This week’s guest is Jenny McClain, who leads R&D Team Enablement at Toast. Jenny’s team focuses on enabling individual teams at Toast to drive their own productivity improvements, and this conversation dives into how they tackle this problem.

Discussion points:

(1:19) How the R&D Enablement team works
(2:50) Why the team was formed
(4:31) The types of work the team focuses on
(7:31) Identifying the problems this team would solve
(11:23) How team embeds work
(17:19) The learning resources the team develops and maintains
(20:55) Who creates and maintains the learning resources
(23:10) How enablement stays connected with teams at scale
(25:51) How the team plans work with qualitative and quantitative measures
(29:37) Formats for sharing knowledge between teams
(33:05) How other companies can think about the enablement function
(37:40) Enablement as a career path

Mentions and links:
Follow Jenny on LinkedIn
Tuckman’s stages of group development

Working Agreements template from Steve Sobel, Director of Engineering at Toast - one of the resources featured in Toast’s Team Health Toolkit

Enabling teams to drive their own productivity improvements | Jenny McClain (Toast)

Engineering Enablement by DX

Enabling teams to drive their own productivity improvements | Jenny McClain (Toast)