I’m one of those deeply technical managers, and I have opinions about the way systems should be built and operated. Letting go has been hard for me, so I developed some guidelines to help me feel better about the structure around these issues. Developing basic standards as a team helps everyone communicate with one another in code and design reviews, and it depersonalizes the process of providing technical feedback. For me, basic standards meant things like how much unit testing we expected to happen with each change (generally speaking, as some tests were always required), and at what point technical decisions should be reviewed by a larger group (like when someone wants to add a new language or framework to the stack). As with goal setting, putting standards in place here helps people know which details are important to think about when they’re creating the technology.