Engage software engineers to build your vision (for non-technical managers and founders) with Chris Iona, Former VP Engineering Hipages

EXCLUSIVE WORKSHOP LIMITED TO 12 PARTICIPANTS 

Course Overview

Engineers are different. This course decodes what makes engineers tick and how a non-technical manager can identify and recruit great talent, understand and question key technical decisions, foster a transparent collaborative culture and lead a productive motivated team.

You will develop:

• Knowledge of where to source engineering talent and the ability to employ various forms of recruitment tests to select the right candidates for your project.
• Structures and processes to balance speed versus quality, and lead a productive and motivated team.
• An understanding of the common technical architectures, so that you can better follow conversation and anticipate scale issues down the road.
• An understanding of how to remunerate engineers; what to pay, how engineers value equity and how you can compete with higher profile companies to attract talent.
• The ability to communicate with engineers in their language, what questions to ask when, and how to measure success.
• A plan to advance the abilities and culture of your engineering team.  Learn when to promote star performers and how to scale an engineering team.

This workshop is suitable for:

• Non–technical Entrepreneurs and executives looking to build, scale or improve the productivity of their engineering team.
• Product and Project managers who want to improve their ability to collaborate and motivate their engineering colleagues.
• Investors looking to assess the ability, structure and productivity of engineering teams for due diligence or in investee companies.

About the expert:

Chris Iona is the Founder of Future Pass, and has spent the past 14 years building, leading and scaling some of Australia’s best startups.  His most recent role was VP of Engineering at Hipages, which saw him grow the team from 5 to 30, transforming the technology stack and tech culture to leverage cloud and modern practices.  This led to a significant increase in service availability, deployments and velocity. Prior to that, Chris was an Engineering Director at Bigcommerce, and in that time helped grow the team through fast and strong growth. In 2014, Chris was listed on AIM’s 30–under-30 list for excellence in Management.  He regularly presents at CTO Summits and conferences.

Syllabus

Module 1 — Fundamentals of Growth, Scale, Tech and Product

• Discover the power of starting, and ending, with the “why” to get better outcomes
• Understand the 4–stages of growth, and plot your organisation’s journey and future
• Understand how scaling needs change as your organisation moves through each stage of growth, across tech and product
• Breakdown the myths of “change” and discover how to manage it with your Tech team
• Discover how to align technical and organisational changes and strategies
• Discover and navigate the competing gravities of growth and operations • Discover how to teach your tech team to think strategically
• Learn to speak, think and empathise with your tech team
• Harness the power of the technology adoption life cycle to understand, to frame and make overall better decisions

Module 2 — Building People, Teams and Culture

• Understand the typical roles in technology, what to expect from them, and typical pay bands
• Breakdown and define typical tech personalities and behaviours, and discuss how to get the best out of them
• Discover when you should go cross functional team or tech functional team
• Lean to create and articulate a motivational environment for win–win outcomes
• Define the right technical culture for your organisation
• Discover how to recruit, interview and onboard great talent
• Better understand hiring in–house, remote or outsourced engineers
• Learn how to build and empower your star performers
• Learn how to take your people and teams along for the journey, as your company grows
• Discover which tech team structure is right for you today, tomorrow and in the future

Module 3 — Scaling your Tech, Product and Process

• The evolution of the tech stack, from startup to enterprise
• How to make the “least wrong” technical decisions as you grow
• Better understanding technical debt, and how to gain business buy in
• Understand some of the common hurdles in architectural design
• The pros and cons of microservices, and why it’s important
• The active role of technology in product management
• Unpacking Agile, Scrum, Kanban, Lean and MVP to create the right process for your teams
• How to better align, define and deliver “value” across product and technology
• How to create a culture of setting meaningful goals

Module 4 — Align, Define and Measure Success

• Breakdown the 3 types of value and use them to balance your tech roadmaps
• Learn how to create a common organisational language between technical and non–technical people to reduce assumptions and improve expectations
• Understand “Objectives by Key Results” (OKRs), the organisational methodology used by Google, Intel, Twitter, LinkedIn, Zynga amongst others
• Discover how to make the most of company, product and tech roadmaps to define and successfully deliver on expectations
• Discuss the importance of celebrating successes, reviewing failures and creating feedback loops
• How to use activities like hackathons to “engage everyone” and build a culture of innovation across your organisation
• Dissect and apply the ‘ol adage — time vs quality and cost vs scope

Workshop logistics:

This workshop is one day and is limited to twelve participants, enabling us to focus on your challenges and objectives. Chris delivers the course in person, weaving in real-life examples from his time at Hipages and Big Commerce. Participants will have the opportunity to ask questions by email in the week leading up to the workshop and Chris will personalize the content and exercises to address everyone’s goals. At the end of the course you will walk away with new skills and a clear plan that you will be able to implement immediately. This workshop is held in an awesome boardroom in the Sydney CBD and runs from 9 am– 5.30 pm with short breaks. Lunch, morning and afternoon tea is provided.

NOTE: Tickets are limited to 12 and will sell out. Register to reserve your place. Please contact rebekah@zambesi.com for further information.