This article will build on the prior discussion about building a high-performing technology organization. I recommend you read that article first to get level-set on the basic principles that we will discuss further here. To avoid making this a 30-min read, I will discuss a subset the technology tenets here and defer the remainder to another discussion:
- Always work backwards from business needs; do not do a single thing in technology before understanding how it will drive the business forward.
- Push responsibility down; avoid micro-management at all costs
- Enforce clear ownership and insist that every person know what they are responsible for, who depends on them and who they depend on.
- Trust but put in place verification processes that drive the team to question their assumptions and think through the entire problem rigorously
Today we will dive deep into these four (4) tenets.
[1] Working Backwards
This is in my opinion one of the most important tenets you can follow for your technology organization. Transparently I took this from Amazon, which is I think one of the primary reasons Amazon is such a successful company. It is easy to say and very hard to do. In a nutshell, the idea here is that every technology project must work…
