Tech Team Leaders’ Guide to Strategy

Building a tech strategy is a core responsibility of the CTO, VP of Engineering, or Head of Engineering. Involving team leaders in this process ensures a more grounded and effective approach.

Tech team leaders play a crucial role by defining roadmaps for their teams, which, in turn, provide the foundation for an effective high-level strategy. To achieve the best results, continuous collaboration between leadership and team leaders is essential.

Let’s explore how to create a roadmap that is both practical and aligned with the company’s overall vision.

Building an Effective Team Roadmap

A team roadmap is a strategic document that outlines product needs, infrastructure requirements, modernization efforts, and compliance and security considerations, among other critical aspects.

An effective roadmap goes beyond listing high-level initiatives or goals. It expands on each goal using the Diagnosis, Policy, and Actions framework, helping to answer the Why, What, and How of every initiative. This approach fosters trust, alignment, and transparency with top-level leadership.

The Diagnosis, Policy, and Actions framework, developed by Richard Rumelt, consists of:

• Diagnosis – Defining the problem that needs to be addressed
• Policy – Establishing guiding principles and constraints for the solution
• Actions – Defining concrete steps to implement the solution within the given policy

Let’s explore a few examples.

Example 1: Modernizing the Infrastructure

Diagnosis: Our current infrastructure relies on outdated and proprietary components, leading to scalability challenges, high maintenance costs, and slow adoption of new technologies.

Policy: Prioritize open-source and cloud-native solutions for new developments. Maintain legacy systems where necessary but avoid further expansion of proprietary technologies.

Actions:

1. Identify and replace critical proprietary components with open-source or cloud-native alternatives.
2. Standardize infrastructure automation and provisioning to improve scalability and maintainability.
3. Update internal documentation and on-boarding materials to reflect new infrastructure standards.

Example 2: Upgrade the Database

Diagnosis: The current database version has reached end-of-life and is no longer receiving security updates or feature enhancements. An upgrade is necessary to maintain security, stability, and performance.

Policy: The database upgrade must be performed with zero downtime to avoid service disruptions.

Actions:

1. Test new database version in the QA environment to ensure compatibility
2. Create a full backup of the existing database.
3. Implement a Blue-Green deployment strategy to minimize risk during the upgrade.
4. Communicate the upgrade plan and schedule a rollout window.

Example 3: Improve Cloud Cost Efficiency

Diagnosis: Cloud expenses represent a significant portion of overall costs. Unused or underutilized resources contribute to unnecessary costs.

Policy: Optimize cloud usage by right-sizing instances, using auto-scaling, and enforcing cost-control policies.

Actions:

1. Conduct an audit of cloud resources to identify inefficiencies.
2. Implement auto-scaling policies for workloads with variable demand.
3. Use reserved or spot instances for predictable workloads.
4. Set up monitoring and alerts for unexpected cost spikes.

Conclusion

1. Structuring your team’s roadmap using the Diagnosis, Policy, and Actions framework ensures clear prioritization and alignment with the company’s overall strategy.
2. This approach facilitates productive discussions with top-level leadership, leading to better decision-making.
3. It improves transparency, trust and accountability across all levels of the organization.

Have you faced challenges when implementing a strategic roadmap? How did you overcome them? Drop a comment below and let’s learn from each other!