Crafting Engineering Strategy

Chapter 1. Introduction

I’ve worked alongside many talented people who spent years waiting for a chance to finally “do strategy.” My hope is that this book convinces you—and maybe them—that waiting is optional. Strategy isn’t reserved for executives. It’s the practice of making thoughtful decisions, and it’s accessible to everyone—including you.

Even if you’d prefer to avoid strategy, it’s still happening all around you. My first big dose of strategy came when I was managing the team responsible for Uber’s service migration (Document 16-1) while we desperately tried to survive an accelerating avalanche of inbound support requests. Since then, I’ve seen strategy everywhere I worked, from Stripe’s acquisition of Index (Document 22-4) to Calm’s focus on being a product engineering company (Document 21-1). There are even some strategy problems that I’ve encountered again and again at every company I’ve joined, such as deciding how to decompose monolithic codebases (Document 20-1).

This book is focused on engineering strategy—in other words, making thoughtful decisions about engineering. Engineering is defined both as the discipline of writing software, and also as the concerns of the Engineering department or organization within your company. If this seems like a hopelessly broad topic, then we agree on the scope of my definition. However, I would never agree that it’s hopeless.

My decision making has significantly improved over the course of my career. I believe very strongly that ...