Is Engineering Enablement more important than Metrics?

Is your organisation focusing solely on a handful of engineering metrics, rather than including engineering enablement?

What is Engineering Enablement?

Enablement means having the authority to do something, to enable your teams & your organisation to perform better and increase problem-solving & delivery speed.

The main goal of enablement is to reduce complexity and improve development velocity and time to market by providing self-service solutions, engineering standards, and best practices. The team aims to enable developers to focus on business logic and emphasise developer experience and product quality. This not only helps in improving developer productivity but also in successfully achieving business goals, boosting operational efficiency, & increasing the potential of your team.

How can an Engineering Enablement team help?

These expert developers of your software/service can greatly help the team as these developers are more aware of the challenges faced by other developers, and can provide solutions to the same.
They can collaborate well with the product and tech teams and understand business goals and technical aspects.
With the help of engineering metrics, they can create the right environment for the developers to innovate & work in & remove blockers. This ability is commonly known as 'developer velocity'.

Metrics are great, but they have to be used along with enablement. Both go hand-in-hand to drive continuous improvement in your team. Choose your metrics wisely, educate your team on the workings of the software and enable your team to become the driving force for your business.

Do you have an engineering enablement team at your organisation? If yes, how has it helped the org and the tech team(s)?