Here’s a taste of Joseph’s priority list about standardizing processes:
1. Deployment process
Make sure that your deployment is repeatable and consistent regardless of which developer is doing it. Document it first, and when it’s done, you can automate it in large parts.
2. Monitoring
Monitoring gives your engineers metrics about the code’s performance in production. There are great tools out there that are easy to set up, and save you a lot of time and energy in the long run. Make sure to have it send your team a message when something breaks.
3. Incident response
Things break in tech, there is no way around it. So you need to put a standard protocol with clear steps they can follow to save time when fixing it. If you do this right, even junior engineers will be effective at incident response.
The list goes on, and there are many other tips and stories from Joseph.
A virtual offsite event can fulfill the same function as its in-person counterpart. You can do team building, unpack your values, align your team or hold a game day. It works.
2. Don’t even try the same activities
A virtual event often holds more potential distractions for the participants than an in-person one. So you need to make an effort to make the online activities engaging. A series of frontal presentations is sure to lose everybodys’ interest.
In a dual leadership role, give equal attention to both your teams. Neglecting to put out fires on one team can be just as harmful, as paying too close attention to the other, and not giving your team room to grow.
2. Give space to your teams
Giving space to your teams to do their jobs isn’t just going to help them grow, but you as well. When you’re not busy with getting involved in the frontline work, you have more capacity to focus on your leadership role, and get better at it.
Here are some takeaways about communication channels:
1. Coordinate planning
You want to start coordination as early as possible. Send a platform engineer to join the planning sessions of product teams, and see if they have requests or advise them on currently available options
2. Use product managers
Using product managers in platform teams is an unconventional but useful idea. They can help with communication on every level, make it smoother and take some load off management - but definitely can’t replace them.
Why writing is important in #EngineeringManagement and how to improve it? Tips from Erica Greene at @Etsy@codeascraft to improve your team’s and your own writing skills.
Make sure everyone in your team has a clear understanding of the different types of documents you regularly work with. This puts you all on the same page.
2. Provide templates
Provide templates for the different documents you expect your team members to write. A high level overview of the necessary contents, and a clear structure to follow can fit on just one page. Use it as a learning material and a reference point for your team.
New podcast with @patkua 🔥
Some key concepts of systems thinking:
1. Emergent behavior
The main point of systems thinking is finding emergent behavior in systems; properties that no one part possesses alone. Understanding this can help you work better with complex systems.
2. Feedback loops
Feedback loops are basically the communication channels of any system. You need to be aware of the ones that are present, their speed, and that you can often adjust them or create new ones. They’re a key element when it comes to influencing a system.
3. Applying systems thinking to leadership
Teams are systems. Organizations are even bigger systems. Systems thinking can be extremely useful when it comes to figuring out leadership challenges. You can be a great leader without it, but it can be a powerful tool in your arsenal.
@ProductHunt’s unbelievable journey shared by the one and only @rstankov who has been successfully scaling teams and products since the very beginning🤙🤙
When you make the switch to management, you need to start from scratch. It’s a new career, and you need to use all your previous experiences in a new context. Rado tells some of his stories about facing this problem.
Write a journal to track your progress
You can write a manager journal to track your effectiveness as a leader. Note all your thoughts and important events. You can go through it weekly, as you plan the next week, and review it monthly, to see if there are recurring problems.