#24 Product & Engineering Wisdom
#24 Product & Engineering Wisdom
Tips, advice and insight on agile, product culture and onboarding developers.
A free fortnightly email that highlights the relevant tips, advice, and case studies from the world of product and engineering for the SEO community.
Hello new subscribers 👋,
For anyone new to this newsletter this is the fortnightly roundup of posts from the product and engineering community.
You can read more about the different newsletter types on the About page.
I also just want to say thank you to all the in-house SEOs who chatted to me about how they work with development, IT and product. I learned A LOT and enjoyed the sessions :). So many smart people in the industry.
From these conversations, notes and qualitative data analysis, I’m now starting to work on the SEO Product Ownership course which I will send more information about a beta cohort in the next few months.
Stay safe and enjoy,
Adam
⚡Post of the Sprint
📖 Agile Delivery: Theory vs Practice - UK Gov
Reading Time: 55 mins
Summary: In this podcast, the UK Government Digital With Purpose (DWP) team discuss the theory of agile vs reality.
The Bottom Line
If you’re hearing the word agile being through around your office or in your organisation this is a great podcast that really gets into “What is Agile"?”.
I really enjoyed this in-depth podcast because senior DWP leaders discuss agile in both government and private sector organisations. They discuss the reality of teams moving to the “agile mindset” in large organisations and provide tips on practicing agile delivery.
I’d recommend listening to this if you want to know “What actually is agile?”.
✨Product
📟 Organizational Dysfunction in Product - Farfetch
Reading Time: 19 mins
Summary: Ken Chin, Director of Product at Farfetch, explains why dysfunction is a problem within organisations whose culture is not a good fit for product teams.
The Bottom Line
The Director of Product at Farfetch who goes through the unintended consequences of strategic alignment and the dysfunction that arises.
In this webinar Ken goes through:
Goal settings (OKRs)
Planning (Alignment)
Strategy (Prioritisation)
This is a great webinar for anyone who is in a SEO/Product team who are trying to change the culture of an organisation will find what Ken discusses very useful.
⚙️Engineering
💻 Ultimate Guide to Onboarding Software Engineers
Reading Time: 14 mins
Summary: A in-depth guide on how to onboard software engineers.
The Bottom Line
This very detailed guide isn’t going to be for everyone.
However, for those who want to get a better understanding of what it is like to be a developer, this is a great post to get stuck into.
I particularly like the 30, 60 ,90 and 150 day phases of onboarding a developer, as it clearly breaks down what they should be learning in an organisation.
I would recommend reading if you’re a technical SEO or SEO PM who wants to learn more about “What a developer does?”.
This Hacker News thread is also useful, where developers give examples of their onboarding experiences.
✅ Search Journey Towards Better Experimentation Practices
Reading Time: 15 mins
Summary: The Spotify Search team discuss the key drivers of their success in creating better experimentation and testing practices.
The Bottom Line
A great blog post on how a team like Spotify have created a culture of experimentation within their Search team.
In this blog post they discuss the following key drivers to build experimentation engine:
Roadmap
Individual experiment quality
Cross-experiments quality
Measure total business impact
Driven Teams
Committed teams
Maintaining momentum
I recommend reading this if you’re creating your own experimentation culture in a SEO team.
Other relevant articles:
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