Leadership line, station 2 of 4
Engineering Management
Lead people and teams: 1:1s, feedback and coaching, structured hiring, fair performance management, team design, delivery health, and managing up and across.
- 6lessons
- 3.5 hto read and do
- Advancedlevel
- 6podcast episodes
- 1checked exercises
Tools you'll use in this course
The lessons open these with a template ready. They work for your own job too, no course needed.
About this course
Engineering managers succeed through their teams. The job is part coach, part recruiter, part planner and part translator between engineers and the rest of the business, and almost none of it is taught when you get the title. This course teaches the core practices for first-time and growing managers, with scripts, templates and worked cases you can use the next day.
After a reorganisation you become engineering manager of two Mangrove Market teams: the Store app team and the young Partner app team that is taking work over from an outside agency. That is 11 engineers, one open senior role, one engineer whose work has slipped, and a mobile-wallet payments feature promised for 1 December that is three weeks behind. You plan your first 90 days, set up 1:1s and give feedback that lands, run a structured hiring loop with a scorecard and a fair debrief, handle the underperformance case step by step, design team boundaries with Team Topologies, measure delivery with DORA's metrics and developer-experience signals, and take the late date to your manager and stakeholders with options.
Every lesson has a podcast episode, filled-in templates, quick checks, practice tasks with model answers and flashcards; the delivery-health lesson has an auto-checked SQL exercise on deployment data. The course ends with a 90-day capstone plan and a final exam for a free certificate.
What you will be able to do
- Plan your first 90 days as a manager of one or two teams, starting with listening and ending with a written plan
- Run useful 1:1s, give feedback that changes behaviour, and coach engineers with questions
- Hire with a role scorecard, structured interviews, written scores and a fair debrief, and close the candidate
- Use career ladders for growth and promotions, and handle underperformance specifically, supportively and fairly
- Design team boundaries and ownership, and measure delivery and team health for learning, not for ranking people
- Manage up and across: share bad news early with options, balance priorities and hold difficult conversations
Syllabus
6 stops, about 3.5 h in total. Each stop fills in when you complete the lesson.
The manager's job
You stop being judged by what you build and start being judged by what your teams achieve. This lesson shows you what an engineering manager owns, what moves to your tech leads, where your week goes, and how to spend your first 90 days with two teams you have just inherited.
People managementTeam designStakeholder management
1:1s, feedback and coaching
Most of a manager's real work happens in small conversations: the weekly 1:1, two minutes of feedback after a meeting, a question that helps someone solve their own problem. This lesson gives you a working system for all three, built on your first weeks with the Store app and Partner app teams.
People managementFeedbackCoachingPerformance management
Hiring well
A hire shapes your team for years, and most hiring mistakes are made before the first interview. This lesson walks through one real loop, the senior backend engineer for the Partner app, from the role scorecard to the candidate's first 30 days.
HiringPeople managementTeam design
Performance and growth
Growing people and handling performance problems are the parts of the manager's job with the biggest effect on someone's life. This lesson gives you a method for both: read a career ladder, build growth plans and reviews from evidence, make fair promotion cases, and handle underperformance early, specifically and supportively.
Performance managementCareer laddersFeedbackPeople management
Team design and delivery health
How your teams are split decides what your software looks like and how fast it can change. This lesson shows you how to draw clear team boundaries and ownership, how to measure delivery and developer experience with a few well-defined numbers, and how to use those numbers to learn without turning them into a ranking.
Team designDelivery metricsPeople management
Managing up and across
An engineering manager spends a large part of every week with people who are not on their teams: their own manager, peer managers, stakeholders and vendors. This lesson gives you methods for each: keep your manager free of surprises, run one priority path for two teams, bring bad news early with real options, hold difficult conversations, and say no to a leader without losing them.
Stakeholder managementManaging upDifficult conversationsPeople management
Capstone: Your first 90 days as engineering manager
A realistic project with a rubric and a model answer.
Final exam and certificate
10 questions drawn at random, 70% to pass.
Capstone project
Your first 90 days as engineering manager
After a reorganisation you manage Mangrove Market's Store app and Partner app teams: 11 engineers with two tech leads, Sam and Dara. The Partner app team formed this year to take work over from the agency Lagoon Digital, and a senior backend role for payments and invoicing is open. Felix, a mid-level engineer on the Partner app team, has missed review comments and two deadlines over three months, and nobody has told him clearly. The Partner app's mobile-wallet invoice payments are promised for 1 December, before the festival rush, and are about three weeks behind because Lagoon's invoicing API changed late. Ken, head of engineering, is your manager. Write your 90-day plan and the key artefacts you would use. If you manage a real team, you may use it instead, with names and details changed.
You will hand in
- A 90-day plan with milestones at day 30, 60 and 90: the listening tour, 1:1 cadence, team charters and one early win per team
- A hiring scorecard for the senior backend role and an interview plan: stages, the competency each interviewer owns, questions with scoring anchors and how the debrief decides
- A performance conversation plan for Felix: the written expectations, the opening of the first conversation, the support offered, the time frame and how it is documented
- The delivery-risk options for 1 December, as you would bring them to Ken and the head of partner sales, with your recommendation
- A team health dashboard proposal: which delivery and developer-experience measures, how they are collected and how the teams use them
Check what you know
Already know some of this? Answer 6 quick questions, one from each lesson, and we will mark the lessons you can skim. It takes about 3 minutes and nothing is graded.
Questions
Do I need to manage people already?
No, but you will get the most from it if you lead in some way, for example as a tech lead. Every lesson has practice tasks set in the course's two teams, so you can practise the conversations before you need them.
Is this only for software teams?
The examples are software teams, but the practices work for any technical team, including QA, data, DevOps, IT operations and support.
Does the performance lesson replace advice from HR?
No. It teaches a fair, specific and documented way to handle underperformance, and it says where HR and local employment law come in. Rules differ by country and company, so always involve your HR partner before any formal step.
Will I need to write code?
Only a little SQL. The delivery-health lesson has an auto-checked exercise that computes DORA metrics from a small table of deployments, and the exam has one similar task. Everything else is templates, conversations and decisions.
How do I get the certificate?
Finish every lesson and pass the final exam: questions plus two short tasks, with 70% needed on each part. The capstone is reviewed separately and you can submit it whenever it is ready.
Is it really free?
Yes. Every lesson, podcast episode, exercise, quiz, final exam and certificate is free. The labs and their templates for real work are free too. Plus and Premium add every lab challenge, weekly extras and a mentor on top, and they never lock the tools or the courses.
How long does it take?
Each lesson shows an honest time for reading and doing. Most people finish a course in two to four weeks at three or four hours a week.