Start with Your Feet and Look to the Horizon
Having mentored and managed numerous Engineering Managers, I’ve often seen them navigating new, sometimes overwhelming, leadership challenges. Whether they’re onboarding onto an unfamiliar team, building a new team from scratch, or leading through significant changes like a shift in scope or a key team member leaving, the uncertainty can be daunting.
In all these cases, I share the same advice: Start with your feet, then look to the horizon.
Step 1: Start with Your Feet (Now)
As a new EM, you’re faced with a series of immediate challenges. A team is looking to you for direction, asking questions like:
- What are we working on?
- Why is it important?
- What are we building toward?
In these moments, I encourage EMs to start with their feet. Mentally picture yourself focusing in on the ground at your feet. Everything else washes away. What are the things the team needs today?
Tactically, I recommend EMs start with the backlog. When your team comes in on Monday, do they know what they should be working on? If the answer is anything less than a confident yes, start here. Your goal is to ensure there’s a well-defined, actionable sprint’s worth of work ready to go. Creating a backlog is the first step in establishing clarity and momentum.
Step 2: Lift Your Gaze (The Next Sprint)
Once you have the a sprint of backlog set, picture yourself slowly lifting your head just a little. You’ve handled the immediate, but what about the next sprint? If it takes you a sprint to prepare a sprint’s worth of work, your next step is creating the space for you to think further ahead. Begin by asking: what can I delegate from my sprint-to-sprint activities to that will free up my time for longer-term thinking?
Start small. Hand off certain responsibilities — backlog grooming or sprint planning — to a tech lead or senior engineer. Then look bigger. Can you delegate building a domain-focused chunk of the backlog to a team member? At tha point, you’ree starting to create some self-sustaining momentum.
Step 3: Look to the Horizon (Quarterly & Beyond)
As the team puts together sprints without your direct interaction, you can start looking further out. It’s time to think in quarters or even longer.
Start by asking:
- Can the team set and work toward quarterly goals?
- What major projects or initiatives are likely six months out?
The key here is that fidelity of the planning doesn’t need to be high — after all, you’re looking at the horizon, not examining every step. This longer-horizoned thinking is essential, but it’s a gradual process, one that only becomes possible once the immediate sprint work is stabilized.
By following this stepwise approach—starting with the immediate needs and gradually lifting your focus—you’ll build both confidence and clarity for yourself and your team. In times of transition, keeping this framework in mind ensures you’re able to balance short-term tactical execution with long-term strategic vision.
Remember: start with your feet, then slowly look to the horizon.