In Staff Engineer, I argued that writing an engineering strategies is like being a historian: look at how things are already working, write them down, and share what you’ve written:
To write an engineering strategy, write five design documents, and pull the similarities out. That’s your engineering strategy. To write an engineering vision, write five engineering strategies, and forecast their implications two years into the future. That’s your engineering vision.
This remains, in my opinion, the most effective way to write useful engineering strategies as a Staff-plus engineer. That’s because enforcing strategy is the biggest challenge for Staff-plus engineers driving strategy work, and this approach collects well-documented precedents to build consensus around. That consensus is the basis for enforcing the strategy going forward.
Writing an engineering strategy.
from Irrational Exuberance
