Few companies understand their engineering strategy and vision. One consequence of this uncertainty is the industry belief that these documents are difficult to write. In some conversations it can feel like you’re talking about something mystical, but these are just mundane documents. The reality is that good engineering strategy is boring, and that it’s easier to write an effective strategy than a bad one.
Solving the Engineering Strategy crisis.
These are speaking notes for my October 4th, QCon talk in San Francisco. See a video of this talk. Slides for this talk. Over the course of my career, I’ve frequently heard from colleagues, team members and random internet strangers with the same frustration: the company doesn’t have an Engineering strategy. I don’t think this problem is unique to Engineering: it’s also common to hear folks complain that they’re missing a strategy for Product, Design or Business. But, whereas I don’t feel particularly confident speaking to why so many companies are missing a clear Business or Product strategy, I’ve come to have some clear opinions about why so many engineering organizations don’t have a written strategy.
Engineering strategy notes.
Recently, I am thinking quite a bit about engineering strategy, and as part of that, I have started re-reading previous resources on the topic, and looking for new things to read while I refine my point of view on what makes for good engineering strategy. The best introduction to my current theory of engineering strategy is Solving the Engineering Strategy Crisis, which has both written and video versions. You can also read my other strategy writing via the strategy tag.
Writing an engineering strategy.
Once you become an engineering executive, an invisible timer starts ticking in the background. Tick tick tick. At some point that timer will go off, at which point someone will rush up to you demanding an engineering strategy. It won’t be clear what they mean, but they will want it, really, really badly. If we just had an engineering strategy, their eyes will implore you, things would be okay. For a long time, those imploring eyes haunted me, because I simply didn’t know what to give them: what is an engineering strategy?
The golden mean of design and engineering - The Intercom Blog
For great products to be built, both design and engineering need to be in balance. If you have a super strong engineering team but a weak or underserved design team, you will struggle.
Don't Feed the Thought Leaders
In this article, the author shares their experience as an engineering manager and the challenges they faced when trying to reach alignment and prev...
How to not screw up your product strategy | Jade Rubick - Engineering Leadership
An overview of common mistakes people make while developing a product strategy, tips for creating a successful strategy, and how to communicate and execute on a product strategy.
6 steps to perfecting an open source product strategy
The future of building great products lies in breaking down the boundaries between business and technical thinking.
Life Is More Than an Engineering Problem | Los Angeles Review of Books
Julien Crockett speaks with Ted Chiang about the search for a perfect language, the state of AI, and the future direction of technology.
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All the best engineering advice I stole from non-technical people
As I focus on becoming a better manager of engineers, I have been reflecting more and more on the advice that produced a 10X boost in my…
Strategy in Life
What is Strategy? Why is it easy to get wrong and so hard to get right? Strategy Structures in Life Concept-Space Getting from one point to another In a predefined direction Stars as Concept-space analogy By predefined actions Strategy in Life Know your surroundings Creating Strategies Using Strategies Summary Strategy...
How to build a generative engineering culture
A generative engineering culture is one where nothing seems to fall through the cracks, “we should” gets prioritized and becomes reality, and original ideas and value come primarily from engineers, rather than management. A culture like this is an engine for building capacity, quality, innovation, and sophistication.
Small Programming Tricks
A lot of effective engineering comes from the accumulation of small nuggets of knowledge.
What Is Strategy?
Today’s dynamic markets and technologies have called into question the sustainability of competitive advantage. Under pressure to improve productivity, quality, and speed, managers have embraced tools such as TQM, benchmarking, and re-engineering. Dramatic operational improvements have resulted, but rarely have these gains translated into sustainable profitability. And gradually, the tools have taken the place of strategy. In his five-part article, Michael Porter explores how that shift has led to the rise of mutually destructive competitive battles that damage the profitability of many companies. As managers push to improve on all fronts, they move further away from viable competitive positions. Porter argues that operational effectiveness, although necessary to superior performance, is not sufficient, because its techniques are easy to imitate. In contrast, the essence of strategy is choosing a unique and valuable position rooted in systems of activities that are much more difficult to match. Porter thus traces the economic basis of competitive advantage down to the level of the specific activities a company performs. Using cases such as Ikea and Vanguard, he shows how making trade-offs among activities is critical to the sustainability of a strategy. Whereas managers often focus on individual components of success such as core competencies or critical resources, Porter shows how managing fit across all of a company’s activities enhances both competitive advantage and sustainability. While stressing the role of leadership in making and enforcing clear strategic choices, Porter also offers advice on how companies can reconnect with strategies that have become blurred over time.
Having no Strategy is a Strategy in Ottawa
What I said at my recent keynote for the Ottawa Tech Investment Summit — and what the government said three days later.
Measuring an engineering organization.
For the past several years, I’ve run a learning circle with engineering executives. The most frequent topic that comes up is career management–what should I do next? The second most frequent topic is measuring engineering teams and organizations–my CEO has asked me to report monthly engineering metrics, what should I actually include in the report? Any discussion about measuring engineering organizations quickly unearths strong opinions. Anything but sprint points! Just use SPACE! Track incident frequency! Wait, absolutely do not track incident frequency! Just make a pretty chart, they won’t look at it anyway! All of these answers, even the last one, have a grain of truth to them, but they skip past an important caveat: there are many reasons to measure engineering, many stakeholders asking for metrics, and addressing each requires a different approach.
