Book Overflow How Engineering Leaders Approach Strategy - Crafting Engineering Strategy by Will Larson
Mar 16, 2026
They unpack how to frame engineering problems before rushing to solutions. They explore making explicit trade-offs and documenting guiding policies. They discuss turning strategy into coherent operational actions and enforcement. They cover testing as design feedback and practical testing patterns. They outline a five-step strategy process from exploration to operations.
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Make Policy Tradeoffs Explicit
- Make guiding policies explicit and acknowledge trade-offs by design.
- Carter highlights Will Larson's line: if a guiding policy doesn't imply a tradeoff, be suspicious and document the trade-offs for debate.
Tell People The Strategy Often
- Write down strategy and repeat it often so people actually know the rules of the game.
- Nathan points to Amazon's leadership principles as an example of frequent cultural reinforcement that makes strategy visible.
Grand Migrations Are Risky
- Bad strategy can cause catastrophic outcomes, especially grand migrations and large rewrites.
- Nathan and Carter caution against a new leader imposing one-size-fits-all architectural rewrites without proper diagnosis.
