Culture as a practice

To get specific output, one must be specific about the inputs.

Engineering culture is not a nebulous, mysterious, intangible quality. Its effects - both positive and negative - can be tangibly observed in:

1. Retention and hire rates of staff
2. The quality of the final output
3. The timeliness of the final output
4. The direct feedback from operators in the organization
5. The direct feedback from partners of the organization
6. The operational efficiency of the organization

These are direct, observable results that can be attributed to the engineering culture. Therefore, it stands to reason that being specific and deliberate about the inputs to the engineering culture for more predictable and sustainable results.

You Need To Be Deliberate About Your Engineering Culture

The only differences between a high-performing engineering shop and others boil down to two things:

1. Budget
2. Culture

For the majority of the tech industry, their budgetary constraints are not going to change drastically. Most individuals in the engineering organization don’t have control over the money available to them.

A relatively lower budget engineering organization can still execute effectively; deliver high-quality products; retain and attract great talent. All based solely on the strengths of a healthy, effective and deliberate engineering culture.

Engineering culture is the one ingredient that is uniquely within the control of the engineering organization and its participants.

It needs to be deliberately crafted, documented, exercised and most importantly, safeguarded from other externalities to the engineering process and organization.

• Software engineering culture is equally as important as the actual engineering of software itself.

• A set of standards should describe some minimums that underpin a healthy, effective and sustainable software engineering organization.

• Engineering culture involves more than just software engineering; including the relationship with the product organization; the relationship with senior management – all of these are facets relevant to a healthy engineering culture

Your engineering culture cannot revolve around an individual

Load-bearing employees are those that largely single-handedly account for key attributes of a team.

Some teams have that one individual that knows where all the bodies are buried and does the bulk of the work. Such teams have a low bus factor, and ultimately will not scale.

Engineering cultures that revolve around a single charismatic engineering leader have an identical risk in bus factor terms. A scalable engineering culture must rest more on a system of guardrails and quality gates that interested parties buy into, thereby increasing the bus factor.

No one individual should be the load bearer of the culture of your engineering organization.

Likewise, no individual(s) should detract from your engineering culture