The Engineering Leader's Process for Continuous Improvement

We’ve spoken to hundreds of engineering leaders in the last couple of years, and there’s a pattern that the best of them follow.

This pattern consistently appears in high-performing engineering teams. So, we decided to share our findings with you.

Here’s what we know:

As an engineering leader, you have two responsibilities: 

1. Improve the developer experience

2. Deliver impact to the end-user

Better developer experience is measured internally. And great developer experience leads to a bigger impact on the end-user, which is externally judged. 

These two responsibilities should work in an almost infinite, yin-yang, fashion.

But how can you achieve this balance foreverandever?

Presenting…

💡 The Engineering Leader’s Process for Continuous Improvement

Eiso has written about this in the past and mentioned it in a couple of episodes of the pod.

Simply put, it’s an actionable way for engineering leaders to use metrics to create positive changes in their organization continuously.

Here’s a quick rundown:

1. Identify what you need to improve.

2. Discuss and communicate with the relevant people.

3. Decide. Ultimately, your role as a leader is to make decisions.  

4. Align these decisions across the entire org (or part of the org that applies). Big organizations are going to spend a lot more time discussing and aligning. For smaller organizations, this might be a five-minute discussion.‍

5. Act. Make sure there's execution.‍

6. Measure the impact of what you're actually doing.

💡 This is a continuous loop. Take a moment to think about your day. Are you spotting what's making things run smoother? Figuring out how to improve the developer experience? And, like, where can you step up your game?

You might want to use this process whenever you have a quarterly, monthly, or yearly planning cycle - not just when there is an issue. We believe every engineering leader would gain from regularly doing, and, in many cases, you already are!

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Eiso wrote about this process on Athenian’s blog and provided an in-depth example of how to follow the loop using metrics.

Check it out →

See you Thursday for a rundown of our favorite frameworks, mental models, and general engineering leadership geekiness!

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