Engineering Culture Index
Understanding your software engineering culture from the subjective experience of the engineers
Assessing the health of your engineering culture via the engineer experience.
If you are not measuring your engineering culture, how do you know that your investment in software engineering teams has the fertile ecosystem to yield optimal returns?
Culture, by its emergent nature, defies accurate measurement. It is an intuitive ‘tacit knowing’ derived from our subjective experiences. Culture results from our collective underlying assumptions and worldviews and our experience of the interactions which ensue from acting on our beliefs and values.
So how do you measure engineering culture in order to manage it?
How do you know what to do and focus on to improve it?
To do this, we created the Engineering Culture Index.
"We hypothesised that culture would predict both software delivery performance and organisational performance. We also predicted that it would lead to higher levels of job satisfaction. Both of these hypothesis proved to be true."
- Accelerate: Building and Scaling High Performing Technology Organisations
by Nicole Forsgren, Jez Humble and Gene Kim
Engineering Culture Index methodology
The Engineering Culture Index is a means for periodically surveying engineering teams, measuring and benchmarking the subjective experience of engineers to assess the overall engineering culture.
The index provides actionable insights, identifying areas that individuals and teams can autonomously improve, as well as areas that may require organisational and cultural changes.
If your team consists of multiple sub-teams, these can be accommodated and add an extra depth to the findings.
Surveys
All engineers complete an online survey - taking about 20 minutes each - asking them to rate their own personal experience of daily work, across multiple themes and dimensions.
There are 12 themes in the survey, grouped into 3 categories. The categories are the dimensions of intrinsic human motivation identified by Self-Determination Theory: Mastery, Autonomy, and Purpose. Each theme examines the engineer’s experience through an organisational lens, a teams lens, and a self lens.
This raw data is analysed and presented in a visual insights report, approaching the data from different angles to identify patterns to explore and analyse. Personal reports are created for each engineer, but to encourage honest responses, individuals are not identifiable in the main report.
Conversations
The reports alone provide powerful information. The first time an Engineering Culture Index is run, we recommend using the results as starting points for 1:1 conversations with each engineer to uncover the underlying causes behind the behaviours.
These conversations help people really think about their experience at work, how they contribute to the culture, and where things could be improved. They are vital for understanding the true nature of what is happening, as many outcomes could have multiple causes.
What the Engineering Culture Index can do for you
The Engineering Culture Index from Human-Centric Engineering can show you:
The strongest points of your culture - things to lean on
The weakest areas of your culture - things to work on
Where engineers have inconsistent experiences
Underlying causes behind identified - and potential - issues
Whether issues arise at the organisational, team, or individual level
Key benefits
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Clarity
Remove the confusion around culture with the information you need to make data-driven decisions for change
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Metrics
Gives you the metrics and a team benchmark for measuring the progress of the evolving engineering culture
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Catalyst
The process increases the desire for a great culture, raising awareness of what each engineer can do to lead change
About the Engineering Culture Index survey
Measuring the subjective dimensions of an engineering culture
The Engineering Culture Index survey is based on three categories representing the dimensions of intrinsic human motivation identified by Self-Determination Theory, namely: Mastery, Autonomy and Purpose. The survey is directly related to aspects of human motivation and thriving. Each of these categories has four themes - to total twelve themes - as shown in the following table. In turn, each theme is designed to examine the engineer experience through three lenses:
Organisation lens - How the engineer experiences their organisation
Teams lens - How each engineer’s experience of working in teams
Self lens - About each engineer as an individual and the impact they have on the culture
The questions are framed as statements using the familiar Likert scale of Strongly Disagree to Strongly Agree. In all, there are 72 statements requesting a 1-5 rating to capture a positive, negative, or neutral response from each engineer. Woven into the survey is the evidence-based research of Ron Westrum and the predictive influence of organisational culture on software delivery performance and organisational performance.
Mastery:
Care and quality in engineering and continual growth as teams and individuals.
Craftsmanship
Pride in Work, Care for Quality, Technical Excellence
Creativity
Experimentation, Prototyping, Innovation, Hypothesis-Driven Culture, Implementing Novelty.
Learning
Knowledge Sharing, Dedicated Learning Time, Communities of Practice, Continuous Improvement Mentoring, Coaching, Growth Mindset, Feedback.
Professionalism
Technical Practices, Principles, Standards, Competencies, Attitudes, and Behaviours.
Autonomy:
Self-directed teams and individuals collaborating effectively.
Trust
Dependability, Psychological Safety, Strong Relationships, Honesty, Vulnerability.
Agency
Influence, Autonomy, Empowerment, Ownership, Accountability, Self-Organising Teams, Sustainable Pace.
Infrastructure
Tools, Environments, Automation, Structures, Processes, Operational Excellence.
Information
Communication, Relationships, Alignment, Visibility, Documentation, Information Flows.
Purpose:
Deep fulfilment and being part of something bigger than ourselves.
Clarity
Clarity of the primary purpose of the organisation and teams. Clear Direction. Clear Career Paths, Clear Roles and Responsibilities.
Leadership
Decision Making, Taking Actions, Organisational Cohesion, Collaboration, Small ‘L’ Leadership, Shared Responsibility
Engagement
Energy, Motivation, Flow, Contribution, Challenge, Inspiration, Wellbeing, Vitality, Connection.
Meaning
Inclusion, Belonging, Connection, Aligned Values, Meaningful Results, Aspiration, Individual Transformation, Stability, Feeling Valued.
The individual survey questions to support the above matrix of categories are open-sourced and available on GitHub at Engineering Culture Index. It is version-controlled and will be modified over time to reflect emerging insights and changes in the craft of software engineering.
Engagement levels
We can give you the tools and let you get on with it, or dive deep and interview each participant to get the maximum insights … or somewhere in between.
DIY
✓ Forms and surveys
✓ Visual insights report
✓ Individual reports
✓ Summary of findings
✓ High-level recommendations
Light Touch
✓ Forms and surveys
✓ Visual insights report
✓ Individual reports
✓ Summary of findings
✓ High-level recommendations
✓ Workshop to discuss findings
✓ Strategic advice
Deep Dive
✓ Forms and surveys
✓ Visual insights report
✓ Individual reports
✓ Summary of findings
✓ High-level recommendations
✓ Workshop to discuss findings
✓ Strategic advice
✓ Interview each participant
✓ Detailed reports
✓ Stories behind the statistics
✓ Targeted and prioritised recommendations
+ Track progress with one free retake of the survey within 12 months
What you receive
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Visual Insights
Sense the reality of your engineering culture through a powerful visual insights report
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Individual Reports
A visual report for each participant to help them understand both their experience and their impact on the culture
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Findings Report
Explaining what the numbers mean, revealing the stories behind the statistics, offering recommendations for improvement
Ask us about the Engineering Culture Index
If you’re interested in learning more about using the Engineering culture Index for your team, drop us a line.
Prefer to talk?
Book a call directly
Resources
A sharable Insight Vignette is available as a slide show PDF which touches on some of the underlying thinking behind the Engineering Culture Index.
