Newsletter #31: Justifying Non-Sexy Product Investments and More.
Welcome to the 31st edition of Software Leads–a monthly newsletter on software engineering and leadership.
Welcome to the 31st edition of Software Leads, a monthly newsletter about software engineering and leadership. It aggregates articles from technical leaders on difficulties, tips, and practices for building and managing successful software teams.
How to Justify "Non-Sexy" Product Investments
“A common issue leaders in product management, design, or engineering face is justifying investment in the "non-sexy" stuff like developer velocity, reliability work, technical debt performance improvement and more.” This post from the CPO of Eventbrite provides a few examples with insights how you to investment cases and prove the value of "non-sexy" projects to make a big impact
How To Help Your Team Achieve Their Goals
"One of the most powerful conversations you can have as a manager with a team member is about their goals. Not company KPIs, not the next core project and their responsibilities, their goals. When you tap into someone's core drivers, you maximise their motivation on the job. They'll even do much of the work on their own time" Here is how you do that.
How To Be a Better Manager by Remembering 5 Simple Phrases
“Managers are often overbooked with meetings, fighting fires, and balancing the needs of their team. When the stress piles up, it can be natural to fall back on instincts and away from good habits that generate positive results”. In this post are five powerful phrases that will make a difference in how you manage or lead.
Cheers, on Drafting an Engineering Strategy
An interesting read from @roidrage. In this post, he shares his experience in drafting an engineering strategy, especially when you join a new company where none exists.
Great engineers I have come across take a keen interest in how users use what they're building. Engineers who feel friction in user experience are more conscious of building to alleviate those pains. This is why I like this post from Camille Fournier. "Engineers should spend time supporting their products. If they are not regularly answering questions, they are missing a chance to appreciate customers' pain when trying to use the systems.”
Software engineering teams can be complicated, and finding a solid approach to structure your teams for success is not easy. The CTO of ESGgen reviews common team structures you will see in most orgs with their pros and cons.
Setting Direction: Create Strategy
Understand what makes strategy good using Apple in 1997 as a case study. A good strategy has 3 elements.
Diagnosis – Define the nature of the challenge in simple terms.
Guiding Policy – The overall approach you’ve chosen to use.
Coherent Actions – Steps required to carry out policy.
Leading Software Teams with Systems Thinking
This series focuses on how to lead software teams with systems thinking, looking at the system to solve common challenges in software engineering.
Illustration by Julia Kuptsova from Ouch!