Whether you just raised a bunch of capital, closed a huge customer, or are expanding your global footprint, one thing all hyper-growth companies have in common is the need to scale their product and engineering organizations. But seamlessly transitioning from a small and scrappy team to a well-oiled enterprise-level organization doesn’t happen overnight. It takes strategic planning, ongoing communication, goal setting, and continued investment in team and company culture.
In this session, Nylas Co-Founder & CTO, Christine Spang will discuss the impacts and best practices for successfully scaling engineering teams. She’ll highlight how to think about priorities, metrics, and KPIs that align with the size and growth of your organization and business.
From the Desk of Nylas' Co-Founder and CTO From 2 to 200: Best Practices and KPIs for Hyper-Growth Technical Teams
1. From 2 to 200
Best Practices and KPIs for Hyper-Growth Technical Teams
Christine Spang
Co-Founder & CTO
Nylas
@spang
2. Software is Eating the World
Engineering teams are the ones building software
So how do I build a great engineering team?
3. Today We’ll Talk About
Building a great company and organizational culture
Importance of org structure and specialization
Goal setting and measuring success
11. Why is Org Structure Important?
Ideal team size: Between 4-10 people Engineering org structure affects
collaboration with go-to-market teams
12. Specialization
Who are specialists and when to bring them in?
-SDET
-PM
-SRE
-Data Engineers
Bridge the gap between highly technical implementation and
the needs of the customer
15. Goal Setting Example
Vision: Nylas is strong at delivering new features and value for our customers
Objective: Build a new cost effective and high-performance solution for enterprise
customers
Key Result: Increase our sync performance by 100x
Key Result: Scale the architecture and migrate 400k accounts
16. KPIs and Key Metrics
Revenue Impact: New revenue/adoption directly attributed to the project
Performance Impact: P90 latency across API endpoints, queue wait or execution times for async
tasks
Inbound Funnel Impact: Increase in sign ups, leads, decrease in conversion times
Reliability Impact: Increased uptime, change in support ticket volume, better resolution times
Cost Impact: Cost of build time, infrastructure spend, impact on sales velocity, customer adoption
18. Three Things I Can Bring Back to My Team
1. You need a strong culture to hire
and retain talent.
2. Communication breaks down
first when scaling. The right org
structure can help!
3. To stay aligned as you grow, set
clear goals using OKRs.
Inverted pyramid showcasing how it all starts with building a great team
Great leaders make a great team. They set the tone. They set the culture, the org structure, and they determine what success looks like.
Quote: Simon Sinek, author of Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action
Optimize culture to allow engineers to build cool things. Remove barriers and allow them to innovate
Engineers have leverage, but don’t confuse that with holding people accountable for their results
Quote: Simon Sinek, author of Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action
Startups can’t win on comp and benefits alone, own bigger pieces of what a company is doing, larger personal growth potential
Help people get a window into what it is like to work at your company and on that particular team
Communication breakdowns, information sharing, tribal knowledge when employees leave, lightweight processes