Congratulations! you just got promoted to engineering leader

The deadline was locked in. Everyone on my team was booked solid. Plans were frozen. Commitments had been made to sales. A number of critical customer deals were contingent on my team delivering on these plans. The plan was aggressive. There were still a number of unknowns that needed to be investigated before our confidence increased. I was planning a number of risk mitigation strategies.

What if scope increased significantly due to some of the unknowns? Technical debt in some parts of our system had led our estimates to be wildly off in the past. Was that about to happen again? Within the engineering organization, the technical debt problem was well recognized and acknowledged. Yet, our schedule did not permit enough cycles to pay off this technical debt.

To make this deadline, we had decided to bolster the team working on this project with additional resources coming out of another team. And to backfill that other team with new resources hired from outside.

Quality was of paramount importance. These customers did not have tolerance for poor quality. What was our plan to ensure that we delivered a high quality system? What special controls should we put in place for those areas where we have a high rate of regression?

How were we going to deal with the unplanned for, but quite likely, human aspects of this project? Attrition, unplanned for vacation, motivation, differing points of view, conflict…the list goes on.

Welcome to the new head of engineering

The business is growing rapidly. That’s a good thing. The business is always trying to do more than its current resources can comfortably do. That’s your problem to manage.

The scenario described above is very typical, and exciting! It can also be overwhelming to someone new to this chaos. For a few, this chaos leads to tremendous personal growth. For many, a coping mechanism is to go back to doing what they are comfortable with. So, an individual contributor, who recently became leader, might try to solve many of these problems by working even harder as an individual contributor. Only to realize that such heroic efforts are not sustainable. And that doing this sacrifices so many critical functions that are expected of her/him as the engineering leader.

Don’t let this happen to you. With the right coaching, you can learn how to deal with this chaos and emerge victorious with an optimized plan that is a win for the business. You can become a trusted and valuable partner to business, while establishing yourself as a credible leader to your team.

The chaos is not going away. At least, not while the business continues to grow. In fact, it may even intensify further at times. I recall one of my managers, for whom I have a great deal of respect, and who taught me a great deal about engineering leadership. One of his mantras used to be “do more with less.” So the solution is not to get more resources.

What’s needed are mechanisms to better deal with all the moving parts. First step is to become aware of all of them; understand their urgency, importance, and impact. Which of these can be safely deferred? Which ones are suitable for outsourced help? Build lists of these. Prioritize with inputs from all stakeholders. A useful technique is to allocate a virtual budget to each stakeholder; for example, tell each of them they have $100 to spend across a number of projects. Ask each of them to allocate these funds across projects. You still make the final call, but using these inputs. Once you do, be sure to communicate final prioritization. Use the spending-exercise results as the rationale to get buy in.

Technical debt can be a serious problem, if not addressed in a timely manner. It can grind innovation to a halt, and can result in current customer dissatisfaction, and eventually churn. Has the risk of not addressing technical debt immediately been understood and accepted by business? Develop a technology roadmap that captures technology investments that must be made.

Develop a credible plan for continuous investment in the technology roadmap. Socialize this technology roadmap with your own team, but also with business. Present the positive impact of addressing these technology roadmap items in terms of product limitations, that are currently constraining sales, that will be removed with these investments. Reduced time to market for subsequent features can also be a strong selling point. When presented with credible data and rationale, it is always possible to arrive at reasonable compromises that are a win for the business overall.

Keeping your team engaged and motivated is a full-time task in itself. One that should not be ignored. This requires time with the team as a group, but also quality one-on-one time with each individual, at some regular and reasonable interval. Work with your team on developing a shared understanding of your team’s culture. It is most likely that you will be hiring new members into the team. Managed and orchestrated well, you can reduce the burden of this on your team. It is your responsibility that you ensure that new hires don’t skew your team culture in the wrong direction.

You are the person responsible for delivery of the commitments made by you on behalf of your team. Deliver on your commitments, and you get a virtuous cycle going. Your team feels a sense of accomplishment and is energized to deliver more. You build credibility with your business partners. You gain leverage at the bargaining table. The next time you are negotiating to get some tech roadmap items worked on, your voice carries more weight.

To the new engineering leader who finds herself in this chaos, do not panic. While you cannot stop the chaos, you can develop mechanisms to deal with it. To the business leader who notices some of these engineering challenges, explore with your engineering leader if these mechanisms can help. In summary, the key points:

• Develop a prioritized holistic picture
• Solicit business input; make them a partner in your planning exercise
• Develop a technology roadmap; shift from reactive to proactive work on technology items
• Invest heavily in your team; without them you can’t get anything done
• Retain control of the final plan; you are responsible for delivery
• Execute to success and build credibility with business and your team
• Get coaching and mentoring; continue to evolve your skills and mechanisms