Can you give some tips how can we run an effective tech discovery with my team (recently promoted L4 engineers)?
I would like to understand how can I drive an effective Tech discovery session (just had a PRD walkthrough) with the team (remotely working) before we start writing a detailed system design document. The engineers are mostly L4 and are still learning how to effectively collaborate instead of full blown meeting.
Discussion
(1 comment)- 1a year agoTech Lead/Manager at Meta, Pinterest, Kosei
Which company are you working in?
- If you're at a mega-corp (FAANG), the tech discovery is largely about discovering and researching internal tools and frameworks.
- Companies like Meta and Google will have their own version of almost everything (even open source projects like React may be used differently).
- I wouldn't trust the stability or longevity of anything which is custom to a company -- the documentation is frequently out of date, so you need to judge how stable it is. I'd highly recommend booking time with relevant teams to understand their roadmap and if they feel they can support you.
- If you're at a smaller company, you can rely more on the public internet. It's still helpful to talk to humans, but you can also rely on case studies of other projects/companies that rely on the tech.
In terms of how to structure the tech discovery session, I'd think about this in terms of ownership that mirrors what you anticipate in the actual project. You may have a rough idea in your head about domain ownership (frontend, backend, API, etc), so those people should naturally lead the discovery in that domain.
Similar to any brainstorm, I'd have an expansion and contraction phase, where you list various tools / technologies which may work (expansion) and separately from that start to document which of these is actually feasible or not (contraction)
- If you're at a mega-corp (FAANG), the tech discovery is largely about discovering and researching internal tools and frameworks.
