How to Achieve Predictable Software Delivery at Scale | Syngenta’s Jason Krohn
Plus the 4 day work week, ruining developer happiness, being opinionated, and more.
On this week’s episode, host Conor Bronsdon is joined by Jason Krohn, Global Head of Delivery at Syngenta. Jason delves into how his teams at Syngenta leverage software engineering intelligence to achieve predictable delivery at scale.
Jason also explores how aligning work with employees' passions contributes to success and retention at Syngenta. He discusses the challenges and solutions in implementing efficient DevOps processes and ensuring organizational buy-in for the vision. Additionally, Jason highlights the importance of empowering teams with autonomy and providing the necessary tools for proactive decision-making.
Whether you're leading a small team or managing an enterprise, Jason's insights offer valuable lessons on driving efficiency, scaling effectively, and fostering a culture of continuous improvement.
“We focus on three things in the metrics. Are we working efficiently? Are we working effectively? And are we working safely?
All that efficiency doesn't matter if we're not capturing value in the market.”
Episode Highlights:
1:46 Scaling teams that are empowered and autonomous
4:01: The four pillars for retaining talent in tech teams
12:51 Tackling organizational change
18:41 Using metrics to achieve predictable delivery
21:45 Why your engineering teams' need to care about metrics, not just be compliant
26:20 Addressing production delays and DevOps integration
28:55 Leadership's role in communicating the 'why’
33:05 The importance of coaching when mentoring
The Download
The Download is engineering leadership content we’re reading, watching, and attending that we think you might find valuable.
1. How to scale yourself
Nobody gets more time. You can increase your leverage—adding people to your team, hiring others to take on tasks for you, using new technology, etc.
But nobody escapes the immutable law of just 24 hours in a day. So you’d better make the most of it, and Ryan Peterman of The Developing Dev has a practical guide to magnifying your impact without adding hours to your workday. Ideal for engineers aspiring to reach Staff levels and beyond, this article provides actionable strategies to elevate your professional trajectory by working smarter, not harder.
2. 4 days > 5 days
But what if you decide to have even less working time in a week?
Tighten has done just that, leveraging a four-day workweek to outperform traditional models, ensuring developers are more productive and engaged through dedicated personal growth time. In doing so, they’ve reduced burnout while elevating the quality and efficiency of their software development. With more than 53% of managers saying they’re burnt out, it’s worth considering if the 4 day work week could be the right fit for your org.
Read: How Tighten Helps Their Devs Get More Done in 4 Days Than Most Do in 5
🎯 What do you think: should dev teams try a 4-day work week?
3. Why you should have an opinion
If you’re not sharing personal views during team discussions, you may be inhibiting decision-making and your own career growth.
Gregor Ojstersek+Abhinav Yadav make the case in Engineering Leadership for the importance of forming and sharing opinions to improve team decision-making in dev teams + outline strategies for articulating opinions, testing them, and much more.
The Engineering Leader's Guide to Predictable Project Delivery (Sponsor)
The industry average for planning accuracy is <50%. That means R&D leaders are wrong more than they’re right–leading to missed deadlines, unkept promises, and tough conversations with executive stakeholders.
Download this step-by-step guide to learn how to use engineering metrics, resource allocation telemetry, and workflow automation to identify project risk early and ensure your team delivers projects on time, within scope, as promised.
4. 10 ways to destroy developer happiness
Nothing hurts productivity like bad management. Yet if you haven’t made one of these mistakes yourself, you’ve certainly worked for a team that has. It’s easy to fall prey to one of these common missteps and damage the health of your team, instead of enhancing your impact and happiness.
Read: 10 ways to destroy developer happiness
Appreciate the mention!