Elegant Puzzle Notes
Ever since started my new role as Engineering Manager. This is one of the 3 books recommended by my manager to read. I have to say, is a very niche book but it is exactly what I needed.
After working for 4 months, I sort of treat this book as the bible yet. Yet not all answers can be found inside here. There are many concept in there to uncover.
Team Sizing
Manager Support Role
Given the effort needed to work on the daily tasks, managers also need time for active coaching, coordinating, furthering team mission (writing strategies, lead change).
Teach Lead Manager Supporting fewer than four engineers. TLM takes the roles of share design and implementation work.
Coach Support more than eight or nine engineers. Typically act as coaches and safety nets for problems.
High Performing Team
Four states of a team:
- Falling Behind. Each week the backlogs are longer than before.
- Threading Water. Able to get critical work done, but not able to pay down technical debts or start a new project.
- Repaying Debt. Able to start paying down technical debt.
- Innovating. The technical debt is low. The majority of work is satisfying new user’s needs.
Focus on building the team to able to stay harmonize and stay at Innovating. It takes time to gel.
They know their stuff inside out.
Tools
Model, Document, Share
- Model Start measuring the team’s health and throughput. Then start to introduce the process (eg. Kanban). Don’t publicize or make a big deal. Frame as a short experiment and start trying it. Iterate until you’re confident it works. Use team health and throughput to ground your decision.
- Document After discover an effective approach, document the problem you set out to solve. Details of how another team would adopt the practice.
- Share Share the document along with you’re experiment doing the rollout. Dove lobby for change.
Of course, there is still a lot more notes in this book to capture and summarize it here. I’ll keep it for another time.