Engineering Management

The Key to Successful Cross-Functional Collaboration

As an entrepreneur, the author had to manage multiple teams with different skillsets. To do this, they aligned and supported the teams while they worked towards their goals, monitored their progress, and removed any obstacles that blocked them from reaching their goals. They also hired the right people with the right skills and gave them the freedom and autonomy to optimize their tasks. This experience taught them to take on tasks even if they are not an expert, to hire the right people, and to pay close attention to their work.

Building a Culture of Innovation: How to Foster Creativity and Problem-Solving in Engineering Teams

This article discusses the challenges and strategies for building a culture of innovation and fostering creativity in engineering teams. It highlights the difficulties of managing remote teams and the importance of establishing psychological safety for team members to feel comfortable expressing their ideas and seeking help. Effective communication and collaboration are emphasized as vital for innovation, and the need for engineering managers to balance their technical and managerial responsibilities is addressed. The article concludes by suggesting the use of AI tools and reimagining mentorship platforms to enhance engagement and collaboration in engineering teams.

Enabling Copilot: The Journey

The author of the text initially heard about Copilot, a coding tool, at a gathering for engineering leaders. Intrigued, they decided to try out the free trial and were impressed by its capabilities. They then proceeded to convince the stakeholders at their company, including engineering leadership, security, and legal teams, of the tool's potential. Concerns such as licensing, budget, sensitive information, and legal risks were addressed and resolved. The deployment process was straightforward, and after one month of usage, the author gathered early results which showed positive feedback and a significant number of users opting to continue using the tool. The author also highlighted areas for improvement and provided additional resources for reference.

Growing Well-Rounded Product People

Product management is a multifaceted area and product managers need to have a wide range of skills. To help product people grow in their careers, managers should identify a super skill in their reports and build around that skill to make them well-rounded product professionals. A clear growth framework should be created that itemizes key areas that direct reports should focus on, and they should be encouraged to learn one skill at a time.

Assessing the Performance of Your Team

The French National Football Team won the 2018 FIFA World Cup, led by exceptional players such as Paul Pogba and Kylian Mbappé. The team was coached by Didier Deschamps, who was also a player on the 1998 championship team. This post discusses the importance of a coach in any team sport, and how an Engineering Manager is similar to a football coach. It also provides a list of metrics to measure the performance of individual team members, such as pull requests merged, bugs or support tickets touched, and open source contributions. Finally, it emphasizes the importance of assessing the “soft” skills of collaboration, motivation, and culture fit in a dynamic business context.

The Dilemma of Building a New Product vs. Rebuilding Existing Ones

This article is about the experience of an associate director who was tasked with handling a product's website. He faced four challenges: a poorly built website, low team morale, lack of product strategy, and a long list of requirements from the business teams. He addressed these challenges by creating a prioritized list of issues to fix, talking to all stakeholders to understand their needs, creating a product strategy, deciding whether to build a product from scratch or rebuild an existing one, and speaking to the finance team in their own language. After six months of work, the website was successfully launched and engagement, traffic, and users increased by 5x. The author learned the importance of balancing short-term and long-term gains, having a product strategy in place, creating quick wins, involving all stakeholders, and speaking to stakeholders in their own language.