Writing Down Strategy Enables Improvement

Will Larson argues that engineering teams often lack a clear written strategy, but this doesn't mean they have no strategy. Writing down your implicit strategy is the key to improving it and aligning your team.

The Reality of Engineering Strategy

• Every team already has a strategy, even if it's not written down
  • "Product, eng, and business always have a strategy, it's just often not written down"
  • Unwritten strategies are applied inconsistently across different layers of the organization
  • Sometimes the strategy is bad, but there's always one

Why Writing Down Your Strategy Matters

• The first rule of strategy: "If you write it down then you can improve it"
• Writing down your strategy enables:
  • Debugging misalignments: "If it's not written down it's hard to say if this PM is just not a good PM or if they're trying to apply the strategy that they misunderstood"
  • Clarifying expectations: Makes it clear what matters and what doesn't
  • Creating alignment: Helps everyone understand the constraints and priorities

Characteristics of Good Engineering Strategies

• Often boring but powerful

  • Example: "We only use the tools we have today" (standard kit approach)
  • Focuses engineers' energy on problems the company values rather than exploring new technologies
  • Creates constraints that drive innovation in the right areas

• Clear constraints that dictate investment priorities

  • Example from Uber: "We only used our own data centers, we didn't use the cloud"
  • Example from Stripe: "We run a Ruby monolith"
  • These constraints focused engineers on building features rather than supporting multiple technologies

• Honest about current reality

  • Based on an accurate diagnosis of your situation
  • "Almost all bad strategies basically come down from a willful disbelief of what an accurate diagnosis [would show]"

Components of Effective Strategy (Richard Rumelt's framework)

1. Diagnosis: What is the current status quo? What are the real constraints?
2. Guiding policies: Based on the diagnosis, how do you want to address the situation?
3. Actions: How will you implement the guiding policies?

Common Strategy Pitfalls

• Inert strategies that don't drive action
• Strategies that ignore real constraints
• Strategies that try to please everyone rather than make clear trade-offs
• Strategies that aren't written down, making them impossible to debug or improve

The goal of good strategy isn't to appease everyone but to "dictate how we invest the limited capacities we have into the problems we care about."