Labs: Setting Engineering Goals and Reporting to Stakeholders

**Yishai Beeri** (0:00)
We need to remember that less is more, so don't come with 50 numbers.
It's not gonna work for the business discussion. Focus on what really matters, and always show how that aligns with the business. So if you're talking about predictability, yeah, this project is landing on time, or 90% of it is landing on time, and here's why, and here's the choices that I've made. That was when you start overcoming those glazed eyes of, oh, some numbers on something that I don't understand. You're seeing success when you get, people are asking you to drill down. They're asking you smart questions about the data that you're showing.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:37)
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Through Gartner's in-depth analysis on the critical features of SEI platforms and how they can be used to drive engineering excellence, LinearB was named as a representative vendor, and therefore we're giving away a complimentary copy of Gartner's SEI Market Guide. Head to the link in the show notes to download your complimentary copy and learn how you can unlock the transformative potential of software engineering intelligence for your team.

**Dan Lines** (1:11)
Hey, what's up, everyone? Welcome to another Labs episode of Dev Interrupted. I'm your host, Dan Lines, LinearB COO and co-founder, and in our Labs episodes, we dive deep into data and best practices that we find. And today, we're talking engineering goals and reporting. So what we're gonna do, we're gonna unpack the data and strategies that elite engineering organizations use to set goals that drive predictable software delivery.
And also how you can report on your progress to senior leadership. Very, very important thing to do.
And I'm joined by a voice who will be, I think, very familiar to many of our listeners, an expert who has helped countless organizations use goal setting to drive engineering improvement, LinearB's own CTO, Yishai Beeri. Yishai, welcome to the pod.

**Yishai Beeri** (2:17)
Thanks, Dan, great being here.

**Dan Lines** (2:19)
Awesome to have you on, brother. We're going to dive right in.
Our first topic in general is around goal setting and the dual mandate.
I know our listeners are likely aware of the meanings of some of these acronyms that we're going to use here. There's a bunch of them. But I think they're crucial to the topic we're about to discuss. And so just to make sure we're aligned, I want to quickly maybe recap some of this terminology. So we'll probably talk OKRs.
So OKRs, Objectives and Key Results.
KPIs, Key Performance Indicators. These are like the most business-oriented acronyms ever. Then we have SMART goals, S-M-A-R-T, which are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-Bound goals.
So those might be some of the things that, you know, some of the acronyms that we use. Now, one of the key things we've noticed in goal setting for engineering teams is a shift in what goals need to look like. So engineering leaders today have a dual mandate of both expected to be elite in operational excellence. So when we think of operational excellence, I almost think of this as like maybe where engineering teams started. It's like, to deliver the stuff in high quality really fast, do your engineering thing. We've been doing this, I don't know, 50 years now, 30 years now, ever since I was doing engineering. That's operational excellence, like be really good at engineering stuff. But the other side of it, and I think this is newer, I know it's newer and I know the best engineering leaders talk to me about it all the time. A lot of our customers are doing this. It's alignment with business priorities. That's the second part of the dual mandate. And I think the reason is most organization has recognized, okay, our engineering team is like the lifeblood of the company. There's a product that goes along with it. We sell that product, maybe it's a SaaS product. And if we're aligned on business objectives, we make more money. I think that's where it's coming from, and that's the other side of it. So, I'm going to, that's kind of setting the table. So, Yishai, how has that dual mandate impacted how R&D leaders need to think about goal setting?

**Yishai Beeri** (4:42)
Yeah, so, definitely a shift, like you said. If you go back, you know, when I started working in engineering management and leadership, there was always the focus of, are we running a tight ship? Are we getting the most out of our developers in that spend? Are we effective in translating the cost of having a dev team into new features? Velocity is a very old word in engineering management.