Shaping our Engineering Identity

Lloyds Banking Group’s Old Broad Street offices were recently the setting for our first Engineering Identity workshop with over 100 engineers attending. Software & QA engineers, DevOps specialists and environment experts got together for a series of stimulating discussions around our identity and how we can shape the future of how software is built. To set the tone of the day, I opened up by explaining why it's such an exciting time to be an engineer within the bank.

"Our commitment to nurturing engineering talent has never been stronger. We are growing an engineering community of people with a passion for what they do, and we empower them to define the way software is delivered."

It’s important to communicate that lasting change can't be achieved by a top-down, one-off transformation, but instead needs a sustained effort to support teams on the ground in making their own improvements, driven by their own insights in the course of delivering software of real value to our customers.

Building on the excellent progress we’ve had to date, extending the adoption of agile ways of working with truly cross-functional teams and a focus on automation will continue to be our top priorities. The importance of this was echoed strongly later in the day when attendees split up into groups to discuss improvements to all aspects of the software development lifecycle within Lloyds Banking Group.

The atmosphere in the room was buzzing, and the momentum we now have behind our engineering community is very exciting. As the year is coming to an end, it’s time to start thinking about how we keep this momentum as we move into 2017 and how shaping our own engineering identity will be essential to our success.

Why is it important to create your own identity?

One could write a book to answer that question, but to put it simply: an identity describes a team in terms of its shared vision, purpose, values, and objectives. It defines how the team members see themselves, while bringing a sense of what’s important for them to achieve their goal. It helps to build trust by creating a distinct culture and a sense of community, which clarifies how we behave and highlights how we want to position ourselves within the organisation as well as with our customers and partners.

So when starting to shape a team’s identity, it’s important to dedicate time to discuss the team’s overarching purpose, to clarify everyone’s commitment, and define the actions required to drive the team towards their common goal.

Purpose – Understanding the vision and having a unifying purpose is critical to get the most out of a team. When individuals are working toward a common goal, they will make the right compromises to do what is right for the team. Without a clear goal, people risk suffering from faulty assumptions, unrealistic expectations, and conflicting interests. Each person will try their best, but if they go in different directions, there is a possibility that their work may cancel the effort of others. A unifying purpose does not guarantee that people will work in unison, but it certainly helps.

Commitment – Even with a clear vision, purpose and a common goal, a team will not succeed unless there is a strong commitment to act. It is, therefore, important to identify the commitment levels within the team, which can be amplified on the ground by demonstrating a strong commitment from the leadership team. Identifying why team alignment is important (or not) to individuals, how the overarching purpose resonates with them, and what they hope to get out of being part of the team can help establishing a view on what is required to push things to the next level.

Action– So the team is unified behind a common purpose with a strong commitment to succeed, how do you ensure the team reaches the goal in the most optimal way? Determine the strengths and weaknesses of the team, and ask how each person see themselves contribute most effectively to the team’s success. Rather than letting past roles and experiences dictate what individuals should do, let the teams come up with suggestions on how they can contribute to the overall success.

Final words

The recipe for delivering quality software for our end customers is a focus on people and culture, not technology. While a clear vision is critical within a large organisation, it is also important to establish clear goals for individual teams, to start small while thinking big, and not get too carried away by the latest trends, tools and technologies.

If you are passionate about software engineering and looking for an opportunity to see the results of your work being used by millions of customers, why not consider one of our job opportunities at Lloyds that you can find on Stack Overflow.