Helping Our Engineers Succeed
Volume 1 - Issue 5 ~ July 28, 2022
Welcome to the fifth edition of the “CIO Two Cents” newsletter from me, Yvette Kanouff, Partner at JC2 Ventures. Read on for insights into what is on the mind of CIOs at this moment in time.
The JC2 Ventures team (John J. Chambers, Shannon Pina, John T. Chambers, me, and Pankaj Patel)
I recently spoke at the 2022 New York CTO Summit, where I highlighted ways to help accelerate engineering efforts and build a strong culture where engineers are empowered. Following my talk, I had several requests to share my thoughts in a blog, so here we are.
I am very passionate about the topic of effective engineering. I think everyone in an organization has a role in participating in on-time, on-quality product deliveries. When product deliveries are late, we tend to fall back on the idea that engineers are too slow, produce too many bugs, or need a better architecture. Simultaneously, engineering teams get frustrated by having to manage backlogs and time-critical disruptions, while dealing with non-negotiable deadlines. Despite these predictable challenges, no matter the enterprise or sector, we tend to shy away from addressing real process issues dealing with delays and quality issues. It might be difficult to approach such a complex topic in a short blog, but I will spotlight a few key strategies that can help your engineers succeed:
Now more than ever, we must place an emphasis on creating an effective workforce of the future by fostering empowered, efficient, diverse, and well-supported engineering teams that can deliver speed and quality.
- Yvette Kanouff
Small and Nimble Teams – Huge teams tend to require large-scale coordination. Break up deliverables into small teams, with each creating a minimal viable product (MVP). Separate components and test capabilities accordingly. Limit the effects of failure by creating small blast radiuses.
Celebrate Failures – We tend to shun production issues, but let’s admit that having engineers create small blast radiuses and launch code quickly and efficiently is a great accomplishment. The speed of innovation requires us to launch fast and fail fast.
Get the Right People – Know and be true to your company culture and hire accordingly for engineering roles. Remember that diverse job candidates can have immensely positive influences on your deliverables. Explore outside traditional talent pools by looking at or partnering with underrepresented universities and in-house training opportunities. Think about prioritizing traits like drive and ambition, rather than just academics and experience.
Fully Embrace Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) – Don’t just build it. Operate it, and really enable continual improvements. Automate everywhere possible through loosely coupled architectures. Focus on outcomes and what the customer needs, not internal micromanagement. Quality is a result of all-inclusive work – don’t separate architecture, security, and scale from coding. Empower engineers, enable DevSecOps, and build innovation into their environments.
The C-Suite and Continuous Product Management – Engineering deliverables change constantly, either because of urgent disruptions, such as production issues, or other unexpected impacts and priorities. So why do we keep expected delivery dates firm and then complain when they are not met? Or worse: they are met, but corners were cut, ultimately leading to complaints about quality. We must set realistic expectations and reprioritize goals together as a company instead of ignoring the realistic disruptions that our engineering teams are faced with and expecting timelines to be magically maintained with high quality deliverables. If we don’t all take an active role in this, then we are sticking our heads in the sand, and we can’t complain later that our engineers didn’t properly reprioritize their competing tasks. This is my biggest piece of advice to business leaders.
Manage Less – Have fewer meetings and enable lightweight processes. Engineers enjoy environments with limited obstacles to succeed. Remove layers of management in favor of creating collaboration and transparency. Ensure customer feedback to engineers and break down roadblocks. Provide learning opportunities, respect, and celebration of successes, to my earlier point about fast deliverables and fast failures.
Engineers are the backbone of any technology company. I work with startup teams every day helping them with engineering bottlenecks and issues. We can ensure they are empowered to succeed by helping every C-suite executive understand how to cultivate winning engineering environments. Velocity and quality of engineering depend heavily on our culture across the entire company. This is especially important as demand for engineers continues to surge. According to TechCrunch, a staggering 85 million engineering positions will be unfilled by 2030.
Now more than ever, we must place an emphasis on creating an effective workforce of the future by fostering empowered, efficient, diverse, and well-supported engineering teams that can deliver speed and quality.
Moving fast? I've got you covered:
(1)
In this blog, I am spotlighting a few key strategies that can help companies support engineers for better results because it is important to get at the root causes of delays and/or quality issues.
(2)
Building small and nimble teams, celebrating successes AND failures, hiring based on company culture not skillset alone, setting realistic expectations and helping reprioritize goals when things change, and more can help bring engineers into larger strategy discussions, rather than giving them the impossible task of working in a silo.
(3)
Now more than ever, we must place an emphasis on creating an effective workforce of the future by fostering empowered, efficient, diverse, and well-supported engineering teams that can deliver speed and quality.
