Building a High Performing Engineering Team: What’s the Secret Sauce

In this episode of  Futurum Tech Webcast, Interview Series, I was thrilled to host Josh Teitelman, VP of Customer Experience at Allstacks and John Steinmetz, CTO of Convo Communications for a conversation about building a high performing engineering team, and what the secret sauce is that makes that goal a reality. First a little bit about Convo Communications. Convo, is a deaf-owned company that is all about connecting humans. And it’s safe to say that their understanding of human connection is quite a bit different than the norm. At Convo, they know that in a rapidly-advancing tech world, technology is often developed on the basis of spoken language. Convo offers a different perspective — and works with clients to ensure that universal communications that just feel right is the end deliverable. Allstacks is a leading predictive forecasting and risk management solution for software development. By leveraging AI and machine learning to integrate data across Product, PMO, Development, and QA teams, Allstacks can provide a comprehensive view of software initiatives throughout any organization. Aligning teams on outcomes that matter is what they’re most passionate about. Our conversation today revolved around: John spoke about leading an engineering team in a pandemic, both from a personal standpoint as it relates to Convo, as well as the impact on their customers; Some of the biggest challenges that organizations faced as they pivoted to WFH initiatives in order to keep employees safe; Josh talked a little about how Allstacks’ users responded to the pandemic and the challenges their team saw related to WFH initiatives; We discussed the importance of maintaining priority alignment and setting expectations within an engineering team, how difficult that can be, and some thoughts from the trenches on how to do that successfully; Tying engineering goals to overall business goals — and how to do that; As a final part of the conversation, both John and Josh shared some interesting customer use cases that really brought home for us the value of building high performing engineering teams, how to think about making that a reality within your organization, and how to think about the technology best suited to help you achieve those goals. In this conversation, it’s clear that Allstacks has played a significant role in helping Convo Communications reach their goals — and if building a high performing engineering team is on your radar screen, I can promise that it’s definitely a conversation worth checking out.