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Building High Performance Software Engineering Teams

“When a leader embraces their responsibility to care for people instead of caring for numbers, then people will follow” — “Leaders Eat Last” Simon Sinek (2014)

Flow

Visualize all work in flight

  • All work
    • Incoming
    • Active
    • Completed
  • Avoid over-process
  • Avoid absence of process

Know where is working coming from

  • Double-click into work that is unclear
  • Look for the source of work requests
  • Keep refining the method of work intake
  • Minimize instances of “unplanned” work

Steady direction at pace

  • Pursue a finite set of measurable objectives at pace
  • Avoid ‘max capacity’ plans
  • Avoid frequent changes
  • Work in small iterative sizes

Where two or more are gathered

  • Avoid single-threaded engineering
  • Pairs design, iterate and review faster
  • Individual engineers become attached

Feedback

Daily Looking for Problem Signals

  • Shipping means it is time to operate
  • Unexpected errors quickly add up
  • Direct line for customer feedback
  • Team dashboards monitor service health

Establish an Andon Cord Culture

  • See something, say something
  • Celebrate blamelessness in raising issues
  • Treat development blocking work in a similar way

Importance of Team Retrospectives

  • Hold a predictable schedule of retrospectives
  • Foster a safe space for feedback
  • Focus on actionable improvements within team control

Performance Goals: The needs of the many outweigh…

  • Individuals create goals that map to team improvement
  • “As an engineer, I will… conduct timely reviews, participate in paring sessions, provide mentoring to junior members…”
  • Learning plan includes sharing or applying the new skill
  • “When I study a new skill, I will apply the skill in context with the work of my team…”
  • Measure results using peer feedback

Continuous Improvement

Delegating the Technical Expertise

  • Build your Tech Leads
  • Stay up-to-date with your own training
  • Review the work of the team and ask questions

Develop an internal culture of Mentoring

  • Mentor creates the space for the mentee to learn best

Make continuous training non-negotiable

  • Predictable schedule of learning time
  • Protect learning time in the schedule

Amplifying problems and using Slowification

  • Emphasizing improvement through slowing down
  • Making the issue known
  • Allocating time and resources to fix the problem
  • Integrating the solution across the organization

References

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Building High Performance Teams - Talk for Open Source North 2025

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