How to Achieve Predictable Software Delivery at Scale | Syngenta’s Jason Krohn

**Jason Krohn** (0:00)
By any objective measure of changes of code, if anything like this, one person looks 10, 15 times more productive than the other. But it doesn't mean that that's what's happening, right?
There is, until we come up with an objective measure of value delivered somehow, you know, there's no real way. And that's why we focus so heavily on teams, effectively, right? If anything, the value I find in the developer level metrics is where do we need more support.

**Conor Bronsdon** (0:28)
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Welcome back to Dev Interrupted, everyone. I'm your co-host Conor Bronsdon, and today we're joined by Jason Krohn. Jason is the global head of delivery and digital product engineering at Syngenta. Jason, welcome to Dev Interrupted. Hey, listeners, a quick heads up that we're taking a week off next week. So we won't be dropping a new episode on Tuesday, March 5th. Instead, season four will resume on March 12th.
Now, back to this week's episode.

**Jason Krohn** (1:35)
Thank you for having me.

**Conor Bronsdon** (1:36)
Absolutely. It's fantastic to have you on. We've known each other for a year or two now, and you've got over a decade of experience leading teams around the world. And you've also done that while scaling your teams around the world. That experience has given you a really well-rounded perspective, and I think you're ahead of where a lot of other organizations want to be, as far as their engineering metrics program, your culture impact, and how you approach it. So a couple of years ago, when we were having guests on the show, all I didn't want to talk about was that hyper-scaling piece. But you've had to do it efficiently. It's not growth at all costs anymore.
And you've really cared about culture throughout the entire process, about the experience your engineers are having, all while scaling from 150 to 400 developers.
And so what I want to talk about is how do you scale efficiently? Considering the complexities that you faced, how do you build and grow teams while ensuring people are empowered and autonomous? What's your approach?

**Jason Krohn** (2:26)
So it starts with the people themselves, right? You have to hire the right people, and then empower them with the things that they care about effectively, right?
As we started small, it was easy to do, right? You have a small team, a small team is attached to a product, they get a thing that they can directly care about.
It's very easy for them to feel engaged effectively, right? As your teams grow, though, you start to lose a lot of this, you start to bring in a little more of the enterprise, you start to bring in a little more of the friction to their work. Totally. And so, as we've scaled, we needed to change a few of those things around effectively, right?

**Conor Bronsdon** (3:05)
So, how do you identify what the right things are? What developers want, as you said?

**Jason Krohn** (3:10)
An important part of building and scaling a team for us, at least at Syngenta, is retention, right? So, we want to hire good people, we want to get out of their way, but then we want to keep them.
Your most impactful teams are the teams that have had people there for a while, who understand what's going on, who understand the complexities of what they're doing, who can then sit and partner with the business to really understand, hey, we have an opportunity, can we seize it? What does it take? How do we do it? What's the right way to go about it, right?

**Conor Bronsdon** (3:38)
So, they have the cultural context and kind of the depth of knowledge that you want to see to lead teams, frankly.

**Jason Krohn** (3:43)
And the system's knowledge, right? So, agriculture is very seasonal.
And so, when we come in with a market opportunity, the business side is going to want a thing done, right? That thing may not always be feasible. But if you have a team that deeply understands the product, the context of the business, the context of our user base, we can get to how can we achieve that value in the timeframe that we have effectively, right? Which may not be what is explicitly being asked for.