An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management
“With the right people, any process works, and with the wrong people, no process works.”
Will Larson • An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management
Write up a plan to close all of the easy gaps and one or two of the riskiest gaps. Add it to your personal goals, and then, congrats, you’ve completed a round of succession planning!
Will Larson • An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management
Typically, my organizational philosophy is to stabilize team-by-team and organization-by-organization. Ensuring any given area is well on the path to health before moving my focus. I try not to push risks onto teams that are functioning well. You do need to delegate some risks, but generally I think it’s best to only delegate solvable risk. If
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Good goals are a composition of four specific kinds of numbers: A target states where you want to reach. A baseline identifies where you are today. A trend describes the current velocity. A time frame sets bounds for the change.
Will Larson • An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management
Keep innovation and maintenance together. A frequent practice is to spin up a new team to innovate while existing teams are bogged down in maintenance. I’ve historically done this myself, but I’ve moved toward innovating within existing teams.5 This requires very deliberate decision-making and some bravery, but in exchange you’ll get higher morale
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take an hour and write up as many goals as you can for what you’d like to accomplish in the next one to five years. Then prioritize the list, pick a few that you’d like to focus on for the next three to six months, and share it with your manager at your next one-on-one.
Will Larson • An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management
A team is treading water if they’re able to get their critical work done, but are not able to start paying down technical debt or begin major new projects. Morale is a bit higher, but people are still working hard, and your users may seem happier because they’ve learned that asking for help won’t go anywhere.
Will Larson • An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management
Maintain a document with this information, which you keep updated and share with your manager. For some managers, this will be enough! Mission accomplished.
Will Larson • An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management
you only get value from projects when they finish: to make progress, above all else, you must ensure that some of your projects finish.