In terms of the team planning process, again, that is mostly quarterly. It's in very close collaboration with engineerng a design. And so i would say the three headed beast of p m e m n design lead come together to really put that plan together. Continuously. You're recalibrating, what is your capacity and what can you actually take on. That's certainly a big learning muscle right now. But yet, quarterly on the team level. I think this is one of the explicit downsides of quarterly o krs, is that you bias tord items that you can fit and deliver and demonstrate impact within a quarter. And that's not always the strategic thing to do
Today’s episode is with Snir Kodesh, Head of Engineering at Retool, which is a development platform for building custom business tools. Before joining Retool, Snir spent six years as a Senior Director of Engineering at Lyft.
In our conversation, we cover some of the biggest differences between leading engineering teams for a consumer product versus an enterprise platform — and the things that are consistent across both orgs.
First, Snir pulls back the curtain on the software development cycle, starting with setting the product roadmap while balancing a diverse set of customer needs. He outlines who’s in the room to represent product, engineering and design, and what those meetings actually look and sound like.
Next, he dives into how engineering actually starts taking that product roadmap and making a plan of action using the “try, do, consider” framework. He makes the case for leaning on QBRs instead of OKRs, why scope creep gets a bad rap, and his advice for getting better at estimating how long a feature will actually take to complete.
Finally, we zoom out and cover his essential advice for engineering leaders — especially folks who are scaling quickly from leading a small team to a much bigger one.
You can follow Snir on Twitter at @snirkodesh
You can email us questions directly at review@firstround.com or follow us on Twitter @ twitter.com/firstround and twitter.com/brettberson