Knowledge shared by our community

From Waterfall To Agile

This article discusses the process of transitioning from a Waterfall to an Agile software development life cycle. It explains the actions taken by two different companies, Inuit and LexisNexis, to make the transition successful. The article also highlights the lessons learned from the process, such as starting with both the product and engineering teams, and not relying on external consultants.

The Difficulties Of Providing Constructive Feedback

A manager had to give constructive feedback to an employee who was also a personal friend. The manager tried different approaches such as putting the employee on an individual project and having weekly checkpoints, but the employee still struggled to deliver on time. Ultimately, the manager had to put the employee on a Performance Improvement Plan, which resulted in the employee resigning. The lesson learned is that managers should be transparent about expectations and have consistent checkpoints to ensure quality and that the employee is invested in improving.

Engaging Training Sessions

This article outlines how the author improved their team's training program by identifying the real pain points and making the content more relevant and interactive. As a result, the team's velocity and cycle-time increased and the code-review process was more streamlined. The author's key lesson is to identify the real pain points and make sure the team understands why it's important to learn how to deal with them.

Shipping Enterprise Software

My company produces Enterprise Software and has implemented a continuous integration and delivery system to ensure quality and testing at all levels. We ship our code every two weeks and cut up larger builds into smaller pieces to deliver to customers earlier. This model has improved quality and customer feedback, as customers are now getting continuous value and upgrades faster.

Why You Should Measure Productivity

Engineering leaders often view measuring productivity as a bad thing, but it is necessary to help teams be as productive as possible. Volume metrics and milestones are useful indicators of productivity, and can help detect anomalies. However, metrics should not be used to penalize teams, and should be used to raise conversations about how to improve productivity.

Scaling your teams and yourself

This article discusses how to manage stress in engineering teams. It suggests that the best way to prevent stress is to hire and value the right people. When someone is dealing with stress, it is important to diagnose the source of the stress and use the appropriate technique to resolve it. These techniques can range from situational leadership to the ladder of inference. It is important to note that some sources of stress are not fixable and the best approach is to be compassionate and supportive.

Building A Great Culture

When hiring, it is important to focus on the character attributes of potential employees rather than just their technical abilities. To build a great team culture, ask your team what makes them feel good and use that to inform your interview process. Open-ended projects are a great way to assess how well someone can manage, understand, and meet standards.

Using Rubrics For Diversity

Establishing fairness on a diverse team is key, and can be achieved by creating rubrics for job expectations, behavioral attributes, and compensation. These rubrics should be as specific as possible to avoid bias, and should be informed by company values and the attributes of the best people on the team. If consistently used, these rubrics will create a bias towards diversity, fairness, and inclusion.

Asked To Fire A Technically Competent Manager

A network engineering manager was asked to fire the manager of the DC office, but instead of doing so, he took the time to understand the situation and offered the other manager advice on how to improve his communication skills. After a year and a half, the other manager was promoted to the position and kept it for seven more years. The lesson learned was to question more before making a final decision and to not take HR direction from seniors at face value.

A Better Way To Onboard

This article discusses the problem of a lack of seniority on a team and how to properly onboard junior engineers. The solution was to introduce a buddy system, where junior engineers are put through a rotation of three different teams and then paired with a mentor. Additionally, specific projects were assigned to the junior engineers to help them adjust to working in a team and getting their code reviewed. This approach has improved onboarding and mentorship relationships, and is a good way to show junior engineers that they are valued.

A Different Approach To Estimation & Tech Debt Prioritization

This case study outlines the process of an engineering team that was struggling to manage a five-year program replacing an old legacy system. The team came up with the hypothesis that it would be easier to manage the prioritization and development of tasks if they broke everything down into similar size work units and put them into a backlog. They also identified the challenge of articulating the value of resolving tech debt to the business stakeholders and created a business case to present to the project stakeholders. The team found that they were much better at same-sizing tasks than estimating and that creating a business case to present to the project stakeholders was an effective way to prioritize tech debt.

Providing Constructive Feedback

This article discusses the importance of giving effective feedback as an engineering leader. It outlines the steps to take when giving feedback, such as starting with positive feedback, providing clear examples of areas of improvement, and employing a coaching approach. It also emphasizes the importance of being vulnerable as a leader and investing in the growth of the individual receiving the feedback.

Aligning High Performing Teams

When taking over responsibility for a regional business unit, the author needed to quickly move through the forming and storming phases of team development and get to the 'high-performing' part. To do this, the author facilitated the team to a clear articulation of the business goals, identified key objectives, success criteria, and an action plan. Additionally, the author worked with each team member individually to identify how their experiences, strengths, and passions could help the team achieve the overall business objectives. The author learned that it is important to have a shared understanding of the team's goals and identify clear success criteria, get leverage from peers, team members, and processes, and be vulnerable to build trust and collaboration.

Don’t Add Too Much Process

New managers often try to control too much and put too many processes in place. It is better to be in frequent communication with people and wait until a problem is heard multiple times before taking action. It is important to empower employees by discussing success rather than prescribing solutions. This method allows for more creativity, empowers employees, gives the team things to learn from, and frees up more of the manager's time.

Starting A Large Undefined Project

This article outlines the steps to take when wanting to build something but not having a good sense of how to do it. It suggests talking to stakeholders, writing use cases, and building a prototype to get feedback. The goal is to focus on the right problem, ensure it is valuable to solve, and solve it in the right way. The article emphasizes the importance of making a lightweight and fast version of the product as soon as possible to get high-quality feedback.

Dealing with smart but territorial engineers.

A staff engineer was very good at his job but wanted to do everything himself and not be transparent about statuses. To address this, architecture/design review sessions were implemented to provide a forum for opinions while still setting expectations that opinion providers are not the ultimate decision makers. Additionally, one-on-one meetings were held to understand why there was a lack of trust and to provide clarity on expectations when delegating tasks. As a result, communication and trust within the team improved drastically. The lesson learned is that engineering leaders must be both technical and psychological, encouraging candid discussions and timely feedback, and clearly stating expectations.

Why You Should Prepare For Performance-Based Meetings

Engineering leaders should always prepare for performance-related conversations, even with high-performing employees. Writing down a list of what you want to say beforehand helps to stay on message and communicate why the individual is performing poorly and what they need to do better.

The Pitfalls of Not Making Active Decisions

While managing a team at NVIDIA, the author encountered a request from another team that they didn't have the time to fulfill. Instead of saying no, they ignored the request, causing relationship friction and delays in solving the problem. The author learned that it is important to make active decisions and communicate them clearly, and involve the business in decision making to ensure the right tasks are being prioritized.

Proof To Defend Your Team

In this case study, the author was in charge of a remote team and had to defend their technical competence when someone called it into question. The author was able to do this by keeping track of the team's progress and being able to demonstrate the work they had done. The author also took action by putting together external PR materials to make the team's work more visible. The lesson learned is that it is important to keep track of the progression of team members and have documentation to prove their contributions.

The Consequences Of Ownership

The protagonist was asked to decide who should own a joint project for rolling out a VPN technology at Datadog. Despite the project having an estimated timeline of six months, the protagonist decided to take it on and the timeline was quickly cut down to two months. This caused unforeseen stability issues and the protagonist had to spend late nights troubleshooting and dealing with vendors. The protagonist learned that if they are going to own something, they should be prepared for the unexpected and have contingency agreements and SLAs pre-agreed.

From Waterfall To Agile

This article discusses the process of transitioning from a Waterfall to an Agile software development life cycle. It explains the actions taken by two different companies, Inuit and LexisNexis, to make the transition successful. The article also highlights the lessons learned from the process, such as starting with both the product and engineering teams, and not relying on external consultants.

The Difficulties Of Providing Constructive Feedback

A manager had to give constructive feedback to an employee who was also a personal friend. The manager tried different approaches such as putting the employee on an individual project and having weekly checkpoints, but the employee still struggled to deliver on time. Ultimately, the manager had to put the employee on a Performance Improvement Plan, which resulted in the employee resigning. The lesson learned is that managers should be transparent about expectations and have consistent checkpoints to ensure quality and that the employee is invested in improving.

Engaging Training Sessions

This article outlines how the author improved their team's training program by identifying the real pain points and making the content more relevant and interactive. As a result, the team's velocity and cycle-time increased and the code-review process was more streamlined. The author's key lesson is to identify the real pain points and make sure the team understands why it's important to learn how to deal with them.

Shipping Enterprise Software

My company produces Enterprise Software and has implemented a continuous integration and delivery system to ensure quality and testing at all levels. We ship our code every two weeks and cut up larger builds into smaller pieces to deliver to customers earlier. This model has improved quality and customer feedback, as customers are now getting continuous value and upgrades faster.

Why You Should Measure Productivity

Engineering leaders often view measuring productivity as a bad thing, but it is necessary to help teams be as productive as possible. Volume metrics and milestones are useful indicators of productivity, and can help detect anomalies. However, metrics should not be used to penalize teams, and should be used to raise conversations about how to improve productivity.

Scaling your teams and yourself

This article discusses how to manage stress in engineering teams. It suggests that the best way to prevent stress is to hire and value the right people. When someone is dealing with stress, it is important to diagnose the source of the stress and use the appropriate technique to resolve it. These techniques can range from situational leadership to the ladder of inference. It is important to note that some sources of stress are not fixable and the best approach is to be compassionate and supportive.

Building A Great Culture

When hiring, it is important to focus on the character attributes of potential employees rather than just their technical abilities. To build a great team culture, ask your team what makes them feel good and use that to inform your interview process. Open-ended projects are a great way to assess how well someone can manage, understand, and meet standards.

Using Rubrics For Diversity

Establishing fairness on a diverse team is key, and can be achieved by creating rubrics for job expectations, behavioral attributes, and compensation. These rubrics should be as specific as possible to avoid bias, and should be informed by company values and the attributes of the best people on the team. If consistently used, these rubrics will create a bias towards diversity, fairness, and inclusion.

Asked To Fire A Technically Competent Manager

A network engineering manager was asked to fire the manager of the DC office, but instead of doing so, he took the time to understand the situation and offered the other manager advice on how to improve his communication skills. After a year and a half, the other manager was promoted to the position and kept it for seven more years. The lesson learned was to question more before making a final decision and to not take HR direction from seniors at face value.

A Better Way To Onboard

This article discusses the problem of a lack of seniority on a team and how to properly onboard junior engineers. The solution was to introduce a buddy system, where junior engineers are put through a rotation of three different teams and then paired with a mentor. Additionally, specific projects were assigned to the junior engineers to help them adjust to working in a team and getting their code reviewed. This approach has improved onboarding and mentorship relationships, and is a good way to show junior engineers that they are valued.

A Different Approach To Estimation & Tech Debt Prioritization

This case study outlines the process of an engineering team that was struggling to manage a five-year program replacing an old legacy system. The team came up with the hypothesis that it would be easier to manage the prioritization and development of tasks if they broke everything down into similar size work units and put them into a backlog. They also identified the challenge of articulating the value of resolving tech debt to the business stakeholders and created a business case to present to the project stakeholders. The team found that they were much better at same-sizing tasks than estimating and that creating a business case to present to the project stakeholders was an effective way to prioritize tech debt.

Providing Constructive Feedback

This article discusses the importance of giving effective feedback as an engineering leader. It outlines the steps to take when giving feedback, such as starting with positive feedback, providing clear examples of areas of improvement, and employing a coaching approach. It also emphasizes the importance of being vulnerable as a leader and investing in the growth of the individual receiving the feedback.

Aligning High Performing Teams

When taking over responsibility for a regional business unit, the author needed to quickly move through the forming and storming phases of team development and get to the 'high-performing' part. To do this, the author facilitated the team to a clear articulation of the business goals, identified key objectives, success criteria, and an action plan. Additionally, the author worked with each team member individually to identify how their experiences, strengths, and passions could help the team achieve the overall business objectives. The author learned that it is important to have a shared understanding of the team's goals and identify clear success criteria, get leverage from peers, team members, and processes, and be vulnerable to build trust and collaboration.

Don’t Add Too Much Process

New managers often try to control too much and put too many processes in place. It is better to be in frequent communication with people and wait until a problem is heard multiple times before taking action. It is important to empower employees by discussing success rather than prescribing solutions. This method allows for more creativity, empowers employees, gives the team things to learn from, and frees up more of the manager's time.

Starting A Large Undefined Project

This article outlines the steps to take when wanting to build something but not having a good sense of how to do it. It suggests talking to stakeholders, writing use cases, and building a prototype to get feedback. The goal is to focus on the right problem, ensure it is valuable to solve, and solve it in the right way. The article emphasizes the importance of making a lightweight and fast version of the product as soon as possible to get high-quality feedback.

Dealing with smart but territorial engineers.

A staff engineer was very good at his job but wanted to do everything himself and not be transparent about statuses. To address this, architecture/design review sessions were implemented to provide a forum for opinions while still setting expectations that opinion providers are not the ultimate decision makers. Additionally, one-on-one meetings were held to understand why there was a lack of trust and to provide clarity on expectations when delegating tasks. As a result, communication and trust within the team improved drastically. The lesson learned is that engineering leaders must be both technical and psychological, encouraging candid discussions and timely feedback, and clearly stating expectations.

Why You Should Prepare For Performance-Based Meetings

Engineering leaders should always prepare for performance-related conversations, even with high-performing employees. Writing down a list of what you want to say beforehand helps to stay on message and communicate why the individual is performing poorly and what they need to do better.

The Pitfalls of Not Making Active Decisions

While managing a team at NVIDIA, the author encountered a request from another team that they didn't have the time to fulfill. Instead of saying no, they ignored the request, causing relationship friction and delays in solving the problem. The author learned that it is important to make active decisions and communicate them clearly, and involve the business in decision making to ensure the right tasks are being prioritized.

Proof To Defend Your Team

In this case study, the author was in charge of a remote team and had to defend their technical competence when someone called it into question. The author was able to do this by keeping track of the team's progress and being able to demonstrate the work they had done. The author also took action by putting together external PR materials to make the team's work more visible. The lesson learned is that it is important to keep track of the progression of team members and have documentation to prove their contributions.

The Consequences Of Ownership

The protagonist was asked to decide who should own a joint project for rolling out a VPN technology at Datadog. Despite the project having an estimated timeline of six months, the protagonist decided to take it on and the timeline was quickly cut down to two months. This caused unforeseen stability issues and the protagonist had to spend late nights troubleshooting and dealing with vendors. The protagonist learned that if they are going to own something, they should be prepared for the unexpected and have contingency agreements and SLAs pre-agreed.

From Waterfall To Agile

This article discusses the process of transitioning from a Waterfall to an Agile software development life cycle. It explains the actions taken by two different companies, Inuit and LexisNexis, to make the transition successful. The article also highlights the lessons learned from the process, such as starting with both the product and engineering teams, and not relying on external consultants.

The Difficulties Of Providing Constructive Feedback

A manager had to give constructive feedback to an employee who was also a personal friend. The manager tried different approaches such as putting the employee on an individual project and having weekly checkpoints, but the employee still struggled to deliver on time. Ultimately, the manager had to put the employee on a Performance Improvement Plan, which resulted in the employee resigning. The lesson learned is that managers should be transparent about expectations and have consistent checkpoints to ensure quality and that the employee is invested in improving.

Engaging Training Sessions

This article outlines how the author improved their team's training program by identifying the real pain points and making the content more relevant and interactive. As a result, the team's velocity and cycle-time increased and the code-review process was more streamlined. The author's key lesson is to identify the real pain points and make sure the team understands why it's important to learn how to deal with them.

Shipping Enterprise Software

My company produces Enterprise Software and has implemented a continuous integration and delivery system to ensure quality and testing at all levels. We ship our code every two weeks and cut up larger builds into smaller pieces to deliver to customers earlier. This model has improved quality and customer feedback, as customers are now getting continuous value and upgrades faster.

Why You Should Measure Productivity

Engineering leaders often view measuring productivity as a bad thing, but it is necessary to help teams be as productive as possible. Volume metrics and milestones are useful indicators of productivity, and can help detect anomalies. However, metrics should not be used to penalize teams, and should be used to raise conversations about how to improve productivity.

Scaling your teams and yourself

This article discusses how to manage stress in engineering teams. It suggests that the best way to prevent stress is to hire and value the right people. When someone is dealing with stress, it is important to diagnose the source of the stress and use the appropriate technique to resolve it. These techniques can range from situational leadership to the ladder of inference. It is important to note that some sources of stress are not fixable and the best approach is to be compassionate and supportive.

Building A Great Culture

When hiring, it is important to focus on the character attributes of potential employees rather than just their technical abilities. To build a great team culture, ask your team what makes them feel good and use that to inform your interview process. Open-ended projects are a great way to assess how well someone can manage, understand, and meet standards.

Using Rubrics For Diversity

Establishing fairness on a diverse team is key, and can be achieved by creating rubrics for job expectations, behavioral attributes, and compensation. These rubrics should be as specific as possible to avoid bias, and should be informed by company values and the attributes of the best people on the team. If consistently used, these rubrics will create a bias towards diversity, fairness, and inclusion.

Asked To Fire A Technically Competent Manager

A network engineering manager was asked to fire the manager of the DC office, but instead of doing so, he took the time to understand the situation and offered the other manager advice on how to improve his communication skills. After a year and a half, the other manager was promoted to the position and kept it for seven more years. The lesson learned was to question more before making a final decision and to not take HR direction from seniors at face value.

A Better Way To Onboard

This article discusses the problem of a lack of seniority on a team and how to properly onboard junior engineers. The solution was to introduce a buddy system, where junior engineers are put through a rotation of three different teams and then paired with a mentor. Additionally, specific projects were assigned to the junior engineers to help them adjust to working in a team and getting their code reviewed. This approach has improved onboarding and mentorship relationships, and is a good way to show junior engineers that they are valued.

A Different Approach To Estimation & Tech Debt Prioritization

This case study outlines the process of an engineering team that was struggling to manage a five-year program replacing an old legacy system. The team came up with the hypothesis that it would be easier to manage the prioritization and development of tasks if they broke everything down into similar size work units and put them into a backlog. They also identified the challenge of articulating the value of resolving tech debt to the business stakeholders and created a business case to present to the project stakeholders. The team found that they were much better at same-sizing tasks than estimating and that creating a business case to present to the project stakeholders was an effective way to prioritize tech debt.

Providing Constructive Feedback

This article discusses the importance of giving effective feedback as an engineering leader. It outlines the steps to take when giving feedback, such as starting with positive feedback, providing clear examples of areas of improvement, and employing a coaching approach. It also emphasizes the importance of being vulnerable as a leader and investing in the growth of the individual receiving the feedback.

Aligning High Performing Teams

When taking over responsibility for a regional business unit, the author needed to quickly move through the forming and storming phases of team development and get to the 'high-performing' part. To do this, the author facilitated the team to a clear articulation of the business goals, identified key objectives, success criteria, and an action plan. Additionally, the author worked with each team member individually to identify how their experiences, strengths, and passions could help the team achieve the overall business objectives. The author learned that it is important to have a shared understanding of the team's goals and identify clear success criteria, get leverage from peers, team members, and processes, and be vulnerable to build trust and collaboration.

Don’t Add Too Much Process

New managers often try to control too much and put too many processes in place. It is better to be in frequent communication with people and wait until a problem is heard multiple times before taking action. It is important to empower employees by discussing success rather than prescribing solutions. This method allows for more creativity, empowers employees, gives the team things to learn from, and frees up more of the manager's time.

Starting A Large Undefined Project

This article outlines the steps to take when wanting to build something but not having a good sense of how to do it. It suggests talking to stakeholders, writing use cases, and building a prototype to get feedback. The goal is to focus on the right problem, ensure it is valuable to solve, and solve it in the right way. The article emphasizes the importance of making a lightweight and fast version of the product as soon as possible to get high-quality feedback.

Dealing with smart but territorial engineers.

A staff engineer was very good at his job but wanted to do everything himself and not be transparent about statuses. To address this, architecture/design review sessions were implemented to provide a forum for opinions while still setting expectations that opinion providers are not the ultimate decision makers. Additionally, one-on-one meetings were held to understand why there was a lack of trust and to provide clarity on expectations when delegating tasks. As a result, communication and trust within the team improved drastically. The lesson learned is that engineering leaders must be both technical and psychological, encouraging candid discussions and timely feedback, and clearly stating expectations.

Why You Should Prepare For Performance-Based Meetings

Engineering leaders should always prepare for performance-related conversations, even with high-performing employees. Writing down a list of what you want to say beforehand helps to stay on message and communicate why the individual is performing poorly and what they need to do better.

The Pitfalls of Not Making Active Decisions

While managing a team at NVIDIA, the author encountered a request from another team that they didn't have the time to fulfill. Instead of saying no, they ignored the request, causing relationship friction and delays in solving the problem. The author learned that it is important to make active decisions and communicate them clearly, and involve the business in decision making to ensure the right tasks are being prioritized.

Proof To Defend Your Team

In this case study, the author was in charge of a remote team and had to defend their technical competence when someone called it into question. The author was able to do this by keeping track of the team's progress and being able to demonstrate the work they had done. The author also took action by putting together external PR materials to make the team's work more visible. The lesson learned is that it is important to keep track of the progression of team members and have documentation to prove their contributions.

The Consequences Of Ownership

The protagonist was asked to decide who should own a joint project for rolling out a VPN technology at Datadog. Despite the project having an estimated timeline of six months, the protagonist decided to take it on and the timeline was quickly cut down to two months. This caused unforeseen stability issues and the protagonist had to spend late nights troubleshooting and dealing with vendors. The protagonist learned that if they are going to own something, they should be prepared for the unexpected and have contingency agreements and SLAs pre-agreed.

From Waterfall To Agile

This article discusses the process of transitioning from a Waterfall to an Agile software development life cycle. It explains the actions taken by two different companies, Inuit and LexisNexis, to make the transition successful. The article also highlights the lessons learned from the process, such as starting with both the product and engineering teams, and not relying on external consultants.

The Difficulties Of Providing Constructive Feedback

A manager had to give constructive feedback to an employee who was also a personal friend. The manager tried different approaches such as putting the employee on an individual project and having weekly checkpoints, but the employee still struggled to deliver on time. Ultimately, the manager had to put the employee on a Performance Improvement Plan, which resulted in the employee resigning. The lesson learned is that managers should be transparent about expectations and have consistent checkpoints to ensure quality and that the employee is invested in improving.

Engaging Training Sessions

This article outlines how the author improved their team's training program by identifying the real pain points and making the content more relevant and interactive. As a result, the team's velocity and cycle-time increased and the code-review process was more streamlined. The author's key lesson is to identify the real pain points and make sure the team understands why it's important to learn how to deal with them.

Shipping Enterprise Software

My company produces Enterprise Software and has implemented a continuous integration and delivery system to ensure quality and testing at all levels. We ship our code every two weeks and cut up larger builds into smaller pieces to deliver to customers earlier. This model has improved quality and customer feedback, as customers are now getting continuous value and upgrades faster.

Why You Should Measure Productivity

Engineering leaders often view measuring productivity as a bad thing, but it is necessary to help teams be as productive as possible. Volume metrics and milestones are useful indicators of productivity, and can help detect anomalies. However, metrics should not be used to penalize teams, and should be used to raise conversations about how to improve productivity.

Scaling your teams and yourself

This article discusses how to manage stress in engineering teams. It suggests that the best way to prevent stress is to hire and value the right people. When someone is dealing with stress, it is important to diagnose the source of the stress and use the appropriate technique to resolve it. These techniques can range from situational leadership to the ladder of inference. It is important to note that some sources of stress are not fixable and the best approach is to be compassionate and supportive.

Building A Great Culture

When hiring, it is important to focus on the character attributes of potential employees rather than just their technical abilities. To build a great team culture, ask your team what makes them feel good and use that to inform your interview process. Open-ended projects are a great way to assess how well someone can manage, understand, and meet standards.

Using Rubrics For Diversity

Establishing fairness on a diverse team is key, and can be achieved by creating rubrics for job expectations, behavioral attributes, and compensation. These rubrics should be as specific as possible to avoid bias, and should be informed by company values and the attributes of the best people on the team. If consistently used, these rubrics will create a bias towards diversity, fairness, and inclusion.

Asked To Fire A Technically Competent Manager

A network engineering manager was asked to fire the manager of the DC office, but instead of doing so, he took the time to understand the situation and offered the other manager advice on how to improve his communication skills. After a year and a half, the other manager was promoted to the position and kept it for seven more years. The lesson learned was to question more before making a final decision and to not take HR direction from seniors at face value.

A Better Way To Onboard

This article discusses the problem of a lack of seniority on a team and how to properly onboard junior engineers. The solution was to introduce a buddy system, where junior engineers are put through a rotation of three different teams and then paired with a mentor. Additionally, specific projects were assigned to the junior engineers to help them adjust to working in a team and getting their code reviewed. This approach has improved onboarding and mentorship relationships, and is a good way to show junior engineers that they are valued.

A Different Approach To Estimation & Tech Debt Prioritization

This case study outlines the process of an engineering team that was struggling to manage a five-year program replacing an old legacy system. The team came up with the hypothesis that it would be easier to manage the prioritization and development of tasks if they broke everything down into similar size work units and put them into a backlog. They also identified the challenge of articulating the value of resolving tech debt to the business stakeholders and created a business case to present to the project stakeholders. The team found that they were much better at same-sizing tasks than estimating and that creating a business case to present to the project stakeholders was an effective way to prioritize tech debt.

Providing Constructive Feedback

This article discusses the importance of giving effective feedback as an engineering leader. It outlines the steps to take when giving feedback, such as starting with positive feedback, providing clear examples of areas of improvement, and employing a coaching approach. It also emphasizes the importance of being vulnerable as a leader and investing in the growth of the individual receiving the feedback.

Aligning High Performing Teams

When taking over responsibility for a regional business unit, the author needed to quickly move through the forming and storming phases of team development and get to the 'high-performing' part. To do this, the author facilitated the team to a clear articulation of the business goals, identified key objectives, success criteria, and an action plan. Additionally, the author worked with each team member individually to identify how their experiences, strengths, and passions could help the team achieve the overall business objectives. The author learned that it is important to have a shared understanding of the team's goals and identify clear success criteria, get leverage from peers, team members, and processes, and be vulnerable to build trust and collaboration.

Don’t Add Too Much Process

New managers often try to control too much and put too many processes in place. It is better to be in frequent communication with people and wait until a problem is heard multiple times before taking action. It is important to empower employees by discussing success rather than prescribing solutions. This method allows for more creativity, empowers employees, gives the team things to learn from, and frees up more of the manager's time.

Starting A Large Undefined Project

This article outlines the steps to take when wanting to build something but not having a good sense of how to do it. It suggests talking to stakeholders, writing use cases, and building a prototype to get feedback. The goal is to focus on the right problem, ensure it is valuable to solve, and solve it in the right way. The article emphasizes the importance of making a lightweight and fast version of the product as soon as possible to get high-quality feedback.

Dealing with smart but territorial engineers.

A staff engineer was very good at his job but wanted to do everything himself and not be transparent about statuses. To address this, architecture/design review sessions were implemented to provide a forum for opinions while still setting expectations that opinion providers are not the ultimate decision makers. Additionally, one-on-one meetings were held to understand why there was a lack of trust and to provide clarity on expectations when delegating tasks. As a result, communication and trust within the team improved drastically. The lesson learned is that engineering leaders must be both technical and psychological, encouraging candid discussions and timely feedback, and clearly stating expectations.

Why You Should Prepare For Performance-Based Meetings

Engineering leaders should always prepare for performance-related conversations, even with high-performing employees. Writing down a list of what you want to say beforehand helps to stay on message and communicate why the individual is performing poorly and what they need to do better.

The Pitfalls of Not Making Active Decisions

While managing a team at NVIDIA, the author encountered a request from another team that they didn't have the time to fulfill. Instead of saying no, they ignored the request, causing relationship friction and delays in solving the problem. The author learned that it is important to make active decisions and communicate them clearly, and involve the business in decision making to ensure the right tasks are being prioritized.

Proof To Defend Your Team

In this case study, the author was in charge of a remote team and had to defend their technical competence when someone called it into question. The author was able to do this by keeping track of the team's progress and being able to demonstrate the work they had done. The author also took action by putting together external PR materials to make the team's work more visible. The lesson learned is that it is important to keep track of the progression of team members and have documentation to prove their contributions.

The Consequences Of Ownership

The protagonist was asked to decide who should own a joint project for rolling out a VPN technology at Datadog. Despite the project having an estimated timeline of six months, the protagonist decided to take it on and the timeline was quickly cut down to two months. This caused unforeseen stability issues and the protagonist had to spend late nights troubleshooting and dealing with vendors. The protagonist learned that if they are going to own something, they should be prepared for the unexpected and have contingency agreements and SLAs pre-agreed.

From Waterfall To Agile

This article discusses the process of transitioning from a Waterfall to an Agile software development life cycle. It explains the actions taken by two different companies, Inuit and LexisNexis, to make the transition successful. The article also highlights the lessons learned from the process, such as starting with both the product and engineering teams, and not relying on external consultants.

The Difficulties Of Providing Constructive Feedback

A manager had to give constructive feedback to an employee who was also a personal friend. The manager tried different approaches such as putting the employee on an individual project and having weekly checkpoints, but the employee still struggled to deliver on time. Ultimately, the manager had to put the employee on a Performance Improvement Plan, which resulted in the employee resigning. The lesson learned is that managers should be transparent about expectations and have consistent checkpoints to ensure quality and that the employee is invested in improving.

Engaging Training Sessions

This article outlines how the author improved their team's training program by identifying the real pain points and making the content more relevant and interactive. As a result, the team's velocity and cycle-time increased and the code-review process was more streamlined. The author's key lesson is to identify the real pain points and make sure the team understands why it's important to learn how to deal with them.

Shipping Enterprise Software

My company produces Enterprise Software and has implemented a continuous integration and delivery system to ensure quality and testing at all levels. We ship our code every two weeks and cut up larger builds into smaller pieces to deliver to customers earlier. This model has improved quality and customer feedback, as customers are now getting continuous value and upgrades faster.

Why You Should Measure Productivity

Engineering leaders often view measuring productivity as a bad thing, but it is necessary to help teams be as productive as possible. Volume metrics and milestones are useful indicators of productivity, and can help detect anomalies. However, metrics should not be used to penalize teams, and should be used to raise conversations about how to improve productivity.

Scaling your teams and yourself

This article discusses how to manage stress in engineering teams. It suggests that the best way to prevent stress is to hire and value the right people. When someone is dealing with stress, it is important to diagnose the source of the stress and use the appropriate technique to resolve it. These techniques can range from situational leadership to the ladder of inference. It is important to note that some sources of stress are not fixable and the best approach is to be compassionate and supportive.

Building A Great Culture

When hiring, it is important to focus on the character attributes of potential employees rather than just their technical abilities. To build a great team culture, ask your team what makes them feel good and use that to inform your interview process. Open-ended projects are a great way to assess how well someone can manage, understand, and meet standards.

Using Rubrics For Diversity

Establishing fairness on a diverse team is key, and can be achieved by creating rubrics for job expectations, behavioral attributes, and compensation. These rubrics should be as specific as possible to avoid bias, and should be informed by company values and the attributes of the best people on the team. If consistently used, these rubrics will create a bias towards diversity, fairness, and inclusion.

Asked To Fire A Technically Competent Manager

A network engineering manager was asked to fire the manager of the DC office, but instead of doing so, he took the time to understand the situation and offered the other manager advice on how to improve his communication skills. After a year and a half, the other manager was promoted to the position and kept it for seven more years. The lesson learned was to question more before making a final decision and to not take HR direction from seniors at face value.

A Better Way To Onboard

This article discusses the problem of a lack of seniority on a team and how to properly onboard junior engineers. The solution was to introduce a buddy system, where junior engineers are put through a rotation of three different teams and then paired with a mentor. Additionally, specific projects were assigned to the junior engineers to help them adjust to working in a team and getting their code reviewed. This approach has improved onboarding and mentorship relationships, and is a good way to show junior engineers that they are valued.

A Different Approach To Estimation & Tech Debt Prioritization

This case study outlines the process of an engineering team that was struggling to manage a five-year program replacing an old legacy system. The team came up with the hypothesis that it would be easier to manage the prioritization and development of tasks if they broke everything down into similar size work units and put them into a backlog. They also identified the challenge of articulating the value of resolving tech debt to the business stakeholders and created a business case to present to the project stakeholders. The team found that they were much better at same-sizing tasks than estimating and that creating a business case to present to the project stakeholders was an effective way to prioritize tech debt.

Providing Constructive Feedback

This article discusses the importance of giving effective feedback as an engineering leader. It outlines the steps to take when giving feedback, such as starting with positive feedback, providing clear examples of areas of improvement, and employing a coaching approach. It also emphasizes the importance of being vulnerable as a leader and investing in the growth of the individual receiving the feedback.

Aligning High Performing Teams

When taking over responsibility for a regional business unit, the author needed to quickly move through the forming and storming phases of team development and get to the 'high-performing' part. To do this, the author facilitated the team to a clear articulation of the business goals, identified key objectives, success criteria, and an action plan. Additionally, the author worked with each team member individually to identify how their experiences, strengths, and passions could help the team achieve the overall business objectives. The author learned that it is important to have a shared understanding of the team's goals and identify clear success criteria, get leverage from peers, team members, and processes, and be vulnerable to build trust and collaboration.

Don’t Add Too Much Process

New managers often try to control too much and put too many processes in place. It is better to be in frequent communication with people and wait until a problem is heard multiple times before taking action. It is important to empower employees by discussing success rather than prescribing solutions. This method allows for more creativity, empowers employees, gives the team things to learn from, and frees up more of the manager's time.

Starting A Large Undefined Project

This article outlines the steps to take when wanting to build something but not having a good sense of how to do it. It suggests talking to stakeholders, writing use cases, and building a prototype to get feedback. The goal is to focus on the right problem, ensure it is valuable to solve, and solve it in the right way. The article emphasizes the importance of making a lightweight and fast version of the product as soon as possible to get high-quality feedback.

Dealing with smart but territorial engineers.

A staff engineer was very good at his job but wanted to do everything himself and not be transparent about statuses. To address this, architecture/design review sessions were implemented to provide a forum for opinions while still setting expectations that opinion providers are not the ultimate decision makers. Additionally, one-on-one meetings were held to understand why there was a lack of trust and to provide clarity on expectations when delegating tasks. As a result, communication and trust within the team improved drastically. The lesson learned is that engineering leaders must be both technical and psychological, encouraging candid discussions and timely feedback, and clearly stating expectations.

Why You Should Prepare For Performance-Based Meetings

Engineering leaders should always prepare for performance-related conversations, even with high-performing employees. Writing down a list of what you want to say beforehand helps to stay on message and communicate why the individual is performing poorly and what they need to do better.

The Pitfalls of Not Making Active Decisions

While managing a team at NVIDIA, the author encountered a request from another team that they didn't have the time to fulfill. Instead of saying no, they ignored the request, causing relationship friction and delays in solving the problem. The author learned that it is important to make active decisions and communicate them clearly, and involve the business in decision making to ensure the right tasks are being prioritized.

Proof To Defend Your Team

In this case study, the author was in charge of a remote team and had to defend their technical competence when someone called it into question. The author was able to do this by keeping track of the team's progress and being able to demonstrate the work they had done. The author also took action by putting together external PR materials to make the team's work more visible. The lesson learned is that it is important to keep track of the progression of team members and have documentation to prove their contributions.

The Consequences Of Ownership

The protagonist was asked to decide who should own a joint project for rolling out a VPN technology at Datadog. Despite the project having an estimated timeline of six months, the protagonist decided to take it on and the timeline was quickly cut down to two months. This caused unforeseen stability issues and the protagonist had to spend late nights troubleshooting and dealing with vendors. The protagonist learned that if they are going to own something, they should be prepared for the unexpected and have contingency agreements and SLAs pre-agreed.

From Waterfall To Agile

This article discusses the process of transitioning from a Waterfall to an Agile software development life cycle. It explains the actions taken by two different companies, Inuit and LexisNexis, to make the transition successful. The article also highlights the lessons learned from the process, such as starting with both the product and engineering teams, and not relying on external consultants.

The Difficulties Of Providing Constructive Feedback

A manager had to give constructive feedback to an employee who was also a personal friend. The manager tried different approaches such as putting the employee on an individual project and having weekly checkpoints, but the employee still struggled to deliver on time. Ultimately, the manager had to put the employee on a Performance Improvement Plan, which resulted in the employee resigning. The lesson learned is that managers should be transparent about expectations and have consistent checkpoints to ensure quality and that the employee is invested in improving.

Engaging Training Sessions

This article outlines how the author improved their team's training program by identifying the real pain points and making the content more relevant and interactive. As a result, the team's velocity and cycle-time increased and the code-review process was more streamlined. The author's key lesson is to identify the real pain points and make sure the team understands why it's important to learn how to deal with them.

Shipping Enterprise Software

My company produces Enterprise Software and has implemented a continuous integration and delivery system to ensure quality and testing at all levels. We ship our code every two weeks and cut up larger builds into smaller pieces to deliver to customers earlier. This model has improved quality and customer feedback, as customers are now getting continuous value and upgrades faster.

Why You Should Measure Productivity

Engineering leaders often view measuring productivity as a bad thing, but it is necessary to help teams be as productive as possible. Volume metrics and milestones are useful indicators of productivity, and can help detect anomalies. However, metrics should not be used to penalize teams, and should be used to raise conversations about how to improve productivity.

Scaling your teams and yourself

This article discusses how to manage stress in engineering teams. It suggests that the best way to prevent stress is to hire and value the right people. When someone is dealing with stress, it is important to diagnose the source of the stress and use the appropriate technique to resolve it. These techniques can range from situational leadership to the ladder of inference. It is important to note that some sources of stress are not fixable and the best approach is to be compassionate and supportive.

Building A Great Culture

When hiring, it is important to focus on the character attributes of potential employees rather than just their technical abilities. To build a great team culture, ask your team what makes them feel good and use that to inform your interview process. Open-ended projects are a great way to assess how well someone can manage, understand, and meet standards.

Using Rubrics For Diversity

Establishing fairness on a diverse team is key, and can be achieved by creating rubrics for job expectations, behavioral attributes, and compensation. These rubrics should be as specific as possible to avoid bias, and should be informed by company values and the attributes of the best people on the team. If consistently used, these rubrics will create a bias towards diversity, fairness, and inclusion.

Asked To Fire A Technically Competent Manager

A network engineering manager was asked to fire the manager of the DC office, but instead of doing so, he took the time to understand the situation and offered the other manager advice on how to improve his communication skills. After a year and a half, the other manager was promoted to the position and kept it for seven more years. The lesson learned was to question more before making a final decision and to not take HR direction from seniors at face value.

A Better Way To Onboard

This article discusses the problem of a lack of seniority on a team and how to properly onboard junior engineers. The solution was to introduce a buddy system, where junior engineers are put through a rotation of three different teams and then paired with a mentor. Additionally, specific projects were assigned to the junior engineers to help them adjust to working in a team and getting their code reviewed. This approach has improved onboarding and mentorship relationships, and is a good way to show junior engineers that they are valued.

A Different Approach To Estimation & Tech Debt Prioritization

This case study outlines the process of an engineering team that was struggling to manage a five-year program replacing an old legacy system. The team came up with the hypothesis that it would be easier to manage the prioritization and development of tasks if they broke everything down into similar size work units and put them into a backlog. They also identified the challenge of articulating the value of resolving tech debt to the business stakeholders and created a business case to present to the project stakeholders. The team found that they were much better at same-sizing tasks than estimating and that creating a business case to present to the project stakeholders was an effective way to prioritize tech debt.

Providing Constructive Feedback

This article discusses the importance of giving effective feedback as an engineering leader. It outlines the steps to take when giving feedback, such as starting with positive feedback, providing clear examples of areas of improvement, and employing a coaching approach. It also emphasizes the importance of being vulnerable as a leader and investing in the growth of the individual receiving the feedback.

Aligning High Performing Teams

When taking over responsibility for a regional business unit, the author needed to quickly move through the forming and storming phases of team development and get to the 'high-performing' part. To do this, the author facilitated the team to a clear articulation of the business goals, identified key objectives, success criteria, and an action plan. Additionally, the author worked with each team member individually to identify how their experiences, strengths, and passions could help the team achieve the overall business objectives. The author learned that it is important to have a shared understanding of the team's goals and identify clear success criteria, get leverage from peers, team members, and processes, and be vulnerable to build trust and collaboration.

Don’t Add Too Much Process

New managers often try to control too much and put too many processes in place. It is better to be in frequent communication with people and wait until a problem is heard multiple times before taking action. It is important to empower employees by discussing success rather than prescribing solutions. This method allows for more creativity, empowers employees, gives the team things to learn from, and frees up more of the manager's time.

Starting A Large Undefined Project

This article outlines the steps to take when wanting to build something but not having a good sense of how to do it. It suggests talking to stakeholders, writing use cases, and building a prototype to get feedback. The goal is to focus on the right problem, ensure it is valuable to solve, and solve it in the right way. The article emphasizes the importance of making a lightweight and fast version of the product as soon as possible to get high-quality feedback.

Dealing with smart but territorial engineers.

A staff engineer was very good at his job but wanted to do everything himself and not be transparent about statuses. To address this, architecture/design review sessions were implemented to provide a forum for opinions while still setting expectations that opinion providers are not the ultimate decision makers. Additionally, one-on-one meetings were held to understand why there was a lack of trust and to provide clarity on expectations when delegating tasks. As a result, communication and trust within the team improved drastically. The lesson learned is that engineering leaders must be both technical and psychological, encouraging candid discussions and timely feedback, and clearly stating expectations.

Why You Should Prepare For Performance-Based Meetings

Engineering leaders should always prepare for performance-related conversations, even with high-performing employees. Writing down a list of what you want to say beforehand helps to stay on message and communicate why the individual is performing poorly and what they need to do better.

The Pitfalls of Not Making Active Decisions

While managing a team at NVIDIA, the author encountered a request from another team that they didn't have the time to fulfill. Instead of saying no, they ignored the request, causing relationship friction and delays in solving the problem. The author learned that it is important to make active decisions and communicate them clearly, and involve the business in decision making to ensure the right tasks are being prioritized.

Proof To Defend Your Team

In this case study, the author was in charge of a remote team and had to defend their technical competence when someone called it into question. The author was able to do this by keeping track of the team's progress and being able to demonstrate the work they had done. The author also took action by putting together external PR materials to make the team's work more visible. The lesson learned is that it is important to keep track of the progression of team members and have documentation to prove their contributions.

The Consequences Of Ownership

The protagonist was asked to decide who should own a joint project for rolling out a VPN technology at Datadog. Despite the project having an estimated timeline of six months, the protagonist decided to take it on and the timeline was quickly cut down to two months. This caused unforeseen stability issues and the protagonist had to spend late nights troubleshooting and dealing with vendors. The protagonist learned that if they are going to own something, they should be prepared for the unexpected and have contingency agreements and SLAs pre-agreed.