Denis Čahuk - Building Autonomous Engineering Teams

Denis Čahuk (aka “Coach Denis”) joined me on Ditching Hourly to share his experiences as an engineering team coach in the tech industry. 

He discusses his coaching approach of on-the-job training, or just-in-time training, and his focus on helping tech leaders improve modularity and productivity. He also shares insights on attracting leads, ideal buyers, expensive problems, and improving ROI. Additionally, he discusses his strict KPIs, pricing model, cancellation of sprints, use of JIRA, and minimal rituals for successful teams.

• 05:50 - “My ideal buyer is a tech lead, an engineering manager, some kind of VP, or a tech technical leader in engineering that has direct reports who are individual contributors.”
• 17:51 - “It is really easy to avoid Friday releases if you plan not to do them.”
• 22:22 - “I wrote a script that mimicked doing exactly what the dev did, but it took them two hours, and my script runs it in 40 seconds.”
• 33:29 - “They would waste 30 minutes every day just checking, ‘Wait, do you mean the thing thing or the other thing thing?’”
• 36:35 - “But what we are measuring with that last subjective metric is essential. And if the team did well this sprint, did they celebrate?”
• 47:31 - “I encourage them to cancel the sprint once the team is no longer following the goal.”

Related links:

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/deniscahuk/
• https://craftingtechteams.substack.com/

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