Engineering Management

A Simple Framework for Software Engineering Management

Photo by bantersnaps on Unsplash

This post is about a simple software engineering management framework that I’ve been using for about six months with the team that I’m currently leading. The framework focuses on three engineering management responsibilities: people management, delivery leadership, and technical system ownership. It helps to prioritise them against each other, and gives a structure to identify and manage tasks within each responsibility.

Engineering Manager’s Responsibilities

Let’s look into each of the three responsibilities.

• People management includes hiring, promoting and mentoring engineers, performance reviews, providing feedback, maintaining a healthy and productive team environment and so on. Although engineering managers are not solely responsible for some of those activities, for example hiring and promotions. However, their input is taken into account and they influence the process.
• Delivery leadership involves planning, setting goals, assigning tasks, liaising with other departments and/or clients, expectations management and other activities to keep projects on track and complete them successfully.
• Technical system ownership is about maintaining the technical systems…