Develop an engineering culture for “Speed to Value”
Netflix is known for its great media streaming services but its biggest engineering challenge was to keep up with its platform’s resiliency & performance to support its exponential growth. There were many moving parts that were being managed by multiple engineering teams. In order to decouple engineering from the platform’s complex architecture, Netflix chose “Freedom and Responsibility” — enabling the developers with end-to-end responsibility along with the freedom to be creative and flexible. The result of this strategy is evident in their continued dominance in this space.
“Establishing the right engineering culture is as critical as creating the right product vision.”
The common mistake made by enterprises looking to transform is arriving at a solution too quickly and engineering it by adopting agile methodology and ceremonies. The solution does get out of the door, but it is:
- late for the market despite multiple iterations
- far from expectations, thus fails to deliver value
- of inferior quality of code/build and platform/stack
- stressful for the teams
Generally, engineering teams don’t possess end-user visibility and understanding. This could be due to the multiple layers between business and engineering or their sole focus on building solutions/features. This results in a product that is inferior both in quality and performance
These concerns exist due to the absence of engineering culture. IBM Garage keeps culture at its core and lays emphasis on “Speed to Value” along with engineering excellence.
Mentioned below are a few cultural principles and methods which equip teams to successfully deliver great products/solutions.
Customer at its heart
Closer to the end-user — By design, the Garage methodology places all chapters, such as engineering, product, and design, closer to each other. This enables the engineering chapter to access superior customer context sooner as compared to the traditional ways of working. Having a consistent view of the end-user helps to develop empathy and define a better solution approach. Early access to high-fidelity prototypes and wire-frames sets the engineering up for success.
Autonomous teams — Giving ownership to teams often results in a better product getting built. Engineering leaders have the responsibility to balance ownership/autonomy and alignment. While alignment is important to ensure that the teams are committed to the goal, autonomy enables the teams to explore and choose the right approach. The engineering chapter of the garage follows the principle of having loosely coupled and tightly aligned teams.
Establish speed to delivery
Extreme automation — Reducing the gap between development and deployment is a critical estimator of engineering agility. While DevOps enables the team to automate the release pipeline, the implementation has its own maturity curve which is an indicator of the speed at which engineering teams can push code to production. The engineering chapter of Garage establishes matured DevSecOps practices for the teams right from the Co-Create phase with continuous improvement embedded throughout other stages. Garage engineers adopt advanced DevSecOps to integrate various aspects of the release cycle, such as test automation, code analysis, security & vulnerability testing, etc.
Frequent releases — The release management teams are always juggling multiple initiatives of varied complexities, which are further intertwined with competing priorities and timelines. This results in a delay in product release, ultimately delaying the product launch and final value realization. To address this problem, garage squads follow the principle of smaller decoupled releases at higher frequencies. This results in a faster time to market and the realization of value at speed.
Adopt best practices
Engineering excellence — While timely delivery of a solution is critical to the success of a squad’s mission the quality of delivery is of equal importance. The engineering chapter of the garage promotes excellence through many interventions by:
- Maintaining quality standards through review ceremonies
- Promoting best practices and standards through playbooks
- Showcasing of solutions through playbacks.
Risk-taking — Engineering teams deal with a lot of unknowns, especially around solutions and technology. Failing to manage unknowns directly impacts the team’s ability to deliver. The engineering chapter of the garage follows the principles of celebrating failures by failing fast, learning fast, and improving fast. These principles encourage the teams to take risks yielding in best outcomes. Garage ceremonies such as retrospective and postpartum encourage teams to have an approach toward continuous improvement. Success and failures are discussed openly and celebrated without bringing individual biases.
Disclaimer — These are my personal views, nothing to do with IBM viewpoint.
Saurabh Kaushik: Data and AI Product Management Leader for 24 years. From web 1.0 to cutting-edge AI solutions, he’s pioneered tech products across industries, from startups to enterprises. Saurabh is a renowned thought leader and speaker at global tech forums, and his tech blogs span over a decade. His relentless innovation continues to shape Data and AI solutions worldwide.
Connect with him on Linkedin
