🤔 Why Engineering Weeknotes Matter

Business Impact:

• Focus teams on what matters, keep everyone aligned from leadership to direct reports, and create historical context
• Effective backup communication when gaps exist in default approaches like 1:1s and documentation
• Surface concerns from the organisation and communicate culture beyond just distributing information

Team Benefits:

• Promotes regular reflection on work and helps teams make better decisions
• Enables cross-team learning, e.g. engineers learning SRE topics, frontend developers understanding backend practices
• Helps teams own their communication rather than being reactive to whoever asks for updates

📝 What Engineering Weeknotes Include

Core Components:

1. Cross-team engineering initiatives (platform work, technical debt, infrastructure)
2. Product team highlights from each delivery team
3. Cultural updates (people, wins, challenges)
4. Learning content (articles, videos, tools, experiments)
5. Forward-looking priorities and upcoming events

Content Philosophy:

• Personal reflections allowing thoughts and feelings alongside news - be open, candid, and refreshingly honest gilest.org: Tips for writing good weeknotes
• Mix practical day-to-day topics with longer-term inspiration that expands field of view
• Make readers smile - they're tired on Friday afternoons looking forward to weekends

🛠️ How to Implement Successfully

Setup Process:

1. Create shared collection space where team leads can contribute updates by Thursday
2. Define clear ownership - rotating writers or dedicated communication person
3. Establish feedback mechanisms in Teams channels or direct outreach

Writing Best Practices:

• Have a bucket of content ideas but don't rigidly stick to same format every week https://doingweeknotes.com/
• Don't feel obligated to use every section every week - some weeks are slower
• Follow strong engineering cultures that emphasize writing, with leaders being prolific internal publishers Inside Stripe’s Engineering Culture: Part 2
• Focus on outcomes and impact, not just activities

Quality Guidelines:

• Keep individual sections concise but meaningful
• Include specific metrics and concrete achievements
• Acknowledge challenges honestly while showing problem-solving
• Celebrate team member contributions explicitly

⏰ When to Publish and Collect

Timing Schedule:

• Collection Deadline: Thursday EOD for team lead contributions
• Publishing: Friday afternoon (when people are winding down)
• Distribution: Friday before 5pm, Monday morning reminder

Frequency Options:

• Weekly: Most common, maintains momentum and relevance
• Bi-weekly: If weekly feels too frequent, but less immediate impact

👥 Who Owns What

Team Lead Responsibilities:

• Provide team section content by Thursday
• Include both backwards (accomplishments) and forwards (priorities) looking information
• Highlight individual team member contributions
• Flag dependencies and blockers affecting other teams

Weeknote Author/Editor:

• Compile and edit individual contributions into cohesive narrative
• Add cross-team initiatives and cultural sections
• Curate learning content and interesting discoveries
• Maintain consistent voice and format

Engineering Manager:

• Set expectation and model participation
• Give feedback on form rather than content to improve communication effectiveness
• Use weeknotes for broader organisational communication and context-setting

📍 Where to Publish and Distribute

Primary Distribution:

• Confluence page for official record and searchability
• Team channels for immediate visibility and discussion
• Email summary for leadership and external stakeholders

🔄 Iteration and Improvement

Regular Feedback:

• Regularly ask for feedback and avoid letting weeknotes become governance burden rather than communication tool
• Survey team periodically about format effectiveness and content preferences
• Monitor engagement through comments, reactions, and follow-up conversations

Evolution Strategies:

• Try different creative formats occasionally (photo weeks, video summaries, guest writers)
• Don't limit to predetermined bucket - if new creative idea hits, go for it
• Adjust sections based on what teams find most valuable