Engineering Manifestos
We go on a journey with Engineering/Technology leaders to understand their approach to Engineering strategy, viz. how they figure out what is needed from the Engineering team to help their company win, and how they apply that to their Engineering teams.
Each company context (company, business, marketplace, competitive environment) at a given point in time is unique. In order to succeed, a set of choices within Engineering on Objectives, Culture, Organization and Process & Systems needs to be made. We seek to gain an understanding of the tools and practices/processes for building teams and products to help companies win.
Engineering Manifestos
Building Teams and Products with Pat Cullen
Pat Cullen, Former SVPE, Carrot Fertility, sat down with me to share his principles and practices for building Teams & Products. At Carrot Fertility, Pat grew the Technology team from 3 employees to over 75, spearheading Engineering, Information Security, Data Privacy, Product, Program Management, and Data functions. Pat used the "Rule of 3" framework to share his learnings across Planning/Roadmapping, Building Engineering teams and cultures, and Ensuring Execution.
- 4:20 Overall approach
- Start from a place of curiosity and empathy. Understand your stakeholders' needs/points of view.
- Reflect on your individual beliefs/points of view.
- As long as you have the right people, there are many different processes that can be adapted to suit the needs of your organization.
- 7:50 Planning/Roadmapping
- Annual Planning
- Quarterly Planning
- Weekly/Bi-weekly Planning
- 12:40 Building Engineering team and culture for first ten/next couple of dozen/scaling to hundreds of members
- Technical Skills
- Accountability
- Team Cultivation/Communication
- 21:08 Ensuring Execution/Processes & Systems
- Evolution (Resistance->Over-adoption->Enabling too abstractly->Pragmatic middle ground)
- Minimum Viable Compliance (Weekly, Bi-weekly/Monthly, and Quarterly updates)
- Flexible Team Dynamics (Daily level)
