As Director of Front-End Engineering at VF Corporation, I have a team of 20 engineers and work alongside two other directors who manage a combined 60 engineers (FTE and Contractors). We have eight scrum teams working across three codebases to support 20+ websites. It’s the largest company I’ve ever worked in, and it brings many new challenges, which I see as opportunities to grow.
In my previous role, the individuals who reported directly to me were on the scrum teams I managed. This made sense as I could build the culture I wanted; I was the leader and didn’t have to contend with other management styles. I could consistently set expectations across my engineers, designers, and QA team. I had complete control!
Fast-forward to now, and I’m in a completely different situation. I’m currently managing a work stream with 4 scrum teams. Only 50% of the engineers on these teams are in my organization; the others report to another director or are consultants. To make things even more confusing, the tech leads in these teams don’t report to me. After talking to different people, I’ve been told this is similar to matrix management.
Matrix management is a form of organizational structure in which employees report to multiple bosses rather than one. It does away with the one-boss, vertical system that most firms use and brings about a system where employees have multiple superiors along both functions and project lines.
I have been working with matrix management for about 12 months, and have run through one successful 6-month project and found some beneficial tactics along the way that I will share. I’d be interested to hear if others in the engineering community have come across this and what their experience has been like.
Set up a weekly sync with your Tech leads. I’ve focused much of my energy on developing relationships with tech leads who don’t report directly to me. I treat them as if they were any of my direct reports.
Communication is key. Keep an open line of communication with the individuals.
Set up a broader Engineering Team sync with the engineers on the scrum teams that you manage / indirectly manage to develop a relationship and, more importantly, a conversation.
Use the meetings to understand any issues the team is struggling with and how you can jump in and support them. This will further develop the trust between you and the team.
Provide Positive reinforcement and reassurance when things are going well and when things do not go as planned. Feedback is vital, and it goes both ways. Always keep an open mind.
Share a roadmap or vision of where you want things to go. What does good look like? Setting expectations is key.
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