The Levels of Engineering Culture
Level 1
No process or rules to get in the way! All we do around here is code. It’s like 5 years old playing soccer–everyone runs straight at the ball/latest shiny object. Yay!
Level 2
We have rules/principles/policies/best-practices that we hope (aka think) will make us more productive, i.e. we use CI and CD! All PRs require a code review. 100% test coverage. 20% time (for innovating). We use Scrum/Kanban/Agile. We use planning poker. We use burndown charts.
Level 3
We have rules that we know make us more productive because we continually measure their impact and can prove it. We alter or drop rules that no longer work. We believe that a good rule set is good enough for a healthy engineering culture, but its not enough for a great one. To get from good to great requires data driven feedback loops and continuous improvement informed by the data, i.e. Agile + Data.
Level 4
Like Level 3, but we aren’t just measuring code productivity, we’re measuring the profitability of our work, aka outcomes efficiency. We can use data to demonstrate which productivity projects are worth more to the business than which marketing/rain making projects.