Thoughts on Engineering Velocity

Speed follows direction.

When we are driving and about to miss a turn, we drive slow. If we don’t know where we are, we drive slow. If we are enjoying the view, we drive slow. If we are in scanning mode we are not focused on the road in front of us. Urban design researchers took notice of this phenomena. Removing sign posts, curbs, stop lights, etc. helped improve the safety of roads in urban areas. Without the clear separation of road versus sidewalks drivers were more cautious. Lack of direction led to increased scanning and caution.

The same phenomena applies to work. Lack of direction means productivity is scattered. Scanning for opportunities and self-indulgent tendencies increase. Both scanning and focus modes are needed but we often scan for too long.

As a startup the number one, most important, killer, advantage is velocity. Without the burden of heavyweight commitments, large hierarchies, etc, startups can move with haste. They can move from thought to implementation quicker than most. But velocity has two components. Speed AND direction. We all talk a ton about speed, but lose sight of where we are going. Direction is what differentiates successful startups.

Align

As a technical contributor, nothing feels better coming to work knowing what I’m going to do. I can put on my headphones, turn on some music, and start coding.

That level of clarity is what we should seek to provide for all engineers. It gets harder and harder as ambitions and vision swells. More people mean more alignment. But that clarity is the number one way to increase productivity.

Alignment is all about direction. Engineering leaders must set clear, actionable goalposts into the ground. Teams deserve autonomy. To prevent autonomy turning into chaos, you’ll need to temper it with alignment. It won’t matter how fast your team moves if they running in different directions.

Don’t expect things to proceed straightforward. Even with the clearest of visions and alignment, the path of progress is windy. Assumptions will prove to be false. New information will reveal an alternative. Development will ebb and flow.

What’s most important is to establish feedback loops. Alignment isn’t a one-time activity. It’s a process. It requires leaders listen to the people doing the work. It requires decisiveness. It requires humbleness. It requires swift and thorough communication. Alignment is the result of clear, consistent communication.

Descope

Once teams receive the vision, implementation begins. Potential solutions emerge. Estimates provided. Plan created. How fast can we get this built? This responsibility usually lies with the teams Faster often gets mixed up with more. While we look at our outputs and see more if we move faster, it isn’t about putting in more work. Often it’s the opposite. The less work we commit to completing, the quicker we can get it out the door. While counter-intuitive, speed requires unrelenting, pragmatic scoping.

There was a study done to understand the impact of grading quality vs quantity. Students in a ceramics class divided into groups. One group was judged on how many clay pots they could make. Another on how well they made a single clay pot. Another as a control group. At the end of the session the “quantity” group ended up with higher quality pots than the “quality” group. When you practice and iterate, you can’t help but get better (credit to James Clear for this anecdote).

I want to note that this doesn’t mean cutting corners. In fact we need to do the opposite. If we do a bad job then we won’t get a clear signal on the impact. Was it a bad idea or poor execution? As Jason Fried, CEO of Basecamp, formulates we have three levers to adjust when planning: scope, quality, and time. With more time you can increase scope and quality. With less quality you could increase scope or decrease time. With less scope you could increase quality or decrease time. Usually some internal or external deadline cap our time. And we don’t want to sacrifice quality, so this comes back to scoping.

Instead of us thinking what we can get done in a quarter, we should be thinking what can we deliver today. That’s the unit of scope we want to think on to increase speeds. Paired with a clear North Star vision and plan, velocity amplifies. Value to customers amplifies. Our impact for the mission amplifies. By fixing our unit of time as a day, we can get very aggressive on scoping while producing high quality outputs. It may not be much each day but that’s okay. We are trying to maximize our learning not number of features made. We are maximizing our learning such that we can best incorporate that back into our knowledge and processes as quick as possible.

Impact

In practice we must measure impact. What was the value to us, customers, and the planet by doing this? What did we learn by shipping this? How can we do prevent this or double-down? Structured reflection and impact measurement complete the feedback loop. Looking from the last alignment, the production, and then the impact, reality emerges. We thought we’d go there. Build these things. But the world didn’t want it or we ended up elsewhere. None of these are bad things. They are vital to the process of building.

The goal is to align fast, produce something, and see the response. To make sure we are running in the right direction we have to place north stars. Signposts for ourselves so we are all aligned and can execute. We march forward through the “fog of war”. We check our trajectory. This is the fly-wheel of engineering in technology. We reap the benefits of compounding actions of our previous small steps. We move forward, we learn, we adapt. We will make missteps and twist an ankle. But what we learn by doing so and how we adapt is what will define us.

Final thoughts

Velocity has two components: speed and direction. Both vital to the creation process. As engineering organizations we must align quick, cut scope, build, and measure impact. Momentum will build and you will reach escape velocity.

While this blog post focuses on output, I want to caution against over-emphasizing speed. Sustaining pace is more important than sprinting. If the fly-wheel spins too fast, people will burn out and organization health suffers. In my experience, sustainable development comes from clarity of direction. Alignment stemming from a common purpose alleviates extraneous work.