Software organizations are built around teams, where professionals work intensively together daily to deliver software. Although teams are preferably self-managed and autonomous, managers must establish conditions and guidance and foster high-performing teams.
One area they often need to work on is balancing team autonomy and responsibilities with alignment between software teams and other parts of the organization.
Engineering managers can enable software teams to learn, improve, and help them move problems and impediments out of the way. A recent panel with Dr. Olga Kubassova, President @IAG, Image Analysis Group, Michael Gray, Principal Engineer @ClearBank, and Hannah Foxwell, Product Director @Snyk, provided several key takeaways:
- Tech leaders can support and guide different kinds of autonomous teams by communicating the organization's core values, mission, and vision, giving them authority within boundaries, fostering visibility and trust, and aligning on priorities - not by standardization.
- As a leader or manager, you should know when to step in to resolve a team problem and when to guide the team toward finding a solution themselves. Don't interfere when a new team is finding their way or solving technical issues; be careful that the team doesn't become dependent on you through interventions.
- Leaders can support diversity and inclusion in teams and foster psychological safety by actively seeking out and elevating the perspectives of every team member, adapting themself to each individual to meet their needs, and allowing people to fail and celebrate what they learned through that failure.
- Engineering managers can support teams on their journey toward high performance by delegating, trusting people, being curious, creating safety, and understanding what level of support their teams need.
- Encouraging knowledge and experience sharing across teams is crucial for boosting innovation, efficiency, and overall organizational success. "Town hall" or "all hands" type meetings can be an excellent way to publicize achievements to a wider audience.
This content is an excerpt from a recent InfoQ article by Ben Linders, "How to Build and Foster High-Performing Software Teams: Experiences from Engineering Managers".
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