The engineering culture sets the tone for how team members work together, prioritize tasks, and collaborate on projects. Software development industry not only continues to expand but is doing so at an ever-increasing rate. The demand for developers, designers, and engineers is getting higher and more urgent. The incredible advance in remote work, the evolution of artificial intelligence, and automation are some of the new trends for the immediate future.
As a company, to rise to the occasion you need to have a strong team and a well-managed organization.
What is it?
Among so many meanings, we can say that “It’s the set of common beliefs, values, principles, and goals that will later impact the way people in the organization make decisions or actions around software development”. It will define the behavior, activities, and priorities of the organization.
Engineering team culture determines how members do things, how they work together, what is important, and also the way how they collaborate on different projects. In the same way, defines communication between management and the engineering team.
What to do to have a strong Engineering culture?
To put together a series of items that define what is important when working in a team to build a software:
- All the members should be involved in this assembly. although it is not possible to agree on everything, all voices must be heard.
- Have clear and measurable goals, and they must be set with the customer’s needs in mind.
- Talking about management, it should keep in mind the values that define the culture and try to reinforce them whenever possible. Making decisions and taking actions guided by this principle will lead to a healthy environment, being congruent is crucial when you are trying to build a strong engineering culture.
- Mutual trust and respect, having an environment where people feel comfortable exchanging knowledge and ideas will lead to better performances and happier members. A good technique to generate this trust is a peer review program, where colleagues are aware of the work of their partners.
Bad habits that affect Engineering Culture
- Lack of confidence: Working in an organization where you cant be sincere is stressful and uncomfortable, and usually leads to a high staff turnover.
- Different cultures for different teams: Designing several cultures for each team is a waste of time and at the same time generates long-term discordance.
- Constant and resounding changes: It is good to change and evolve, to bring new methodologies, and new systems. The teams are prepared for these changes. What should not be done is to make big changes in short periods of time, this generates a loss of identity and often disorganization in the processes.
Benefits of having a good Engineering Culture
It generates a healthy and organized climate, where people are at ease, making team members want to stay, and retaining them is no effort at all. employee satisfaction in companies where there is a good and healthy organizational culture is significantly higher than average.
It’s easier when it comes to recruiting new staff, when the culture is well-defined, finding people who fit in with it is much easier and the employee rebound rate is likely to be low as well.
All team members are clear that each role and task is not only important but also requires specific skills, training, and knowledge to be effective.
Of course, all these benefits and having a pleasant organizational climate, where everyone is comfortable and actively working, will lead to a better quality of the final products and therefore to better satisfy the customer’s needs.
To conclude
In these times when it is increasingly difficult to retain your team members, where everything is so volatile and people prioritize comfort and feel at ease. Having a clear, genuine, team-built organizational culture, with a view to improving the quality of the company’s work, can be a key point to taking your organization to scale and achieving the objectives you were looking for.
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