Engineering Team Success: A Relatable Story of Process Change

The following story is just the beginning of a series of articles to come. Often times, leaders join organizations with inefficient, flawed or no defined process at all. Often the environment is a go-go-go mentality, prioritizing fast delivery over quality standards. However, this approach can prove detrimental to the team or company in the long term. Leaders should never forget that working harder and longer does not necessarily equate to faster velocity and high-value output. Instead, implementing a healthy strategy and defined processes can result in dramatic improvements in quality, speed of delivery, and team morale.

Although this story is based on real experiences on multiple teams, it only covers a fraction of the ingredients needed for success. Future posts will explore these missing ingredients that contribute towards a successful outcome.

The Story

Once upon a time, in a buzzing tech company, there was a software engineering team led by a fearless manager named Jane. She was determined to lead her team to greatness, but unfortunately, they were constantly bogged down by production support tickets and critical bug fixes, drowning in an ocean of tech troubles. It felt like they were on a treadmill of fixing problems, going nowhere, and had no time for innovation or new features. Jane, experienced as she was, had seen this before and is confident she can make a positive change; but only if her team supports her and is open to dramatic change and trying new approaches.

She started by analyzing their processes and discovered a laundry list of areas where improvements could be made to increase operational efficiency. She was like a detective on a mission, dead set on cracking the case of how to create a successful, high-performing team.

First, Jane had to cut out the noise and distractions that were preventing her team from staying focused on their vision. She made sure other departments didn't interrupt them with non-essential work, so they could concentrate on their planned tasks without getting sidetracked. She did this by teaching other teams how to work with them and created intake forms based on the type of work, making this an async operation. She assigned rotational engineers to be the first point of contact and be the the first line of defense against all the noise and distractions, so the team could focus on value-added work without being constantly interrupted.

Next, Jane worked to harden the team's processes, focusing on each phase of delivery. At first, this felt like trying to turn coal into diamonds after years of developing bad habits and then overcoming them by working harder and longer. She desperately needed to reduce the back-and-forth work, so they could streamline their efforts, and create momentum.

Jane knew that clarity of purpose and direction with great communication and collaboration increased velocity. She insisted on more information during planning sessions and created a list of requirements that must be met before a task was actionable. This included a clear product description with acceptance criteria and user stories when relevant. This was followed by an early review of incoming efforts by engineers to ensure the team has what is needed to take action, while also leaving insights of how this work could be accomplished. She wanted everyone to be aware of why the work was important, when the work needs to take place, and make this work visible to the entire company. This helped improve decision-making at all levels. Her goal was to give her team a map (vision), compass (direction), and a GPS (path) so they could navigate through their tasks with complete clarity. Enabling everyone to make decisions and take action without needing to wait for approval because they know it aligns with the vision and direction of the company.

Jane then focused on knowledge sharing and continuous education for skill development. She wanted every team member to feel empowered to solve problems themselves and give them every opportunity to grow into their career. Yet, coaching and training takes time from the high-output, senior-level individuals, and this can hurt delivery. She encouraged her team to create a growing wiki and video walkthroughs for repeatable work and relevant knowledge sharing to empower junior team members, which allowed them to autonomous, collaborate more effectively and learn from each other's experiences.

Jane understood the importance of focused problem-solving and introduced regular sessions that concentrated on singular/few topics instead of juggling multiple issues simultaneously that create an endless discussion with few positive actionable outcomes. It's proven that you will get more accomplished by taking on less and getting to 'done' faster before taking on more. This approach helped the team tackle problems more effectively and quickly find resolutions. Split-attention and regular switching tasks has a high cost. They focused on limiting the projects they worked on concurrently allowing work to get to 'Done' faster before picking up something new.

Jane also enforced new rules around the size of tasks and properly breaking them down into manageable chunks. Jane knew that overly large efforts led to a slowdown during each phase in their workflow and bloated the time to completion. Smaller chunks of work led to faster completion, quicker feedback, more frequent releases, higher quality and less risk. This also allowed the team to be more nimble and adapt to changing priorities and late-stage change requests.

Jane also prioritized building trust within the team. She emphasized the importance of open and clear communication, encouraged bi-lateral feedback, and celebrated their wins together. She had each team give instructions and train other teams how to interact with them and make requests. This included how to intake in new work without 'shoulder tapping', how to communicate updates asynchronously, and how to establish the most efficient handoff. She even added monthly team Happy Hours to help build deeper relationships so the team can better handle the stressful times together without finger pointing. This fostered a supportive environment where the team could build rapport.

As the team implemented these changes, they noticed a significant shift in their day-to-day life. The number of support tickets and bug fixes gradually decreased, allowing them to allocate more time and resources to developing new features. A positive side-effect was being able to start their day and know exactly what they would be working on without being derailed. The team's morale went up with the additional clarity of how we work, and they found a renewed sense of purpose in their work as they saw and felt the impact of their efforts.

By taking bold action to transform their processes and working environment, Jane's team was able to break free from the constraints of a fragile system and refocus on creating new value for the company. Through collaboration, continuous improvement, and trust, they emerged as a powerhouse of innovation and growth.

The Takeaway

In this story, you heard Jane pay attention to and look for resolutions on:

• Process - How we work matters. Clarity of how we work is empowering.
• Knowledge Management - How we collect and disseminate knowledge is critical for long-term success. See Knowledge Management Policies.
• Noise and Distractions - If you can't reduce noise, centralize it so the majority are unaffected.
• Collaboration - We train others how to work with us.
• Team Health - Building trust and empathy powers us through the difficult times and staying strong as a team. Celebrate successes, learn from mistakes, and have a blameless culture.
• Leadership - Team members deliver the value, leaders are meant to provide the environment and pathway to maximize effectiveness and provide opportunities for growth. Team does, leader enables and empowers. Leaders are not the smartest person in the room, they are the person who can get the smartest people in the room to work together. I like to define leaders as the 'catalyst' or 'multipliers' of value.

Not at All Rainbows and Butterflies

Let's not forget, this story isn't all rainbows and butterflies. This story is idealistic and doesn’t dive into the challenges and nuances that were faced to make this a reality. Making changes isn't easy, but with Jane's leadership and the right people on her team, they were able to conquer anything that came their way. Without the right people in your figurative bus, change is extremely hard if not impossible. This will be the topic of the next post.