The First Engineering Ops Hire: 4 Key Challenges and How to Overcome Them

The role of Engineering Operations is gaining prominence as organizations recognize the need to optimize their software development processes. Being the first Engineering Ops hire is an exciting opportunity, but it comes with unique challenges. In our community we’ve met for an exciting online session of identifying and defining the main challenges. Here are four common hurdles and strategies to navigate them:

1. Role Definition and Expectation Management:

The Challenge:

• Being the first Engineering Ops, like any other role in a company, brings a challenge of defining and implementing the exact role and its definitions. This brings to lack of clarity about responsibilities, stakeholders, reporting structures and success metrics.
• At the beginning, many stakeholders don’t know on what meetings to involve the Engineering Operations or what decisions and information should be passed by them.
• Also, Engineering Operations might approach and instruct people to work in a certain way or conduct certain changes that might be pushed back by team members or other leaders that don’t fully understand the ownership and the role of the Engineering Operations.
• In addition, many times Engineering Operations are brought to “create order” or to “manage the chaos”. This type of general title leads to misalignment in expectations, where each stakeholder thinks differently on the expected role and outcome.
• The Solution in short: Proactive communication, expectation alignment, and a clear charter outlining goals and metrics are key to establishing the role’s purpose and responsibilities. Embrace the iterative nature of defining this new position, as real-world actions will clarify the role over time.

2. Demonstrating Value and Gaining Buy-In from the teams:

The Challenge:

• When bringing the first Engineering Ops, usually one of the first expectations are for them to make the relevant teams to work in a unified way. Each company starts at a different point, so the gap is different, but eventually one of the roles is to change the way all the teams work in specific issues. a direct outcome is the need the collaboration of the Engineering Teams and other stakeholders.
• Taking into consideration the above challenge of the role not being clear enough for the stakeholders and adding the request on significant changes in their daily work creates a challenge to gain fast buy-in for the suggested changes.
• This challenge is magnified when considering management’s expectations, which engineering teams may perceive as micromanagement or excessive scrutiny.
• The Solution in short: Start by identifying and addressing a pain point that resonates with the engineering team. This could be reducing support overhead, streamlining development processes, or improving visibility into status and overall picture. Once you’ve earned their trust, you can tackle broader strategic initiatives.

3. Gaining the Leadership trust and buy-in:

The Challenge:

• While this may sound absurd, sometimes the same leaders that brought in the role to the company might be the main ones to create obstacles in the way to its success. And even if they aren’t, it’s important for the Leadership to understand that the change needed in their departments apply changes in the way THEY behave also.
• Moreover sometimes when bringing in an Engineering Ops, many processes and outcomes become more data oriented and sometimes the data reflects significant changes that are needed and people might feel personally responsible for the current situation.
• Also as a consequence of the raised expectations and unclear success metrics at the beginning, sometimes as a management there could be desire for very fast results. Another outcome might be to prioritize improvement that is crucial to the management but isn’t the most painful point to the Engineering, or demands many drastic changes that aren’t suitable so early in the process to gain the Engineering trust. You’ll need to balance these perspectives and demonstrate how your work benefits everyone.
• The Solution in short: Build relationships with both leadership and individual contributors. Understand their priorities and concerns. Tailor your communication to each audience, highlighting how your initiatives address their specific needs.

4. Prioritizing in a Chaotic Environment:

The Challenge:

• The first Engineering Ops hire often encounters a chaotic environment with unclear processes and competing priorities. It can be overwhelming to decide where to start and how to make the most impact.
• Engineering Ops usually have many stakeholders with different pains, expectations and interests and the Engineering Operations arrive to a place in order to create order in the chaos, which means there’s a lot of processes to improve and to choose from. Another thing to consider, as mentioned above is the buy-in needed at the beginning of the position.
• This means there are a lot of balancing to do between what is right for the company vs would be a quick win or gain most buy-in. Sometimes they align, but most of the times it’s a tough prioritization
• The Solution: Begin by mapping out the current state of engineering processes and tools. Identify the biggest pain points and prioritize initiatives that offer the quickest wins. Consider conducting surveys or interviews to gather feedback from the engineering team. Communicate the reason why across management to gain their buy-in within the chaotic situation.

In conclusion, the first Engineering Operations holds some interesting challenges. Some are similar to other positions when brought to the company the first time, but as as it’s a position brought often to put order in the chaos and change de facto a lot of the processes and the culture of the company — it holds unique challenges as well.