I’ve noticed something interesting about most of the engineers I know—they often lack a deep understanding of the business implications and overall impact of their work. As someone who recognizes the significance of the “bigger picture,” I find myself spending a considerable amount of time explaining and demonstrating the real-world effects of our projects.

I often gather data from various departments, particularly sales & marketing, and present it to the engineers. It’s amazing how engineers who grasp the big picture become more engaged and excel in their roles.

However, I face a challenge in collecting this “big picture” myself. I constantly find myself having to follow artifacts and communication channels from other departments, which can be quite overwhelming.

So, fellow leaders, I’d love to hear your thoughts on measuring the business impact and ensuring that our engineers are aware of it. How do you tackle these challenges in your own organizations 🚀💡

  • canpolatEnglish
    22·
    1 year ago

    This can only be solved at organization level. First, I don’t think there is a reliable way to measure business impact of an engineer’s work. But I don’t think that’s necessary anyway. The organization should focus on the team, not the individual. Only real measurement you get is the customer feedback. And the best way to make it matter is to shorten the feedback loop. If in your organization some people write stories and then send them to engineers, your engineers are essentially not in the loop. Engineers need to be present (and asking critical questions) when you are defining the features. Only then can you expect the team to deliver what the customer wants. And that generally requires organizational changes (cutting the middle man, giving the team more autonomy in their work and developing a trust culture).

  • BenLloydPearsonEnglish
    4·
    1 year ago

    A lot of organizations seem to focus on tailing indicators such as lines of code written, or the number of bugs found, and I think that’s part of what fuels the perception that being an engineering leader is one of the most difficult roles in modern companies because they don’t paint an accurate picture of how things are today.

    The first thing is to get data that tracks key performance metrics. Many organizations often start with DORA metrics to create “slides for the board” that show the overall health of the engineering organization. This is a great place to start, but you can take this further by incorporating your project tracking into the data to measure how you allocate resources across the engineering function and whether or not that allocation is enough to meet product delivery timelines. There are a handful of tools out there that make this easy, like Sleuth and LinearB. A quick search should surface other solutions for this too.

  • WelmoEnglish
    3·
    1 year ago

    I always explain what our software is about, i always talk about why we are implementing that feature and who is going to use it. This leads to sometimes they arguing with me about why should we make such feature and that is just a matter of the user getting used to

    But usually this helps motivating them and give them a better picture overall of what we are doing. Sometimes having a meeting talking about the future roadmap of the product itself and how the planned features align to this also helps a lot for them to get the bigger picture and how their work is impacting

  • epchrisEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    This is a struggle. I’ve found it helpful to use skip-level 1:1’s to discuss this topic, and make sure my skip level knows ahead of time (and on an ongoing basis) that building this map (and helping to guide others through it) is a priority of mine so they can prepare at their level to provide information that I might be missing.

    It’s also a great opportunity to provide that same skip-level with the perspective from the engineers in the organization on the "flip side’ of that coin. You’re facilitating communication and alignment in both directions.

    • jpfreelyEnglish
      51·
      1 year ago

      You missed the point that op is trying to help the engineers understand where their work comes from and the effects it has. Giving them or letting them be part of the bigger picture aids in the decision making process when doing the actual engineering.