Let me be direct: Please do not keep calling yourselves as engineering leaders if all you do is track velocity, chase SLAs, and manage escalations.
Somewhere along the way, many of us became:
- PPT
experts
- Excel
trackers
- Meeting
coordinators
- Escalation
managers
- Delivery
cops
- Talkietects
(only talk with buzz words, drawing boxes and flows on the board.. with No
Fundamental Technical Knowledge.. )
But not engineering leaders.
And the truth is uncomfortable: Velocity and SLA are lagging
indicators of good engineering. They tell you what happened, not why
it happened.
If we want real engineering excellence, we need to redefine
it, honestly.
Here is what today’s engineering excellence actually looks
like:
Excellence Is Not How Fast You Deliver. It’s How Reliably
You Deliver.
Velocity without quality = debt.
SLA without stability = firefighting.
Real engineering excellence = fewer incidents + predictable
releases + lower rework + cleaner architecture
If your team is fast but breaking production every month,
that is not excellence, that is reckless.
If You are Not Investing in Engineering Hygiene, means
You are Not Leading Engineering
Ask yourself: When was the last time you reviewed:
- CI/CD
health
- Deployment
reliability
- Code
review quality
- Observability
- Test
coverage
- Architecture
evolution
If your answer is “I don’t have time”, that is the problem.
Leadership drifted into operations.
Engineers don’t grow if leaders don’t push engineering
discipline.
Stop Measuring Output. Start Measuring Predictability.
Anyone can ship fast once. Excellence is the ability to ship
fast every time.
New metrics: Cycle time, MTTR, Deployment frequency, Change
failure rate, Rework percentage, Debt burn-down, Automation coverage
If these are not in your dashboard, you are not measuring
engineering.
Engineering Excellence Requires Saying "NO"
No to shortcuts, No to temporary work-arounds, No to “just
deploy it.” , No to timelines that ignore architecture.
If everything is “urgent,” then nothing is excellent.
Your team needs clarity and boundaries, not a Jira
checklist.
Leaders Must Be Technically Curious Again (and always)
You don’t need to code. But you must understand what
is possible.
If your engineers know more about modern patterns,
Ai-generated code workflows, testing automation, or cloud architecture than you
do, you can't challenge them, guide them, or protect them.
Leadership cannot be Excel-driven or PPT-driven in an
engineering-first world.
Engineering Excellence = Strong Foundations, Not Fancy
Features
The boring things matter:
- Logging
- Monitoring
- Alerts
- Modular
code
- Documentation
- Test
automation
- Versioning
If these are weak, everything else collapses, no matter how
many features you shipped.
Your Culture Is Either Engineering-First or
Escalation-First
Strong teams: review code seriously, invest in design
upfront, automate everything, document decisions, fix debt continuously.
Weak teams: chase tickets, patch problems, skip
tests, rush releases, fear deployment days
Engineering Culture is leadership’s responsibility, not the
team’s responsibility
Engineering Excellence Is a Leadership Discipline, Not a
Developer Skill
If leaders don’t champion:
- Good
architecture
- Clean
code
- Quality
gates
- Automation
- Reliability
- Security
- Technical
debt control
…then teams won’t either.
Engineering excellence is a top-down expectation.
Let’s Be Honest
We all slipped into operations mode at some point. But
staying there is not an option anymore.
If we want better engineering outcomes, happier teams, and
predictable delivery, then leaders, including me, including you, must return to
being engineering leaders, not spreadsheet managers.
This is the shift we must make. And it starts with us.....
Happy Holidays!!