Leading EffectiveEngineering Teams

PROJECT ARISTOTLE

Google conducted one of the best-known studies on effective software engineer- ing teams, known as Project Aristotle. The project aimed to identify the factors that make some teams more successful than others.

Project Aristotle identified five key dynamics that contribute to the success of software engineering teams

• Psychological Safety: Team members feel safe to take risks, make mistakes, and express their opinions without fear of judgment or retribution.

  • Give open forum to share feedback in anonymous

• Dependability: Team members can rely on each other to deliver high-quality work on time and meet commitments.

• Structure and Clarity: Team members have clear roles, goals, and processes, with a defined sense of how the team functions and what is expected.

• Meaning: Team members find their work personally meaningful and aligned with their values or goals.

• Impact: Team members feel that their work has a meaningful impact on the organization, customers, or the world at large.

Some other points from other research

• Smaller teams are better.
• Diversity can be beneficial. (different kind of people senior ,junior etc will encourage invation and creativity)
• Clear communication is vital.
• Leadership matters.

Hiring and interviewing for effectiveness

When building a new team or adding members to an existing one, it’s important to assess candidates not just for their technical skills but also for the key mind- sets and qualities that contribute to team effectiveness. During interviews, ask questions that probe for evidence of the engineering mindsets discussed earlier, such as caring about users, being a good problem solver, and being open to learning and growth. Present candidates with scenarios that test their approach to challenges like prioritization and balancing trade-offs.

What Author Learned About Leadership

1. Align with Broader Objectives
   Ensure your work aligns with your organization’s core goals. This alignment amplifies the impact of your efforts and contributes meaningfully to overarching priorities.

2. Leverage Your Team’s Unique Strengths
   Recognize and utilize the distinct skills and expertise within your team. By understanding each member’s strengths, you can delegate effectively and foster growth.

3. Communicate Effectively
   Maintain open and consistent communication. Regularly share progress, challenges, and achievements to build trust, encourage collaboration, and ensure everyone stays informed.

4. Focus on Impact, Not Just Hard Work
   Hard work is valuable, but the focus should be on outcomes that create measurable, meaningful impact. Prioritize efforts that align with organizational objectives and yield significant results.

5. Build a Narrative Around Your Work
   Document and share the story of your team’s journey. A compelling narrative enhances visibility, highlights achievements, and positions your work as a critical contributor to success.

Efficiency Versus Effectiveness Versus Productivity

Efficiency → Efficiency implies doing things right to minimize waste and maximize output.

Effectiveness → Effectiveness implies doing the right thing and delivering the right outcome.

Productivity → Productivity is a subset of efficiency and measures output over input

20 minute rule

If you are blocked, use the first 20 minutes to do research to unblock yourself; after that, either ask our team chat or a person and let them know of the results/findings of the prior research.” This enables them to better understand a problem or task and the requirements and constraints involved before asking questions, making informed decisions, and producing better-quality code.

SMART

A SMART goal is a structured and methodical approach to setting objectives that enhance clarity, focus, and achievability.

1. Specific

A goal must be clear and precise, leaving no room for ambiguity. It should address the “who, what, where, when, and why” of the objective.

• Why it matters: Specific goals provide direction and eliminate confusion, making it easier to focus efforts and measure progress.
• Example: Instead of saying, “Improve customer service,” a specific goal could be, “Reduce customer complaint response time to under 24 hours by streamlining the support ticket system.”

2. Measurable

A goal should include criteria to measure progress and success. This involves defining key metrics or indicators that will track progress over time.

• Why it matters: Measurement ensures accountability and provides a way to evaluate whether the goal is being met.
• Example: Rather than “Increase sales,” a measurable goal could be, “Increase sales revenue by 20% within the next quarter.”

3. Achievable

Goals should be realistic and attainable, considering available resources, constraints, and time. While they should challenge you, they must remain within reach.

• Why it matters: Unrealistic goals can lead to frustration and demotivation. Achievable goals maintain motivation and ensure progress.
• Example: Instead of “Double our revenue in a month,” an achievable goal could be, “Increase revenue by 10% over six months by expanding our digital marketing efforts.”

4. Relevant

A goal must align with broader organizational or personal objectives. It should directly contribute to the mission, vision, or priorities of the team or individual.

• Why it matters: Relevant goals ensure that time and effort are spent on activities that truly matter, preventing wasted resources.
• Example: For a company focused on sustainability, a relevant goal could be, “Reduce packaging waste by 30% by switching to biodegradable materials within the next year.”

5. Time-Bound

A goal needs a clear deadline or timeframe for completion. This creates urgency and helps prioritize actions.

• Why it matters: Deadlines instill discipline and provide a sense of urgency, ensuring progress is made consistently.
• Example: Instead of “Launch a new product,” a time-bound goal could be, “Launch the new product by December 31, 2025, with a targeted marketing campaign starting three months prior.”

Two techniques that can help define relevant productivity metrics

Goal-question-metric (GQM)

GQM is a structured framework that links goals to measurable outcomes through specific questions.

Example

1. Goal: Decide what you want to achieve (e.g., “Be the best treasure hunter”).
2. Question: Ask how to measure progress (e.g., “How much treasure did I find?”).
3. Metric: Choose what to track (e.g., “Number of treasures found”).
4. Link the goal, questions, and metrics to evaluate success.
5. Use the results to improve and reach your goal faster!

Objectives and key results (OKRs)

OKRs are a goal-setting framework used to define and track objectives and their measurable outcomes.

Objective → What you want to do? Key results → How you going to achevie this (the benchmark to track your progress they are metrics of your sucess)

The 3 E’s Model of Effective Engineering

• Enable
• Empower
• Expand

Enable

DEFINE EFFECTIVENESS FOR YOUR BUSINESS TYPE AND TEAM SIZE

steps you can follow to define what effectiveness means for your team

• Identify your team’s goals and objectives
• Determine what metrics are relevant to measuring success
• Set targets for each metric
• Define effectiveness in terms of outcomes

Empower

If enabling is about identifying what needs to be done to become effective and initializing it, empowerment takes you a step further. Empowering effectiveness involves providing the necessary support, resources, autonomy, and opportunities for growth and development.

Patrick Lencioni’s model, known as the Five Dysfunctions of a Team, explains why teams fail and how they can succeed by addressing these dysfunctions. It’s structured like a pyramid with five layers, starting from the base.

• Absence of Trust (Build trust by encouraging openness and honesty)
• Fear of Conflict (Encourage constructive conflict.)
• Lack of Commitment (Ensure everyone’s input is heard and agree on a clear plan)
• Avoidance of Accountability (Set clear roles and expectations)
• Inattention to Results (Focus on collective results) Team members prioritize personal success over team goals.

Tuckman’s model of group development outlines five stages that teams go through to become high-performing. These stages are Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing, and Adjourning.

1. Forming: Getting to know each other.
2. Storming: Facing conflicts.
3. Norming: Resolving issues and collaborating.
4. Performing: Achieving great results.
5. Adjourning: Wrapping up and parting ways.

Expand

Expanding effectiveness refers to increasing an organization’s overall effectiveness, efficiency, and success across its various departments, teams, and functions by making them self-sufficient.

• Empowerment through trust (trust the team and leave them to take decision)

The three always of leadership

• Always Be Deciding: Make timely, impactful decisions. even without knowing full info.Make informed choices quickly, accepting that not all decisions will be perfect.
• Always Be Leaving: Empower others to lead and ensure continuity.
• Always Be Scaling: Focus on growth and scalability for long-term success.

Always be deciding

Three-step approach to decision making

Identify the blinders Blinders are mental blocks that prevent us from considering all possible solutions to a problem.

Identify the key trade-offs Decide, then iterate

Common Effectiveness Antipatterns

Individual Antipatterns

THE SPECIALIST Don’t make one on specialist in specifc area let everyone know everything because if they not present it hard to other work on Even if you conduct knowelege sharing so on untill they have hands on expereience it hard to understand

THE GENERALIST Who work in all thing without understanding indepth only have shallow knoweledge

THE HOARDER someone who works in isolation, accumulating changes throughout a sprint and withholding updates until the end.

Identifying a hoarder is relatively easy, and you might observe them in the first sprint itself: • The engineer’s updates are withheld until they accumulate into a substan- tial pull request. • Other team members find themselves largely unaware of the hoarder’s ongoing work. • Code reviews of the hoarder’s sizable pull request become time- consuming and happen so late that you may be unable to devote adequate resources to them, leaving the code under-reviewed. • The engineer believes their code to be perfect and may not readily accept suggestions to change it to fit better with the rest of the solution.

THE RELENTLESS GUIDE when a team member, often with good intentions, consistently provides solutions and guidance to others, even beyond what is necessary. While their support may initially seem admirable, it can lead to problems if team members start relying too much on the guide and stop developing their own problem-solving skills.

THE TRIVIAL TWEAKER Engineers making small, often insignificant changes to code that don’t have a meaningful impact on the project. These engineers, driven by boredom or a desire to improve the code, engage in minor tweaks, such as refactoring or reorganizing, under the guise of making improvements. While these changes might seem harmless, they can divert attention away from more important tasks, wasting time and resources on superficial adjustments.

Practice-Related Antipatterns

Practice-related antipatterns are caused by procedural pitfalls when designing, coding, reviewing, or testing solutions. A single individual cannot be held responsible for these. They can only be managed when the entire team collaborates to standardize and follow processes under the guidance of a leader.

LAST-MINUTE HEROICS

Happens when team members scramble to fix problems right before a deadline, often with little time for proper testing or feedback. While it may seem like a quick fix, it can hide deeper issues and create risks for the project.

PROTRACTED REFACTORING

self-motivated engineers often discover existing code that could be written better, for example, by using a new API or library that was not available previously

• The planned refactor expands organically, incorporating more elements and aspects, leading to unintended scope expansion.
• As the refactor persists, project timelines may extend, potentially delaying releases and affecting overall project objectives.

Structural Antipatterns

Structural antipatterns are caused by structural issues, including knowledge silos, skill imbalances, and communication gaps, which can pose risks to the long-term sustainability of the team.

ISOLATED CLUSTERS

when subteams within a larger software development team form insular groups, limiting cross-team collaboration. Members of these clusters tend to engage mostly with colleagues from their own subgroup for reviews, help, and knowledge sharing, which creates barriers to broader teamwork and stifles collective progress.

Leadership Antipatterns

• MICROMANAGEMENT
• SCOPE MISMANAGEMENT
• PLANNING OVERKILL
• Skeptical leadership is an antipattern where engineering managers develop unnecessary insecurities about their team’s competence as a project progresses. These managers become overly anxious, viewing minor issues as potential risks and questioning decisions without clear justification

Effective Managers

Managing Your Time

• Time blocking
• Chunking similar tasks

ASSESSMENT

verify whether your strategies are working through regular assessment. You must assess the execution of your time management strategies and adjust them if necessary as a cycle of improvement:

Becoming an Effective Leader

Assessing Your Leadership Skills

Technical expertise

• Do I have the required technical know-how for this project?
• Have I perceived a team member’s face light up when I guided them toward a creative solution?
• When was the last time I helped someone solve a difficult problem?

Communication

• Does my team always understand me?
• Have there been any instances of misunderstandings or miscommunication where a team member did not understand what I was trying to convey?
• Do I tailor my communication style to the individual or group I am addressing?
• Do I often need to repeat instructions?
• Do I actively listen and remember the discussion in the right context?

Drive

• Am I distracted easily from my end goals?
• Am I able to follow up relentlessly and course-correct quickly?
• Do I remain tenacious and optimistic in the face of challenges?
• Am I able to recognize and seize opportunities that can help me with achieving my goals?

Fairness

• Do I always make objective decisions based on facts?
• Do I hold any prejudices that may subconsciously influence my decisions?
• Am I impartial when delegating responsibilities?

Influence

• Do people listen to me because of my authority as a leader or because they trust me to do the right thing?
• Would I be able to guide others even without authority?

Caring for others

• Am I aware of what’s going on in my team members’ lives?
• Am I able to empathize with others?
• Are my team members overly cautious while communicating with me?

Resources

• Identify what makes a great manager
• https://leaddev.com/communication/five-management-anti-patterns-and-why-they-happen

My Takeway

• Do something to build the communication between the team such going out and playing games and brainstroming
• Build a open culture

How i can make the team the build on time with proper code and doc etc?