The Engineering Manager Guide
Most engineering manager in tech companies never get proper training due to this need I decided to write an article to help new engineering managers.
In this article I will share my personal opinion on what makes an engineering manager a good one and how you can do it too, hope you’ll find it helpful!
Mediate the conversation — ShutUP!
As a manager or sometimes as the most senior person in the room, we just want to say the answer to a problem, after all, most of us are still engineers or ex-engineers which mean we’re a problem solver at heart.
The issue with bursting out a solution to every problem is there is no one answer and the bigger issue is your opinion as a manager can affect the others. The worse thing that can happen to a team is being too biased because of a manager or high-rank opinion.
For example, when the CEO expresses his/her opinion there will be more people in a room that would agree
Ask don’t tell
One of the biggest misconceptions among managers is that their number one job is to tell people what to do. Let me tell you something, no ones like to get told what to do. our job as a manager is not to give orders, our job as leaders is to mentor and provide direction. As a manager, we need to empower our team members and allow them to figure out things when we’re not around.
An excellent team is a team that can accomplish tasks even when their leader is not around. I found that asking the right questions lead for a better conversation and help everyone understand what are we trying to solve and where are the misconceptions and misunderstanding.
Create a framework and stick with it.
In order to build a sustainable team and a steady routine, you will need to implement some sort of framework. A framework will define a routine.
Let’s start with a two weeks sprint which will help the team to go through the objectives the team would need to accomplish. During the sprint, there are 3 meetings.
- Sprint planning — in sprint planning the team will go over the “groomed” tickets and assign them to each of the team members. The goals is simple what is reasonable to work in a two-week sprint.
- Sprint grooming — the sprint grooming meeting is a bit technical, in this meeting we will go over the tickets and the work that need to be done. In some cases we create new tickets to work that need to be happen and in some we will go over features or big and edit existing tickets. Having a grooming meeting doesn’t mean that there no sub grooming meeting between the team members.
- Sprint retro — the retro meeting happen at the end of a spring where each team member can share with the team what was good, bad.
On top of those I would Recommend on having a daily standup where everyone in the team can tell what are they’ve been working on and what’s next for them. A daily standup help the team to be in sync and make sure everyone aware on what the others are working on. It also help for team building when everyone are chatting with each other and get the chance communicating with each other. Besides updates it helps build a better synergy with the other team members.
Get to know your team and not the code
So far you’ve been coding and it’s awesome, but now you’re a manager and need to understand that it more important for you get to know you’re team. Try to understand what drives each of person on your team and why are they working for you and not leaving for another company.
Build trust with your team, as a leader you need to win your team trust, in order to win it you will need to spend time with them and lead by example.
Hiring
As an engineering manager you end up making technical decisions, those decision need to take into account one of the most important tactical aspect which is hiring.
Hiring is one of the most important responsibilities for an engineering manager. When you’re the hiring the manager there are no excuses, you’re the one who assembled the team and it’s your responsibility for the team deadlines and success.
The earlier the hires the more impact they have. A strong team is like a snowball, a strong team will attract strong talents and vice versa. An early bad hire has a tremendous effect on a team and the company, remember the CEO of the company trust you to help him build the best product you can build, make sure to have the right people around you.
Product Management
I’m not going to get in depth why it’s important because I can write a whole post about product and engineering and yes, you’re an engineering manager but you still need to understand a product life cycle.
Product development is crucial for the success of the engineering team, and a good product can’t exist without good engineering team.
Product and engineering are the yin and yang of a company, as an engineering manager you need to make sure to work closely with the product team. A bad synergy between the two can kill a company.
In the pyramid below you can see how from a company wide goals and initiatives, a group can come up with release and features. once the features agreed we can come up with epic and user stories that break down to individual tasks. As an engineering manager you can and should have a say on what features and epic your team should work on. A more experience engineering manager can effect the company goals and initiatives.
Take care of the people you’re
I hope this was helpful, comments and questions are always welcome!
