Scaling Plans By Time

One of the hardest things about bring in project leadership is figuring out how and when to make adjustments. There are a lot of decisions that have an immediate impact and other decisions that have delayed results. There are some things that can be worked on in a “now” timeframe and yet others that we require some other work to build up to. Each phase of technical leadership requires planning in increasing scales of time and being comfortable with increasing amounts of ambiguity.

  • Individual Contributor

    An individual contributor has the most immediate frame for decision making and the lowest amount of ambiguity. Ideally, the IC is focused on the task immediately in front of them. Decisions should be actionable within a span of hours.

  • Tech Lead/Architect

    Local technical leadership should have a view of the codebase that spans beyond the tickets that are on the board. They should be thinking several days or even weeks into the future. Ambiguity and risk is relatively low, though. These individuals may be running just ahead of the ICs in terms of making sure that the codebase is prepared for the next tasks.

  • Team Lead/Scrum Master

    The titles for this phase is a little fuzzier and might be rolled up into titles above or below instead of existing independently. At this level, the product timeline is being immediately reviewed. Decisions are made in the timeline of sprints. As such, this individual is making plans in the timeframe of multiples of weeks and up to a month or two. Risk is common as confidence in the plan will rapidly decline the further out from “now.”

  • Engineering Manager

    For many, the direct manager may fill the roles of some above titles as well. For our purposes, though, I want to illustrate that someone needs to be thinking out beyond the scope of the next few sprints. Someone needs to have a roadmap for the product at a reasonably actionable scale. This person might formally be a “product owner” or “project manager,” but the manager that oversees career growth and opportunities should also be thinking at this scale. Plans are likely make in terms of quarters rather than weeks. Expect this role to have to think through things in a middle term and working to mitigate scenarios or classes of risks rather than a specific concern.

  • Director

    Here, I’m assuming that a Director position involves managing multiple teams, with managers in place to handle the most immediate conversations with staff and product owners. The Director’s job is to help the managers execute in the middle term plans and think through larger growth initiatives. There is comparatively little confidence in direct execution at this stage. This might sound concerning, but there’s a lot of risk in making concrete plans on the scale of half-years and years. The Director’s role is to set a vision on the horizon and enable the staff to bring it in. That vision should be reasonable and appreciable. The time scale allows the benefit of prediction and expectation, but the details must be flexible enough to meet unexpected outcomes or activities.

  • Beyond…

    There are other scales beyond those that manage teams of teams. There are several titles and roles, but the scale of planning is often in terms of years. These stages exist deeply in the land of ambiguity. The ability to concretely predict what’s on the horizon has been lost. Instead, there’s a small bit of prognostication. The strength of this role is to not only imagine the far future but also to develop the excitement and commitment across all levels of the organization to make it manifest. In a real sense, these roles don’t solve “today’s problems,” but rather must be thinking about the abstract “tomorrow problems” that can, may, and will arise.

These scales roughly map out to various levels of team leadership for engineering managers. The time periods are relatively obvious, but many do not think about them abstractly. When I speak to the managers that report to me, they’re often thinking too deeply about their needs and their team’s immediate needs. Many ICs aren’t thinking about time scales at all.

Being mindful of the scales and the need for comfort in ambiguity is a great way to gauge whether someone is close to the next level of responsibility. Not everyone that is comfortable in ambiguity is ready for a promotion. Not everyone that can confidently plan in an increasing scale of time is ready for that next task. That said, if someone is able to plan and execute at a larger scale consistently, it’s time for me to evaluate all of their leadership skills and have that communication of career expectations and growth.