Writing: An overlooked engineering leadership skill?

I think "yes", but I am biased

Image by Stable Diffusion

One of the most overlooked skills in an engineering leader, or any leader in my opinion, is their writing skills. I know I am biased, after all I enjoy writing, hence this newsletter. My biases aside, I do believe that writing clarifies one's thinking, allows for better synthesis of arguments and is a very powerful communication mode. There have been many occasions where writing has proven to be invaluable. None as valuable as alignment.

Alignment, or lack thereof, tends to be a very common challenge that emerges as a startup grows beyond the early halcyon days. The startups’ early days can afford to have impromptu modes of communication and alignment can be easily obtained by virtue of its small size. As the startup grows, communication must become more intentional, crisp and consistent, all of which can be satisfied by well written notes, emails and narratives. Obviously, written communication can, and should be, supplemented by other modes. But, more often than not, a well written note can work much better than a large meeting.  

In this short post, I will illustrate how written notes can help with alignment around one very common engineering activity: starting the development efforts of a new feature or product. I like this example as it illustrates the benefits of written communication throughout the life-cycle of developing a new feature and is obviously an activity that every engineering organization faces.

The “new project launch” memo

Funding a new feature or product is a big deal. It is a critical decision that has a lot of downstream effects on sales, marketing, finance and customers. All of these protagonists have their own opinions and agendas on what needs to be built, why and when. The burden of trying to balance the needs of all these stakeholders inevitably falls on the Product Managers through product and customer discovery and so on. 

The memo I am about to describe doesn’t cover the breadth or depth that a PM PRD document or its equivalent does. Rather, its intention is to broadly announce the commencement of the engineering efforts to build a feature/product. It’s a rallying memo.

Below are the three components I cover in these memos:

Why this feature/product matters: A succinct description of what the feature/product is. This should include a brief overview of the “job” this service does and its value to the end customers. Describing the “job” the feature fulfills helps illustrate its value and benefit to the end customer. Additionally, I almost always add a section on what the feature is not, which is a bit odd but I have found that describing both what it is and what it is not is a great way to set expectations. The “what it is not” tends to describe attributes of the feature/product that didn’t make the cut. 

Who is working on it: This is a great opportunity to introduce the team that is working on this new feature to the rest of the company. This introduction in turn drives ownership and pride within the team. It also offers a channel of communication to the team. 

When will it be available: This is the section that draws the most attention. I usually outline a rough estimate, with the promise of more updates as the team makes inroads on developing the feature/product. 

These “new project launch” memos should be shared with the entire company (depending on company size), but at a minimum must be shared with the R&D and GTM functions.

I mentioned earlier that the memo serves as a rallying call. It also crystalizes and clarifies what is being built, why and for whom beyond the R&D team. It therefore, helps drive alignment across a large audience spanning R&D, sales, marketing, support, finance and others.

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I started this post by stating that writing is one of the most underrated skills for an engineering leader. It is also one of the hardest to master. Writing is hard. It requires practice, courage, diligence, humility and much more. The benefits from becoming better at writing are plentiful, but none more important to me than the ability to clarify and crystalize my thinking.

“Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers.” Isaac Asimov

I often get asked how should one start writing, especially at work. My answer is to find those opportunities that can benefit from a well written memo, email or document. The ones that can galvanize and align a group of people are always great candidates. When you find those, sit down and try and craft a written narrative. And then do it again, and again and again :)