Enabling teams with Manuel Pais and Eduardo da Silva

A newsletter that started as a personal learning and getting-in-touch project by Ivan Krnic grew into a sociotechnical newsletter covering topics of technical excellence, organizational improvements, and productivity.

Enabling teams are an essential part of the Team Topologies concept – it’s how your organization learns and grows faster!

Like reconnaissance platoons, Enabling teams explore the path in front, look for new technologies and approaches (but also reach into their existing bag of tricks), and share this information with stream-aligned teams, helping and enabling them to move faster.

Learning and growing faster should’ve always been organizational priorities. But recent trends in tech have made them even more critical.

The first and obvious one is the rise of Generative AI. It’s something new with a capacity to redefine the work as we know it – a perfect fit for accelerating the adoption through Enabling teams – at CROZ, we had incredible experience with this approach, both internally and externally.

The second one is the shift in the workforce market. The recession caused layoffs. Many people lost their jobs and are on the market. Some companies are using this situation, cherry-picking and hiring experts. There will be a lot of newcomers in their organizations, and Enabling teams are a viable mechanism to onboard newcomers and get them up to speed.

Listen to my conversation about Enabling teams with Manuel Pais and Eduardo da Silva and consider using this concept. Is there a better time than after summer vacation when we’re decisive and full of energy?

DevOps and Cloud InfoQ Trends Report – July 2023 – Check out the latest trends: evolution instead of revolution (we invented more than we can digest :), platform engineering is tapping into developer advocacy, security should become more developer-friendly, and observability is still a hot topic.

Rebecca Parsons – Thoughtworks CTO: by 2025 We’ll See Evolution in Architecture, But Not Revolution – Rebecca Parsons takes a glimpse into the future. Again, the same leitmotif of evolution over revolution. The concept of Evolutionary Architecture has been with us for a while, and “fitness function” is at its core. It’s an interesting concept that we’re playing with these days.

On Becoming a VP of Engineering, Part 1: The Path to VP – The higher you look at the organizational ladder, the fewer resources there are to help you understand your job. Emily Nakashima, VP of Engineering at Honeycomb, started an excellent short series telling her experience.

Engineering Manager Interview Questions – Compared to the VP of Engineering, it’s easier to find resources to help you understand the role of the Engineering Manager. If you’re looking into this role, here are sample interview questions for junior and experienced Engineering Managers to get you started.

I will admit I was very skeptical, but this is NOT “yet another book” preaching on the rights and the wrongs! It will NOT give you a prescription or the Ten Commandments on workplace behavior.

It will, however, introduce you to a couple of schools of thought and give you foundational elements (spoiler alert: virtues!) to develop your approach to ethics aligned with the digital age. Mark Schwartz is an expert in introducing humanistic concepts to the tech world.

Photo by jesse orrico on Unsplash