The Role of an Engineering Manager ...
[... as part of Trusted Shops' software engineering organization.]
In the last article I shared a fundamental principle of Trusted Shops' software engineering organization. It makes sense to read it first to understand one or the other aspect better.
This time it’s about the role of an Engineering Manager at Trusted Shops.
Responsibilities
Given the separation of “Working IN a system” and “Working ON a system”, the Engineering Manager is purely focussing on the latter.
An Engineering Manager is responsible for multiple Engineering teams. (There are no Team Leads in the software engineering organization. More on the reasoning behind this in a separate article.) The responsibilities boil down to two buckets.
At Trusted Shops, we are not heading for a dominant disciplinary structure. Quite the opposite, we strive for servant leadership, meaning “Working ON a system” serves “Working IN a system”. The focus is on the teams and the operational work. This strengthens the customer focus and it inevitably ensures that teams become stronger and mature.
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Engineering Manager is technical role but with on a different flight level
Serving the engineering organization, that doesn't mean that engineering manager is a weak role. That's not the case. And even if coding and other hands-on technical work is explicitly out of scope of this role, it is a technical role.
Engineering Managers are also leading certain technical decisions, especially one-way-door decisions. This kind of decision is hard to change later and therefore requires additional attention. An example could be the introduction of a new programming language.
This example also gives a glimpse about the technical focus. It’s more the tactical and strategic level rather than the operational level.
What else?
Have I missed something you are interested in to better understand the organizational approach at Trusted Shops? Write it in the comments.
I would say key responsibility for the engineering manager is continuous improvement of all engineering practices in order to continuously improve the flow of value. He/She are kind of a mentor and coach for all disciplines, strives for best practices and tries to identify bottlenecks in the system, pointing them out to the teams so that they can work on improving them. He/She also sets the vision/mission for the engineering tribe/department/group
Thanks for sharing the article, André Neubauer ! 👏 Just one concern about introducing the new programming language for the team by the engineering manager. Isn't it the high-level technical strategy, which should be owned by the CTO, Chief Architect, or the high-level Principal role? Introducing new technology on a team level brings a lot of risks to the organization and should be aligned overall with the technical strategy. (It's hard to find developers, security risks, expensive maintenance, etc.)
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