Technical Direction as an Individual Contributor
Focusing on Business Goals
Once you understand the business's goal, you can more effectively help it achieve it.
Impact mapping is a technique for better understanding how you can influence business outcomes.
With impact mapping, you go beyond a formal requirements document and try to work out what impacts the business is trying to make. Do they want to increase sales? Is their goal to increase market share? Do they want to enter a new market? They may want to increase engagement to create loyal customers with a higher lifetime value.
Impact mapping is a very informal technique. Four questions can reveal your project's impact.
1. Why are we doing this? It may seem obvious, but many teams skip this step and build unnecessary things.
2. What is the goal we are trying to achieve? The goal should be connected to something valuable to our stakeholders.
3. Who will be affected by it? We need to have these people involved in the project's decision-making.
4. How can those people help us achieve the goal? The group of people changed by the changes or project can either help or hinder the project.
5. What can we do to support them? Think about the deliverables that help that accomplish their goal, nothing else.
Impact Mapping is a valuable technique for teams to focus on meeting business expectations.
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Empowering Engineers
Investing in the development of engineers through mentorship and guidance should be a top priority for any organization.
Increasing administrative authority empowers engineers with new tools to solve problems.
As a leader, you should provide direction in setting technical visions while prioritizing the needs of the business.
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Technology requires dedicated advocates to promote itself. Companies that don't explore fade away.
Executing as an Staff+ Engineer
As a staff+ engineer, managing many projects while balancing personal and professional commitments can be challenging.
Taking on tasks that help you grow your leadership skills and find meaning in your work can make a big difference. Communicate these expectations to your manager and collaborate.
Focus on producing higher quality work and establish a habit of execution.
Organize projects in a way that builds new work on top of previous projects to allow for organic changes and compounding effects. Establish a routine for reviewing the roadmap and evaluating progress toward projects. Encourage project leads to ask for help and share progress rather than reporting status.
Strive for a balanced roadmap that allocates up to one-third of the total work hours to bugs, fixes, and backlog items. It's better to be ambitious and avoid overloading the roadmap with too many tasks than to add too few.
As a staff+ engineer, having a clear vision of your career objectives is crucial for success.
Whenever you are ready there are two ways that I can help you.
Agile Unleashed. My flagship book on improving team processes and efficiency for teams of all size. I share 10+ years of field experience, proven methods, and actionable strategies.
Book an appointment with me and let's discuss the details of your current organization and how I might help becoming a part-time member of your team.