“Don’t confuse transparency with involvement”
I recently read a post on James Everingham, Head of Engineering at Instagram, on how he boosted transparency within their organisation.
This made me look at transparency from a different perspective. In the past,
I looked at ‘being transparent’ as being open, honest, aligning goals, expectations with business and individual needs. I never thought about
HOW to get there.
“You can have more decisions than decision-makers, but if you have more decision-makers than decisions, that’s when you run into problems.”
Decision-making
The root of most problems in the work place come from bad decisions or not having the right data to make informed decisions.
“Transparency is especially important as Engineering scales up in an organisation. Transparency is a persistent, thorny problem because we’re not all on the same page about what it even means.”
That statement alone blew my mind.
Everingham started to boost transparency by defining what their decision-making process looks like, and by making this his number one priority. He defines decision-making under the following:
the Who — who makes decisions
the How — how are decisions made
the Why — understanding and context
Everingham used two different models to frame this process — RACI and RAM models, and if you’re a Star Wars fan, they have the RACI model using a Star Wars analogy.
Bias often leads to bad decisions.
If you know that you have influence in a decision, and as a decision-maker, you should remove yourself from that decision.
What I really liked about this post is that it opened my eyes to a new dimension in transparency and decision-making within organisations. Not only that, it explained how Everingham went about doing this. In addition, he gives you the tools and understanding to do that yourself.
“Transparency is an admirable goal to strive for, but you have to set up the right processes to support it or it won’t become your reality. Technology and teams may change, but the need for people to understand what’s going on and feel bought in never does.”
I find this post important because the lack of role definition and responsibilities can be disruptive and inhibit transparency. This can lead to trust issues. Trust is such a simple thing and yet important within Organisations as its the foundation of so many good stuff in the working world. When people clearly understand what is expected from them, they are likely to excel within their role. If not, it becomes a ‘setup for failure’ and is detrimental to the business as well as the person. I’ve seen this happen far too many times and am trying to change that.
Software development should work alongside its processes. Know what your company vision is. Understand the problems. Align every, single decision to that vision. Your vision is your guiding light in decision-making. It’s a living entity — not just words. Show your vision in your decisions. In your actions. Every. Single. Day.
Here’s some high-level organizational principles Instagram’s engineering team came up with, as well as what they really mean on a practical level:
Move as fast as possible — Minimize dependencies so everyone can move quickly.
Build clear accountability with the fewest decision-makers — We need 1–1 mappings between product and engineering.
Write simple and clear KPIs — That means all groups need to have measures.
Scale to a much larger organization — That means all organizations should have roadmaps.
Maintain a very high-level of quality and craftsmanship — That means performance, stability and code should all have their own owners.
Live! your organization’s principles.
