Engineering Excellence: Strategies for Building High-Performing Teams

The "Engineering Excellence" event, hosted by Codurance during the Leeds Digital Festival 2024, brought together technology leaders, engineers, and team managers to explore effective strategies for building and maintaining high-performing engineering teams. The panel featured insights from industry veterans such as Matt Belcher, Head of Emerging Technology at Codurance, Lee Sanderson, Principal Craftsperson at Codurance, Mala Benn, Head of Engineering at Glean, Andy Tyack, Deputy Director at DWP Digital, and Charlotte Bailey, COO at Panintelligence.

Here are the key takeaways from the event:

1. What Does Productivity in Software Mean?

Productivity in software development extends beyond just output. It’s about the value generated from the investment in development. This value can take various forms depending on the perspective, including:

• Business: Increased revenue, profitability, market share, and business agility.
• Organisation: Team alignment, culture, talent development, and employee satisfaction.
• Team: System stability, feedback effectiveness, and throughput.

Each of these factors contributes to what productivity means in a high-performing software engineering context.

2. Why Measuring Productivity is Essential

While measuring individual productivity can introduce risks, such as creating unhealthy competition or focusing too much on individual output, the panel emphasised that measuring team productivity is essential for several reasons:

• Identifying Areas for Improvement: Measurement provides insight into areas that require attention.
• Aligning with Business Goals: Metrics ensure that the engineering team’s efforts align with broader company objectives.
• Uncovering Bottlenecks: Measuring productivity can reveal where processes slow down, enabling teams to address inefficiencies.
• Making Data-Driven Decisions: Objective measurements lead to informed decision-making and improvement strategies.

3. The Continued Importance of Team Health

Regular assessments of team health were highlighted as crucial to maintaining a productive and engaged workforce. A healthy team is not only more aligned with organisational goals but also more likely to succeed in delivering projects on time and on budget. Team health checks promote continuous improvement and help to identify and resolve issues before they escalate.

4. Maintaining Performance Standards as Teams Scale

As organisations grow, maintaining high-performance standards becomes more challenging. The panel discussed strategies for scaling engineering teams while preserving performance, such as:

• Loosely Coupled Teams: Minimising dependencies between teams helps to ensure that each team can operate efficiently and autonomously, regardless of the organisation's size.
• Adapting to Growth: Larger organisations may need to adopt different processes to maintain high performance, but core principles like communication, autonomy, and alignment remain key.

5. Motivating Teams: The Power of Intrinsic Motivation

A major theme of the event was intrinsic motivation, which focuses on the internal drivers that keep teams engaged and productive over the long term. The panel referenced Dan Pink’s book Drive, outlining three key components of intrinsic motivation:

• Autonomy: Employees need the freedom to take ownership of their work and skill development. For example, companies like Google encourage innovation by allowing engineers to spend 20% of their time on personal projects.
• Mastery: Teams should be given the tools and opportunities to continue improving their skills, fostering a sense of accomplishment and growth.
• Purpose: Employees should feel that their work contributes to something meaningful. A clear understanding of how their efforts align with the company’s broader mission can increase engagement and motivation.

Conclusion

The "Engineering Excellence" event offered attendees valuable insights into the key drivers of high-performing engineering teams, from productivity metrics and team health to motivation and scaling strategies. The panel discussion highlighted the importance of measuring productivity in meaningful ways, fostering a positive team culture, and ensuring that employees are motivated through autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

By implementing these strategies, organisations can build and sustain high-performing engineering teams that are agile, engaged, and aligned with business objectives.