Book Image

Engineering Manager's Handbook

By : Morgan Evans
Book Image

Engineering Manager's Handbook

By: Morgan Evans

Overview of this book

Delightful and customer-centric digital products have become an expectation in the world of business. Engineering managers are uniquely positioned to impact the success of these products and the software systems that power them. Skillful managers guide their teams and companies to develop functional and maintainable systems. This book helps you find your footing as an engineering manager, develop your leadership style, balance your time between engineering and managing, build successful engineering teams in different settings, and work within constraints without sacrificing technical standards or team empathy. You’ll learn practical techniques for establishing trust, developing beneficial habits, and creating a cohesive and high-performing engineering team. You’ll discover effective strategies to guide and contribute to your team’s efforts, facilitating productivity and collaboration. By the end of this book, you’ll have the tools and knowledge necessary to thrive as an engineering manager. Whether you’re just starting out in your role or seeking to enhance your leadership capabilities, this handbook will empower you to make a lasting impact and drive success in your organization.
Table of Contents (24 chapters)
1
Part 1: The Case for Engineering Management
5
Part 2: Engineering
9
Part 3: Managing
15
Part 4: Transitioning
19
Part 5: Long-Term Strategies

Building an accountable team culture

When we look deeply at accountability as a trait of teams, we may break it down into two basic components: the acceptance of responsibility for outcomes and the willingness to personally fulfill that responsibility. In other words, accountability concerns the belief that the work is ours and the belief that we have the agency to carry it out. Our goal as engineering managers is to guide our teams to a state where they possess both of these beliefs.

Internalizing ownership and internalizing agency are two very different goals. You can imagine how easy it would be to know that a job is yours while having no idea how to do it. For team members to feel responsible for work but lack the ability or environment to accomplish that work can be incredibly demotivating and damaging. This underscores the importance of supporting both of these aspects of accountability on our teams. To serve these dual aims, use the three Ps of accountability: provide, promote...