How to Define your Goals for 2024 as an Engineering Manager
January 2024 is already almost over but it’s not too late to think about your goals as an engineering manager for 2024. It’s a chance for you to really think about what matters most in your job, for your team, and for the products you work on. This year, it’s all about setting goals in a thoughtful and organized way, looking at the bigger picture beyond the usual tasks.
Now is the time to sort out your priorities, making sure you put your team first. Think about your team members’ careers: who’s ready to move up, and how can you help them get there? Then, focus on the technical side of your projects. Tackle the old problems in your systems, plan any big changes needed, and find areas where you can really make things better and try out new ideas. But don’t stop at that. Your understanding of the product is super important. Work closely with your product manager to figure out which features and changes really matter and push for them.
During this time of planning and setting goals, talking with your manager is very important. Share your goals and make sure they fit with the wider goals of your company and organization. Set up regular times to check how you’re doing, making these chats a key part of your journey through 2024.
As you start this year, keep in mind that the goals you set are more than just boxes to tick. They help you make choices, track your progress, and ultimately play a big part in how well your team and your products do. Grab this chance to make plans that really mean something to you and that push your team forward. Here’s to 2024 — a year for careful planning, making a real impact, and leading in a way that changes things for the better.
I split up your potential 2024 engineering manager goals into three areas:
People Goals
Let’s explore how you, as an engineering manager, can help your team grow and succeed. Learn how to spot team members who are ready for bigger roles, give them the right support, and create a team culture where everyone keeps learning and getting better. This isn’t just good for each person on your team; it makes the whole team stronger and more united.
Promotion Focus
Identifying and nurturing potential candidates for promotion is a key responsibility of an engineering manager. Here’s how you can approach this:
Identify High Potentials: Look for team members who consistently exceed expectations. For example, a developer who not only completes tasks efficiently but also proactively improves existing processes might be a candidate for a leadership role.
Personalized Mentorship: Provide personalized guidance to potential candidates. If you have a team member skilled in coding but less confident in leadership, tailor your mentorship to develop those leadership skills, perhaps through leading small project teams.
Opportunities for Visibility: Create opportunities for these individuals to showcase their skills to higher management. This could mean assigning them to high-profile projects or encouraging them to present their work in company-wide meetings.
Leveling Up Team Members
Fostering an environment that allows all team members to grow and develop their skills is crucial for a thriving team.
Skill Gap Analysis: Conduct regular one-on-ones to understand each team member’s aspirations and skill gaps. For instance, a team member might be interested in learning cloud computing technologies but lacks the opportunity to work on relevant projects.
Tailored Development Plans: Based on the skill gap analysis, create individual development plans. If a team member shows interest in data science, provide resources or find opportunities for them to get involved in that area.
Encourage Knowledge Sharing: Promote a culture where team members learn from each other. Organize regular knowledge-sharing sessions where team members can present on topics they are experts in or have recently learned about.
Creating a Growth-Conducive Environment
The overall environment in your team can significantly impact the development of your team members.
Continuous Learning Culture: Foster a culture that values continuous learning. This can be achieved by providing access to online courses, organizing workshops, or even setting up a small library of technical books.
Feedback Mechanism: Implement a constructive feedback mechanism. For example, after project completion, conduct a retrospective meeting where team members can discuss what went well and what could be improved, focusing on both technical and interpersonal skills.
Recognition and Encouragement: Regularly recognize and appreciate improvements and achievements. This could be as simple as acknowledging someone’s effort in a team meeting for their work on a challenging problem or for helping a colleague.
By focusing on these people-centric goals, you can help your team members not only excel in their current roles but also prepare them for future challenges and advancements. This not only benefits the individuals but also strengthens the overall capability and morale of your team.
Technical Goals
Let’s look at how to keep your team’s work and your products running smoothly and efficiently. You’ll discover strategies for setting and tracking performance goals, managing and reducing technical debt, and planning for your system’s long-term growth and health. Additionally, we’ll cover the importance of closely monitoring your systems to quickly address any issues. Mastering these technical aspects is crucial for maintaining a competitive edge and ensuring your product’s future success.
Performance
Enhancing the performance of both the systems your team manages and the products they develop is fundamental to maintaining a competitive edge. Here’s how you can approach this:
Set Clear Performance Benchmarks: Establish specific, measurable targets for system performance. For example, if your team is responsible for a web service, set targets for response times, error rates, and system uptime.
Implement Continuous Monitoring: Establish a routine for monitoring system performance against your benchmarks. Use general system monitoring tools to track these metrics and identify when performance dips below expected levels.
Regular Reviews and Adjustments: Make performance review a regular part of your team’s routine. If a new feature has caused a slowdown in the system, gather your team to pinpoint the cause and implement solutions.
Tech Debt
Managing technical debt is about striking a balance between progressing with new features and maintaining the health of your existing codebase. Use these steps to tackle it in a organized way:
Identify and Prioritize Tech Debt: Regularly review your codebase to identify areas of technical debt. For instance, if parts of your codebase are outdated and no longer efficient, list these areas and prioritize them based on their impact on your system’s performance and stability. It’s key to ask your engineers for feedback regarding tech debt and make sure it gets prioritized.
Allocate Time for Tech Debt Resolution: Dedicate a portion of your development cycle to addressing technical debt. For instance, you might allocate one day a week or one sprint every few months to focus solely on improving and refactoring your codebase. This also shows your team that you make sure taking care of technical debt has priority.
Incorporate Tech Debt into Your Roadmap: When planning new features or improvements, factor in the technical debt that could be incurred. If a new feature relies on parts of your code that are known to be problematic, include time for refactoring in your project timeline. This needs to be well communicated to your Product Manager, especially what advantages the refactoring has long term especially for engineer velocity.
Long-term Technical Improvements
Investing in the long-term health and scalability of your systems ensures that your product remains robust and competitive.
Invest in Scalable Architecture: Plan for growth by choosing architectures and technologies that can scale with your user base and data. If you anticipate a significant increase in users, design your systems to handle this growth smoothly.
Encourage Innovation and Research: Allocate time for your team to research new technologies or methods that could benefit your systems in the long term. For instance, if there’s a new database technology that promises significant performance improvements, allow your team time to explore and test its feasibility for your systems.
Sustainability and Future-proofing: Focus on making decisions that ensure the longevity and maintainability of your systems. This might mean choosing well-supported technologies with a strong community and a clear long-term roadmap.
Enhance Observability: Enhance your systems’ observability by integrating comprehensive logging, metrics, and tracing into a centralized platform. This approach ensures real-time system insights and facilitates swift issue resolution, fostering a culture of continuous improvement and informed decision-making.
By focusing on these technical goals, you not only ensure the current performance and stability of your systems but also lay the foundation for future growth and innovation. This balanced approach is key to maintaining a robust and forward-looking technical infrastructure.
Product Goals
It might be surprising, but as an engineering manager, your goals include not just technical stuff but also product goals! Let’s find out how you can work closely with your product manager to really shape your product. You’ll see how teaming up for strategy sessions, sharing your tech insights, and making decisions together can make your product even better. We’ll also talk about pushing for features that make the most of your team’s tech skills, balancing cool tech ideas with what customers really need, and even teaming up for big, bold project ideas. Working closely with your product manager can lead to some great things for the feature / product your team owns!
Ownership through Collaboration
Effective product ownership as an engineering manager often involves a close collaboration with your product manager. Together, you can create a synergy that deeply understands and shapes the product.
Joint Strategy Sessions: Regularly participate in strategy sessions with your product manager. For example, if you’re working on a cloud storage solution, collaborate to understand market needs and technological capabilities, ensuring that both perspectives are integrated into the product vision.
Advocate for Engineering Insights: Share unique insights from an engineering standpoint that could influence product decisions. If your team suggests an innovative way to optimize data storage, bring this to the table during discussions with your product manager.
Data-Driven Collaboration: Utilize tools like JIRA or Asana for transparent project management. Provide a dashboard for your product manager with an overview of in-progress projects. This ensures both you and your product manager are aligned on priorities and progress. For example, track feature development stages and share updates in real-time. This is something that can also be delegated to the project lead.
Influencing Product Features
As an engineering manager, you’re in a unique spot to help shape the product based on your deep understanding of certain features you’ve worked on for a long time. Your experience gives you insight into what can really make the product shine.
Suggest Features from Your Experience: Bring your first-hand knowledge of the product’s features into the conversation. If you’ve been working on a part of the product for a while, you probably have great ideas on how to make it better. Share these ideas with your team and product manager.
Work Together to Choose the Right Features: Team up with your product manager to figure out which features are most important. You both bring different perspectives to the table, and together you can decide which features will really make the product stand out.
Find the Balance: It’s all about finding the right balance between exciting new tech ideas and what your customers actually want or need. Have open discussions with your product manager to make sure your tech ideas match up with what your customers are looking for. Your long-term involvement with specific product features means you’ll have valuable insights into what works best.
Moonshots as a Joint Venture
Moonshot projects can be particularly successful when engineering and product management work hand-in-hand.
Collaborative Ideation: Organize brainstorming sessions with the product management team. If your product is in the fintech sector, jointly explore innovative ideas like incorporating AI for fraud detection.
Shared Risk Assessment: Work together to evaluate the risks and potential rewards of moonshot projects. This might involve assessing the feasibility and market readiness for a new technology.
Resource Balancing: Plan resource allocation in collaboration with your product manager. Ensure that while pursuing moonshot ideas, like adding VR elements to an educational app, regular product development also continues smoothly.
By focusing on collaboration with your product manager, you can effectively contribute to shaping the product’s direction, advocating for features you believe in, and jointly pursuing ambitious projects that can redefine your product’s trajectory.
Conclusion
As we wrap up this guide on setting your goals for 2024 as an engineering manager, remember, it’s not just about checking tasks off a list. It’s about leading with a clear vision, combining strong tech skills, smart product thinking, and, most importantly, supporting your team’s growth. When you balance your goals across technical areas, product development, and team development, you create a strong product and a team environment that’s positive and productive. Your role is key in making these plans work well and bringing out the best in your team and your product.
Your teamwork with the product manager, your smart input on product features, and your careful management of technical tasks are very important. It’s just as important to help your team grow, learning new skills and moving forward in their careers. As you start this year, remember to keep talking with your team, checking how your goals are going, and being ready to adjust your plans when needed. Look at 2024 not just as another year, but as a chance for you to really make a difference, leading your team to success and feeling great about your work as an engineering manager.
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