Engineering Excellence Is a Team Sport

Engineering Excellence Is a Team Sport

A while ago, our Engineering Manager team spent a day discussing the future of the Pega chapter. During that workshop, one topic surfaced repeatedly: technical excellence. This happened not because we lacked talented engineers or good ideas. Quite the opposite because across our teams, there were already many initiatives, improvements, and discussions happening. What we were missing was a shared direction that could help us focus our efforts and make the most of our chapter time.

This week, we took an important step toward changing that.

Our Pega Engineering Excellence Lab brought together 14 colleagues for an onsite afternoon with a clear objective: define a technical vision for the coming months by identifying a small number of strategic focus areas and aligning on initiatives that could move us forward together.

The goal was simple but ambitious: strengthen Pega engineering excellence at CoFa and use the full potential of the Pega Platform across teams.

Starting With Creativity The afternoon began in an unexpected way. Before discussing processes, tooling, or technical improvements, we picked up pens and started drawing.

Using only a handful of simple symbols representing concepts like goals, relationships, support, change, and wholeness, we were asked to visualize our vision for the chapter. At first, it felt unusual. Most of us are more used to diagrams, architecture discussions, and Jira tickets than creative drawing exercises. But it turned out to be the perfect warm-up.

The activity encouraged us to think differently, explore possibilities, and step away from solution mode for a moment. It helped open our minds before we started tackling bigger questions.

A special thank you to Mariann, one of our agile coaches at CoFa, who facilitated the session with amazing energy and kept us focused throughout the afternoon. She created the right balance between encouraging creativity and helping us stay focused on the purpose of the workshop.

From Pain Points to Priorities Once the creative warm-up was over, we split into smaller groups and started collecting ideas.

What frustrates us today? Where do we see opportunities for improvement? What would make us more effective as engineers and as a chapter?

As we started clustering the ideas, something interesting happened. Despite coming from different teams and perspectives, many of us were identifying similar themes. That overlap was encouraging because it showed that some of our biggest opportunities were shared across the chapter.

From there, we moved into prioritization because strategy is ultimately about focus which our Pega chapter lead, Raphaela, made sure to highlight at the introduction part of the session.

We could have created a long list of initiatives. Instead, we (or Mariann mostly) challenged ourselves to identify the areas where concentrated effort could have the biggest impact.

__Four Focus Areas __

By the end of the workshop, we picked four focus areas.

Engineering Standards

How can we create more consistency in the way we build software?

Topics such as code review guidelines, error handling approaches, access control, and application design all fall into this area. The goal is not to remove team autonomy. It is to establish shared practices that help us maintain quality, reduce unnecessary variation, and make collaboration easier across teams.

Developer Experience

Developers should spend as much time as possible solving meaningful problems rather than fighting repetitive processes. Ideas in this area include improving log streaming, enabling smaller releases, enhancing CI/CD pipelines, and automating parts of release documentation. Even small improvements can remove daily friction and create space for learning, innovation, and higher-value work.

New Technologies

The Pega ecosystem continues to evolve rapidly, especially in the area of AI-supported development. We identified opportunities to explore topics such as Blueprint, Knowledge Buddy, agents, and practical AI usage patterns. Rather than chasing trends, we want to understand where these technologies can genuinely help us work smarter and deliver more value. Maybe we’re going to explore some of the ideas during our Hackathon at the end of the year. Some people are already quite excited about this :)

Knowledge Sharing & Learning Strong engineering organizations learn continuously, and growth mindset is one of our core values at Cofa.

This area includes initiatives such as centralizing developer documentation, and our how-to guides, organizing certification study groups (we already have one for LSA certification and we’re considering to create an SSA study group), and running walkthrough sessions to share knowledge across teams.

What I Enjoyed Most

What I appreciated most about the afternoon was not the outcome itself, but the way we got there. The discussions felt really balanced. There was no single dominant voice driving the conversation. People listened to one another, challenged ideas constructively, and built on each other’s perspectives. With 14 people in the room, the group felt large enough to bring diverse viewpoints while still being small enough for everyone to contribute comfortably. I was also impressed by the enthusiasm people showed when discussing potential improvements. Engineers naturally enjoy diving into details, and there were moments when conversations started heading in that direction. Those were exactly the moments when Mariann helped bring us back to the bigger picture. The details matter, but there will be plenty of time for those later.

The Real Work Starts Now

The workshop was never intended to solve everything in a single afternoon. Instead, it gave us direction. The next step is to form guilds around the four focus areas. These groups will help turn ideas into concrete initiatives, prioritize work, and create momentum across the chapter.

Personally, I am particularly excited about Engineering Standards and Developer Experience. I believe both areas have enormous potential. Shared engineering standards can help teams learn from one another, create more consistency in quality, and prevent issues before they reach production. Developer experience improvements can remove friction from everyday work and give engineers more time to focus on learning, innovation, and solving meaningful problems.

At the same time, I am already involved in onboarding-related topics that connect closely to the Knowledge Sharing & Learning area, so I am looking forward to seeing progress across all four pillars.

What left the biggest impression on me, however, was the energy in the room. People genuinely wanted to contribute. And that kind of motivation tends to spread.

Technical excellence is often associated with architecture, tooling, or coding practices. Those things matter but after this onsite, I was reminded that excellence also starts with a group of people who care enough to step back, identify opportunities, and work together to make things better. The workshop may have lasted only four hours. The impact, hopefully, will last much longer :)

Written by Elif Schaefer, Engineering Manager (Pega)