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New Engineering Manager Bootcamp

Published by O'Reilly Media, Inc.

Beginner to intermediate content levelBeginner to intermediate

Managing people, processes, projects, and prioritization

Course outcomes:

  • Understand ways to better manage people
  • Learn to identify what’s working and not working for your engineering team
  • Fine-tune delivery metrics of your engineering team
  • Explore goal setting and delegation techniques

Course description:

Join expert engineering manager Ananth Ramachandran to get a 360° tour of the array of technical and nontechnical responsibilities required in an engineering manager’s role. Topics you’ll encounter range from managing people, processes, and projects to setting goals and priorities among product and technical initiatives and helping your team focus and deliver. You’ll engage in exercises and discussions that will deepen your understanding of your skills and your team, and you’ll gain a broader perspective and an expanded skill set to apply to engineering management.

Week 1:

Session 1: Mastering People Management

Session 2: Evolving Your Engineering Team’s Processes

Week 2:

Session 1: Delivering Quality Projects in a Timely Manner

Session 2: Work on What Matters the Most

NOTE: With today’s registration, you’ll be signed up for all four sessions over two weeks. Although you can attend any of the sessions individually, we recommend participating in all four.

What you’ll learn and how you can apply it

  • Build a happier, more productive engineering team
  • Evolve your team’s processes to improve their efficiency and throughput
  • Deliver good quality, impactful projects on time
  • Recognize priorities that matter most to your team and organization

This live event is for you because...

  • You’re an engineering manager, or you want to become one.
  • You’re an experienced engineer who would like to work closely with engineering and product leaders in your organization.

Prerequisites

  • Knowledge about management or first-time experience as an engineering manager (useful but not required)

Recommended preparation:

Recommended follow-up:

Schedule

The time frames are only estimates and may vary according to how the class is progressing.

Week 1—Session 1: Managing Yourself and Your Team, Manager, and Stakeholders

Technique to manage yourself better (30 minutes)

  • Presentation: Ice breaker; setting the context of this course; doing a self one-on-one to manage yourself better
  • Hands-on exercise and group discussion: Describe how you're doing as an engineering manager
  • Q&A

Mindful one-on-ones with your direct reports (30 minutes)

  • Presentation: Asking for and giving constructive feedback
  • Hands-on exercise and group discussion: Structuring one-on-ones with your direct reports; formulating one-on-ones with low-performing engineers
  • Q&A
  • Break

Managing up (30 minutes)

  • Presentation: Managing your manager and your stakeholders
  • Hands-on exercise and group discussion: Your top two stakeholders; their expectations of you; your expectations of them
  • Q&A

Building a happy and productive team (30 minutes)

  • Presentation: Building a happy and productive engineering team that possesses mastery, autonomy, and purpose
  • Hands-on exercise and group discussion: How do you define a happy engineering team?; list actions that you’ll take to ensure that your team has mastery, autonomy, and purpose
  • Q&A

Week 1—Session 2: Evolving Your Engineering Team’s Processes

Evaluating your processes (40 minutes)

  • Presentation: How to identify what’s working and what’s not working for your engineering team
  • Hands-on exercise and group discussion: Map out processes that are/are not working for your engineering team; develop action items to improve the not-so-good aspects
  • Q&A

Technical, development, and delivery processes (40 minutes)

  • Presentation: Adopting and evolving the right technical, development, and delivery processes to improve your team’s efficiency and throughput
  • Hands-on exercise and group discussion: Your level of involvement in technical decision-making; measuring your team’s efficiency and throughput; one process that you will optimize tomorrow
  • Q&A
  • Break

Defining key metrics and ownership (40 minutes)

  • Presentation: Defining key metrics and ownership for your team’s processes
  • Hands-on exercise and group discussion: Build an ideal RACI matrix for your team’s processes; scrutinize your current situation
  • Q&A

Week 2—Session 1: Delivering Quality Projects in a Timely Manner

Deliver projects iteratively (25 minutes)

  • Presentation: How to iteratively deliver projects to enable a fast feedback loop
  • Hands-on exercise and group discussion: Your current delivery iteration; How soon do your users experience the change your team is delivering?
  • Q&A

Integrating effective QA into your team’s delivery (35 minutes)

  • Presentation: Integrating effective QA into your team’s delivery
  • Hands-on exercise and group discussion: Rate the quality of your team’s delivery; explain how you currently integrate the QA process into your team’s delivery; What is your “definition of done”?
  • Q&A
  • Break

Fine-tuning your team’s delivery metrics with proficiency (40 minutes)

  • Presentation: Fine-tuning your team’s delivery metrics (DORA baseline) with proficiency
  • Hands-on exercise and group discussion: Your team’s performing level (low, medium, high, or elite); What should you fix to become an elite performing team?
  • Q&A

Removing blockers for your team’s deliverable (20 minutes)

  • Presentation: Removing blockers for your team’s deliverable
  • Hands-on exercise and group discussion: Blockers to timely delivery; How can you remove them?
  • Q&A

Week 2—Session 2: Work on What Matters Most for You, Your Team, and Your Organization

Prioritizing your team’s work (25 minutes)

  • Presentation: How to prioritize what your team should work on now and for next few months
  • Hands-on exercise and group discussion: Your team’s priorities; de-prioritize unimportant topics
  • Q&A

Consulting with your stakeholders (35 minutes)

  • Presentation: How to create balance between technical and product initiatives with your stakeholders
  • Hands-on exercise and group discussion: List technical debt and initiatives; explain why it’s important to tackle; the impact on business context and user experience
  • Q&A
  • Break

Setting technical strategy, direction, goals, and focus (40 minutes)

  • Presentation: Setting technical strategy, direction, goals, and focus; protecting your team
  • Hands-on exercise and group discussion: Define a technical strategy and set direction and goals in alignment with product priorities; explain how would you communicate to your team
  • Q&A

Mastering delegation (20 minutes)

  • Presentation: Delegating work on the most important and appropriate topics
  • Hands-on exercise and group discussion: Use the Eisenhower matrix for better delegation; sharing responsibility
  • Q&A

Your Instructor

  • Ananth Ramachandran

    Ananth Ramachandran is an engineering manager at Vinted and the author of The Complete Engineering Manager: Build High-Performing Engineering Teams for Your Organization.

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Skill covered

Team Management