From my perspective, the end-goal of a Software Engineering Manager (or any other Software Engineering Leader) is that the team they serve becomes and remains motivated. My personal approach revolves around being a leader-servant supporting each and every member’s career growth and development. Throughout my career, I have identified three pre-requisites which need be satisfied before any motivational efforts could have a meaningful impact. It is for this reason that I call such pre-requisites, pillars. These are efficacy, efficiency, and vision.

In building a motivated team, the Software Engineering Manager assumes a few roles: a Team Architect, as they lay the foundation for motivation using these pillars; a Leader, as they teach by example how to execute the groundwork for building and maintaining these pillars; and an Orchestrator, finding the right people according to their skills and affinity to take the responsibility of each pillar.

Efficacy

Efficacy concisely refers to getting things done. Efficacy may be accomplished by making sure the team focuses on meaningful work; that adds as much value towards the goal as possible while removing distractions. Having too many meetings with an overextended forum is a key distraction because of the person-hours spent, possibly without results.

Amongst other strategies, one mitigation action could be reducing the person-hours spent in meetings by designating specific Direct Responsible Individuals (otherwise known as Tech or Discipline Leads) which act as proxies or ambassadors for all the members of their distinct disciplines. As Direct Responsible Individuals, it is their responsibility to communicate effectively towards their discipline to reduce communication gaps and coordinate amongst other disciplines to avoid creating discipline silos.

Efficiency

Efficiency is making every unit of time count towards a goal. Not everybody is able to switch context seamlessly i.e., there is a productivity cost of stopping a task to take another one. Having too many dependencies while having no one specifically designated to solve them is one of many obstacles to working efficiently. Moreover, external requests without proper diagnosis can also foster too much context switching amongst the members of the team.

Two actions can help improve the team’s efficiency: remove internal and external dependencies and determining whether external requests have been properly posited to be the team’s responsibility. These actions can be performed by either a Technical Program Manager or both, a dedicated Program Manager and a dedicated Operational Manager.

Vision

Vision is that every member of the team understands how what they are doing has an impact towards the team’s, department’s, and organization’s goals. Sometimes the best way to achieve this is by having different length roadmaps: a short-term, it could vary from a single sprint’s objective statement to a few drafted in advance; a medium-term, which could range from a quarterly plan to a yearly one; and a long-term, which is a plan that reflects the company’s mission, vision, and values.

A key role to support this pillar is that of a Product Manager.