Engineering Managers' Handbook - Individual Work Patterns

How does this help you?

This handbook provides you with the formula for enhancing engineering productivity. Our goal is to create a framework to replicate success, a framework built on a foundation backed by data.

We help you identify the patterns in your engineers’ workflow to help you point out the unhealthy ones. This is the first step towards a data-driven engineering leadership. Learn more about enhancing engineering productivity in the handbook.

The handbook will enable you to:

• Run effective Daily standups;

“Standups can be a compelling space for connecting the team and creating a rhythm, but it’s not uncommon for these meetings to experience some attrition at times. There are a few overarching themes teams may experience. One of those common themes includes issues with self-reporting​. Additionally, some managers might over-correct and check-in far too often on a team member’s progress.​ There can be a fine line between absentee management and micromanagement. With data, you can​ see work patterns and know when something seems off or when work is progressing​.”

• Direct One-on-ones constructively;

“Team centric communication is often about fostering autonomy, and over communication at that layer can sometimes be distracting or can even come off as condescending. When you’re pushing information up, use data to support your narrative. By coupling data with your qualitative analysis, you can help your manager, nontechnical stakeholders, and senior leaders process the information more effectively. We will teach you how to use the analytics regarding the development process to get the full picture of the ​what​, so you can use that information to get to the ​why,​ and have more targeted conversations in one-on-ones.”

• Deliver accurate reports;

“you’ll see how to use data across the development life cycle as a conduit to enable your team to more readily present innovative ideas, advocate for progress, or speak more openly about the hard conversations — ultimately enabling your team to grow retrospective over retrospective.”

• Enhance your code review workflow.

“For sprints where deadlines were missed or were during the sprint review, stakeholders felt there was not enough time to iterate to the correct solution. In an ideal environment, everyone on the team is involved in the review process and collaborating to improve solutions to problems and ensure that the work meets the team standards.”