As Engineering Managers, we’re often held accountable for a lot of intangibles: goal setting, career development, conflict resolution, and of course, delivery.
Delivery is a key part of business growth, as EMs, TLs, PMs we want to ship more value and the quicker we can do that, the better. It’s a simple equation: faster delivery = more value shipped to users. But what we often fall short on is pushing for better delivery and pace in our teams using the *right* approach. Typically, when we do try to push these two, it quickly becomes a game of productivity and gaming numbers. The problem with this approach is that, to put it bluntly—I’ve never seen it work. So what is the right approach to improve the delivery and pace of your team? Especially if you’re a scrappy startup with limited resources? Obvious answers are working overtime, hiring more people or adapting process. And while those things may give you more output, your team isn’t actually shipping any faster, so you aren’t solving the root problem. What does have impact is setting expectations with your team, finding leverage with well chosen tech investments, and a handful of other tactics that I’ll highlight in my talk. By the end of the talk, folks will have received actionable advice that’ll help them improve their teams’ delivery and pace without a data-first approach. This will include advice on: – How to motivate their teams – How to encourage pace without turning everything into a number – What tradeoffs to make when pushing for delivery and pace – How to know when pace has improved without metrics
