How To Do It Right The First Time: Engineering Standards And Procedures

Often, I am asked to show real-life examples of what is happening when we do Brilliance Mining. Even the processes, engineering standards and procedures we undertook to release it.

In this example, I am working with a company in the software space. It is critical to build new software such that it can be maintained later when it is in use. Also, partners must be able to implement and maintain it. As the team of a company grows, it becomes even more important that everyone on the team adheres to the same engineering standards and procedures.

How can you get that documented quickly and effectively? That is what I am showing you here.

Transcript

Greetings. Sometimes, people ask me, “Stephie, could you show us some real examples of what is happening when you do Brilliance Mining with others?”

Absolutely. I have shown some examples in the past, but this one is a little bit more “nerdy” than some of the other examples you may have seen. That is wonderful because it’s important. 

It’s an engineering scenario in the software space about standards and procedures. The idea is that when the company is going through the innovation process, the development process, they have to make sure that all the standards and procedures that they need for the product are maintainable and are considered from the beginning.

Here is why putting these standards and procedures is important.

• It’s about being a team and being cohesive.
• It’s important that the team can develop and support the products we build.
• Customers and partners need to be able to implement and support the products.

Thus, it is important to have a curated, carefully curated set of tools and technologies. 

When you put these kinds of things together, it is important that you show the whole thing at a glance.

An Overview Chart Helps You Develop AND The Recipients Of Your Training

When you do that,

1. It’s much easier for the people who get this information to see at a glance what’s coming, and that is very important for effective learning.
2. The other really important part is that you, as you develop these standards, can see the whole picture. You most likely will find that something is still missing.

I’m going to show you this. Here’s an overview of the standards and procedures. As we put this together, we initially had individual pages saying:

• Engineering Workflow: Agile Process
• Engineering Workflow: GitFlow
• …

You may not know what any of this means, but that’s okay. The point is only that we began to extract.

Then, after we had extracted some number of these, we started to put this chart together. That prompted us to think of more things. Next, we reordered some of the sections to give them a more logical flow. Finally, it became this. 

This work is not done yet. This overview may still change, but it has become a guide for developing this further.

That is what I wanted to show you today. Having a one-page overview will help both you as you’re developing it and the people who will be the recipients of your training, your Brilliance System, as I call it when it is done.

I’m Curious

• How does this nugget apply in your company or organization?
• Which standards and procedures need to be documented so your team can grow in a cohesive fashion?