Introducing the four activities of engineering managers

An engineering manager’s work is made up of only four basic activities. Sounds easy, right? This is what they do:

• Engineering
• Managing
• Transitioning
• Big-picture thinking

How much of your time is spent on these activities will be determined by contextual and personal factors we will learn about later in this chapter. So, let’s examine these.

Engineering—the planning and delivery of software for business needs—may be the bulk of your work as an engineering manager. You may contribute directly to these activities, coding alongside your individual contributors, but the primary role of an engineering manager in engineering activities is one of leadership, to guide and facilitate the best possible outcome and take accountability for decisions made. Let’s break down the elements of engineering leadership activities:

• Leading architecture
• Project planning and delivery
• Supporting production systems

Managing—providing for the needs, well-being, and professional growth of your team—may be the bulk of your work as an engineering manager. This aspect of an engineering manager’s role is incredibly impactful and can’t be overemphasized in its ability to lead to great success or crushing failure from seemingly small changes. Let’s go through the elements of management activities:

• Working cross-functionally
• Communicating with authority
• Assessing and improving team performance
• Fostering accountability
• Managing risk

Transitioning—guiding your team from one state of being to the next—is an inevitable eventuality for all engineering managers. Managers have a crucial role in preparing teams for change, contextualizing changes as they come, and providing teams with a sense of stability in an ever-changing world. Let’s break down the key areas of transitioning:

• Resilient leadership
• Scaling your team
• Handling changing priorities, company pivots, and re-orgs

Big-picture thinking—is the time you devote to broader and more abstract questions of how to grow the utility and value of your engineering organization while retaining the progress and talent you have, touching on elements of all of the previous activities while thinking creatively to maximize impact and leverage. Key areas include:

• Retaining talent
• Team design

I have organized this book around these four activities as parts and chapters. If you are particularly interested in one topic, you can jump ahead, but it is recommended to read the topics in order for the best understanding.

Now that you understand what engineering managers are responsible for and the activities they perform in service to those responsibilities, let’s go over how we might spend our day as engineering managers.