How do you scale up your engineering team?
You’re gonna knock off a liquor store.
Seriously?
No way.
That’s too small-time.
Let’s go big.
We’re gonna heist a bank.
Wait a minute.
How does committing a major bad guy crime relate to scaling up an engineering team?
Scroll and learn.
I’m a fanatical reader. I love heist novels. Nothing like escaping into the pages of a thrilling caper. Heist movies are great, too. Jean-Pierre Melville did an extraordinary job of depicting the inner workings of heists on film.
Heisting is a team sport. The team is led by a criminal mastermind who recruits a crew of specialists to carry out the strategy to pull off the heist. From planning to execution, our intrepid mastermind manages a mishmash of disparate personalities, getting them to work together on the big caper in spite of their individual differences. When the plan goes sideways, the mastermind makes adjustments and adapts to situations, steering the caper back on track until the heist has been pulled off.
Of course, we’re not really going to heist a bank. I’m going to show you how scaling up an engineering team is analogous to masterminding a heist.
Street cred
Okay. I presented the premise of this post. You may be thinking, “How does this funky T-Shirt guy know what in the heck he’s talking about?” I’m a strategic engineering leader with 10+ years of experience running global engineering operations teams. I built out an engineering operations organization, expanding from 3 to 20 headcounts over the course of 8 years. I scaled up my org in three phases, developing strategies to align with infrastructure growth and business needs.
The caper
While it sounds like fun to plan out an actual heist, breaking the law and doing jail time sounds as fun as sitting through a thousand consecutive hours of mandatory corporate compliance training courses. Now that I think about it, maybe it would be preferable to do actual jail time instead of enduring endless hours of those trainings!
We’re going to take a few pages out of the heist playbook and run through a scenario in scaling up an engineering team. That old saying? Write what you know? I’m going to draw from my own leadership experience to flesh out our scaling up scenario:
BSD is the leader of a 3-person engineering operations team for a hypergrowth tech startup. Their team manages the company’s data infrastructure, handling engineering tasks, on-call support and project work. BSD has a big problem. Their team is at maximum capacity, lacking the bandwidth to keep up with requests and new projects. Their team is burning out. BSD needs to add headcount.
Freeze.
We’re not gonna call this a scenario. That sounds bland, kind of like a plain baked potato. Let’s jazz things up. We’ll call our scaling up scenario, The Jazzy Loaded Baked Potato Caper.
The playbook
Here’s our high-level playbook for scaling up an engineering team:
- Strategy
- Recruitment
- Planning
- Team Building
- Conflict Management
- Adaptation
- Execution
Sounds like the playbook for a heist.
Time to pull off The Jazzy Loaded Baked Potato Caper.
Strategy – Because The Big Picture matters
BSD needs headcount for their burnt out team. Simple. Put up job posting. Hire more people. Problem solved.
Except it’s not.
The mastermind of a heist wouldn’t march into a bank, demand money and walk away. Not without a strategy. Likewise, BSD needs to develop a strategy before they execute the caper to expand their team.
Strategic leadership involves:
* Assessing the current state of operations
Review data, such as metrics, to identify the team’s pain points. Talk to the team to a get a deeper understanding of the human toil.
* Aligning with the organizational roadmap
Engage with cross-functional leaders. Learn how projected business growth may impact the capacity of your team in the coming years.
* Forecasting the future state of the team
Review the roadmap findings. Estimate how many future headcounts will be needed to manage the increase in demand for the team’s services from projected growth.
Here is the strategy for BSD:
Add 2 headcounts now to solve the short-term team capacity issues, expanding the team from 3 to 5 headcounts. In anticipation of future growth, groom one senior team member to be the future team lead. To meet projected demands, hire an additional 4 headcounts over the next 3 years, expanding the team to 9 headcounts.
Recruitment
One of my favorite parts of a fictional heist is the recruitment process. The mastermind needs to find the right talent to execute the heist strategy.
So does BSD.
Two additional headcounts need to be added now. BSD knows which operational gaps have to be filled to lead the team through the present day crisis. However, BSD has to be careful not to be shortsighted during the recruiting process.
Time for an eye exam?
Not quite. BSD needs to be thinking strategically about filling the 2 headcounts. The long-term plan is to expand the team to 9 headcounts. Consider how those 2 new hires fit into the big picture.
Some questions to ponder:
* Do they have the immediate skills and experience to stop the present day bleeding?
* Do they have the foundational skills and organizational fit to further the team’s long-term growth?
Answer those questions and let the recruiting begin.
Tangent of the day
Once upon a time, one of my direct reports complained to me about our use of the term headcount, pointing out how it sounds dehumanizing. The thought bubble above my head agreed. Not one of my favorite terms either. Ranks up there with synergy and leverage. But headcount is standard business jargon, so, yeah, we all use it… End tangent. Back to post. On to Planning.
Planning
BSD currently has three people on their team. Two new headcounts will almost double the size of the team. BSD needs a plan to integrate the new hires into the existing team, factoring in the longer-term strategy for team growth.
Some planning questions to ask:
* How to deploy the new headcounts to stop the present day bleeding?
* How to redeploy current team members to ramp up the new headcounts?
* Who is a good candidate to groom as an eventual team lead?
Notice that I didn’t ask how BSD intends to get the new and current team members working together in harmony. That deserves its own chapter in the playbook.
Team Building
The fundamentals of team building apply to our caper. Trust needs to be built between current and new team members. Open communication is essential. So is collaboration.
BSD is gonna drive the tactical aspects of the team building process. That’s where the integration plan comes in. The plan will give BSD a better idea of how to execute the team building process to achieve the deployment objectives.
Not to forget.
One of those bullet points on the plan is grooming a team lead. Integrating new engineers into the team is a perfect stretch project for a team lead candidate to demonstrate their leadership potential.
Conflict Management
In heist fiction, the mastermind recruits a crew of specialists to get the job done. The personalities of the offbeat crew seldom gel together. That makes for compelling conflicts in a fictional setting.
Not ideal for real life.
BSD is almost doubling the size of their small team. The addition of new headcounts will lead to conflicts of different sorts. Simple conflicts, like new team member prefers Bash over the team standard of Python for scripting. Complicated conflicts, like current team member and new team member butting heads during team meetings.
Off goes the strategic thinking hat. On goes the people management hat. BSD has to get people working together.
Adaptation
All of the strategic leadership around our caper is executed based on experience, data analysis and talking to people. We do our best to come up with sound plans, but things go sideways.
Guaranteed.
Take the fictional heist example. Our mastermind devises a strategy, recruits specialists, builds the crew, draws up a plan and gets the crew working together. And some element of the plan goes wrong.
Same with real-life.
Let’s look at the ways.
Last-minute budget cut means only 1 of the 2 headcounts is approved. Long-time team member quits out of frustration. Top candidate for one of the openings withdraws at the offer stage.
Yep.
Crap happens.
BSD needs to step in, make adjustments and keep things moving. Resilience is the key.
Execution
We’re ready to execute The Jazzy Loaded Baked Potato Caper. Thanks to outstanding leadership from BSD, the team has grown by 2 headcounts. One of the senior team members is on track to be a future team lead. When the company grows like crazy, BSD is prepared to further expand the team by 4 headcounts over the next 3 years. We pulled off the caper!
