Engineering Principles: Shape the Solution and Build in Small Steps

The principles of our products are deeply rooted in the culture of Intercom. Over the years, they've helped us keep teams aligned, create products our customers love, and guide our decisions through every roadmap, strategy meeting, and integration.

Recently, we launched a series of blogs exploring the thought process behind each of our product principles, written by the people who know them best: our R&D team. So far, on the engineering side, we've covered the importance of keeping it simple and being technically conservative. Today we're going to cover two more.

First, our Group Engineering Manager, Levent Ali, explains how engineers should take ownership of the solution. This not only encourages engineers to grow and see a product or feature through, but ultimately it means you're building a product with a variety of perspectives and expertise, which helps improve results. for the customer:

“It also means that engineers learn to think like designers and product managers, and vice versa, for smoother processes, more efficient dynamics, and ultimately better products. similar issues and caring about the same outcomes, which leads to a culture of ownership and zero blame. No one ever says "it's not my job"

We'll also hear from Aidan Lynch, Senior Product Engineer, about how making changes in a series of small, easy-to-understand steps speeds product development and delivers value to customers faster:

"Building within complex systems is a challenge. When bugs appear during big changes or bloated features miss the mark, it's hard to pinpoint the specific problem. Small steps make it easier to commit, change and progression - being sure that you are building on solid ground"

Want a little more? Check out more episodes of our podcast here. You can follow on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or grab the RSS feed in your player of choice.