Joyce Jang - Build Teams as an Engineer

We build product and software as teams. And as anyone who as worked on a team knows, there’s often a lot more that goes into working together to build that product than actually just building the product itself. A highly functional team is not as elusive it may seem. Software engineering is a skill we’ve developed, but even more importantly software engineering on teams is another skill we’ve been practicing and improving on as an industry. Software engineering principles and best practices may seem to have very little to do with teamwork, but being able to thoughtfully apply some of what we’ve learned as engineers towards teamwork, we can help move towards creating such success with our teams.

https://us.pycon.org/2018/schedule/presentation/165/

Transcript

1. How to Build Teams as an Engineer PyCon 2018 Joyce Jang
2. Checklist 1. Gather Information, Get Answers 2. Set a Focus 3. Draft a Team Plan 4. Design a Communication System 5. Execute & Drive Sustainability
3. Checklist 1. Gather Information, Get Answers 2. Set a Focus 3. Draft a Team Plan 4. Design a Communication System 5. Execute & Drive Sustainability
4. Gather Information, Get Answers • Team Identity • Responsibilities • Goal & Purpose • Success • Team Culture • Things that are and are not working • Team Perception • Ghost Responsibilities
5. Gather Information, Get Answers • Goal and purpose • Working and not working • Responsibilities and non-responsibilities
6. Checklist 1. Gather Information, Get Answers 2. Set a Focus 3. Draft a Team Plan 4. Design a Communication System 5. Execute & Drive Sustainability
7. Checklist 1. Gather Information, Get Answers 2. Set a Focus 3. Draft a Team Plan 4. Design a Communication System 5. Execute & Drive Sustainability
8. Team Plan - Team Product Eng Design
9. Team Plan - Team BE FE DB
10. Team Plan - Team • Modularity - separating software into components according to functionality and responsibility • Abstraction - separating complexity into components of only what’s necessary at each layer
11. Team Plan - Team Goal: Create an environment that allows the team to succeed in their goals
12. Team Plan - Individuals Goal: Determine how each individual fits into the Team Focus, and how they will contribute to the success of the team.
13. Checklist 1. Gather Information, Get Answers 2. Set a Focus 3. Draft a Team Plan 4. Design a Communication System 5. Execute & Drive Sustainability
14. Communication System 1. How does an individual on the team communicate with the rest of the team? (e.g. project progress, shared tasks, fixing bugs) 2. How does the team communicate with people on other teams? (e.g. customer issues, product requests, system dependencies) 3. How do we communicate to the larger organization and company? (e.g. progress, planning decisions)
15. Communication System Team/ Engineer Team/ Engineer Communication
16. Communication System Component Component API
17. Communication System
18. Checklist 1. Gather Information, Get Answers 2. Set a Focus 3. Draft a Team Plan 4. Design a Communication System 5. Execute & Drive Sustainability
19. Drive Sustainability The way to automate human behavior is through habits.
20. Drive Sustainability • Practice making decisions. e.g. ask the team what they think should be done from time to time • Have them drive meetings • Keep the feedback loop tight and get them in front of customers • Provide visibility. Given context, have them practice balancing priorities • Get them to execute the plan in smaller scoped areas
21. Drive Sustainability Creating and driving process is laying out the framework and foundation. Building good habits around the process, is what ultimately determines the success of the team with this process.
22. Checklist 1. Gather Information, Get Answers 2. Set a Focus 3. Draft a Team Plan 4. Design a Communication System 5. Execute & Drive Sustainability
23. Thank you!