It was a pleasure to attend the Red Bull: Tech to Track event in Milton Keynes. This event showcased some of the remarkable engineering which is undertaken in Milton Keynes Red Bull factories. The team is constructed of ~1400 people making F1 the largest team sport in the world. The level of attention to detail in a cutting edge field is inspiring to witness.
As an Engineering Director, I am often looking for inspiration on process improvements which would benefit the Engineering teams at Canonical. I wanted to share some thoughts I had from the interesting talks given at the event.
Setting the direction
The speed of a business can strongly influence the culture of an organisation. The time from idea to testing to roll out should be measured and monitored to ensure delivery does not decline as the technology landscape expands. I plan to monitor the time to deliver inspiration as a key metric for my teams going forward. Productively often declines slowly overtime with process overheads. Therefore, it is key for all Engineering teams to pragmatically challenge standardised procedures and practices to achieve objectives and meet deadlines.
Synergy better construction team and racing team
In the Web Engineering team at Canonical, we use a lot of our own in-house developed products such as rockcraft, Charms, Juju and Charmed K8s. This has become a source of excitement for us. By working closely with other teams in the organisation, we help to drive each other's roadmaps and provide consistent feedback. This was very similar to the synergy between the construction teams in Red Bull and their driver teams.
In F1 feedback is collected very quickly after each session, often before the car stops. After a test session both teams jump straight into a meeting room and conduct a though debrief on all aspects of the experience and issues detected. This is performed quickly as every minute after the session the feedback can be lost. This is something I plan to introduce to my Engineering teams. Firstly, by conducting internal Web Engineering user testing session when we meet for sprints in the coming weeks.
Talent Academy
At Red Bull racing that have a keen focus on attracting young people to STEM. Ultimately finding and retaining true talent via a series or educational programmes. Firstly, they showcased the amazing work they are doing with schools in the area via their STEMx programme. Which encourages young people to grow their interest in STEM fields. This is achieved by visiting schools with a team of educators. Encouraging them to take part in competitive team work. They offer work experience for 15-year-olds and older to work with experienced engineers. Often returning summer after summer.
The area which struck me as interesting was the graduate programme which encourages a set of successful postgraduate students to work together in a think tank structure. Allowing them to shine and become the next generation of talented young people at Red Bull. This would be an interesting programme to adopt at Canonical.
All in all, it was nice to see this level of Engineering displayed so proudly and an honest focus on benefiting the local community.
