Appendix - Engineering manager glossary
Throughout this playbook and in the broader software engineering industry, Engineering Managers use a specific set of terms and acronyms to describe their processes, team health, and systems. This glossary provides simple, practical definitions for the most common terms you will encounter.
People & Roles
- IC (Individual Contributor): An engineer whose primary responsibility is writing code, designing systems, or contributing directly to a project without managing people.
- EM (Engineering Manager): A leader responsible for the growth, health, and output of an engineering team. Unlike Tech Leads, EMs focus heavily on the "people system" and team operations.
- Tech Lead: An engineer responsible for the technical direction and architecture of a specific team or project. They often remain highly hands-on with code.
- Tech-Led Coach: The optimal EM archetype discussed in this playbook. A leader who possesses deep technical roots but uses them primarily to coach engineers and optimize delivery systems.
Delivery & Process
- DoR (Definition of Ready): A checklist of criteria that a ticket or feature must meet before the engineering team agrees to start working on it (e.g., clear acceptance criteria, designs attached, edge cases defined). It acts as the team's inbound shield.
- DoD (Definition of Done): A checklist of criteria that a ticket or feature must meet before it is considered finished (e.g., code reviewed, automated tests passed, deployed to staging, documentation updated). It acts as the team's outbound shield.
- Velocity: A measure of the amount of work a team can complete during a single sprint or iteration, usually measured in story points or number of tickets. Stable velocity is more important than high velocity.
- Lead Time: The total time from when a feature is requested by a stakeholder to when it is delivered to production.
- Cycle Time: The time from when an engineer starts working on a ticket to when it is deployed to production.
- Tech Debt (Technical Debt): The implied cost of additional rework caused by choosing an easy (limited) solution now instead of using a better approach that would take longer.
Health & Metrics (DORA)
- CFR (Change Failure Rate): The percentage of production deployments that result in a failure requiring a hotfix, rollback, or patch. A measure of software quality.
- MTTR (Mean Time to Recovery / Restore): The average time it takes a team to recover from a production failure. A measure of system resilience.
- DF (Deployment Frequency): How often code is successfully deployed to production.
- eNPS (Employee Net Promoter Score): A metric used to gauge employee loyalty and satisfaction. It is typically measured by asking a single question: "On a scale from 0-10, how likely are you to recommend working on this team to a friend?"
Communication & Management
- 1:1 (One-on-One): A regularly scheduled, private meeting between a manager and their direct report. This time should be dedicated to career alignment, feedback, and debugging mental blocks, not project status updates.
- Radical Candor: A management philosophy centered on the idea that you must "Care Personally" while simultaneously being willing to "Challenge Directly". It is the foundation for healthy feedback loops.
- Managing Upward: The practice of consciously working with your own manager (and upper leadership) to establish mutual expectations, translate technical constraints into business value, and secure resources for your team.
🎯 Self-Reflection for You
- Are there any terms your company uses daily that mean something completely different to the rest of the industry?
- Which of these concepts do you feel you need to establish more firmly within your current team?
If you want to discuss how to implement these concepts practically, or if you need help navigating the transition into management, let's connect in a virtual coffee chat.
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