How we live our values

The Create Engineering Managers lead by example. This page shares how the EMs live GitLab values.

Collaboration

Bi Weekly EM Meetings
Quarterly meetings with Stable Counterparts
Recognition of team members through Discretionary Bonuses, Sync Team Meetings, Thanks Channel or Individual Team Channels

Development and implementation of Quarterly OKRs
Planning Sprints with Product Managers
Manage Employee Development
Propose Cross Team or Cross stage Initiatives
Strive for 70-80% Create Say / Do Metrics
Participation in Working Groups
Regularly Review Dashboards
Host Team Retrospectives
Continuously refine and improve team processes based on feedback from Retrospectives, Skip Level Meetings, 1-1’s, 360 Feedback and Employee Engagement Surveys
Support Team Members in their Employee Development

Communications

Meetings

Pre-populated Meeting Agendas
Always prepare agendas as far as possible in advance and ask the attendees to review and fill out as much as they can before the meeting
Default meetings to a maximum of 30 minutes
If you find you must have a 1 hour meeting determine if you can break it into two sections, Verbalize and Read Only
Pre-populate the agenda and ask the attendee to complete as much of the agenda as possible and when you are actually in the meeting, skip over the sections that have already been resolved

Time Management

Audit your work schedule by determining where you are spending the most time
Analyze your work schedule and determine if there are opportunities for delegation
Use the calendar to color code your activity categories to better visualize where you are spending your time (e.g: Focus Time, 1’1s, Coffee Chats, Team Sync Meetings, Meeting Prep, Focused Software Development, etc)
Compare where you are spending your time to your Job Family and to the Engineering Career Framework and ensure you are working on the right things

Delegation

Delegation is an Empowering gift that you can give to a team member
Delegating empowers other team members to take on new responsibilities and opportunities for professional growth
Delegation Activity Worksheet is a tool Engineering Managers can use periodically to audit if there are opportunities for delegation

Calendar Best Practices

Schedule Focus time in a minimum of 1 hour increments
If you have routine activities you perform daily schedule them on your calendar
If a regular deadline comes up that you keep forgetting about, create a calendar reminder
Do not schedule more than 2 hours worth of sync meetings at a time if you can help it.
Do not schedule meetings during the last hour of your day (if you can help it). This leads to working late, typically there are always items that must be wrapped up by the end of the day

Participated in the Minorities in Tech Mentoring Program
Online Diversity Training for Engineering Managers (5+ hours)
GitLab Diversity Inclusion And Belonging Certification & Training
Bias toward Async communication
Make Family feel welcome through activities such as Family and Friends Day, and Create Team Day

Using the Large MR Dashboards to identify lessons learned for iteration
Large Backend Merge Requests (internal only)
Large Frontend Merge Requests (internal only)
Track Merge Requests that have been open for 8+ days and investigate if there are opportunities for improved iteration.