Team

Growing with Glue Work

July 21, 2021
Growing with Glue Work

Co-Writ­ten By Kylie Mar­tinez and Aman­da Clouser

We have had many con­ver­sa­tions this past year explor­ing invis­i­ble work done inside the home. This is any­thing from remem­ber­ing to send out the Mother’s Day cards on time to ensure that the toi­let paper is always stocked. As we talked about it in a per­son­al life con­text, we were intrigued to see how this could trans­late into the work­space. We were lucky enough to find resources avail­able regard­ing soft skills that employ­ees har­ness and use to bet­ter the com­pa­ny, even if it doesn’t direct­ly pro­duce deliverables.

When we think of glue work in the work­space, we think of rela­tion­ship build­ing, pro­fes­sion­al growth, hard con­ver­sa­tions over strin­gent poli­cies, and inten­tion­al process improvement.

We have seen Michi­gan­Labs be inten­tion­al about glue work as we have scaled up in com­pa­ny size, con­tin­u­ing to revis­it the busi­ness struc­ture fre­quent­ly and cre­ate new process­es and posi­tions when warranted.

Why is it impor­tant to sup­port glue work?

Devel­op­ers & UX design­ers are hired to write code or design an app, but com­pa­nies can­not run on just out­put alone. In all teams, there is inevitably some glue work” that must be done in order for success.

We all ben­e­fit from unseen and extra efforts made by our lead­er­ship and team mem­bers. With­out it, we would feel more like cogs in a machine than humans. Michi­gan­Labs is quick to sup­port endeav­ors sur­round­ing glue work by remind­ing us that our team and their skills are more than a means to an end.

Below are our favorite ways that glue work is sup­port­ed and encour­aged in our workplace:

Bond­ing opportunities

Rotat­ing lunch

Rotat­ing lunch is a month­ly team lunch with ran­dom­ized groups of 4 – 5 peo­ple from all posi­tions and teams in Michi­gan Soft­ware Labs.

As our team grows, we need to main­tain strong rela­tion­ships with our team mem­bers. Rotat­ing lunch allows us to reach out­side our day-to-day inter­ac­tions and con­nect with peo­ple we oth­er­wise might not.

Month­ly celebration

Month­ly cel­e­bra­tion is where we cel­e­brate all of the birth­days, work anniver­saries, and any oth­er notable events that are occur­ring that month.

It’s often hard in larg­er orga­ni­za­tions to rec­og­nize every cel­e­bra­to­ry event because there are too many of them, but being con­scious of cel­e­brat­ing these things every month is a fun way to cre­ate com­mu­ni­ty and feel appreciated.

Quar­ter­ly cel­e­bra­tions with­in each project team

With the nature of our work, our project length varies. To cel­e­brate teams on longer projects or teams that don’t have a spe­cif­ic project (Busi­ness Ops) are acknowl­edged for their accomplishments.

Expand­ing prac­tices when too much is falling on one person

Expand­ing devel­op­ment leads

Being flex­i­ble with growth in a com­pa­ny is essen­tial to suc­cess. As our devel­op­ment team grew, we knew there were too many expec­ta­tions falling on our sin­gle devel­op­ment prac­tice lead with a group of ~20 devel­op­ers. To adapt, we expand­ed to hav­ing Prac­tice Co-Leads to share the weight of responsibilities.

Well­ness & Cul­ture Lead

When the com­pa­ny was small­er, it was eas­i­er to orga­nize team events by look­ing around the office and say­ing, Should we go to Culver’s?” With over thir­ty peo­ple now, com­pa­ny events & meet­ings require more coor­di­na­tion and time. This growth led to Michi­gan­Labs hir­ing some­one to sus­tain an engag­ing and col­lab­o­ra­tive cul­ture, focus­ing on team expe­ri­ence, well­ness and con­tin­u­ous efforts to cre­ate a space of belonging.

Pro­fes­sion­al Development

Book Clubs

At the begin­ning of 2020, a book club start­ed where groups would work through busi­ness books, dis­cussing and hon­ing skills applic­a­ble to our day-to-day life in the office. This oppor­tu­ni­ty has dou­bled as a space for team mem­bers to learn from oth­ers they do not reg­u­lar­ly work with.

Con­fer­ences

Each year, all team mem­bers a stipend is giv­en to put toward a con­fer­ence or class that would fur­ther their knowl­edge in a top­ic of their choos­ing. This stipend allows our team mem­bers to invest in skills they are inter­est­ed in, fur­ther­ing their pro­fes­sion­al development.

Lunch & Learns

Month­ly, Michi­gan­Labs has the oppor­tu­ni­ty for a wide range of top­ics to be taught to team mem­bers. This not only enrich­es the over­all knowl­edge of the team but also pro­vides oppor­tu­ni­ties for col­lab­o­ra­tion, com­mu­ni­ty, and growth.

Defin­ing & refin­ing practices

Quar­ter­ly Rocks/​OKRs

Every quar­ter our prac­tice leads and ser­vice group leads come togeth­er to define and dis­cuss our objec­tives for the upcom­ing months. This dri­ves con­tin­u­ous improve­ment and allows space for change and re-pri­or­i­ti­za­tion when needed.

Fri­day Feedback

We use Fri­day Feed­back as a mul­ti-func­tion­al tool that helps share infor­ma­tion, ideas, and feed­back with our lead­er­ship team. We use it for week­ly check-ins, asyn­chro­nous standups, send­ing team mem­bers Kudos,” sub­mit­ting ideas, and pulse sur­veys. All of this allows lead­er­ship to stay con­nect­ed with how the team is feel­ing.


It has been encour­ag­ing to see the lead­er­ship of Michi­gan­Labs pro­vides path­ways to sus­tain­ing our cul­ture through­out growth. Glue work is an essen­tial part of what keeps Michi­gan­Labs wel­com­ing and team mem­bers con­fi­dent in the company’s direction.

Amanda Clouser
Amanda Clouser
Development Practice Co-Lead

Looking for more like this?

Sign up for our monthly newsletter to receive helpful articles, case studies, and stories from our team.

Making your Android project modular with convention plugins
Android Development

Making your Android project modular with convention plugins

May 22, 2024

Explore the journey of Gradle and build tools like it, particularly in the context of Android development. You'll learn the necessity of separating code into modules as projects grow and how Gradle convention plugins can streamline this process.

Read more
The Pareto Principle at work in software
Business Process

The Pareto Principle at work in software

December 4, 2023

Read more
Lessons Learned from our Associate Developer
Team

Lessons Learned from our Associate Developer

September 13, 2023

One of our Associate Software Developers, Rohit, reflects on his time at MichiganLabs working on a short-term project, what he learned about real-world development, and the software consultancy business model.

Read more
View more articles