I'm a new engineering leader and my team is delivering a lot of code, but I'm not sure if we're focusing on the right things. How can I ensure that we're being effective and not just efficient?

answers-v3

Burrows Delta	Andrew Model
0.4647	1.0

This is a fantastic and very timely question—one that every engineering leader faces, especially in fast-moving environments. Delivering a lot of code can feel productive, but as you’ve sensed, output alone doesn’t guarantee you’re solving the right problems or driving meaningful impact. Let’s break down how you can ensure your team is truly effective, not just efficient, drawing on the frameworks and practical advice from Leading Effective Engineering Teams and the recent Tech Leadership Tuesday session.

Understanding Effectiveness vs. Efficiency First, it’s crucial to distinguish between efficiency and effectiveness:

Efficiency is about doing things right—minimizing waste, maximizing output, and streamlining processes. For example, your team might be shipping features quickly and with clean code. Effectiveness is about doing the right things—delivering outcomes that matter to your users and your business. It’s not just about how much you deliver, but whether what you deliver actually solves real problems and creates value. Productivity is output over input, but it’s only meaningful if the output is valuable . If your team is highly efficient but not effective, you risk building features that don’t move the needle for your users or your company.

Shifting Focus: From Output to Outcomes To ensure your team is effective:

Align with Business and User Goals: Regularly revisit your team’s objectives and ensure they map directly to business outcomes or user needs. Ask: “How does this feature or project help our users or advance our company’s strategy?” Prioritize Ruthlessly: Use frameworks like OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) to set clear, outcome-oriented goals. This helps the team focus on what matters most, not just what’s easy or interesting to build . Measure What Matters: Track metrics that reflect real impact—user adoption, customer satisfaction, business KPIs—not just velocity or number of pull requests . Seek Feedback Early and Often: Engage stakeholders and users throughout the development process. Their feedback is a reality check on whether you’re solving the right problems . Building a Culture of Effectiveness Foster Psychological Safety: Encourage your team to ask questions, challenge assumptions, and share concerns if they feel work isn’t aligned with the right goals. This openness is foundational for course-correcting early . Clarify Roles and Responsibilities: Make sure everyone knows not just what to do, but why it matters. This clarity helps avoid wasted effort and keeps the team focused . Balance Efficiency with Innovation: Streamline processes where possible, but don’t over-optimize to the point that you stifle creativity or adaptability. Leave room for experimentation and learning . Practical Steps for New Leaders Here’s a simple checklist to get started:

Step Action Why It Matters 1 Review your team’s current goals and backlog Ensure alignment with business/user outcomes 2 Set or revisit OKRs with your team Focus on outcomes, not just outputs 3 Implement regular stakeholder check-ins Validate you’re solving the right problems 4 Track both delivery metrics and impact metrics Balance efficiency and effectiveness 5 Encourage open discussion about priorities Build psychological safety and adaptability

Navigating the Age of AI If your team is leveraging AI tools, be especially mindful:

Don’t Over-Rely on AI for Output: Always verify AI-generated code and ensure it aligns with your standards and goals. Human review is essential . Maintain Critical Thinking: Encourage engineers (especially juniors) to understand and explain what AI-generated code is doing, so you don’t lose sight of the “why” behind your work . Focus on Real Value: Avoid shipping features just because AI makes it easy—ensure every release is genuinely useful to your users . Final Thought As a new leader, your most important job is to keep your team focused on delivering value, not just volume. By setting clear, outcome-driven goals, fostering a culture of open communication, and regularly validating your direction with stakeholders, you’ll ensure your team is not just busy, but truly effective.

If you’d like to dive deeper, you might want to explore how to measure engineering effectiveness in practice or discuss strategies for focusing on the right things in engineering teams. Let me know if you want to explore these or any other aspect of effective engineering leadership!

basic-gpt4o-mini

Burrows Delta	Andrew Model
0.6608	0.9999

Absolutely, it's great to hear that you're stepping into a leadership role! Balancing efficiency with effectiveness is crucial for any engineering team. Here are some strategies to help you ensure that your team is focusing on the right things:

1. Define Clear Objectives and Key Results (OKRs)

Establish clear, measurable goals for your team. OKRs can help align your team's efforts with the broader objectives of the organization. Make sure these goals are ambitious yet achievable, and revisit them regularly to assess progress.

2. Prioritize Work Based on Impact

Use frameworks like the Eisenhower Matrix or the MoSCoW method to prioritize tasks. Focus on high-impact projects that align with your team's goals and the company's mission. Encourage your team to ask, "Is this the best use of our time?"

3. Foster a Culture of Continuous Feedback

Create an environment where team members feel comfortable sharing feedback on processes, priorities, and outcomes. Regular retrospectives can help identify what’s working and what isn’t, allowing you to pivot as necessary.

4. Encourage Cross-Functional Collaboration

Engage with other teams (like product management, design, and marketing) to ensure that your engineering efforts are aligned with user needs and business goals. This collaboration can provide valuable insights into what features or improvements will have the most significant impact.

5. Measure Outcomes, Not Just Output

Shift the focus from lines of code or number of features delivered to the actual impact those features have on users and the business. Use metrics like user engagement, customer satisfaction, and revenue growth to gauge effectiveness.

6. Invest in Team Development

Encourage your team to continuously learn and grow. This could be through training, attending conferences, or working on side projects. A well-rounded team is more likely to innovate and focus on the right problems.

7. Implement Agile Practices

If you haven’t already, consider adopting Agile methodologies. This can help your team stay flexible and responsive to changing priorities. Regular sprints and reviews can help ensure that you’re delivering value consistently.

8. Create a Vision and Communicate It

Share a clear vision for where you want the team to go. This helps everyone understand the "why" behind their work and can motivate them to focus on the right priorities. Regularly communicate updates and celebrate milestones to keep the team engaged.

9. Encourage Experimentation and Innovation

Allow your team to explore new ideas and technologies. This can lead to innovative solutions that may not have been considered otherwise. Create a safe space for experimentation where failure is seen as a learning opportunity.

10. Regularly Review and Adjust

Make it a habit to regularly review your team’s focus and outcomes. Are you meeting your objectives? Are there new priorities that need to be addressed? Be willing to adjust your strategies based on what you learn.

By implementing these strategies, you can help ensure that your team is not just efficient in delivering code but also effective in delivering value that aligns with your organization’s goals. Remember, the key is to maintain a balance between speed and quality, ensuring that your team is working on the right things at the right time. Good luck!

cl-gradio-pe1

Burrows Delta	Andrew Model
0.4737	0.9998

Focus on aligning your team's efforts with the broader business objectives. Start by understanding the larger context of your projects—what are the strategic goals? Communicate these to your team clearly. Encourage them to ask questions and fully understand the purpose behind their work. It’s important to emphasize effectiveness over sheer volume. Consider pairing team members with product managers to help them see the impact of their work. Regularly check in on priorities and ensure they’re aligned with delivering the most value. This approach will help your team do the right things, not just more things.

basic-gpt3.5

Burrows Delta	Andrew Model
0.6224	0.9997

To ensure that your team is being effective and not just efficient, consider implementing the following strategies:

Set clear goals and priorities: Clearly define the goals and priorities for your team to ensure that everyone is aligned on what needs to be achieved. This will help focus efforts on the most important tasks and avoid wasting time on less critical activities.
Regularly review progress and outcomes: Schedule regular check-ins with your team to review progress and outcomes. This will help you assess whether the team is on track to meet its goals and identify any areas that may need adjustment.
Encourage collaboration and communication: Foster a culture of collaboration and open communication within your team. Encourage team members to share ideas, provide feedback, and work together to solve problems. This will help ensure that everyone is working towards the same goals and that decisions are made collectively.
Measure success beyond code delivery: While delivering code is important, it is also essential to measure success beyond just the quantity of code produced. Consider metrics such as code quality, customer satisfaction, and impact on business goals to evaluate the effectiveness of your team.
Continuously improve processes and workflows: Encourage your team to continuously improve processes and workflows to increase efficiency and effectiveness. This could involve implementing new tools, adopting best practices, or refining existing processes to streamline work and deliver better results.

By implementing these strategies, you can ensure that your team is not only delivering code efficiently but also focusing on the right things to achieve overall effectiveness.

chatgpt

Burrows Delta	Andrew Model
0.2124	0.9991

That’s a great question — and one that shows you’re already thinking like a strong leader. Channeling Addy Osmani here, let’s unpack this from a few key angles:

🚦 Effectiveness vs. Efficiency: Why the Distinction Matters

“Shipping fast is meaningless if what you're shipping doesn’t move the needle.” — Addy Osmani

Efficiency is about doing things right — optimizing processes, pushing lots of code, minimizing cycle time. Effectiveness is about doing the right things — aligning effort to outcomes that matter.

A team that's only efficient might ship a lot of features that don’t drive user value. Your role as a leader is to connect their efforts to impact.

🔍 Step 1: Reconnect the Team with Outcomes

Ask: What are we trying to achieve?

Shift from output-focused metrics (like velocity or story points) to outcome-focused ones (like engagement, retention, error rate reduction, or revenue uplift).

Action: Introduce or revisit a clear set of OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) or North Star metrics. Then ask:

Does the work we’re doing map clearly to one of these?
If not, why are we doing it?

"Tie your roadmap to measurable impact. Features should have a hypothesis behind them."

🧭 Step 2: Create a Culture of Product-Engineering Alignment

Involve your engineers in understanding the “why.” Effective teams care about solving the right problems, not just coding tasks they’re handed.

Action: Set up recurring syncs with PMs, designers, and engineering to:

Validate user problems.
Review impact of past work.
Kill or course-correct projects that aren’t working.

“Empowered teams question priorities, validate assumptions, and aren’t afraid to stop work that no longer makes sense.”

🛠 Step 3: Instrumentation + Feedback Loops

“If you can't measure it, you can't learn from it.”

Every major feature should ship with instrumentation. Not just logs or uptime monitoring — but real user behavior metrics:

Are users using the feature?
Are they completing intended flows?
Are we reducing friction or creating it?

Action: Build a dashboard (or work with analytics) that makes usage & impact visible to the team.

💬 Step 4: Retrospectives Focused on Value

Don’t just talk about blockers and process. Add a recurring question to your team retro:

What shipped recently that created real impact?
What did we ship that might not have been worth it? Why?

“Use retros not just to get faster — but to get smarter about what not to build.”

🔁 Step 5: Iterate Ruthlessly

Just because you shipped something doesn’t mean you’re done.

Action: Bake in iteration cycles. Review impact 2–4 weeks post-launch. Adjust the roadmap based on what’s working and what’s not.

✨ TL;DR from Addy’s POV:

Map work to business/user outcomes.
Get engineers closer to the problem space.
Measure impact, not just output.
Create feedback loops and iterate with intent.
Celebrate learning as much as shipping.

If you'd like, I can help you draft a team alignment session, build a lightweight value-mapping framework, or create a dashboard to track meaningful outcomes. Let me know how hands-on you'd like to get.

openai-generated-prompt

Burrows Delta	Andrew Model
0.4004	0.9985

Hey there! It's great that you're thinking about effectiveness versus just efficiency. Delivering a lot of code is one thing, but ensuring that code aligns with your team's goals and the broader business objectives is where the real impact lies. Let's dive into some strategies to help you focus on the right things.

1. Define Clear Objectives: Start by ensuring that your team has a clear understanding of the goals you're trying to achieve. Are you solving the right problems? Regularly revisit your team's objectives and make sure they align with the company's vision. This clarity helps prioritize work that truly matters.

2. Measure Impact, Not Just Output: It's easy to get caught up in metrics like lines of code or number of commits. Instead, focus on the impact of the work. Are the features you're shipping improving user experience or solving customer pain points? Use metrics that reflect the value delivered, like user engagement or performance improvements.

3. Foster Open Communication: Encourage your team to voice concerns or suggest improvements. Sometimes the best insights come from those closest to the work. Create a culture where it's safe to question priorities and propose changes.

4. Regularly Review and Reflect: Implement regular retrospectives to assess what's working and what isn't. This isn't just about process improvements but also about ensuring you're on the right path. Ask questions like, "Are we solving the right problems?" and "What can we do better?"

5. Balance Autonomy with Alignment: Give your team the autonomy to make decisions, but ensure there's alignment with the broader goals. This balance reduces coordination overhead and empowers your team to focus on impactful work.

6. Encourage Documentation and Knowledge Sharing: Good documentation helps maintain focus and clarity. It ensures everyone is on the same page and can reduce misunderstandings about priorities and objectives.

7. Build Psychological Safety: When your team feels safe to take risks and make mistakes, they're more likely to innovate and focus on meaningful work. Encourage a culture of trust and low ego collaboration.

Protip: Regularly ask your team, "What are we doing today that we shouldn't be doing?" This simple question can uncover inefficiencies and misalignments that might be hindering your effectiveness.

Remember, being effective is about doing the right things, not just doing things right. Keep iterating on these practices, and you'll find your team not only delivering code but delivering value. Keep up the great work, and don't hesitate to reach out if you need more guidance!

tmpt-me

Burrows Delta	Andrew Model
0.4617	0.9964

As a new engineering leader, it's crucial to distinguish between being effective and merely efficient. While delivering a lot of code might indicate high productivity, it doesn't necessarily mean that the team is focusing on the most impactful tasks. To ensure effectiveness, start by prioritizing outcomes over outputs. This means aligning your team's efforts with the broader business goals and ensuring that the work they do contributes to these objectives.

Implement goal-setting frameworks that emphasize the importance of doing the right things. Encourage your team to understand the impact of their work on the overall project and organizational goals. Additionally, use metrics that measure outcomes and business value rather than just the volume of code produced. This approach will help you and your team focus on delivering meaningful results that align with your strategic objectives.

basic-gpt4o

Burrows Delta	Andrew Model
0.6238	0.842

Congratulations on your new role as an engineering leader! It's great that you're thinking about effectiveness versus just efficiency. Here are some strategies to ensure your team is focusing on the right things:

Align with Business Goals: Make sure your team's work aligns with the broader business objectives. Regularly communicate with stakeholders to understand the company's priorities and ensure your team's efforts are contributing to those goals.
Define Clear Objectives and Key Results (OKRs): Use OKRs to set clear, measurable goals for your team. This helps in aligning the team's work with the company's strategic objectives and provides a framework for evaluating success.
Prioritize Ruthlessly: Encourage your team to focus on high-impact work. Use frameworks like the Eisenhower Matrix or RICE (Reach, Impact, Confidence, Effort) scoring to prioritize tasks that deliver the most value.
Foster a Culture of Feedback: Create an environment where feedback is encouraged and valued. Regularly solicit feedback from your team and stakeholders to ensure you're on the right track and make adjustments as needed.
Measure Outcomes, Not Just Output: Focus on the impact of the work rather than the volume of code delivered. Use metrics that reflect the value delivered to users, such as user engagement, performance improvements, or customer satisfaction.
Encourage Innovation and Experimentation: Allow your team the freedom to experiment and innovate. This can lead to more effective solutions and help the team stay engaged and motivated.
Regularly Review and Reflect: Conduct regular retrospectives to reflect on what’s working and what’s not. Use these insights to continuously improve processes and focus areas.
Empower Your Team: Trust your team to make decisions and take ownership of their work. Empowered teams are more likely to focus on meaningful work and find effective solutions.
Stay Informed and Adapt: Keep up with industry trends and technological advancements. Encourage your team to do the same, and be willing to adapt your strategies and focus areas as needed.
Communicate Vision and Purpose: Clearly communicate the vision and purpose behind the work. When the team understands the "why," they are more likely to focus on the right things and be motivated to achieve the desired outcomes.

By focusing on these strategies, you can help ensure that your team is not just efficient in delivering code, but also effective in delivering value to the organization.