Four elements of a strong engineering culture

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As a technology leader, it's important to clearly define the attributes that drive your business forward. Start with this.

Culture is the backbone of any engineering team. She is what drives the team as a cohesive entity, keeping engineers engaged and attracting new, highly skilled talent.

For me, culture consists of two closely related aspects. On the one hand there are the internal values ​​and the external brand of the engineering team. On the other hand, there is the daily process that defines, guides and strengthens engineering culture.

THERE ARE 4 KEY ELEMENTS FOR A STRONG ENGINEERING CULTURE

• Execution
• Influence
• Teamwork
• Quality

1. Execution

One of the most important tasks of an engineering team is to deliver high-quality results - this means that the focus must be on strong performance. Teams should be aligned with their mission and have a clear view of long-term plans.

This is especially true for fast-growing startups that are trying new things and constantly evolving. When I joined Software Cloud AG last year, I saw that execution is a key component of our culture. And even now, as a public company, our engineering team still works this way. We are nimble, flexible and expandable in our work. We don't always know all the information in advance, so repetition is key. With concise mission statements and longer-term roadmaps, the teams and engineers can always adapt their work to the broader team and company mission.

Agile execution can only be achieved with an emphasis on concentration. As the saying goes: less is more. Teams should ruthlessly prioritize and ensure they are working on the most impactful projects - the projects that support the company's mission and goals.

For example, when I started at Software Cloud AG , I focused on growing the seller organization, i. H. of our team focused on the selling process and the selling experience of apartments. At that time the team was understaffed. There were too many projects at once and not enough engineers to focus on each one.

To remedy the situation, I helped the team establish clear metrics for the organization to focus on, ensured teams' roadmaps were prioritized based on those metrics, and pushed them to focus on fewer but more impactful projects to concentrate. I have made it clear that the sheer number of projects does not matter. Instead, teams can make a greater impact on the business through greater execution.

At a high level, it's about quality, not quantity. Make sure your teams spend their time on the projects that matter most.

2. Effect

Real impact ensures that all employees are working on projects that benefit customers. For this to succeed, engineers must be empowered and feel accountable for their work. Successful teams and organizations are highly aligned across all functions - from development and product to design and operations - and have an equal say in the decision-making process.

I believe that engineers should think entrepreneurially - always with the business and the customer in mind. Instead of just taking a product spec and opening as many pull requests as possible, engineers should be more involved in product direction. Engineers should also have a feel for their customers and their problems.

This empathy can be achieved in a number of ways: by meeting with users regularly, by reading support tickets, by responding to support tickets, by reading sentiment polls, and so on.

The final point is a metrics-based approach to everything. If we want to make sure our work is helping our customers, we need to be able to measure it and use the results as a basis for prioritizing our roadmaps. Projects should be experiments and the results should be measurable with clear success criteria. This allows everyone to make informed decisions, objectively prioritize or deprioritize projects, celebrate successes and learn from failures.

Of course there is a balance and there are exceptions. With some projects you know that you have to carry them out - e.g. B. on projects that have to do with trust and security - while on others you can take big risks. Often, higher risk means higher reward.

3. Teamwork

The culture of an engineering team is ultimately made up of many smaller team cultures. A strong organizational culture requires a strong team culture, where everyone can rely on each other, feel supported, and be vulnerable.

A key element of this is a culture of blamelessness. Eventually, something always goes wrong, but it's important that engineers learn from their mistakes by keeping an impeccable record.

Want some tips on how to do this? Begin the debriefing with the understanding that everyone involved acted with positive intentions. The goal is to learn from it and avoid such a failure in the future. The discussion should be objective, i. H. it's about what happened, not who did (or didn't do) something. When making suggestions for improvement, focus on how things can be improved in the future rather than trying to work backwards to avoid the problem.

Engineers should always be able to rely on their teammates for everything from code reviews to architecture and design help to supporting one another in personal crises. This requires numerous mechanisms that are created by the technical management so that the team culture can develop. Personally, I find team bonding events - like offsites, hackathons, and learning programs - to be invaluable.

The other aspect of teamwork is a personal growth mindset. This shows in many ways, but a sure sign are engineers who are always willing to learn new things and advance their careers. The management of an engineering office can do this through learning programs such as B. encouraging technical "brown bags", budgets for learning and development courses or books and a strong desire to use new technologies. With a desire for personal growth, engineers must also be able to receive quality feedback from their managers and peers and set clear goals for their professional development.

4. Quality

After all, technical quality is crucial for the long-term stability of the company, technical efficiency and individual satisfaction. This primarily relates to the quality of the code, but there are also many cases where the work simply needs to be deployed as quickly as possible. That's perfectly acceptable - as long as it's the exception and not the rule. I've seen many teams collapse under mounting technical debt without being able to deliver new features. This can be due to heavily coupled code, lack of abstractions, lack of investment in bug fixes, rigid designs that are not easy to change, or dozens of other issues.

An important way for technical leadership to show their focus on quality is through their investments, e.g. B. in human resources, infrastructure and platform teams. This means: If you are already talking about quality, you have to implement it. If quality is really important, you have to act. The true focus of these teams should be on technical excellence and nurturing the rest of the team through constant improvement, automation, and technical leadership.

Over the years I have helped influence and promote the culture in a variety of ways. As a technical leader, it's important to clearly define the attributes that drive your business forward. And I firmly believe that these four elements are essential to creating a strong culture that will lead your team to success.