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What Is an Engineering Culture? 

06 Mar, 2023
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Engineering culture is an inclusive and safe organizational culture that fosters talent and is driven by sharing and equality to achieve the impossible.  

Unicorns, like Microsoft and Google, gave us the example: make knowledge sharing a prominent part of your organization and refresh your leadership style. Shaking up their culture has enabled them and many pioneering product companies to thrive.  

Engineering culture is gaining momentum because it offers solutions to some of today’s biggest pain points: slow software delivery, poor process, and product quality, and talent shortage.  

Engineering culture has been around for a while. So, in that sense, it’s not a super innovative trend. However, it’s always been quite a technical endeavor and we believe that’s about to change,” says Marcel de Vries, CEO of Xpirit. “Because, as we see it, organizations are increasingly looking for ways to improve operational practices. In other words, learn how to embrace engineering, work in value streams, and improve knowledge sharing.

 

Engineering Culture on The Rise 

Engineering culture emerged as a natural reaction to digital transformation. It makes sense that the initial focus was on becoming a digital company. But with the tech side of this change in place, a growing number of companies now wonder how to go about the human aspects. After all, your people are the ones who really anchor the transformation.  

Secondly, the same digital efforts are turning companies into IT companies whose main priority is to deliver software.

Migrating to Azure Cloud, implementing DevOps, and working Agile will turn the way you work upside down. Engineering culture captures these elements, helps you get a grip on change, and succeed as a digital newbie,” says De Vries. 

 

How Do You Build an Engineering Culture?

We identified eight pillars that collectively drive the intended change. If you tick these boxes, you’ll be the proud creator of an engineering culture — and ready to reap its benefits: faster and better delivery of higher-quality software.    

  • State-of-the-art Software Engineering. All you need to cook up incredible software: cloud-native, infrastructure-as-code, observability, resiliency, and more. 
  • Smooth delivery. Delivery is key. Secure and compliant pipelines ensure repeatability and reduce errors and mistakes. 
  • Clear Digital Vision. Transform your business by learning about Product Management, Product Vision, Business Strategy, and Enterprise Architecture.  
  • An Empowering Operating Model. Become the best IT company you can be. Work on creating aligned autonomy, high responsivities, and end-to-end value stream teams. 
  • Appropriate Continuity. You need to be secure and compliant by default, while increasing the speed of delivery and the stability of your products.  
  • Epic Work Environment. Build and nurture the cultural aspects of becoming an IT company. Your leadership, mindset, and setup must focus on empowering people.
     
  • Knowledge Driven. Jobs are constantly changing. Make learning part of the company’s DNA. Empower your people to share knowledge and ensure learning is a constant. 
  • Power through Platforms. Familiarize yourself with ready-to-use solutions like Azure landing zones, Data, and IoT platforms. Don’t waste time. 

What Are the Benefits of An Engineering Culture?  

In a nutshell, the pillars of an engineering culture promise to accelerate the adoption of new tech, a new way of working, and a new form of leadership.  

Suppose you’ve been working on creating an Azure environment, but you’re just not getting anything in production. In that case, building an engineering culture can help remove hurdles and accelerate your delivery lifecycle, for example, by creating close-knit multidisciplinary teams you can trust to develop and deliver something together.  

Your organization’s culture is hard to grasp. But if you get it right, a new mindset will empower everyone in your business and accelerate every single process. When your people truly understand what you’re doing and what will make you move faster than ever before, that’s a real game-changer. We believe the eight pillars mentioned earlier sum up what it takes to achieve that,” De Vries concludes.  

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