Newsletter #27: Resources for Engineering Directors and more.
Welcome to the 27th edition of Software Leads–a monthly newsletter on software engineering leadership.
Welcome to the 27th edition of Software Leads, a monthly newsletter dedicated to software engineering and leadership. It compiles content from technical leaders on difficulties, tips, and practices for building and leading software teams in the twenty-first century.
As always, I've included my top discoveries from the previous month below.
Resources for engineering directors
This post was written for directors managing projects from two layers away. It contains insights for managers of managers on fostering execution on teams they indirectly manage. The author, Will Larson, gives a straightforward structure for managing levels away that I have seen used by senior technical leaders I had the opportunity to work with.
To foster team execution from multiple levels away, you must:
Understand what’s happening in those teams.
Add things necessary for execution.
Remove things getting in the way of execution.
This post from Andreas Klinger is full of learnings for managers of small teams/startups. A few of the takeaways that resonated with me a lot are:
As a manager, everything is your fault.
You manage processes; you lead people.
Processes are expectations made explicit.
Chaos is felt less by the people creating it.
Four steps to organizational change without the drama
As leaders, our job is to make our part of the organization better. This requires imposing change. Making change is not always as simple as it appears, since change can be met with surprise, confusion, feelings of injustice leading to anger, or cynicism leading to disengagement.
I enjoyed reading this post and the rich examples provided on making an organizational change with little drama. I think every tech leader should read this.
Making changes easy for your team
Have you ever wanted to implement a change that makes sense only to get a pushback? Change sometimes brings (perceived) discomfort to people. One of the ways to implement change without resistance is to make it easy or by removing the perceived discomfort. In this post, you will learn how to overcome resistance, skepticism, and change fatigue when making change.
Start with the problem
Assess how large of an issue the problem is
Come up with a diagnosis
Propose remedy
Socialize your plan – Solicit feedback
Communicate the change
How to use expectations as a tool for growth and excellence
This post made me remember why it’s crucial to set expectations and make them explicit as tech leaders. Key takeaways from this post are:
Expectations must be made obvious.
Measure and adapt expectations.
Expectations must be written.
On becoming a senior technical leader
I told a senior engineer a few weeks ago that one of the ways to grow into technical leaders is to continuously discover high-leverage tasks or organizational problems (technical or non-technical) that no one is tackling and lead the solution. This post lays out a set of role models and mental models that any engineer can use to increase her impact.
Working better with stakeholders — three key techniques
While this post was written for project managers, I believe it’s valuable for every technical leader who interacts or works with stakeholders. The key learnings in this post are:
Make stakeholders your partner. Don’t work in an “us against them” mode.
Be explicit and persistent about your goals.
Use strong evidence.
Cheers,
Illustration by Ekaterina Rogova from Ouch!