Every engineer out there is looking to build something amazing, just like every visionary likes to see their ideas come to life. Unfortunately, innovation can be lost in the day to day, technicalities, other priorities, and requirements documents. All of these have created pitfalls for many promising projects, but it doesn’t have to be the case if you can be aware of where those pitfalls may pop up and implement a little bit of autonomy in bridging those gaps.

Here are a few things that we do to keep our engineering team connected to and at the forefront of innovation.

Finding opportunities for innovation

A common roadblock for innovation is a lack of inspiration. But look around you, there’s always room for improvement and people willing to improve. Best of all there’s opportunity on the other side of that hurdle you may not even see yet.

Recently at Koddi we took a fresh look at manual processes that we could automate. These were processes that may have started out as a small daily task that our teams took on to make clients’ lives easier, but eventually grow to an hour a day. We challenged the support teams to define these tasks in a few bullet points, and then some of the engineers volunteered to help automate these tasks. 

The outcome was pretty amazing; in just a few days we were able to free up 35 hours per month being spent on these tasks. Our team is now able to reinvest that time into more in depth analysis and higher quality service.

Enable passionate people to engage directly

By having engineers engage directly with analysts who were hammering out these manual processes we were able become intimate with the daily pain. The person most capable of changing the technology is now directly working with the person that is most aware of the problems at the ground level. Also, these stakeholders are now empowered to make more suggestions in improving the business.

The user is no longer hesitantly thinking “How can I ask for this new feature?” but answering the question “What would you like improved?” This helps to formulate more robust ideas that aren’t hampered by pending approvals but encouraged and discussed in a productive manner. Had this come in cold requirements from a manager passed to another manager passed to the engineer these projects may get half completed or worse abandoned because you can’t delegate passion. Instead we have solid solutions that were built on consistent communication and a desire to relieve the pain.

Remove red tape where possible

At Koddi, we utilize the flexibility of AWS(Amazon Web Services) to minimize time lost to establishing new technical infrastructure. AWS removes the need for technical managers and helps us keep new projects segregated from existing processes. This works for us at the level we’re at but larger organizations can learn from this too. Project managers and coordinators that were more technical have given me a personal boost in getting my projects done. They achieve this by being more aware of where they could step in and remove roadblocks for their engineers to keep the flow of the project and boost morale.

One key thing to remember in your journey of proving is that you’re proving a case for change, so the bigger the change the more you will have to prove. Some of that proof will have to be not just the business solution but the ramifications of the solution. Removing the red tape allows innovation to flow from the ground up. Once that starts to reach the top, innovation is no longer a directional flow and becomes a consistent cycle of communication. Security flaws may come on the winds of change and that’s something to prepare for. Although, in depth security reviews should be done after development, discussing what the software actually does rather than what it hypothetically will do. The results will be defiant in deciding for a change in design or a change in policy.

Let the builders build

In the past I’ve heard various managers say “We’re not a software company; we sell X, or Y.” While that may be true, we’re in the internet age and our business – regardless of what we sell – relies on technology. With that dependency comes the stresses of technology and the various weaknesses that could pop up. Nobody knows those stresses more than your engineers and IT professionals. Listen to their warnings and trust in their foresight because engineers and builders enjoy creating functional tools and products.

In our case, we enjoy the freedom to build a solution without being told every step of the way exactly how it needs to be. New features and improvements regularly come from the freedom given to our engineers to explore different technologies and possibilities. These avenues have led to new business opportunities and increased client service before the request was even made.

The path to innovation is dug out in the trenches of troubleshooting and questions without answers. How quickly and smooth the path comes together is greatly dependent on the passion of the people involved, the tools used to get there, and how many roadblocks that are in your way. Where is your path headed?