Empower the People

Help engineers and managers build the judgment and authority to resolve problems at the right level.

Principles

• People come first.
• Don’t be a bottleneck.
• Decisions belong close to the work.
• Empower managers to coach and resolve disputes.

Practices

Engineer-authored ADRs, review by peers, clear decision boundaries, and escalation through responsible managers where needed.

In practice

When I inherited a struggling Remote Control GUI team, I moved two engineers who could no longer work effectively in the existing reporting arrangement into a new UI-Platform team under an experienced manager. I brought Staff and Principal engineering support into Remote Control to establish better practices and mentor the team. As the team grew more capable under new management, I was able to reassign that temporary support.

I also introduced Architecture Decision Records through UI-Platform, beginning with an ADR describing the ADR process itself. I later expanded the practice across my organization and then through the Principal Engineering Committee to the wider on-device software organization. This was a way to establish shared decision-making practices through engineering leadership rather than simply imposing a process.

Read the engineering organizations case study.

Further writing

• Decisions Belong Close to the Work (planned article)
• Don’t Be a Bottleneck (planned article)