An Engineering Culture — Why do I need one?

We are not a Facebook or Google. We are an IT shop in a large corporation. Why do we need to worry about an engineering culture? Why do we care?

Do you find yourself asking this question sometimes?

Well, whether you are in the business of selling core technology products, pharmacy, bras or candy bars, chances are that there is a large technology infrastructure that is supporting your business at scale. And chances are that you are delivering technology products to your internal and external customers all the time. And you are currently doing “Enterprise IT” to deliver these products.

I think the first question, you need to ask is:

“Am I doing Good IT?” Are my technology products being delivered & maintained in an efficient way, with high quality, meets my customers expectations and deliver value? Am I doing it consistently?

If the answer is a resounding “Yes”, then you already have a good engineering culture. You don’t need to read any further :) But if the answer is a “No” or a “Maybe” or “I don’t know”, you may want to look at this “Engineering Culture” thingy.

Before going further, I just want to quickly define what I really mean when I talk about an engineering culture. An engineering culture is what happens when you engineer technology solutions/products with the following in mind:

• create an environment of open communication, ownership & accountability
• apply lean-agile mindset to the overall process of delivering software
• apply software engineering principles & practices to how we deliver and operate software

At the end of the day, establishing or adopting the practices, culture and mindset of a good engineering culture just acts as a forcing function to do “Good IT”.

What do you think? Do you need an engineering culture?

The good news is that you can be a fast follower. There is a lot of material out there on experiences on how people have built great engineering cultures. Each of them provides unique perspectives and they are about companies that are respected for their technology chops.

My picks on good reads on building an engineering culture:

• Kevin Scott’s experience building out the engineering culture at LinkedIn, etc.
• Netflix’s culture page
• Facebook’s redbook
• GitLab’s culture page
• Buffer takes accountability and transparency to a new level

Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.