The key to sustaining engineering excellence in a world of constant change

Engineering excellence through data, continuous learning, and authentic leadership

News By Brian McMahon published 30 September 2024

They say the only constant in life is change. In the technology industry, that’s only partially true. By building and nurturing a series of constants, businesses can set themselves up to flourish for the long haul, no matter which technology revolution we may face next.

Organizations that implement fundamental engineering, architectural, and operational practices can undoubtedly weather times of change, having built the extensible IT infrastructure and processes to help them chart a necessary path forward. But what does it take to truly thrive in periods of uncertainty? The core attributes of organizations I’ve seen most successful with sustaining engineering excellence not only balance but artfully blend a sense of high ambition and resilience, a culture of continuous learning, and authentic approaches to leadership.

Brian McMahon

Managing Vice President of Finance Technology, Capital One.

Cultivate High Ambition and Resilience Through Data

First, successful engineering organizations measure the right things and turn data into actionable insights and targeted learning paths focused on skill-building, growth, and professional development. For example, if teams are slow to detect an incident with their application, it may be due to improper monitoring and alerting. If cycle times are missing the mark, it might be that the engineer could improve test automation skills. If cloud storage or cloud costs are unnecessarily high, perhaps the infrastructure was poorly designed or overly complex. 

In all of these cases, metrics and a test-and-learn approach should be embedded into the natural rhythms of the organization such that data informs whether teams persist on the current path or pivot to different approaches. This continuous retrospection and feedback loop can help leaders to make impactful decisions, take action, and best support and coach their teams in the pursuit of excellence.

These data-driven insights are also key to identifying areas where engineers spend time on manual or rote tasks, much of which could be allayed with automation. Automation can be an incredibly powerful tool to help shift engineers’ capacity away from these tasks to focus on more creative problem-solving and career-defining work. Machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) has added rocket fuel to this effort, enabling the automation of complex and time-consuming workflows and activities. With the bandwidth unlocked by automation, engineers can turn their sights to constant experimentation and innovation (which is an exciting prospect when you’re working to solve challenging problems in financial services, for example).

Key performance indicators and data should permeate beyond product performance, too. Implementing these metrics into an organizations’ performance and talent management routines can also help reinforce the health of the organization, which is particularly important as leaders continue to raise the talent bar. In my experience, it’s these engineering best practices - measuring what matters, striving for excellence in those metrics, and supporting engineers in hitting ambitious targets - that are not only the framework for pursuing bold innovations but they’re also the key to attracting and retaining teams of world-class talent.

Fostering a Growth Mindset and Culture of Continuous Learning

Put simply, great engineers want to work with other great engineers. They expect engineering excellence from the organizations they join (and stay in) because this high talent bar is the foundation for continuously shipping products with meaningful outcomes for the business and customers. For leaders of these high-performing organizations, the pursuit of top talent is “always on.”

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