Day 17: Practical Solutions to Track Your Goals as an Engineering Leader
Be Better Engineering Leader, a 30 Days Series
This is the fourth week of a series of daily lessons on how to Be a Better Engineering Leader. I recommend spending up to an hour on each lesson to gain insights into Product, Technology, and People—areas critical for every Engineering Manager.
As an engineering leader, effectively tracking your goals and key performance indicators (KPIs) is crucial for ensuring progress and making informed decisions. While some organizations have mature data stacks with comprehensive dashboards, many need simpler, quicker solutions that can be set up in less than a day and updated in minutes.
This lesson provides practical guidance on setting up easy-to-maintain tracking systems using accessible tools like Google Sheets, Looker Studio, and BigQuery. The focus is on starting small, iterating, and automating gradually to suit your needs.
Step-by-Step Guide
Define Your Objectives:
Identify Key Metrics: Begin by listing the KPIs, SLOs, and other metrics that are most relevant to your team’s success. Prioritize those that are actionable and aligned with your goals.
Set Clear Targets: For each metric, establish clear, measurable targets. Use the SMART framework to ensure your goals are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound.
Example Tools and Solutions:
Basic Tracking with Google Sheets:
Create a Google Sheet with columns for each metric, target values, current status, and a progress bar.
Utilize conditional formatting to highlight deviations from your targets.
For manual data entry, update the sheet regularly—ideally, at the same time each week.
Automated Reporting with Looker Studio:
Connect your Google Sheets to Looker Studio for a visual dashboard.
Use various visualizations like time series, column charts, or scorecards to make your data easy to interpret.
If you prefer automated data integration, you can connect Looker Studio directly to a BigQuery table or CSV files.
Automating with BigQuery and Cloud Functions:
Set up a scheduled query in BigQuery to fetch and aggregate data from your cloud databases.
Use a simplified table in BigQuery to make the data easily accessible for Looker Studio, reducing the cost and complexity of frequent queries.
Review and Adapt:
Weekly Team Review: Dedicate 30 minutes each week to review progress, discuss any issues, and refine your tracking approach as needed.
Monthly Summary for Stakeholders: Prepare a monthly report summarizing key insights and actions to share with external stakeholders. Focus on transparency and continuous improvement.
Further Reading
Blog post with example solutions: Simple Data Tracking Solutions for Engineering Leaders
Premium article with example implementations: Practical Solutions to Track Your Goals
Measure What Matters by John Doerr
By implementing these solutions, you'll have a reliable system to monitor your team's progress and make data-driven decisions. Start with a simple setup and build on it as your needs evolve.
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