--- title: "How to Build Trust with Engineering Teams | Team productivity audit" description: "In engineering management, my vision is to create a productive software delivery environment that developers are proud to work in, with a focus on tangible…" url: "https://www.marian.coach/blog/how-to-build-trust-with-engineering-teams/" lang: "en" image: "https://www.marian.coach/images/blog-covers/how-to-build-trust-with-engineering-teams.webp" --- ![Marian mentoring an engineering leader one on one](https://www.marian.coach/images/blog-covers/how-to-build-trust-with-engineering-teams.webp) In engineering management, my vision is to create a **productive software delivery environment that developers are proud to work in**, with a focus on tangible outcomes across the company. It’s a system with the proper guidelines and the right level of automation, so standard development work gets done seamlessly. That’s why, in the engineering department, we built real-time **team health boards**. It gave us back some precious time to focus on systematic process improvements. To fulfill such ambitions, the standard set of **predefined method** _(Scrum, for example)_ and the ticketing system **won’t do the trick** out-of-the-box. ## Measure What Matters Most: Roadmap Focus The problem I struggle with most is the gap between software development ticketing tools and product management solutions. Via engineering ticketing applications, we are told the [top efficiency factors](https://www.marian.coach/blog/better-than-dora-metrics-team-productivity/) to look at are lead time, throughput, and their derivatives. It seems to me that these type of default indicators divert software companies from measuring what matters most: **focus on outcome,** represented by the roadmap. Other metrics are secondary. In practice, low lead time and high throughput don’t build trust when the roadmap gets delayed. ## Health Board Indicators To visualize engineering outcomes and keep focus, we decided to build a fully transparent health board with the following insights: ![Mews R and D health board: 48% invested into roadmap, 29 items completed per two weeks, 2.2-day average cycle time](https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1400/0*E85HGxuUzX6j0cMm.png)[Mews](https://www.mews.com/) Software Development Health board, applicable to the whole department or filtered to specific teams 1. **What is our roadmap contribution** % in the last 30 days? Do we plan well? Our expected guardrails are in the range of **50%-70%**, depending on the product’s life cycle stage. Typically, startup products have a higher roadmap focus due to the low volume of support and maintenance work. 2. What type of work distribution do teams have-bugs, cleanup, support, investigation? What work prevents the team from contributing to the roadmap? **How much do we invest in tech debt/consolidation?** To mitigate tech debt and potential bugs, we invest in **features and consolidation in a 2:1 ratio**. ![Work-mix dashboard: 76% of last 30 days went to on-roadmap features, roadmap contribution at 39%](https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1400/0*P3QQnXLW7zT9AQyw.png)Features and Tech Roadmaps balance 3\. What’s the roadmap status? How many different initiatives _(epics)_ does the team work on in parallel? To significantly reduce context-switching costs, we keep the number of parallel **main initiatives to 1 or 2**, depending on team size. ![Roadmap execution chart per squad, each epic split into ticket states from consideration to fixed](https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1400/0*CwVxMTRhaH-O2run.png)Roadmap Epics: Execution status 4\. How much do we **invest in which products**? Such insights allow us to steer our workforce properly. ![Mews product dashboard: investment per product over time, 61% of issues into roadmap, 2.2:1 feature-to-consolidation ratio](https://www.marian.coach/images/blog-archive/2023/08/image-4.png)Products investment timeline After the questions above were answered properly, we extended our health boards with standard indicators such as throughput, lead and cycle time, ad-hocs and long-lasting outlier occurrence, pull-request frequency, and code review duration. On top of the metrics, we’re on the way to shipping notifications when situations go off-track _(long-lasting ticket stages, approaching deadlines, proposals fit for the sprint planning, waste elimination)_. In essence, our goal is to mitigate firefighting situations, which are typically hard and time-consuming to resolve. ## Build the Real-Time Health Boards in 3 Months ![Architecture sketch: ticketing tool to a Node extractor, Azure Blob and pipelines, then Power BI web and mobile](https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1400/0*k_OYUnQIocKKpIzW.png)Data flow architecture In a nutshell, a simple node.js service extracts all the ticketing data and respective changelogs from YouTrack via REST API calls. The output is then uploaded in the form of a csv file to Azure Storage. Next, the data factory enriches the attributes _(ticket fields)_ with corresponding data types and creates the data table model based on our ticketing hierarchy. In [Power BI Desktop](https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/desktop/) we’re able to design desirable reports and publish them to Power BI Cloud. As a result, all the dashboards are refreshed automatically and accessible on the web or [mobile](https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/mobile/) app. We built the boards end-to-end in the following steps: ## Step 1: Create the Ticketing Structure ![Hand-drawn ticketing hierarchy: topic feeds epics, epics feed tasks, tasks feed team-internal subtasks](https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1400/0*L6gsqcEObduLPQDn.png)Tickets hierarchy Internally, we made the decision to represent product **roadmap** initiatives in the hierarchical form of **topics, epics, tasks, and subtasks**, right in the ticketing system. For such purpose, thanks to quick change management, we adjusted the ticketing structure in YouTrack within a month. The alternative is to have an existing integration with any of the product management solutions. ## Step 2: Extract the data The next stage was to spend a month building a small node.js service, responsible for extracting real-time ticketing information and then feeding analytics data pipelines. The good news is that most of the ticketing solutions offer reliable access to data via [REST API](https://www.jetbrains.com/help/youtrack/standalone/resource-api-issues.html), including [history changes](https://www.jetbrains.com/help/youtrack/standalone/resource-api-activities.html#ActivityItem-supported-fields). ## Step 3: Use the Right Reporting Tool Nowadays, analytics tools _(like_ [_Power BI_](https://powerbi.microsoft.com/) _or_ [_Tableau_](https://www.tableau.com/) _)_ are fairly user-friendly and simple to use once a person understands their principles and how to **digest and visualize the data** they provide in the best possible form. It was extremely helpful to start gathering knowledge right away from the [Power BI Desktop video channel](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=%23PowerBIDesktop) and [PowerBI.tips](https://powerbi.tips/). Still, we got the dashboards working in a month, thanks to people having software development backgrounds. ## Practical outcomes I admit we’re still at the beginning of our mission, although the outcome is tangible. Engineers and product managers have asked to improve the reports in various ways, along with additional adjustments of the ticket structure. We’re learning to use the reports on a daily basis and trust the data. I firmly believe clean data insights greatly increase the probability of investing in the right improvements and making the right decisions. ![Marian Kamenistak in a leadership workshop, in front of a slide titled "Top 3 dangers — Why we haven't delivered the roadmap this quarter."](https://www.marian.coach/_astro/talk-01.BK9BNN9P_Z1Q1Q8u.webp) Naming the top delivery dangers out loud is what makes a health board credible. In practice, engineering health boards and reports have helped us in many ways: - We made sure to plan sprints according to expectations, focusing mainly on **roadmap contribution** and eliminating other types of work. - We put the cap on the **number of high-level initiatives** the team can work on in parallel. - We reduced **unplanned ad-hocs** which disrupted the development process. Most importantly, **software engineering is perceived as highly transparent**. Everyone in the company has access to the development team’s health board, roadmap progression, and product investment, which creates trust. ## Lessons learned > Stakeholders used to say, based on feature delays, that “ **Engineers can’t estimate”**. As a software manager, you’re asked to “ **Make better estimates**”. In practice, I’ve learned that [estimates are not the core issue](https://www.marian.coach/blog/dont-let-yourself-be-held-hostage-by-estimates/). [https://cdn.embedly.com/widgets/media.html?src=https%3A%2F%2Fgiphy.com%2Fembed%2FR7m04yMaGWVeE%2Ftwitter%2Fiframe&display\\\_name=Giphy&url=https%3A%2F%2Fmedia.giphy.com%2Fmedia%2FR7m04yMaGWVeE%2Fgiphy.gif&image=https%3A%2F%2Fi.giphy.com%2Fmedia%2FR7m04yMaGWVeE%2Fgiphy.gif&key=a19fcc184b9711e1b4764040d3dc5c07&type=text%2Fhtml&schema=giphy](https://cdn.embedly.com/widgets/media.html?src=https%3A%2F%2Fgiphy.com%2Fembed%2FR7m04yMaGWVeE%2Ftwitter%2Fiframe&display%5C_name=Giphy&url=https%3A%2F%2Fmedia.giphy.com%2Fmedia%2FR7m04yMaGWVeE%2Fgiphy.gif&image=https%3A%2F%2Fi.giphy.com%2Fmedia%2FR7m04yMaGWVeE%2Fgiphy.gif&key=a19fcc184b9711e1b4764040d3dc5c07&type=text%2Fhtml&schema=giphy) 1. Focus on roadmap contribution to make teams succeed. Default ticketing tool metrics are secondary. 2. Clean up the system. Measure the different types of work teams work on. Clean massive backlogs. Decrease context-switching and the occurrence of ad-hocs. Ensure engineers can keep the focus. 3. As a change agent, if you decide to advance the structure of the company ticketing system, ask for a mandate to avoid potential push-backs. 4. To make the reports reliable, take into account that you’ll invest an additional month into **data cleanup**. 5. When building transparent dashboards, get ready to explain why and where it will help. Transparency isn’t meant to bully anyone-it’s here to make the right improvements and prevent firefighting situations. 6. Avoid reports comparing individuals. 7. Don’t aim to build the perfect development process. Instead, create a system that can handle 80% of issues seamlessly in the flow. Lead by example and teach others how to resolve the rest on demand. ![Marian Kamenistak mid-talk with a bulleted slide projected behind him.](https://www.marian.coach/_astro/speaker-05.D2k3JWKF_12k7rf.webp) Presenting the same health board logic to a room of engineering leaders. For a long time, I was looking to find [the right style of management](https://www.marian.coach/engineering-manager-mentor/) to suit the most engineers. I went through a ton of books offering different strategies. Simply put, the conclusion I came to is that data [**insight combined with empathy**](https://hbr.org/2020/06/the-best-managers-balance-analytical-and-emotional-intelligence) is the unbeatable way to manage both developers and feature delivery in the best possible manner. Team productivity audit ## Get sprint completion from 50% to 80%. In 3 months, or the money is on me. 3-month engagement, fixed scope, fixed price. Worth ~11M CZK/year for a 60-person org. [Request an audit brainstorm →](https://www.marian.coach/engineering-teams-productivity-audit/) ## Read next - [ ### VP of Engineering @ Mews - A look back on my 1st year Life is fun! Joining a new company in April 2020 couldn’t have been easier: The Prague HQ office got closed due to the virus whose name we shall not mentio… 30 June 2021 · By Marian Read → ](https://www.marian.coach/blog/vp-of-engineering-mews-a-look-back-on-my-1st-year/) - [ ### Hiring A Software Engineering Manager? 10 Interview Questions to Help You Make the Right Bet. How do I onboard an Engineering/Tech Manager ace ♣️ in just 3 months? Do this: 1️⃣ Decide how much of Technical/Delivery, Leadership and Process scope you… 16 February 2024 · By Marian Read → ](https://www.marian.coach/blog/10-interview-questions-to-hire-the-right-engineering-manager/) - [ ### 9 Solid Tips To Grow Your Team’s Talent in a Year “I have no time to grow my teammates. We have to deliver.” 9 practical moves to grow your team's talent in a year without dropping delivery. 15 March 2023 · By Marian Read → ](https://www.marian.coach/blog/9-solid-tips-to-grow-your-teams-talent-in-a-year/) ### New posts, straight to your inbox. Your emailSubscribe You're on it. Nothing hits your inbox today. First send goes out once the list is live, and you're already on it. 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