Want to Create a Great Engineering Team Culture?

When it comes to building great technology team cultures, starting smaller and being more focused is often the best place to start.

Try this plan:

1.?Decide on 2-3 values or capabilities that are important for your team.

For example: ?transparent communication, accountability, alignment to the business

2.?Pick one behavior/activity to support each value. Pick something that is easy to do and something you can do frequently.

For example: using team meetings (not the meeting after the meeting) to openly discuss errors or escalations without judgement/blame or meeting with product owners to jointly address concerns and stay aligned on priorities.

3.?Determine when and where you’ll do this activity. Start doing it.

For example: allocating time every week in meetings, setting up regular coffee/kombucha/matcha conversations with product owners.

4. Don't worry about doing it perfectly. You're learning and building a muscle. You can do it and it's okay that it doesn't happen right away.

Note: You can focus on just one value/capability and select 2-3 supporting behaviors.

The goal is to create a habit with these activities and incorporate them into your ways of working.

Resist the urge to take on more activities. Why? Because you’ll quickly overload your people and lose momentum.... and it will be much harder to start again.

Good culture change doesn't have to be a huge undertaking to make a big impact on your people.