Day 9: Role of Engineering in Product Organization
Be Better Engineering Leader, a 30 Days Series
This is the second 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.
Changing the Way Products Are Built
In a product company, the role of engineering is not just to support the product team but to be an integral part of solving customers’ problems. To truly empower your organization, engineering must be a profit center, contributing to the company’s ability to deliver value consistently and effectively.
Key Principles for Engineering Leadership:
Frequent, Small Releases
Successful product organizations deliver value to customers as often as possible. According to DORA research, "Elite Performers" deploy on demand, multiple times a day, with a change lead time of less than one day. Even if you can't achieve continuous delivery yet, aim for at least one release every two weeks. Assess your current release frequency and set incremental goals to increase it.Product Instrumentation
Every new feature should include analytics to measure its impact and usage. Encourage your team to integrate metrics like user volume, event counts, and conversion rates into their development process (lesson from Day 6). This is not just the product team’s responsibility; engineering should take an active role in understanding how users interact with the software.Monitoring & Observability
Frequent releases can lead to instability. Build robust monitoring and observability practices to catch issues before they affect customers. Implement comprehensive logging, tracing, and alerting systems. Use tools like New Relic, DataDog, or ELK Stack to gain visibility into your system’s health and performance.Staged Rollouts & Early Validation
Reduce the risk of disruption by releasing changes gradually. Use techniques like feature flags, blue/green deployments, and early access programs. Feature flags allow you to control feature exposure and quickly disable problematic changes. Early access programs let you gather feedback from a small group of users before a full rollout.
Action Points
Evaluate Your Product Delivery Practices
Write down the current state of your product delivery practices. Assess your organization in four key areas:Frequent, Small Releases: How often do you release? What’s the average size and complexity of each release?
Product Instrumentation: Do you have analytics integrated into every feature? How well do you understand user behavior?
Monitoring: Do you have effective monitoring and alerting in place? Can you detect issues before they impact customers?
Staged Rollouts & Early Validation: Are you using feature flags or blue/green deployments? Do you test new features with a small audience first?
Score each area from 1 to 5, where 1 means significant improvement is needed and 5 indicates you are an industry leader in this practice.
Create a Plan for Improvement
Identify one area from your evaluation that needs the most improvement. Set a specific, actionable goal to enhance this practice over the next 30, 60 or 90 days. For example, if your team struggles with frequent releases, aim to reduce the size of each release and increase deployment frequency by 50%. Share this plan with your team and set up regular check-ins to monitor progress.Build a Culture of Continuous Improvement
Discuss your findings and improvement plan with your team. Encourage them to think about how they can contribute to enhancing product delivery. Foster a high-trust environment where team members feel empowered to suggest and implement changes.
Additional Resources
Premium Article: The Role of Engineering in Product Model Transformation - Changing the Way Product Is Built
Cheat Sheet: The Role of Engineering in Product Model Transformation - Changing the Way Product Is Built - A quick summary of the article.
Book Recommendation: Empowered by Marty Cagan
Focus on small, iterative improvements to transform how your organization builds products. Your journey to becoming a high-performing product organization starts with today's actions.
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