We want to encourage innovation and create cutting-edge products that our customers love
Agile engineering teams understand how their work fits into the larger company strategy. They make data-driven decisions, ruthlessly prioritizing their work (and reprioritizing when necessary) based on what will deliver the greatest return for the company.
Their focus is laser-sharp, and they consistently communicate the business case for each project so the rest of the company understands why those priorities matter.
Offer leadership and support to the engineering team and helps maximize their growth, impact, contribution to the business, and overall happiness.
The key to the success of a team and a company as a whole is one: building momentum. In many cases, when a team seems to lack urgency, the root cause is not laziness or proficiency but an absence of momentum.
When a team experiences a win, it sparks motivation, which produces additional wins. Winning has a snowball effect, where the more you win, the more you keep winning.
Amazon’s ‘growth flywheel’ demonstrates this snowball effect. When an online reseller like Amazon gets quality sellers, they’re better able to serve customers. When customers are happy, they buy more products, which attracts more quality sellers. As the business grows, sellers compete by providing lower-priced products, which further improves the customer experience. Growth breeds growth, momentum breeds momentum:
Of course, the opposite is true as well. When you’re facing the headwinds of negative momentum, it can pull your team into a downward spiral. That’s why leaders have to keep spirits high and seek out wins whenever possible—to guard against negative momentum and profit from a positive one.
So how do you build momentum? Increase velocity simples!
In software engineering, the best way to boost momentum is to achieve quick (high-velocity) wins in areas that have the greatest impact (mass).
Have dicovery session to validate our hypothesis, MVPs etc.., its all about impact—on your products, your customers, and your bottom line. As such, you must ruthlessly prioritize (and frequently re-prioritize) your projects to ensure you’re achieving the greatest return on your efforts.
What does that mean? To be successful, engineering teams (as well as product development teams, technology teams, reseach, rdo Sales etc.: the logic always applies) must:
Talent (like time) is a limited resource, so it must be directed in a way that maximizes results. This entails laser-sharp focus, with everyone striving daily to optimize impact.
A world-class engineering team should not compromise on that.
Respond quickly and efficiently to market demands is one of our most powerful assets. When you’re going up against established competitors with enormous budgets, flexibility is one of your main your competitive advantages.
These are three pillars we need to achieve:
The ‘high-velocity decision-making’ approach (as championed by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos in one of his annual letters to shareholders) helps decision-makers do what the term literally implies: make impactful decisions, fast. When done right, this model helps build momentum and drive success.
Here are its four basic principles:
Shipping fast and learning quickly is the second necessary pillar for improving velocity and boosting momentum. As Marty Cagan discusses extensively in his book Inspired, there are two inconvenient truths about products:
Roughly half of the initiatives you launch will not have the impact you’re expecting them to have on the business. In fact, good teams plan for 75% of their ideas not working.
Ideas that actually work will typically require multiple iterations until they get the business impact you expect. As such, those quick, efficient iterations are, in many cases, more important than the absolute quality of any single iteration.
Improving execution efficiency is the third pillar of the high-velocity decision-making model. Standardizing the following procedures will improve efficiency:
Quick flagging and removal of blockers
Smart Minimum Viable Products (MVPs): 80% of the value comes from 20% of the effort, so focus on the features that offer the highest return
Optimizing the use of group time (meetings culture, means of communication, push/pull updates) and using other means of collaboration when they’re more efficient
Improving the software delivery process: technology, infrastructure, and tooling
Encouraging a ‘disagree and commit’ attitude. In other words, no final decision should be reached because somebody has been exhausted into submission; a better way forward is to disagree and commit, so the team can move forward and quickly escalate if it’s needed.
Hiring the right people
This should be obvious, but in order to build momentum and accomplish everything I’ve laid out above, you have got to hire the right people. The best processes in the world won’t work unless you have a team that is open to giving them a try.
What software engineers are we looking for? Here are five key traits:
pragmatic problem-solvers understand and embrace the fact that software is never done nor perfect, and can deliver clean code & architecture while staying focused on solving business problems and delivering value.