How to Build an Engineering Culture That Focuses on Business Impact

What is the work you're doing today?

I am head of engineering and co-site lead for Intercom London. In collaboration with my product partner, I’m responsible for the programs of work and teams in London. We are one of the three global product and engineering offices at Intercom and closely collaborate with our peers in Dublin and San Francisco. Intercom’s mission is making internet business personal through enabling better relationships with customers. In London, we are focused on evolving how our customers can provide great support to their users through both delightful and efficient agent and automated solutions.

What are the goals you have for the talk?

Over the years, running different engineering organisations, I’ve learnt that to build a healthy and effective engineering organisation, in addition to technical expertise, you need clear values and principles, effective processes and a clear understanding of your customers’ needs and the goals of your company. During this talk, I’ll explain how we’ve embedded all those in our day to day to quickly build a high performing site responsible for critical aspects of our products and our strategy. My goal is demonstrating that intentionally focusing on aspects of our work other than writing code and architecting systems can maximise the velocity and impact of your organisation and improve your outputs and outcomes. 

What would you want people to leave the talk with?

Specific techniques they can implement at their work to create a fast-moving engineering organisation that is fully aligned with company goals and is delivering clear and increasing value to the business and customers while maintaining high employee engagement. These ideas will be applicable to both leaders of an organisation that want to improve how their group operates but also to individuals looking to have the biggest impact and opportunities of growth in their role.