building high performance engineering teams - focus on people - scrum australia 2014

NICHOLAS MULDOON • AGILE COACH • TWITTER • @NJM

building high performance teams focus on people

focus on people

Here be dragons

high performance teams

1. Impact - Teams are customer focused

2. Quality - Teams deliver quality, minimising waste

3. Flow - Teams deliver iteratively to maximise learning

4. Kaizen - Teams constantly improve their process

scrum is part of the solution vs

scrum is the solution

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unleash productivity

hire amazing people

review performance

improving the flock

unleash productivity

hire amazing people

review performance

improving the flock

ro les and ladders

competenc ies

Collaboration •Team orientated, helpful and friendly.

Puts the goals of the team ahead of individual goals. Knows when to ask for help.

Communication • Listens to understand. Clear and

concise in speech and writing. • Treats people with respect. • Calm and laid back demeanor. Adaptability •Understands that we'll need to

conduct many experiments in order to get it right.

•Understands that failure and learning are part of the process, works to build a culture of learning.

example competenc iesCreative Problem Solving •Ability to build new things and solve existing problems with incomplete or ambiguous data.

•Pushes past existing constraints and limitations. Competence and Impact •Deep technical knowledge and desire for mastery.

•Delivers astonishing amounts of valuable work Ownership •Work collaboratively, act independently. Take responsibility for their work, solve their own problems.

•Seek to simplify - “pick up the trash”. •Measure success by benefit to customers, not vanity metrics.

customer focus and collaboration vs

purely technical candidates

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h i r ing process

top grad ing

• What were you hired to do in this role? • What accomplishments are you most proud of in this role? • What were some low points during that job? • Who were the people you worked with? Specifically:

• What was your boss’s (or team leader’s) name, and how do you spell that? • What was it like working with him/her? • What will he / she tell me were your biggest strengths and areas for improvement

when I talk to them? • How will they rate you on a 1-10 scale?

• Why did you leave that job?

top grad ing quest ions

unleash productivity

hire amazing people

review performance

improving the flock

unleash productivity

hire amazing people

review performance

improving the flock

f l ight schoo l

dev prod

pr inc ip les

Iterative, team-based development.

We get small teams together with all the relevant skill sets, build in small increments, and pivot based on customer feedback. These teams are co-located and focused on the task at hand, not spread among other priorities.

Teams are “stable”, have a clear charter, ownership, and members share accountability.

We use light-weight planning techniques to optimize our short term and long term roadmap, respond to changing customer needs, and align with other teams.

example pr inc ip le

optimise the whole vs

optimise individuals

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methods

unleash productivity

hire amazing people

review performance

improving the flock

unleash productivity

hire amazing people

review performance

improving the flock

360° rev iew ( ind iv idua l )

ob ject ives , key resu l t s

( team)

objectives, key results vs

backlog

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Objective: Drive industry-leading end user quality standards • Resiliency: Reduce top-line failure rate

(client events) from X% to Y% (at least 15% reduction).

• Resiliency: 50% of traffic served from XYZ, maintain five 9’s SLA.

• Cost: Reduce XYZ costs in Q1 by $XXM. Develop process, content & visibility for measuring savings.

Objective: Build a world class product and engineering team • Hiring: Make offers to X SWEs for

Consumer and Platform. • Agility: Increase the “iterative team-

based development” survey score by X% (X to X), achieve NPS >60 for training sessions.

• Training: All people managers attend at least one learning workshop.

example OKRs

pu lse survey (company w ide)

unleash productivity

hire amazing people

review performance

improving the flock

unleash productivity

hire amazing people

review performance

improving the flock

women in eng ineer ing

girls who code

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re t rospect ives

tw i t te r un ivers i ty

Languages •Scala Essentials (5 days) •ScalaCheck Essentials •Testing Scala Code at Twitter •Andriod Essentials (5 days) •Android Performance •Python Essentials •Android Accessibility

Agility •Agile Essentials •Running Effective Retrospectives •Effective Backlog Grooming •Effective User Story Mapping •Effective Code Reviews

Twitter Technology •How to Build a Service at Twitter •Twitter Futures •Open Sourcing at Twitter •Distributed Systems for Young Bloods •Database Essentials •Finagle Essentials

example courses

tech ta lks

f locks

Languages •Scala •Python •Erlang •JavaScript

Agility •Agile Flock

Twitter Technology •Mesos/Aurora •Manhattan

example f locks

unleash productivity

hire amazing people

review performance

improving the flock

unleash productivity

hire amazing people

review performance

improving the flock

Remember : Here be dragons

NICHOLAS MULDOON • AGILE COACH • TWITTER • @NJM

building high performance teams focus on the people