training thoroughness

I manage a wonderful group of engineers. At one point, I use to be an engineer on this team too, but I ascended to the role of EM (read: I no longer get to code all day). Joking aside, I really like my role and I'm happy to empower my team to do great things.

That said, we didn't hire a backfill for the senior engineering role I held and, at the risk of sounding arrogant, the team isn't performing as well. Our velocity has slowed down a little and we've let a number of bugs get introduced into our projects. I don't think I'm hot shit, but I do recognize that I bring a level of experience that the rest of the team members haven't established yet. A lot of the bugs should have gotten caught in pull request review (or never introduced in the first place). Bugs happen, but teams should be able to catch them or remember to run the tests locally.

There are some things that are fairly straightforward to train. How to break down a problem, how to write a good ticket, how to write good tests, etc. What I'm struggling to figure out is how to train them on thoroughness. Some of my initial ideas were:

Create a pull request checklist

Encourage mentorships with more senior engineers

Hire a back-fill for my old position with someone that has more experience

If anyone has any good ideas, feel free to reach out to me on Mastodon:

@zstix@foostodon.org

I've been managing for a few years now, but I still really struggle with this part of the job and would welcome any advice.

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