Every machine that operates on an engine has a horsepower rating and usually there is a limit to that horsepower output. For example, in a car, the horsepower is determined by various factors like engine design, the ability to mix fuel and air, the ability to manage heat or cooling, transmission and drivetrain, etc. Like a car, every technology team has a horsepower ceiling as well – a maximum throughput they can achieve. 

It is important that every leader recognizes the aspects that make up this throughput factor: 

Management and Execution horsepower

Every lead, every manager, every project manager, basically any human on your team managing other humans has a limit to how many humans they can effectively manage. If the team grows beyond the size that the leader can lead/manage effectively, you may get some marginal incremental output, but for the most part it will be dollars down the drain without a significant increment in output or outcomes. Or in other words, once you cross the management horsepower of your leaders, you will experience diminishing marginal output. 

How much horsepower do you need?

Architecture horsepower

As a development organization grows in numbers and scale, so do the number of technical leads and architects in order to “feed the incremental mouths” with work. One of the challenges an organization faces at this juncture is to ensure all the architects are aligned and consistent in their design philosophies and approach. There are a few models to create a collaborative execution model for the architect team to effectively collaborate – Communities of Practice, Centers of Excellence, Shared Services, etc. come to mind. However, if one is not diligent with processes, documentation, on-boarding, training and all the other adjacencies, the architectural principles and standards may start to get diluted after a while reflecting in poor product quality. This is the architectural horsepower constraint that every organization faces. One could argue that this technical debt is unavoidable as one scales. After all, even organizations/products like Amazon.com and Google are past their 7th or 8th holistic re-writes of those respective products. But in the enterprise IT world, you will not win any accolades for trying to make a case for re-writing your applications every 3-5 years because of technical “debt”. Solving architectural horsepower constraints therefore becomes critical. 

Think tank horsepower

Perhaps the hardest constraint to solve is the ‘thinktank’ horsepower limitation. The ‘think tank’ on any team are the folks that have the functional knowledge or subject matter expertise, the relevant experience in the field and most important of all, have critical thinking capability. These are the folks that you typically find on the product side of the organization and/or are the ones that solve the hardest problems. These folks can quickly become chokepoints on the team as they will typically need to be involved in every problem or solution in some form or fashion. The skills, experience and expertise they possess are hard to find/replace, hence making this the toughest horsepower limitation to overcome, usually. 

Customer

The final horsepower limitation is the number of customers or customer groups a team can support. This limitation is usually a factor of organization structure, and folks with customer facing skills and business/functional expertise. As the team takes on more customers, the processes related to demand management, work prioritization, communication, and automation need to mature to keep up.  

Solving for your organization’s horsepower limitations starts with taking stock of the team’s current skills, experience, expertise and maturity. Baselining the skills and expertise required for each of the four aspects listed above – leadership, architecture, functional expertise, critical thinking and customer facing skills, process maturity and organization structure is critical. The leader’s job then becomes addressing the organization’s horsepower gaps either through talent acquisition or through mentoring/coaching.