Strategizing for Success in Software Engineering

In software engineering, having a solid strategy is crucial for achieving success.

STRATEGIES ARE NOT GOALS

First of all, it’s important to understand that strategy is not the same as the goal itself. The goal is the end result that we want to achieve, while strategy is the approach we take to reach that goal.

Strategy is a set of cohesive hypotheses to reach an outcome. Each team, project, and company can have different strategies based on their specific outcomes.

A PRACTICAL EXAMPLE

For example, let’s focus on a strategy for an engineering goal. At Pinterest, last year, my group, the Shopping Experience Engineering org, was focused on enhancing the user experience to help users shop in the Pinterest app.

Our goal was to build user experiences that were perceived as reliable and responsive. Our strategy was to reduce the number of bugs and page load latency, as we believed that improving quality and performance were key to achieving this goal.

A STRATEGY SHOULD BE COHESIVE

A successful strategy should be cohesive, meaning that all its elements should work together to achieve the desired outcome. It’s important to have a clear understanding of the goal and to develop a set of coherent…