SalesLoft’s 3 Core Tenets of Engineering
I am asked, often with skepticism, how do SalesLoft’s 5 Core Values actually influence the work we do?
It’s a great question that I usually answer with abstracts. Usually, I say “the Core Values are a set of filters in my mind, and each time I prepare to speak or take action I test my intentions against the Core Values filters. I may or may not modify my message or action. This ensures my actions fit the Core Values.” Easy-peasy, right?
Some folks are left unsatisfied by this answer. They say “how do they tie into writing appropriate unit tests?” Or “how do they affect making a decision to try new architectural patterns?”
This is a story of a team fully embodying our 3 Core Tenets of Engineering, the mechanism that ties our Core Values to our day-to-day habits.
Yes, you heard right. In order to tie our Core Values to engineering performance, we created guiding principles or our 3 Core Tenets of Engineering. This allows engineers to simply keep correct practices of teamwork and execution in mind while they do their work.
The 3 Core Tenets of Engineering
- Write beautiful, extensible, elegant, simple code.
2. Ship finished features fast. Get value to the customer or it’s not done.
3. Work together as a team. Take ownership, help others, pair program.
We will highlight the team that built SalesLoft’s “Meetings” feature. Meetings allow users to tie SalesLoft to their calendaring app of choice, and through it, propose and set calendar invites. This allows our users to accomplish all of their calendaring tasks without leaving SalesLoft or managing 3rd party tools! Let’s start with a quick intro to our team, HSA (Heavy Swearers Anonymous).
Heavy Swearers Anonymous
Before we dig into why we were successful, let’s make sure we all know what success means here. A product implementation at SalesLoft is successful if:
- The feature delights customers.
- The Product Department agrees that the work that’s been done fulfills their specifications.
- The decisions made and the code written push the boundaries of what’s possible for SalesLoft Engineering.
- The people who worked on the implementation understand and are proud of how their work connects to the overall mission of SalesLoft, and the to the missions of the people who use it.
Meetings was a total victory. Customers love using it, Product’s expectations were exceeded, several of HSA’s experiments led to new ways of solving problems, they produced a ton of reusable, extensible code, and they are proud of their work. In fact, when we all got back together for this exercise there was a palpable energy that could only be a result of their deep connection to one another, to SalesLoft, and most importantly, to the users who will benefit from this feature.
Tenet 1: Write beautiful, extensible, elegant, simple code
Core Values: Focus on Results, Bias Toward Action
You might be thinking this should be self-evident. I agree, but if you’re like me then you’ve worked places where it isn’t. Let’s look at how this delivery team embodied this tenet.
Beauty + Simplicity = Elegance
“Elegance is beauty that shows unusual effectiveness and simplicity.” From Wikipedia.
Simply put, in order to achieve elegance, team members must be equally focused on beauty (contextual readability) and simplicity (logical readability).
The practices HSA enacted to achieve this goal may be less satisfying than a list of tactical steps, it is an approach and attitude.
Ground Rules:
Before the work began, HSA decided they would not cut corners, period. At any point, a team member would be challenged if they were perceived to be doing so. By committing to the single responsibility principle, HSA also split out all of the logical components and loosely defined their interfaces. This allowed members to work independently with incomplete knowledge of other team members’ work. Engineers committed to submitting small pull requests, and the benefits of that are well documented. The team held one-another accountable through the implementation of the feature and reaped rewards beyond elegant code.
Extensible Modules:
Because of their ground rules, HSA was empowered to build reusable components and make architecture decisions that pushed SalesLoft engineering forward. I cannot emphasize the impact this project had on the organization. It brought us:
- Evidence that commitment to quality results in not only great code, but organizational improvement.
- The first internal feature using the public API. SalesLoft is a believer in drinking our own champagne (Our sales team sells SalesLoft by using SalesLoft.) This effort proved that our API is good enough for our customers because it is good enough for us.
- A successful implementation of microservice architecture. It was not the first at SalesLoft, but yet another victorious example of why microservices work for us.
- We learned how to write reusable react components in the context of SalesLoft’s ecosystem.
- One of those components is a beautiful date picker that’s used all over the application.
An underappreciated bit of reuse and extensibility is in the domain knowledge gained. Jeff, the QA Engineer, became an expert in calendaring and timezones, and now is the go-to person to ask in the organization!
The secret sauce is commitment to a mindset of quality and innovation, and for team members to habitually hold each other accountable. Let’s explore our second tenet, where we strive for excellence in combining our engineering and product organizations.
Tenet 2: Ship finished features fast. Get value to the customer or its not done
Core Values: Put Customers First, Focus on Results, Bias Toward Action
The focus on getting value to the customer is what’s special about this tenet. Of course we strive to deliver finished work quickly, but who cares if it doesn’t help customers?
The team was able to fully focus on delivering meetings because the product and engineering managers strove to protect the team from unnecessary outside influence. The team members took ownership of pushing back if something fell through the cracks, and they were able to maintain full focus on delivering their project for its duration.
HSA was asked to deliver by a reasonable date. Their focus allowed them to begin working on stretch goals before the deadline came. For these, HSA estimated their own delivery schedule. No hard end date, no scope negotiations, no panicked adding of engineers near a deadline. This is effective, and has the fortunate side-effect of making the team excited to come to work and deliver!
HSA took their time to do strategic planning. They split the work such that each piece was independent and could be QA’d and placed into production without exposing partial functionality or affecting other systems’ behaviors. For example, they delivered integrations only for Gmail, then later came back and implemented integrations for Azure and Nylas. Focusing on small pieces also made any bugs found by QA easy to fix. Their planning was so detailed, in fact, that they had identified cases where 404s and 500s might happen in unusual scenarios. They did this before writing any code! Their plan was so tight, that after the first executive check-in, the co-founder found all future check-ins unnecessary.
A cherry on top was HSA’s relationship between design and engineering. Dylan, the designer would actively pair with engineers to remove communication barriers, he even went the extra mile to fix CSS bugs to help the rest of the team reach their goal. This epitomizes Team Over Self.
Every member on the team used their tools to ensure they were constantly focused on making our customers’ jobs easier by providing them with a calendaring solution. None of this awesome planning and project management matter if the people on the team are not invested in making each other successful. Let’s see how they kept one another in mind.
Tenet 3: Work together as a team. Take ownership, help others, pair program.
Core Values: Team Over Self, Focus on Results, Glass Half Full
Table stakes at SalesLoft is having a Team Over Self attitude, meaning putting the goals of the team over one’s own personal and professional goals. Here’s how that approach played out.
It starts with unconditionally treating one another with dignity and respect. Everyone understands that every decision and action made by other team members carries their best intentions.
On HSA, team members could take for granted that when a person owned work, they would deliver it. That doesn’t mean others wouldn’t help. Engineers pitched in with QA and planning. Product wrote code, paired with engineers, and helped with QA.
Requests for change occurred, from both within and outside. The team decided that some change would help them deliver value to customers, and some would not. They stood together to push back on non-valuable change. However, when a good suggestion was made, they would embrace it and do their best to get it to users quickly.
The team succeeded because they put their teammates’ and SalesLoft’s goals above their own. They held one another accountable and in the highest esteem.
HSA has done a great job of illustrating how SalesLoft’s Core Values influence the tactical work of individuals and delivery teams. We focus on writing exemplary code that we’re proud of. We get valuable, working features to users as quickly as possible. We do those things through a deep commitment to supporting and holding one another accountable.
Now when I’m asked, I can easily draw a connection between SalesLoft’s Core Values and the way we accomplish work day-to-day. I hope this story whets your appetite because we’re experiencing massive growth and we want you to join us!
Joe Essey is an engineering manager leading License to Trill — our product team focused on our workflow engine suite of features. When he’s not leading this amazing team of engineers, designers and product owners, he’s exercising his creative muscle producing electronic music.
