Session

It's not easy managing a team of engineers. We manage work volume, timelines, and budgets, in addition to the engineering process itself. In a perfect world, we would create a series of technical processes and toolsets that supports a team of happy and productive engineers. However, even in this perfect world we need critical insight into the creative processes of our developers. Sometimes, what makes developers the most efficient isn't what makes them happy. And what makes them happy might be against a new business mandate. As a result, we often end up with systems that are a poor fit for both the business and the engineering teams.

At our agency, we've begun standardizing our technical workflow. We strive to support both the business needs and help our engineers work efficiently. The workflow we have minimizes context-switching costs as engineers move between projects. It helps us streamline deploy protocols for various client sites. To get here, we had to ask ourselves some tough questions. What is the tangible ROI of a consistent local development and deployment workflow? What does this process it look like? How do you manage change working alongside a technically savvy and opinionated workforce?

In this session, we will discuss how we at Kanopi Studios have approached this issue. We'll highlight the benefits and challenges we’ve experienced on our journey. This session will explain why technical standardization is good for your business. We'll discuss the process, the wins (and losses) and next steps once we've ingrained basic standardization. This session will help you avoid some of the common mistakes that engineering managers can make, and ultimately, will help you and your engineering teams be happier and more productive.

Attendees of this session will learn:

• Basic steps to implementing a standardized technical workflow
• Common pitfalls of technical standardization
• Highest-ROI areas to standardize
• Tips to help engineers stay productive and engaged through the standardization process