Core Engineering Principles for Customer-Centric Design
Apr 17, 2024
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Ian Tien, CEO and co-founder of Mattermost, shares insights from his journey from Microsoft engineer to open-source innovator. He discusses the critical importance of a customer-centric approach in engineering, emphasizing direct communication with end-users to tailor solutions. Tien highlights how self-awareness and transparency among teams foster trust and enhance relationships. He also explores the evolution of core values, advocating for adaptability in engineering principles to meet changing customer needs.
A customer-centric approach is vital for engineering success, prioritizing user needs to enhance solutions for diverse stakeholders.
Self-awareness among team members boosts understanding of customer challenges, leading to more relevant and effective engineering solutions.
The adaptability of core engineering principles ensures they remain relevant, allowing companies to evolve and address changing industry demands.
Deep dives
From Video Games to Open Source
The journey began with the transition from a video game company to creating an open-source communication platform called Mattermost. Initially, Ian Tien and his team developed HTML5 video games, but faced challenges in licensing and sales due to the lack of market interest in their platform. After pivoting to real-time strategy games and gaining funding, they developed Mattermost to serve their own remote collaboration needs. This unexpected evolution highlights the adaptability of technology startups and how user-driven solutions can lead to significant business opportunities.
The Importance of Out-of-Band Communication
A critical insight shared is that every enterprise should maintain an independent communication channel outside of their primary system. This is essential for security organizations, as using the same system they defend may lead to vulnerabilities. If a breach occurs, relying on the same system for communications can potentially expose sensitive information to attackers. Thus, understanding the need for segregation in communication channels is paramount in protecting organizational integrity.
Customer-Centric Design Principles
A customer-centric approach significantly influences the success of engineering projects by ensuring that the end user’s needs are prioritized. In the realm of open-source development, this requires understanding the diverse audiences that benefit from the product, including both developers and IT professionals. For example, while developers may require freedom in the tools they use, IT teams often prioritize compliance and security features. Recognizing these varying needs helps engineers create solutions tailored to distinct roles, ultimately enhancing user satisfaction.
Principles of Self-Awareness and Transparency
Self-awareness is emphasized as a core principle that fosters an understanding of capabilities and customer perceptions among team members. Engineers should engage with end-users to truly grasp the challenges they face, leading to more relevant and efficient solutions. Mattermost implements structured conversations and metrics to encourage this awareness across the company, ensuring that issues are addressed before they escalate. By promoting transparency and diverse communication pathways, organizations can cultivate a culture where employees are empowered to innovate and solve problems collaboratively.
Adapting Principles for Future Growth
The principles at Mattermost are evolved continually to reflect changing needs and challenges, emphasizing that great companies must remain flexible. This adaptability ensures that as the organization grows, its core values remain relevant and useful, as exemplified by the transition away from a confusing 'high standards' principle to a more unified approach towards 'earned trust.' The ongoing reflection on what constitutes excellence and high impact is essential for maintaining a competitive edge. Companies in all sectors can benefit from this iterative approach, aligning their principles with their evolving operational landscape.
Ian Tien, CEO and Co-Founder of Mattermost, talks about these core principles and their impact on his company. He highlights the importance of customer obsession, self-awareness, transparency and earning trust, just to name a few.
Following the engineering principles in day-to-day processes
Stories of the engineering principles in real life
The role of managers
Finding the right engineering principles for Mattermost
Are engineering principles set in stone?
Excerpt from the interview:
“Great companies are always changing and improving. We never reach a point where we say, "That's it, we've learned everything we need to know." Our values and principles are always evolving as we learn more and as our needs change. For example, we used to have a principle called high standards. It was important when we were struggling with quality issues early on. But as we improved our quality and introduced other principles like earned trust, having high standards started to cause confusion.
High standards were sometimes in conflict with our other values. For instance, it clashed with customer obsession when we needed to release features quickly. It also conflicted with high impact when we focused too much on polishing things instead of delivering important changes. So, we decided to remove high standards from our principles. We realized that its role could be filled by other values and that it was causing more confusion than clarity.
This shows that our values aren't set in stone. We're always willing to reassess and make changes when needed. Our goal is to create a culture that meets the needs of our team and our customers both now and in the future.”
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