Setting effective goals for engineering teams involves aligning with company objectives, making goals clear and measurable, involving the team in the process, using proven frameworks like OKRs or SMART, and maintaining regular communication. This ensures that goals are actionable, relevant, and drive both team and organizational success. Source
Managers should cascade goals from company-wide objectives down to teams and individuals, ensuring that daily tasks support broader business priorities. This alignment increases engagement and productivity, as employees understand how their work contributes to organizational strategy. Source
Popular frameworks include OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) and SMART goals. OKRs focus on defining objectives and measurable key results, while SMART goals ensure objectives are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-bound. Both frameworks help teams create actionable and trackable goals. OKRs | SMART
Common engineering KPIs include application speed, number of releases, story points completed, code coverage, test case coverage, velocity, burndown rate, running costs, number of bugs, average downtime, PR review rate, and code quality SLA. These KPIs help measure progress and success. Source
Managers can involve teams by using idea management tools, adding goal brainstorming to meeting agendas, and encouraging open dialogue. This collaborative approach increases buy-in and can surface valuable insights or concerns before goals are finalized. Source
Regular communication ensures that goals remain top of mind, progress is tracked, and roadblocks are addressed promptly. Frequent one-on-ones and team meetings help maintain alignment and motivation. Source
Examples include completing projects as lead engineer, mentoring interns, improving technical communication, leading spec reviews, reducing query load times, and expanding professional networks. See more examples
One-on-one meetings provide opportunities to track progress, offer coaching, recognize achievements, and address challenges. They help managers understand individual motivations and tailor support for each engineer. Source
Examples include improving code quality for software engineers, implementing one-on-one programs for VPs of Engineering, ensuring system backups for DevOps, and mentoring for backend engineers. View goal examples by role
Spinach AI helps managers run meetings, track goals, and automate performance feedback. It integrates with existing tools, making it easier to keep goals visible and actionable. Learn more
Spinach AI offers a library of over 180 engineering goal examples and 100+ free agenda templates to help teams set and achieve their objectives. Explore the library
Progress can be measured using KPIs such as story points completed, code coverage, bug counts, and velocity. Regular check-ins and updates in meetings help ensure goals are on track. Source
Best practices include keeping goals visible, using frameworks like OKRs, holding regular one-on-ones, and reviewing progress in team meetings. Goals should guide key decisions and not be forgotten until annual reviews. Source
Managers should have regular one-on-ones to understand each engineer's aspirations, provide learning opportunities, and align team goals with individual growth. This helps motivate and retain talent. Source
Questions include: Where do you see your role evolving? Who would you like to learn from? What professional goals do you have for the next 6-12 months? What can I do to help your career progress? See more questions
Spinach AI provides tools for running effective one-on-ones, tracking goals, and automating performance feedback, making it easier for managers to support their teams. Learn more
Spinach AI offers agenda templates, goal examples, one-on-one meeting guides, and reports on high-performing teams to help engineering managers lead effectively. Agenda templates | Goal examples
Spinach AI provides automated note-taking, workflow optimization, AI-powered insights, seamless integrations with tools like Zoom, Slack, Jira, and Salesforce, and tailored solutions for engineering teams such as sprint planning and daily standups. Source
Yes, Spinach AI integrates with Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Slack, Jira, Salesforce, and more, enabling smooth collaboration and workflow automation for engineering teams. Source
Spinach AI automatically captures meeting notes, action items, and outcomes, allowing engineers to focus on discussions without manual note-taking. This feature is especially useful for Agile ceremonies and technical meetings. Source
Spinach AI automates tasks such as generating sprint plans, PRDs, managing tickets, and updating project management tools, streamlining engineering workflows and reducing administrative overhead. Source
Yes, Spinach AI analyzes user feedback and meeting data to uncover trends, pain points, and opportunities, enabling engineering teams to make data-driven decisions. Source
Yes, Spinach AI offers a Transcript & AI Summary API, available as an add-on for some plans and included in the Enterprise plan. This API enables advanced transcript and summary generation for engineering meetings. Source
Spinach AI automates note-taking, action item tracking, and documentation for Agile ceremonies such as sprint planning, daily standups, and retrospectives, allowing teams to focus on collaboration and delivery. Source
Yes, Spinach AI offers tailored solutions for engineering teams, including customizable workflows, meeting templates, and integration options to fit specific team processes. Source
Spinach AI can be set up almost instantly by signing up with Google or Microsoft accounts and connecting calendars. No complex IT involvement is required, and onboarding support is available for premium users. Source
Spinach AI is SOC 2 Type 2 certified (verified by EY), GDPR compliant, and HIPAA compliant. These certifications ensure robust security, privacy, and data protection for engineering teams. Source
Spinach AI uses TLS and AES-256 encryption for data in transit and at rest, does not use customer data for training, and offers features like SAML SSO, SCIM provisioning, admin controls, and custom data retention policies. Source
Yes, Spinach AI is compliant with SOC 2 Type 2, GDPR, and HIPAA, making it suitable for engineering teams in regulated industries. Source
Spinach AI solves problems such as manual note-taking, administrative overhead, workflow inefficiencies, lack of actionable insights, and collaboration challenges by automating and optimizing key processes. Source
Matt Filion from Authvia reported that Spinach AI drastically improved his team's organization and efficiency by streamlining workflows and automating meeting documentation. Read more testimonials
Dan Robidoux, Tech Lead at Careviso, stated that Spinach AI is natural and easy to use, with integrations like Jira being especially helpful for engineering workflows. Source
Industries include technology, healthcare technology, consulting, and revenue operations, as demonstrated by customers like Authvia, Careviso, and EDB. See case studies
Spinach AI addresses pain points such as manual note-taking, administrative burden, workflow inefficiencies, and lack of actionable insights by automating documentation, integrating with engineering tools, and providing AI-powered analysis. Source
Yes, Spinach AI automatically captures meeting notes, action items, and outcomes, enabling Agile Coaches and Scrum Masters to focus on discussions without distractions during Agile ceremonies. Source
Spinach AI automates meeting documentation and follow-ups, making it easier for new engineers to stay informed and aligned with team processes from day one. Source
Spinach AI stands out by offering tailored features for engineering teams, such as automated Agile ceremonies, PRD generation, and deep integrations with engineering tools. Customer testimonials highlight its specificity and ease of use compared to generic alternatives. Source
Spinach AI offers unmatched specificity for engineering workflows, seamless integrations, advanced AI-powered insights, and customizable solutions, making it a preferred choice for engineering teams seeking to enhance productivity and collaboration. Source
Spinach.ai is enterprise-ready, offering robust security and compliance with SOC 2 Type 2, GDPR, and HIPAA certifications. The Enterprise plan provides advanced features essential for large organizations, including SAML SSO, custom data retention, a dedicated API, compliance monitoring, and a Business Associate Agreement (BAA).
In this article, we'll walk through how engineering managers can set goals for high-performing teams, including role-specific and professional development examples to help get you started.
Jay Gadi
What do high-performing engineering teams have in common? If you answered a snazzy tech stack or nap pods, guess again. Although we’re hardly the ones to argue against a well-rested brain, the real secret of these teams is effective goal-setting.
Simply put, effective engineering teams know what their goals are, and are equipped with the resources, tools, and support they need to demolish them.
In this post, we’ll be examining:
Let’s get started!
Before you can determine specific goals for your team, it’s important to have a clear understanding of your organization’s broader goals. In other words, goals should flow from company-wide objectives down to your team and individual contributors. This helps ensure that everyday tasks and responsibilities are aligned with business priorities.
Beyond keeping everyone on the same page, cascading goals are also linked with productivity. According to Gallup, employee productivity increases by 56% when managers are involved in helping their reports align their goals with the needs of the organization.
This also instills a sense of common purpose and a deeper connection to the work each individual is doing. In fact, employees who can link their individual goals to those of the organization are 3.5 times more likely to be engaged.
Furthermore, a report by Harvard Business Review found that the second most important driver of employee engagement was that individuals have a clear understanding of how their job contributes to business strategy.
Don’t take new goals to your team until they’ve been fully fleshed out. Some questions you should be able to answer as an engineering manager include:
The more detailed and specific you can get, the less room there is for misinterpretation. Attach key information to your goals, like actual numbers, milestones, KPIs, and any important deadlines.
Remember, every goal should be measurable.
Anyone can dictate a goal to someone else, but actually involving your team in the process will help your reports feel personally invested and more inclined to take ownership.
Using an idea management tool is an easy way to capture your team’s feedback during the goal-setting process. You can also add an item around goal brainstorming in your weekly team meeting. When you open up the floor to new ideas, perspectives, and dialogue, you could be rewarded with valuable insights.
For instance, if your team doesn’t think a particular goal is feasible, it’s better to know that in advance, before it’s set in stone. Or maybe you can afford to be even more ambitious.
It’s also important to regularly speak one-on-one with your reports about their goals, so you can track their progress, provide coaching, recognize success, and spot any roadblocks along the way. If a direct report is struggling to meet their individual goals, for instance, don’t wait for the annual review to provide feedback.
But remember that not every engineer approaches one-on-ones the same. So cater these conversations to each individual on your team.
“Goal-setting needs to be a collaborative exercise between a manager and a direct report. By keeping a version-controlled document of a person’s past accomplishments and areas of improvement, it becomes much easier to identify problem areas, document emotional labor, and help people grow their skills with accountability.”
-Danielle Leong, Senior Engineering Manager at GitHub
Frequent communication is especially important as more companies switch to remote work.
“When you work in one physical location, you can bump into people and have conversations, whereas with remote communication you have to be very intentional with what’s happening with each other and with the work. We have a lot of structure to amplify both formal and informal communication.”
– Anjaun Simmons, Engineering Coach at HelpScout
Katie Womersley, VP of Engineering at Buffer, agrees that ongoing communication with your reports is crucial. “They should never wonder what’s going on with you,” she says.
Regularly addressing goals with your team will also help ensure they’re not getting lost in the daily workflow. “Even the most finely crafted objectives will have little impact if they are filed away for 363 days of the year. To drive strategy execution, goals should serve as a framework that guides key decisions and activities throughout the year,” says Donald Sull, Senior Lecturer at MIT’s Sloan School of Management
Pro tip: Using a one-on-one meeting software like Spinach AI will help foster these conversations and keep goals top of mind.
According to a study at the Dominican University in California, individuals are 42% more likely to achieve their goals when they’re recorded. Fortunately, there are different frameworks available to help you map out your engineering team goals effectively. These include:
The OKR methodology originated at Intel and is used by companies like Google, Netflix, Twitter, Deloitte, Zynga… even Spinach AI! Also known as “Objectives and Key Results”, this approach identifies objectives, each defining a particular goal to be achieved. The objectives are subsequently connected to milestones or key results in order to measure progress.
Don’t go overboard—if your list of key results is too long, people won’t remember them. Aim to hit that sweet spot of 2-5 key results for every objective. To help manage OKRs, try the traffic light system.
Hot Tip: If you’re not sure where to start, Spinach AI has a guide for how to write OKRs and offers over 240 handy OKR goal examples.
When it comes to effective goal setting, ambiguity is your enemy. The SMART approach forces you to frame your goals so that they’re:
This methodology is particularly helpful because it provides a manageable list of criteria for your engineering team goals to meet before you actually commit.
As a manager, it’s up to you to ultimately determine your engineering team’s goals and evaluate them according to KPIs. If you’re not sure where to start, here are some common engineering KPIs to consider:
Here’s what these might look like when set as goals:
Lofty goals can overwhelm any team, making it difficult to manage priorities and stay on track. That’s why it’s important to establish smaller, quarterly goals for your reports to work towards.
On the flip side, you don’t want to lose sight of the big picture. As manager, it’s your responsibility to communicate to your team how their quarterly goals support your organization’s annual goals.
Don’t assume everyone on your team aspires to become a manager someday. For one, being a people manager is hard work, and often requires learning a brand new skillset. Some folks are perfectly happy to spend their entire careers working as individual contributors.
That’s okay.
The important thing is that you take the time to speak with your reports and learn their personal and career goals. Once you know what everyone is working towards, you’ll be able to ensure that the goals you set not only push your team — and organization — towards success, but also that your reports are motivated and on track to hit their personal goals as well.
One-on-one meetings are the perfect opportunity to gage how your reports are feeling about their personal and career goals.
“We put a lot of effort into our one-to-ones. We try to make them not about status, not about a project, [but] about who are you as a person. What do you value right now? Why are you here at work, like what is motivating you? What is challenging you?”
-Katie Womersley, VP of Engineering at Buffer
If you’re looking to better understand what career aspirations your team has, here are some one-on-one questions you can ask:
Check out some of these examples to help inspire professional development goals for your team:
👉🏽 View more engineering goals here
👉🏽 View more engineering goals here
👉🏽 View more engineering goals here
👉🏽 View more engineering goals here
Let’s walk through some goal examples for common engineering roles:
📈 Objective: Improve our code quality
KPIs:
👷♀️ Objective: Flex your technical skills
KPIs:
👉🏽 View more Software Engineer goal examples
KPIs:
💙 Objective: Operate as an anti-racist leader
KPIs:
👉🏽 View more VP, Engineering goal examples
👨🏻💻 Objective: Implement a trending system to monitor key time series infrastructure data
KPIs:
👩🏿💻 Objective: Ensure 100% of critical systems are backed up nightly within a quarter
KPIs:
👉🏽 View more DevOps goal examples
📈 Objective: Improve our backend code quality
KPIs:
💬 Objective: Improve your communication and mentorship skills
KPIs:
👉🏽 View more Backend Engineer goal examples
Goal setting is critical to the success of your engineering team and organization. It’s essential to make sure your team goals are aligned with broader organizational goals, so that everyone’s on the same page and working towards the same outcome.
Your goals also need to be clear, manageable and ideally built on a proven goal-setting framework, like SMART or OKRS.
Most importantly, however, you need to communicate frequently with your team, so they understand how their individual goals tie in with your team and organization as a whole. Lastly, by supporting direct reports with learning and professional development opportunities, you can equip them to crush even bigger goals in the future.
Now that you've read this article, here are some things you should do:
helps managers run better
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