YOU CAN FREQUENTLY ASSESS the quality of a team by the quality of their metrics. Metrics are the lifeblood of a team lead because everything in your job is a negotiation, and metrics provide a rational foundation for discussion. If you don’t back up your statements with metrics, you’ll sound like Animal the Muppet. You also need metrics because you

The goal of adding APIs to your product description is to explain how your team will interface with other teams. APIs can also explain how external developers might work with your systems and what kind of data you’ll store.

The best “eng managers” are those who have been promoted into the role because they love their teams, understand people, know how to ship, and want to build brilliant products. The worst are those frustrated engineers who only wanted more control and more money. You know who you are. Cut it out.

It’s important not to say, “Make the login button less prominent.” We also didn’t say, “Move the ‘What’s your favorite team?’ promo up to the top.” Rather, we empowered the design team to make a collection of optimizations based on our prioritized business objectives, which we clearly stated.

To remove some of the arbitrariness from this stage of the project, I check to ensure that the team feels proud. Your team must be proud of the software they build, and the bugs you have in the product shouldn’t embarrass you.

This strategy accomplishes what I need it to accomplish. It speaks to the type of product IMDb is going to offer and why the company is uniquely positioned to provide this service. It speaks to competition and how IMDb will be different, and justifies why IMDb should target a specific segment. It’s brief and to the point. It’s not excessively speci

APIs can be very useful but can also backfire because the engineers you work with may feel that APIs are their territory. Be careful — feel out the team first. If they understand that the idea behind you writing APIs is so that high-level management can agree on which teams will own which data, and which interfaces must be maintained as part of you

embody. Similar to my previous suggestions, Maeda advocates “simplifying” features so they do only what they absolutely must. For advanced features that are used occasionally or by users of secondary importance, “hide” those more complicated features. One way to hide complexity is to put power-user features into an “advanced options” dialog or coll

Your strategy is a rough plan to win over your target customers given the unique assets of your company and the pressure from your competitors. That’s it.