As engineers, we have myriad responsibilities. As professionals we are expected to be reliable in staying on top of those responsibilities. Below is a comprehensive list of everything we need to juggle:
- Asana
- Completing stories
- Adding engineering notes to stories
- Adding or clarifying acceptance criteria on stories
- Github
- Code review
- Dependency updates
- Maintaining a clean set of branches (deleting branches when you are done)
- Maintenance
- Sentry
- Datadog
- #system-status slack channel
- #engineering-notifications slack channel
- Facility support
- #change-requests slack channel
- #bug-reports slack channel
- #support slack channel
- Growth and Mentoring
- Updating guides and documentation
- Keeping up to date with new technology and tools
- Helping other engineers
- Getting help when you need it
- Mentor and be mentored, regardless of position
We do not mandate that an engineer handles these responsibilities in any specific way. We simply respect each other, work as a team, and expect each other to stay on top of this growing list with whatever workflow works best for the individual. This is where rituals come into play.
Call them what you want, rituals, customs, habits... whatever the name, the purpose is the same. Having a framework to stay on top of every task required of you prevents things from slipping through the cracks.
Define your own rituals. Stay on top of them. Iterate on them. Your rituals today might not be the same next month. They, almost certainly, won't be the same next year. But, start somewhere.
Share your rituals with other engineers. Update them as they change, discuss them with your colleagues and managers. If you don't know how to cover a certain responsibility or think there is a better way, the rest of the team would love to help or hear that. Build on the rituals of others. When you slip (and we all do) reassess and recalibrate. Maybe something wasn't working, maybe you were having an off week. That's OK. We can only improve a process after we've tried.