You're managing engineering applications, but are you doing it as effectively as possible?

Choosing the appropriate tool and aligning it with organizational goals is a critical decision for every company. One of our organization's objectives was to maximize automation wherever feasible. We opted for a tool that empowered us to completely automate our CI/CD processes.

Más que herramientas hay que previamente tener claro el contexto y enfoque que queremos. Para detectar ineficiencias y puntos de mejora nos podría bastar con una simple hoja excel compartida como recurso en una plataforma como oneDrive. Permite editar a todos los integrantes del equipo y preparar sesiones de trabajo colaborativas donde identificar los aspectos a tratar y sobre los cuales poner el foco.

In architecture, picking the right tools in a high paced environment can be a double edge sword. You need to ensure you have done your research and due diligence while maintaining alignment with company goals, team buy in, and meeting deadlines. I also believe this to be a very fun part of the trade. That said it can lead to over engineering or rabbit holes. Ensuring you have selected something you can act upon and use within your development ecosystem is a must. The balancing of all these areas keeps you informed, helps develop good feedback loops, and prepares you for what is yet to come. Enjoy the process but only at your expense and be able to compromise with your decisions to blend it into future and past visions.

Whichever tool you choose the work needs to be made visible - a simple Kanban board for your pipeline with labelled sources (referrals, outsourced, etc) works great. This will also give you added context on where your bottlenecks are.

Tools play a crucial role in implementing standards in a workflow. However, after years of experience with various tools, I've realized that any tool can work. The key is to select a set of tools that your team feels comfortable with and is motivated to use. It is essential to choose tools that your team can quickly adopt and engage with.

IMO this is the most important piece and it is not just engineering workflows but how that engineering workflow fit within broader product lifecycle 1. Define the problem with clear definition of success 2. Design application and make informed decision about design and architecture (this step is important to avoid over engineering) 3. Work breakdown structure and dependency management.. we make mistake here by focusing on smaller stories and ignoring painful dependency .. these could be development time or implementation time dependencies 4. Unit testing and edge case testing 5. Integration and security testing 6. Bring different personas together to do a bug bash trying UAT like testing 7. Build and deploy using automated tools

Software engineers must automate as much as possible, from test suites to deployment. Automation should be a part of their culture, and if something can be automated, it should be. By doing so, they will save themselves time and effort in the future.

In our area of work, we say it is Ok to over communicate. Approaching this idea in a positive spirit, one can discern how important timely communication is. Be it with peers, leaders or stakeholders. Let us just take 3 areas closely related to software development. Topic-1: Designing (documentation) prior to implementation. Topic-2: Regular, continuous task updates. Topic-3: Learning from the mistakes. If you talk to anyone in the S/W development realm, they would acknowledge these as important. However, if you check for supporting data, you will be surprised by the harsh reality of just the opposite, mostly. Appropriate process guard rails with accountability need to be instituted.

Software engineers must first learn to code and prioritize clear and direct written communication. Practical writing skills are always necessary, especially since remote work has become the primary work mode. Clear written communication is essential for effective collaboration and productivity in a remote work environment.

A manager's primary focus should be to help their team achieve its full potential by removing as many blockers or interruptions as possible. Secondly, they should aim to build collective confidence within the team and provide autonomy to each individual, allowing them to find their way to solve problems.

This is becoming a more and more tricky and elusive topic for people with delivery and people responsibility. Needless to say, this has only become harder post Covid with remote working becoming the norm, plus the millenial and Gen-Z approach to work and expectations. On the other hand, client expectations are soaring sky-high, that requires utmost sincerity, diligence and proficiency with minimal or no room for slippages or sub-optimal delivery. It is not unusual to come across team members that are complacent, do not understand the high-stakes involved, un-willing to understand the big-picture or the client & business priorities. This requires a fine balance of team's interest & welfare against employers' & clients' interests.

I have found a Japanese concept called Shoshin to be beneficial. Shoshin means "the beginner's mind." It is about having an open mind and being willing to learn and re-learn everything as a beginner. Even if you already have expertise in a subject, looking at it from a beginner's perspective can allow you to see things in a new light. It can reveal different paths to reach the same goal and surprise you with unique insights.

Few things that I found could be added is Risk management , stakeholders management, dynamic of people resources environment, alignment to strategic and org goals , roles and responsibilities clearly defined.

Be respectful of applicants personal data - ensure your process involves an automated clean up of resumes and other application data.