Most engineering leaders obsess over code quality, deployment pipelines, and shipping velocity. But after leading and rebuilding teams across multiple companies, I’ve learned this truth:
💡 You don’t ship great software without a great team — and you don’t build great teams by accident.
Here’s what I’ve seen go wrong (and how to fix it).
🧩 The Problem
In one of my early roles, I joined a team that had inherited legacy products during a massive organizational shift. We were smart. We had modern tooling. On paper, we had everything we needed.
But we couldn’t deliver.
We kept running into the same walls — alignment, momentum, ownership. Our retros were full of process tweaks, but output stayed flat. Morale dropped. We were a group of individuals, not a team.
🚢 What Changed
It wasn’t until leadership shifted focus — from individual talent to team cohesion — that things started moving. We reorganized teams to optimize for shared ownership, communication, and trust. Not process. Not code.
And guess what? Our output improved. Velocity stabilized. People cared more.
💥 Why This Matters
When you treat the team as a product:
- You think about durability, not just delivery.
- You build for scale, not just speed.
- You invest in team dynamics the way you’d invest in observability or testing.
Engineering culture isn’t just vibes. It’s infrastructure.
🔧 Try This
Do a “team design” retro
Ask your team what’s working and not in the way you work together, not just in the product.Evaluate your org chart like a system diagram
Where’s the tight coupling? Where are the bottlenecks?Introduce shared rituals that reinforce collaboration
Think: engineering office hours, demo days, or pairing sessions with cross-team intent.
📬 Want More?
This piece was originally published in my newsletter Beyond the Commit — where I share practical, real-world lessons on engineering leadership, scaling teams, and building products the right way.
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