EMPOWERED

CHAPTER 80The Most Important Thing

Empowered engineers are the single most important thing that you can have in a company.

—Bill Campbell

In your journey to empowered teams, if I had to pick just one concept from this entire book that I hope you would take to heart, it would be the idea of an empowered engineer.

Certainly, I'm not saying that's all that's required, as extraordinary products come from product teams. But I am suggesting I believe this is the single most important ingredient.

I could have framed most of this book around the concept of an empowered engineer.

I have explained that the best single source for innovation is your engineers (because they're working with the enabling technology every day, so they're in the best position to see what's just now possible).

The product vision is intended to attract and inspire these engineers.

The product strategy is intended to ensure these engineers are working on the most important problems.

The team objectives give the engineers clear statements of the problem to solve, and the outcomes to strive for.

The product manager and product designer provide critical constraints regarding business viability and customer experience, respectively.

User research and data science provide the engineers with key insights.

And to be very clear, just letting your engineers decide how to code a solution is not what is meant by empowerment. Of course, they need to decide how to implement the solution.

Letting your engineers determine ...