Engineering managers and particular person contributors normally need the identical factor: to supply high quality work in a means that feels artistic and collaborative, all whereas doing so in a predictable and sustainable means. I’d even say you’ll wrestle to seek out somebody who doesn’t need the sort of work settlement. 

It’s additionally necessary to notice that there’s wholesome pressure and unhealthy pressure between engineering managers (EMs) and particular person contributors (ICs). Nice groups work nicely once they have a wholesome quantity of pressure — they ask questions and problem one another respectfully to get to one of the best answer.

However there are plenty of shifting components to make the EM–IC relationship work, and it’s the friction between these components that may create unhealthy pressure.

The reason why there is perhaps pressure between EMs and ICs

Relating to measurement and analysis, EMs and ICs have completely different perceptions of what  provides worth. This may be based mostly on a number of tension-causing elements.

(1) Completely different targets based mostly on roles. The roles themselves carry inherent pressure. EMs wish to be sure that issues are predictable and the crew is working nicely. ICs deal with doing artistic work that’s, at occasions, arduous to foretell and ship with high quality. One needs to measure issues that the opposite can’t all the time ship predictably.

(2) The partition of labor. EMs and ICs are tasked with considering at completely different ranges. EMs assume one rung larger than ICs — about coordinating many individuals and roles corresponding to ICs, product managers, and designers, and shielding ICs from the inputs that come from all of these views. 

These worries don’t all the time correspond to what ICs take into consideration — corresponding to tech debt, their improvement course of, their CI/CD movement. It’s not that EMs don’t fear about these items; it’s only a completely different hierarchy of worries. 

(3) Unhealthy EMs/Unhealthy ICs. Generally there are dangerous EMs who don’t assume their job is to create a crew of ICs who’re unblocked and functioning nicely. This will create a really adversarial relationship, the place a supervisor says, “I would like this executed now,” and an IC says, “You don’t perceive what it takes to get that executed.” 

Conversely, there may be dangerous ICs who’re arduous to work with and lack empathy for the issues that EMs fear about. This will result in the “managers are simply pushing paper and don’t really ‘do’ something” narrative.

(4) Measurements that “don’t matter.” EMs measuring issues that ICs really feel don’t matter creates a disconnect. I’ll discuss measurement extra later, however the pressure right here comes, partially, due to the character of our business. 

Software program engineering is artistic work, which is by nature troublesome to measure. But, the EM has to ship high quality merchandise on time, which requires a point of measuring. 

(5) Effectively-intentioned processes gone awry. EMs may put in place processes or guardrails to assist their groups ship issues sooner with larger high quality, however they find yourself being too time consuming, inefficient or onerous for the crew. I’ve seen groups with so many onerous process-related duties that they don’t even really feel like they do a lot work. It’s simply checking plenty of bins, and the ICs are depressing.

So, what to do? It’s a must to align on measuring what issues.

An incredible place to ease the stress is throughout the developer workflow or the software program improvement life cycle — the method of taking issues from idea to launch. Inside that life cycle:

Measure issues that matter, not the BS stuff. Keep away from what we all know hasn’t labored up to now in our business — monitoring traces of code, pull requests, happiness sentiment.

Measure issues with consistency that correlate to crew efficiency. It’s necessary to measure from the actual work ICs are performing as an alternative of simply gathering statistics. Specializing in the crew’s efficiency focuses the measures on how everybody can enhance versus calling out people and making a poisonous stack-rank setting.

Measure in a innocent tradition in order that if one thing goes flawed, you’re not pointing fingers. A innocent tradition reinforces a deal with the crew’s efficiency, not the person’s. You speak when it comes to the crew’s outcomes and easy methods to enhance as a crew.

Automate, automate, automate. Our business has nearly all the time moved itself ahead as a result of we automated away the human, error-prone issues. If you end up saying “Be sure to all the time…” that’s a sign that it’s time to automate. Automate the guardrails as an alternative of creating handbook processes. 

Automate the developer workflow, CI/CD, alerting, the definition of executed, and so on. You possibly can even consider it as linting for the developer workflow, the place you construct guidelines between alerting, CI/CD, problem trackers, and code internet hosting instruments to automate issues that can assist your crew be extra environment friendly and efficient.

Lastly, be open and clear about what issues, what you’re measuring and what your targets are. In doing so, you’re serving to to drive a crew effort that everybody owns. It’s a bottom-up strategy the place you declare that you just wish to get higher. You’re asking the crew, “Can we imagine in these items?” to make sure you measure what builders wish to be a part of, and so they have the flexibility to see how they’re doing and the place they’ve alternatives to enhance.

And by doing this, you’re measuring the precise issues. You’re measuring the issues that persons are really engaged on, and also you’re utilizing these measurements to guage your crew. That’s the stuff that issues.

It’s not straightforward to maintain pressure in examine earlier than it veers into an unhealthy state, but it surely’s essential to take action. EMs and ICs will respect one another extra for it, and also you’ll get a extra collaborative, environment friendly crew because of this. And inside effectivity, the actual positive aspects in your group begin to materialize.