5 minutes
Over the years, the role of individual contributors has evolved significantly. They are no longer just dealing with rapid technological changes; they must also adapt their approach to align with business objectives.
Many individual contributors may not immediately relate to thinking like a boss. However, embracing this mindset can empower you to align your work with business objectives, increasing your impact and influence. This perspective shift not only allows staff+ engineers to have a greater impact on their teams, internal stakeholders, and client relationships but also puts them in the driver’s seat of their professional journey.
Applying a business mindset to engineering challenges can take time to learn, but will ultimately help you stand out as a diverse leader within your team.
1. Balancing complex work
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Project work often requires breaking down complex tasks into smaller features to achieve outcomes within a scoped time frame. Unfortunately, despite our estimations, features usually take longer than they’re forecasted to. Failing to manage these project fluctuations can lead to risks, including further delays, increased spending, and tension between team members and stakeholders.
Miscalculated project timelines are usually brought on by an initial underestimation of task complexity. Engineers can also quickly become overwhelmed by the increased pressure to deliver high-quality features, compounding this effect even further. Successful technical leads must balance engineering solutions with budgets, timelines, and an overall strategic approach to deliver maximum value.
To adopt a strategic approach, technical leads must zoom out and take a birds-eye view of the project. This often requires considering the technical, team, and financial implications. This may include:
- Adopting a different approach to other critical areas of the project. This can reduce team friction by prioritizing and solving problem areas or solutions that have not been well thought out or have received less attention and focus.
- Determining the minimum viable product (MVP) of any given feature request allows teams to deliver value and pivot to more important aspects of engineering if required.
- Collaborating with clients to review the backlog and identify launch-critical tasks and those that can be deprioritized. Together, you determine what they consider to be deal breakers for launch.
- Communicating with project managers or account managers to encourage healthier and better-purposed budgets and planning.
This change in mindset will immediately distinguish your leadership and strategic skills, influence healthy budgeting practices, reduce team friction, deliver higher-quality value to clients, and encourage further collaboration between engineering and internal stakeholders.
2. The effort vs. value predicament
“Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good” – Voltaire
The amount of effort we put into delivering value is a concept often overlooked by engineers and scrutinized by more client-facing facets of a business. It’s essential to keep project budgets lean, prevent team burnout, and ensure productivity, all while avoiding the trap of over-engineering. In striving for the most efficient and optimized solution, we sometimes invest excessive time in perfecting features that already meet client needs. This search for the most efficient and optimized approach can burn precious hours, ultimately failing to deliver any noticeable value to clients. The concept of “good enough” is not about settling for less but finding the balance between quality and efficiency.
“Perfect” is also a matter of perspective and sometimes an unnecessary goal, especially when budgets are tight. In these situations, good enough is almost always good enough. Instead of aiming for perfection, it’s more effective to focus on delivering an MVP first. Once that’s achieved, then it’s time to iterate upon products in a focused and strategic manner, creating more robust and focused outcomes.
3. Managing time and exceeding expectations
“Meeting expectations is good. Exceeding expectations is better” – Ron Kaufman.
While meeting expectations is essential, engineers can make a significant impact by exceeding them. A proactive project approach can result in timely deadlines, on-point budgets, and client satisfaction.
As a technical lead or individual contributor, you can exceed expectations by stepping back to evaluate possible solutions to project challenges. These solutions don’t have to be ground-breakingly innovative; they just need to solve a problem. For instance, you might achieve this by proposing a more efficient way to implement a feature or suggesting a cost-effective solution to a technical problem. If said solution can deliver the same value with less effort and time, you’ve made an impact. Consistently exceeding expectations like this establishes a higher level of trust in your work, creating room for more project autonomy in the future.
Ultimately, to adopt a more proactive approach toward your work, you need to change your mindset by anticipating challenges and thinking from your clients’ perspectives when ideating.
4. Learn to stay out of your lane
Contributing to aspects of a project or feature that aren’t in your wheelhouse can deliver more value, impact, and team cohesion.
Last year, the concept of “staying out of your lane” was introduced at my annual company summit. The overarching concept encourages leaning in on project responsibilities where you can offer value. For instance, front-end engineers may be able to contribute significant value to user experience (UX) teams or user interface designers to help streamline engineering later on in the project. When I initially heard the idea, I was skeptical. It sounded like a surefire way to frustrate and hinder the autonomy of other engineers. Now that I’ve experienced it in practice, I’ve changed my stance on the principle.
A healthy respect for others’ roles and remits is crucial for collaboration. Ensuring team members of varying experience levels and backgrounds share ideas, provide insight, and even contribute to deliverables can improve the team’s effectiveness. This approach breaks down knowledge silos but also fosters a sense of unity, learning, and shared purpose among team members.
Building trust and supporting concepts like “staying out of your lane” takes time and encouragement. However, with the correct application, it can yield invaluable results. When team members feel confident in round-table, cross-discipline discussions, they increase their potential to flag risks regarding budgets, delivery, and achieving successful outcomes.
Final thoughts
Business and technical leadership share many commonalities. The closer these two units work together, breaking down silos, the more value they can deliver. Staff+ engineers need to take a vested interest in how their engineering decisions impact the business aspects of a project or feature. This includes budget considerations, sticking to a definition of “good enough,” and exceeding expectations where possible.
