These are my notes on 97 Things Every Engineering Manager Should Know edited by Camille Fournier.
Similar to other "97 things" books, loads of useful tips on a broad range of topics in short blog-like chapters. I especially liked the chapters from Cate Huston.
My main takeaway:
As a manager your work is to create clarity, clarity, clarity, and then, more clarity.
Key Insights
The number in (#) is the chapter.
- (3) As a manager, you need to fix your personal quirks, not apologize or document them.
- Highlight which items have uncertainty (== learning == mistakes == risks).
- (12) Consider doing experiments instead of making decisions.
- (10) The highest leverage activity of an engineering manager is making sure who reports to them have clarity, alignment, and understand "The Why" to "The What".
- (13) Your company culture is well-defined when you could turn away a world-class candidate because culture fit.
- (18) "Bad news test" - Given two tasks, which one would you rather be sharing bad news about? Delegate that task.
- (27) On a struggling team, start by answering two questions:
- How do I create clarity?
- How do I create capacity?
- List of "soft" skills.
- (33) Ask for clarification.
- (40) To give constructive feedback, pay attention to how the person gets stuck, sidetracked or sloppy.
- (52) Management is not a promotion. It is a career change.
- (54) Train new managers.
- (59) Most of the dysfunctions come from some lack of clarity goal.
- (60) For a fixed deadline, scope and quality are always negotiable.
- (67) Emotional contagion is real.
- (79) As a new manager, listen and understand before you try to change something.
- (82) Stable teams FTW!.
- (83) Good interview questions:
- What have you learned in the past six months?
- Tell me about the time when you failed and what you learned from that?
- Do you have the skills, expertise and experience to perform the job?
- (87) Self-organizing teams: shared goal + set of rules + tension.
- (92) Complains are good: they show that you are trusted.
All notes
The number in (#) is the chapter.
- (1) Make one if four 1-2-1 a retrospective:
- Beforehand both write down : what work, what not, ideas for change.
- (2) How to know you are a good manager:
- Problems be handled without you.
- Team delivers consistently.
- Honest and meaningful feedback, both directions and between team members.
- Team is ok with failure.
- You have time to do strategic work.
- What kind of advice you are asked for?
- (3) As a manager, you need to fix your personal quirks, not apologize for them.
- (4) Effective roadmaps:
- Impact on users.
- Metrics and hypothesis.
- Consider specifying what we deliberately decided to leave out.
- Highlight which items have uncertainty (== learning == mistakes == risks).
- (7) Career:
- Specialist: opportunity to work on most difficult technical problems.
- Generalist: opportunity to work on most difficult business problems.
- Dont think I agree completely with this, but I see the logic and know examples.
- (8) Structure when communicating with Executives:
- I am telling you about X because of Y.
- Why is worth the executive's time.
- Details of X.
- I need you to do Z, so that X because of Y.
- State a clear goal for the meeting.
- I am telling you about X because of Y.
- (10) The highest leverage activity of an engineering manager is making sure who reports to them have clarity, alignment, and understand "The Why" to "The What".
- Write at least weekly a message to you team to connect the What to the Why.
- (12) Consider doing experiments instead of making decisions.
- (13) Your company culture is well-defined when you could turn away a world-class candidate because culture fit.
- (18) "Bad news test" - Given two tasks, which one would you rather be sharing bad news about? Delegate that task.
- Share openly what your responsibilities and goals are, what has been delegated, deprioritized or simply wont get done.
- (19) Manager roles is not about being a shit umbrella, but to provide context for the team to understand the problem and come up with better solutions.
- (23) Management skills to make a team productive:
- Project management:
- Break down scope to ship frequently.
- Minimum viable product.
- Risks and bottlenecks.
- Balance product delivery with sustainable engineering.
- Prioritization.
- Project management:
- (27) On a struggling team, start by answering two questions:
- How do I create clarity?
- Not vision, but something more immediate and based on today.
- The more concrete, the more difficult is to get everybody to agree, as there is less room for multiple interpretations.
- Examples:
- Take stock on ongoing projects: purpose + timelines.
- Scope milestones for each project.
- Articulate priorities and rationale behind them.
- Make project status visible.
- How do I create capacity?
- Sense of overload, often unevenly distributed across the team.
- Too much WIP?
- Align people to work they want to do.
- Give people clear feedback.
- Who is doing the estimation and deadlines?
- How do I create clarity?
- (29) Growth path is an intrinsic motivation. To create:
- What motivates you? What are your values?
- What demotivates you? What you dont want to do?
- What are your strengths? Not only technical.
- What are your goals? What results and impact? What skills to learn?
- What is the concrete action plan for getting you there?
- (33) Ask for clarification.
- (34) Be intentional about how you design the team rituals.
- (39) 1-2-1 are reportee driven.
- (40) To give constructive feedback, pay attention to how the person gets stuck/sidetracked or sloppy.
- (52) Management is not a promotion. It is a career change.
- (54) Train new managers:
- Good habits.
- Appropriate skills.
- Safe avenues of practice.
- Understand when to be a friend and when a manager.
- In conflicts, when to step in, when to take an unbiases stand and when to escalate.
- When and how give feedback.
- Asses if what you are doing make you happy.
- (59) Most of the dysfunctions come from some lack of clarity goal.
- Whatever definition of accountability you are using, the first place to apply it is to yourself, and your leadership team.
- (60) For a fixed deadline, scope and quality are always negotiable.
- (63) A team is a cacophony of stories:
- Stories are typically incomplete, but rarely wrong.
- Managers are uniquely positioned to shape the stories that people tell.
- Repetition is an important tool for spreading stories.
- (66) Performance issues, 2 types:
- Event-based:
- Transitory.
- Give support.
- Systematic:
- Inability to follow through.
- Team dynamics.
- Lack of motivation.
- Constant exhaustion.
- Unclear goals.
- Event-based:
- (67) To be effective, you need to learn to manager yourself before you can manage others.
- Emotional contagion is real.
- (76) Commitment shared by the entire team.
- (78) As a manger your voice has weight.
- (79) As a new manager, listen and understand before you try to change something.
- (82) Stable teams FTW!.
- (83) Good interview questions:
- What have you learned in the past six months?
- Tell me about the time when you failed and what you learned from that?
- Do you have the skills, expertise and experience to perform the job?
- (85) Clearly define and communicate your priorities:
- Being a manger should be the top one.
- Define what average successful week looks like. It is quite different from what a dev one looks like.
- (87) Self-organizing teams, 3 conditions:
- Clear shared goal.
- Set of rules: few and simple.
- Tension: short-term reason why the team should make the effort on self-organize now rather than later.
- Time pressure.
- Challenge.
- Reward.
- At an org level:
- Goal -> Vision.
- Rules -> Culture.
- Tension -> Motivation.
- (92) Complains are good:
- Show that you are trusted.
- Help find problems.
- Are feedback.
- Show what the complainer values.
- Opportunity for coaching the complainer to grow.
- Opportunity for empathy.
- (94) What you do with a new hire's ideas is critical for the behaviour of that new hire.
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