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7 Simple Steps That Helped My Engineering Teams Thrive
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Between 2016 and 2021, my engineering teams went through one of the most intense — and successful — periods of my career. We delivered projects at breakneck speed, and looking back, that period at the coalface taught me what really drives engineering team performance.
There are many factors behind a successful team, but these practical steps stand out. They don’t require special talent, just discipline — and almost any organization can put them into practice.
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Keep standups short and on point – Standups are for alignment, not debate. Keep the team focused because while engineers often feel compelled to justify themselves, others don’t need the details and just want to get back to work.
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Move discussions to follow-up meetings - If a deeper conversation is needed, book it right after the standup. Let the right people opt in, instead of holding everyone hostage.
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Protect morning periods - For most engineers, mornings are prime productivity time. Avoid booking meetings then, so they can tackle their hardest problems when they’re freshest. This can be a challenge in organizations that operate across multiple time zones, so if you do have to arrange, say, a standup meeting in someone’s morning, try to preserve the rest of that productive block.
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Give engineers long, contiguous blocks - A fragmented schedule kills an engineer’s momentum. Engineers need those long blocks to get into the zone and tackle complex problems. As Paul Graham explained in Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule, managers think in half-hour slots, but engineers need hours at a stretch.
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Respect flow – Studies have shown that it takes around 15-20 minutes to achieve a state of concentration. This is where the real work and breakthroughs happen. And, the length of time you manage to stay in that state is known as ‘flow’. Any interruptions, even trivial ones, reset the clock and prevent that state of deep focus ever being achieved.
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Resist breaking the standup cycle - If you’ve asked an engineer to get something done by tomorrow or they’ve stated they’re working on it today, then let them get on with it. Repeated check-ins and requests for updates only creates disruption.
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Provide air cover - As a manager, your job is to absorb the noise. Most organizations have more people asking for updates than producing code. Shield your team from constant interruptions by being the single point of contact. Let them focus on building while you handle the information flow. Updates come through you - and you alone. Don’t tolerate others bypassing you and instruct your team to politely direct inquiries to you.
It might seem rather basic but these simple steps helped my teams increase productivity and deliver at extraordinary speed without burning out. They’re not complicated — they just require consistency and discipline.
Tip: Despite an abundance of encouragement, one team struggled to keep the standup short. In the end, I introduced an egg-timer that got passed around as each person gave their update. The egg-timer was set to a two-minute interval each time and if it went off while you were holding it, you had to do the forfeit (i.e. coffee run to the local cafe). Needless to say, standups ran to time after that.
In my next article on management, I’ll share how we built culture, trust, autonomy and technical excellence beyond these practical steps.
Donnacha Forde
#management #software-engineering #productivity #engineering-leadership