Strategic Thinking, Org Design & Aligning Engineering & Business Goals - Tackling the Top 10 Eng Leadership Challenges! #187
Jul 16, 2024
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Engaging conversation with Jessica McKellar, Andrew Lau, Samir Naik, and a former VPE at Robinhood about aligning engineering with business goals, team topologies, and strategic thinking in engineering leadership. Insights on metrics tracking, org design during hyper-growth, and optimizing virtual teams for customer focus.
Aligning engineering initiatives with business outcomes is essential for long-term success.
Specialized engineering teams focusing on customer personas and workflows enhance efficiency and tailored solutions.
Reorganizations should align with strategic business goals to avoid damaging consequences and achieve successful outcomes.
Deep dives
Aligning Engineering and Business Goals
Jessica McKellar emphasized the importance of aligning engineering initiatives with different business outcomes, especially when working towards becoming a public company. Ensuring clarity on long-term goals and metrics early on is crucial, even for private companies, to build internal discipline and be prepared for future evaluations in standard market terms. Having a clear understanding of key metrics from the beginning allows for informed decision-making and strategic planning, fostering a culture of readiness for future business evaluations.
Organizational Evolution Towards Specialized Engineering Teams
As companies grow, the challenges at the org level require a strategic approach to align engineering with broader business goals. Samir Naik from Plaid discussed the transformation of their engineering organization over 10 years, highlighting the shift from a single team to specialized units, each focused on specific customer personas like platform teams and business teams. This shift allowed for a more focused and efficient allocation of resources, addressing the unique needs of different customer segments with specialized workflows and personnel.
Navigating Complexities of Reorganizations
Aaron Erickson and Mike Triah underscored the significance of effective reorganizations in addressing specific business outcomes rather than just organizational needs. They highlighted that poorly executed reorgs can lead to damaging consequences and emphasized the importance of aligning reorgs with strategic business goals. They suggested that reorgs should mediate business needs with organizational structures to achieve successful outcomes.
Strategic Thinking for Scale and Efficiency
Scott Woody from Metronome emphasized the need for specialized engineering teams focused on specific customer personas and workflows for enhanced efficiency and tailored solutions. By assigning teams to specific personas and workflows, Metronome was able to address intricate customer requirements effectively. Additionally, the integration of PMs specializing in workflow understanding and consultants as subject matter experts helped bridge knowledge gaps and develop tailored product solutions.
Design Partnership for Expertise Growth
Metronome's strategic approach to design partnerships involved a collaborative learning process with clients, where they selected customers willing to help educate and guide the team in understanding intricate workflows. By actively engaging clients in the learning process, Metronome aimed to enhance their expertise in various domains and foster innovation in their product offerings. These partnerships facilitated mutual learning and knowledge sharing, positioning Metronome for long-term growth and success.
In Part 3 of the Top 10 Challenges series, we’re addressing the biggest org-level challenges that eng leaders face. We’ve compiled conversations from past podcasts and conference sessions that cover org-related topics, such as aligning engineering & business goals, team topologies & org resourcing, and thinking strategically. This episode features a slate of top eng leaders with valuable insight to share: Jessica McKellar @ Pilot, Andrew Lau @ Jellyfish, Samir Naik @ Plaid, Former VPE @ Robinhood Surabhi Gupta, Aaron Erickson @ NVIDIA, Mike Tria @ Gusto, Emad Elwany @ Docusign, and Scott Woody @ Metronome.
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SHOW NOTES:
Aligning Engineering and Business Goals: Invest in tracking metrics to identify / meet long-term business-building goals w/ Jessica McKellar (00:43)
How to align metrics with overall, long-term business strategy w/ Andrew Lau (4:56)
Planning Team Topologies and Organizational Resources: the transition between PMF & scale-up w/ Samir Naik (12:12)
Approaching org design & planning during periods of hypergrowth w/ Surabhi Gupta (18:45)
How to do an effective reorg w/ Aaron Erickson and Mike Tria (24:41)
Strategic Thinking: Organizing engineering by strategic themes & complete units of value w/ Emad Elwany (30:12)
The transition from a large unified eng team to embedding experts and building specialized teams catered to specific customer personas w/ Scott Woody (37:26)