I sometimes hear when interviewing engineers that their day-to-day is just about delivering this story or fixing that bug. I think we can do better than that, not just for our engineering teams but for the business, its profitability and agility.
Part of this is that there can sometimes be too much focus around LEAN software development practices. For example, engineers should be focused 100% of the time on task X for customer A. LEAN is about reducing waste and only doing what the customer wants. However, I don't believe innovation is waste — far from it!
A business is measured not just by the product it produces today, but by how it continuously improves, becoming more dynamic, agile, efficient and expanding into new markets or areas in comparison to its competitors.
Twenty years ago we didn't have cloud systems, CI/CD, auto-filling code, IaC and so many tools of our modern trade that we take for granted. What will the industry look like in 20 years time? What is the next advantage we can use today?
As leaders we should be giving engineers a bit of space from the stories and sprints to expand into the new, the unexplored. Because you never know, what they are looking at might be the "cloud" of tomorrow and by adopting it you are positioning your organisation ahead of the competition. If we are always looking at the now, and never at the tomorrow then we can get left behind by those who are.
One way to do this is a hackathon or innovation day. I love these, but actually not primarily because of the innovation. Rather it is the buzz leading up to it, the team work or fun that can be had on the day is amazing for bringing a team or engineering function together. Deep down though, I think that if you are reserving your innovation for a single day in the year is a bit like trying to give the whole year's feedback to someone in a performance review. A good manager should be giving constant feedback to his reports, both positive and constructive change. In the same way I believe we should be counting innovation as part of the weekly working life of an engineer.
I am not saying that we should be ignoring that important feature for a customer, or letting an engineer disappear down a rabbit hole for 2 weeks on the latest functional language, but we need to find a balance. Trusting your engineers with some space to explore not only gives you more motivated engineers, but potentially a faster delivery in every sprint with what they find. Importantly as leaders we need to both be ensuring the delivery of the features of today as well as the product needs of tomorrow.
One of our responsibilities to our teams is to both sell and demonstrate this to the organisation showing where and how it is adding value. Your teams will thank you for it as will the business!
Having said CI/CD, cloud, IaC etc. didn't exist 20 years ago, I am sure someone will correct me. I stand firm with my belief that generally the trends towards these techs started later than that! Hopefully you are understanding the point I am making; that we need to be on the lookout for the next tech to deliver efficiencies in the software world.