Building an Engineering Culture
In 2011, Marc Andreessen made an often-quoted statement: “Software is eating the world.” About a decade later, we can all agree that is true. Almost every company in the services industry has software and IT at the core of their daily operations. Take IT away from a bank, an insurance company or a large e-commerce business, and they are out of business in no time.
In my work as a consultant, I get many questions from organisations struggling with this. It usually starts with a technical question — but after digging a bit deeper, we quickly reach the point where the technical solutions are not enough. You can build great software, but if you cannot get it into the hands of your customers quickly enough, it does not deliver value.
The solution is usually the same: embrace the fact that you are a software company. And start behaving like one.
That goes far beyond improving software, building automation, and setting up monitoring. It touches a deeper cause — the organisation itself, and how it operates. At Xpirit, we use the term Engineering Culture to describe 8 pillars that need to be in place to truly become a software company.
The 8 Pillars
1. State of the Art Software
You need to build state-of-the-art software: cloud native, resilient, observable, secure and compliant. Unit-tested and maintainable, using the right patterns and architectures. Not only the applications — the “ops” side matters just as much. Concepts like infrastructure as code and immutable infrastructure are the new normal and must be part of every software solution.
2. Smooth Delivery
Smooth delivery is crucial to success as an IT company. Think about the development toolchain and supply chain — the heartbeat of product delivery and, if neglected, an attack vector. Secure and compliant pipelines ensure repeatability and reduce errors. But the delivery process also matters. ITIL, CABs and endless handovers between silos do not make delivery smooth, and need to change.
3. Appropriate Continuity
Cyber criminals are adopting cloud and DevOps practices faster than the average enterprise, and the number of threats is increasing. Business continuity, reliability, and security are essential. You need to be “secure and compliant by default” while increasing your speed of delivery and the stability of what you ship.
4. Power Through Platforms
In this connected world, embrace what is already out there. Do not reinvent the wheel. Look at how platforms can accelerate your business — Azure Landing Zones, data and IoT platforms, open industry standards for authentication, open source, and the in-company variant: inner source.
5. Empowering Operating Model
Once your vision is clear, organise in a way that allows your company to execute on it. Aligned autonomy, high responsibility, and end-to-end value stream teams are the concepts to start with. Put decisions and responsibility as close as possible to the people doing the actual work.
6. Move the Business Needle
This is about the transformative leadership needed to become an IT company — how everything you do adds value to the business. Product management, product vision, business strategy and enterprise architecture must all be aligned and purposeful.
7. Knowledge Driven
Learning should be embedded in the DNA of the company. Organisations need to adopt a learning mindset and a new approach to knowledge sharing, because every profession changes over time — and IT changes faster than most.
8. Epic Work Environment
Your culture should match your ambition. DevOps is about people, process and tools — in that order. The leadership, the mindset, the workplace should all be about enabling people. Trust, radical candour, people first. That is what makes people perform.
As you can see, there is a lot to cover. And everywhere it is different. But if you embrace the fact that you are actually a software company, make sure you look at more aspects than tools and techniques alone. The engineering culture that surrounds your technology is what determines whether it delivers lasting value.