitively.