EM Interview Task

Engineering Manager Interview Task

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Supriya Harikumar

How can I, as the Engineering Manager, improve team dynamics and inspire greater communication and ownership?

Encourage open communication Create a physchologically safe space for team to share their feedback/ideas transparently. Ensure the team is equipped with the right communciation tools(Slack/JIRA/Asana) that allows for consistent virtual cross-functional collaboration. Delegate accountability Enable aspiring seniors in the team to own modules/deliverables per their capabilities, that will drive commitment to productive deliveries. Making the team visible and setting clear purpose with quantifiable OKRs, makes the team responsibly own their deliverables. Iterate with retros Ensure to pulse check the team health and ways of working consistently to iterate. Let the team feel heard and included in shaping the culture intra/inter team.

Team dynamics is nurtured by a culture that values

• Open communication
• Empowerment
• Clear purpose & goal

EM has to lead by example -> Show what good looks like -> Know what motivates the team -> Build a self-organising team

How can I, as the Engineering Manager, implement more effective Agile processes and teamwork, to improve people planning, effort and capacity predictability and overall team morale?

Cultivate Agile mindset Enable the team to embrace responding to change over following a plan, with safe fail and growth focussed atmosphere. Enhance technical agility with feature toggles, architectural uplifts and robust continuous delivery processes. Test driven/behaviour driven development also helps nurture this mindset to test, learn & iterate. Setup resilient discovery phase String strong early collaboration between Product, engineering, data & research to uncover potential technical roadblocks, effort estimates and dependencies upfront. Cross-functional roadmap walkthroughs, setting DoR and consistent backlog grooming will help prioritise the deliverables, aligned with the business needs. Data driven planning Leverage agile metrics like team velocity, throughput combined with DORA metrics like Lead time to value and deployment frequency to determine effort and capacity requirements. Hold regular cross-funcional estimation sessions to determine efforts required and spread a shared understanding of scope. Ensure to have buffers for spikes, incidents and any other predictive diversions the team might need to step on.

• Foster autonomy and ownership
• Prevent burnout and keep team motivated
• Remove impediments and establish open feedback forums

How can I, as an Engineering Manager, uphold and implement standards for code quality, testing strategy, overall metrics, and team health monitoring to promote both sustainable delivery speed and a strong focus on code quality throughout the SDLC?

Spread quality advocacy

Regulated Code Standards

Setup quantifiable metrics

Test driven development

• Code coverage, test coverage and defect OKR metrics
• Transparent dashboards built to visualise data trends
• Build tech debt backlog with gaps identified

• Implement automated tests from Unit to E2E
• Establish CI pipelines with quality gates
• Shift-left testing mindset

• Define what good coding standards look like
• Embed automated code quality tools (Eg:SonarQube)
• Build robust peer review culture

• Empower team to own quality as part of delivery
• Regular 1:1 checkins and team pulse checks
• Incorporate solid RCA lookback & share learnings

Thank You