Engineering Management. Is it a Rubik’s cube to solve.
Engineering Manager: What a Designation. Looks very heavy right ?
Well not so much . There are multiple dimensions associated with this role . All the information in this blog which I am going to provide is from my personal experience and the ladder i followed . Perceptions might differ but the core aspects , I am sure are common and most of you (my buddy managers) will be able to resonate with it . So let’s get started .
Engineering Manager : A person who acts as the baseline resource who drives the growth of any organization. In the course of this progress this person has to wear multiple hats at various points of time . He is the main driving force behind implementation of any firm’s strategy and vision . He has to take into account and work on all the three important pillars of engineering management . What these are .
Pillar 1
Technology: This element forms the crux of all the operations Engineering Manager performs.Now there are different types of organizations and different types of implementations. Broadly we can classify these into 2 types :
Software Development: This type of landscape requires an Engineering Manager to posses extensive skills into back-end development . Also high proficiency in programming languages is a deemed must have along with Web application development . In such type of implementations an Engineering Manager has to take decisions from Feature Engineering, product augmentation , incremental roll out and Time to market perspective.
Data Analytics: This type of landscape requires an Engineering Manager to posses skills in entire data realm . This also involves certain elements of application development but no dedicated back end development . In such type of implementations Engineering Managers have to take decision on the right data stack and the methodology to be adopted in the implementation of any integrated data platform or data pipeline. These data pipelines could be for analytics purpose or for data science operations.
Common Realm : System design is the common realm in which Engineering Managers should be proficient no matter to which section they belong to, application development or data analytics. Reason is that without having this perspective it becomes difficult to think of the possible landscape and to mentor the team along with taking right decision on the right tech stack.
Code Code Code: Engineering Management requires a lot of delegation in terms of milestones and tasks . You have a team at your disposal to perform these tasks. But that also make you off track from the latest tech trends . Which is why don’t fall for the saying”Move to management to avoid doing code”. Keep coding . That will make you stay in touch with the recent trends in tech world and will alleviate your horizon in taking right decisions.
Paved Road to Success:Always maintain a standardized approach . With the invent of more and more open source and cloud based services there are a plethora of tools available to perform the same kind of work . Establish certain standards so that tools used across teams are standardized and no siloed behavior is present. For this you need to be the best judge for the team along with their participation.
Pillar 2
People : This is one of the most important pillars in Data Engineering . This is time consuming and should be allocated a reasonable amount of time as well.To be a successful Engineering Manager you need to bring as well as retain the best talent . Now by saying that I am not referring that we should hire only the best resources ,as the definition of BEST itself is very subjective.Intentions should be that all the teams should the BEST version of themselves . Confused . Let me clear it .
Mentoring : An engineering manager should wear the hat of a mentor . Since all Engineering Managers were individual contributors at one point of time they are well versed with tech stack and that’s the reason they have reached to this new role. This also includes hand holding for a brief period for certain resources . Not all resources needs that but some are slow starters and can be turned into great performers . Apart from this Engineering Managers have to lead the way in the selection and decision making .
Team Involvement: Best results comes out when ideas are cooked in multiple minds . Yes that’s correct . Believe me I have seen this in action. If you involve team in various discussions and take ideas from them , team feels involved in the implementation cycle. That’s how people starts to think beyond usual delivery on their assigned tasks and move towards attaining operational excellence . “What else can be done in a better way. How can we optimize the existing ecosystem”. This are the questions which starts coming up in their mindset .
Performance alleviation: Apart from the project hustle , how do you handle low performers. Definition of low performers depends on the benchmark you set in your team. But question arises how to bring up these people out of performance slump. Taking a 90 percentile holder to 95 is easier than taking a 60 percentile holder to 90. Now this sounds cinematic but it is true . But being an Engineering Manager can you really afford to invest time in alleviating all such resources from performance slump . Practical answer is NO. Not all . That’s where you need to develop judgement skills as to on which resources you need to invest time and on which it’s not feasible.
Focused Groups: Having regular interactions with team is also very important . You can follow following approaches which i tried .
i)Bi-monthly all hands meeting: Schedule a bi-monthly all hands call and encourage people to come up with ideas on new initiatives.Inform team on the new initiatives you are planning and invite them to participate in the same . In the course of this you will find that people will eventually start coming forward with new ideas and if some one wants to participate in your idea they might fill the skill gap as well by working on the skills required . Overall a win win situation.
ii)Specific group discussions: Keep 1 -2 hours of your weekly calendar free on a designated day vacant, and invest that in having discussion with these specific groups. Now how to form these groups . Form them based on similarities among resources . These can be any form of similarities . Reason of inviting people with similarity is that once they are in the company of their look alike they would be more comfortable to open up . Also make this a regular practice. Benefit of this approach is that sometimes people keep a lot with themselves and not open up to management even when they should . With this approach they open up and you can reach to the entire breath of your team.
iii)Quarterly recognition:Yes you understood it correctly. There is no free lunch in corporate sector . In order to retain the best talent just appreciating them with the appreciation cards or mails will not do much good . Reward them monetary in various forms available with your firm. That really boosts their confidence. Don’t forget to request funding for the same in advance and don’t commit to anyone in advance.
Second line of command: Being in management is very lonely. You might be wondering how that is possible . Sadly it is . You cannot win a war without a second in command . Develop a second line of resources who can contribute to your growth and you can reciprocate with the same . Prepare a dedicated team of team lead and architect who have information on every nook and corner of your project and can assist you in taking informed decisions.
Pillar 3
Delivery : This is the third and also an important pillar in the life of an Engineering Manager . Whatever landscape or implementation you are heading you need to ensure seamless delivery of the same. Now it looks simple from above but this requires work on a lot of pointers. Let’s cover them all.
i)Stakeholders : These are the people because of whom the very existence of your role is there. So working for their requirement is of paramount importance for you. Maintain a proper communication channel with them having broadcasted right set of information at the right time. Be very communicative .
ii)Golden copy of work: Whenever a new initiative or new implementation comes it needs to be broken down into smaller pieces . But before going there you need to prepare the golden copy of entire piece of work expected from you . This is known as product backlog . This can be prepared by the product owner or you can only prepare it . It depends from organization to organization . Once you have product backlog ready and agreed with your stakeholders you need to break them into smaller phases or milestones.
iii)Commitment: The golden rule to succeed in Engineering Management is to strike a right balance between what should be done and what can be done . This is known as creating a boundary line between over-commitment and under-commitment. While starting with any milestone involve your team in the planning so that your estimates match up with ground reality . Don’t be too optimistic but on the other hand don’t be over cautious as well. Try to strike the right balance while providing estimate to your stakeholders.
iv)Metrics: Adhere to the right set of metrics you want to measure the performance of your delivery. Always try to keep spillover and technical debt in check. It’s a good practice to keep tech debt at less than 3% and spillover at less than 5 %. Apart from this always maintain a Risk matrix with appropriate severity levels. Keep this report as part of your communication with stakeholders to inform them in case of any deviation from committed timeline.
v)Operations: Ensure that your day to day operations are running smoothly. Hire a scrum master to get into the skin of these things and ensure you get a plan on the same. Make sure that all milestone/phases are clearly divided into sprints and sprint grooming and sprint planning should be taken up very seriously with dedicated participation from entire team.Also prepare a dedicated team from your second line as CAB team . Code Accessibility Baseline team. Make sure that whatever code is being shipped to production is being reviewed by this CAB team in design and development phase so that chances of production bug or tech debt gets minimized.
Well a lot said and done . Believe me , all this input comes from my own personal experience . There are lot more aspects associated with Engineering Management. Will try to bring them out in next iteration of this blog .So stay tuned.
