Leading Effective Engineering Teams

Chapter 4. Effective Management Behaviors: Research from Google

In Chapter 1, we looked at how Google’s Project Oxygen and Project Aristotle identified key factors that make teams effective. In this chapter, we’ll dive deeper into these research projects, but from the perspective of how their findings reveal what makes a good engineering manager.

Examining this research helps us understand the specific behaviors and practices of effective engineering leadership. We can then adopt and develop these behaviors ourselves to lead high-performing teams in organizations of any size.

In this chapter, I will walk you through the list of essential behaviors for engineering managers as identified by Project Oxygen. I will discuss each and how you could develop these behaviors yourself. Similarly, I will also discuss what the findings of Project Aristotle regarding factors that contribute to team effectiveness could mean for you as a manager.

Project Oxygen

Project Oxygen was a research initiative launched by Google in 2008 to identify the qualities of a great manager at Google. The project was led by the People Analytics team—a team of researchers that studies employee data and finds ways to create and maintain a great workplace at Google. Before going into the details of this project, let’s get the story of what Google was like before the project was launched.

A Brief History

Historically, some highly motivated engineering teams questioned the need for managers. They believed they could ...