Engineering Management

How to Create a Tailored Growth Plan For Your Teams

When joining a company with an unclear career ladder, the manager took action to ensure that their engineers had clarity on what constituted progress in their career. This included analyzing their strengths and weaknesses, setting clear goals, and identifying areas where their interests and the manager's goals could overlap. The outcome was that engineers had clarity on their goals and felt engaged and involved with the organization. The manager learned that it is important to be clear about goals at the start of a performance cycle, ask questions to team members, and build a specialized plan for engineers to help with retention.

Changing of a Guard

After a company underwent a significant transformation, the new leadership brought in new people to fill the ranks. The protagonist was eager to stay with the company, but was not given an opportunity to move up. To showcase their worth, they spoke with old management and other people from their field, and used a football analogy to express their interest to the new president. Ultimately, they learned that if you want something, you should be proactive and show your interest, and that the average work span of an employee in technology is two to three years.

Should Product Managers be Technical?

This consulting engagement with a startup founder focused on product management practices. Through further discussion, it was revealed that the founder's real issue was a matter of innovation. By probing deeper into the problem, a more appealing solution was found, strengthening the business association. Being technical in the situation was beneficial in coming to a closure.

Next Level Support Engineering (a.k.a. Incidents Management Engineering)

A year ago, the author was tasked to restructure the existing Support Engineering function in their company, which had experienced rapid growth due to the emergence of Covid-19. To do this, they had to redefine what Support Engineering was, and what it should do to address the new set of problems. This included establishing incident management protocols, a program management team, interception software, and building the team. Through this process, the author learned that Support Engineering should be established earlier, and that it should be a top horizontal function that liaises Engineering and Operations while shielding product teams.

Inspiring Engineers with your Company's Vision

The author shares a personal story about their experience as an engineering lead on a Windows 8 application development project. They highlight the importance of having a clear Company Vision that motivates employees and aligns their work with the goals of the company. The author emphasizes the need for leaders to communicate the "why" behind their projects and provide opportunities for engineers to feel ownership and engagement. They also discuss the potential negative effects of a lack of alignment with the Company Vision, such as competing priorities and decreased productivity. The article concludes by emphasizing the ongoing nature of developing and communicating the Company Vision.

Building an Exponential High-Performing Team

When starting a business, it is important to build a diverse team with different skill sets, backgrounds, knowledge, vision, and preferences. This will enable the team to try new technologies, modify processes quickly, and choose from a variety of perspectives. It is also important to think about duplicating roles as the team grows, and to mix up senior and junior employees, corporate and startup people, and extroverts and introverts. The lesson learned is to look for diversity that can generate more added value instead of hiring like-minded people.