Balvinder Singh Banjardar is the director of software engineering for Walmart Global Tech.
While many companies are concerned about implementing high-value software, fewer of them consider the importance of building and maintaining a high-performance software team. And though certainly being at the vanguard of tech adoption is important, successful tech leaders would assert that the “secret sauce” is very much in the team that is developing and refining these tools for your company’s unique processes and needs.
So how can you build the strongest team possible? A lot of factors must be in place.
Articulating And Manifesting A Vision
As a leader, you must first and foremost articulate your vision with clarity. Different teams work on different types of applications—some are domain-oriented, some are utility-based and others focus on platforms. It’s crucial to convey precisely what kind of applications a team is building and ensure alignment with the overall vision.
But beyond vision, strategy is essential. High-performing teams should prioritize automation and reusability to avoid redundant efforts. Instead of building the same thing multiple times, they need to focus on creating reusable components.
Three main factors contribute to high performance in application development:
1. Tools: Providing teams with access to the latest AI-driven and cutting-edge tools helps accelerate progress and innovation.
2. Planning: Effective planning ensures teams stay aligned with objectives and deliver efficiently.
3. Automation: Automating repetitive tasks increases efficiency and allows teams to focus on high-value work.
Encouraging experimentation and leveraging modern tools enable teams to move forward quickly and efficiently.
The Meaning Of Leadership
Vision and strategy sound great in the abstract. But how can these be executed toward impact? What does true engineering leadership entail at the day-to-day level?
A leader, regardless of their title—whether manager, director or VP—must deeply understand the organization’s key performance indicators (KPIs) and objectives and key results (OKRs). Without this understanding, leaders cannot effectively guide their teams.
Leaders also must ensure alignment between goals and execution. In software development, it’s easy to get sidetracked by new ideas, but leaders play a critical role in course correction. They keep the team focused on the mission and vision, ensuring that efforts remain aligned with the company’s objectives.
Additionally, leaders should recognize achievements—not just at the end of a project but at key milestones. Celebrating small wins fosters motivation and maintains momentum. Quick feedback loops enable faster adjustments, ensuring continuous improvement throughout the development life cycle.
A Framework For Success
There are multiple frameworks for developing high-performance teams, but the one I personally follow consists of four key stages: Define, Design, Deploy and Celebrate.
1. Define
• Identify the business and customer problem.
• Understand why solving it is important.
• Clearly articulate the vision to your team.
• Define the necessary jobs to be done, and assess the expected value for the business and the customer.
2. Design
• Solve the problem using the right technology, architecture and skills.
• Determine correct data models, user interfaces and other technical components.
• Rapidly build prototypes or minimum viable products (MVPs) to test ideas quickly.
• Emphasize a fail-fast, learn-fast approach.
3. Deploy
• Scale the tested solution effectively.
• Implement change management to handle evolving requirements without disrupting stability.
• Focus on continuous improvement, product safety and regulatory compliance.
• Ensure risk mitigation while maintaining high accuracy and real-time performance.
• Evaluate cost-effectiveness and continually optimize resources.
4. Celebrate
• Acknowledge milestones and accomplishments.
• Make celebration a continuous occurrence to sustain motivation, engagement and pride in work.
Leaders must act as guides and enablers throughout the implementation of this framework, bridging the gap between teams, stakeholders and executive leadership while ensuring smooth execution.
Building A Story-Oriented Team
Ultimately, we live in a fast-paced world where being a subject matter expert in just one area isn’t enough. Technology enables rapid learning and adaptation, so teams must be technically strong while also understanding the broader context of their work. This is what it means to be story-oriented, and it’s a vitally important characteristic of a successful team.
A technically skilled team has access to and effectively uses the latest tools—AI-driven or otherwise—to enhance productivity. Quality teams can leverage AI-driven testing tools instead of relying solely on manual scripts; product teams can use modern tools to streamline the creation of business requirements documents (BRDs) and project requirement documents (PRDs); developers can integrate AI-assisted coding tools to enhance efficiency.
A story-oriented team goes beyond this. Its members can understand the bigger picture. This means knowing how their work fits into the company’s mission, truly understanding the customer’s needs and pain points and creating solutions that provide real business value, not just functional outputs.
By combining technical proficiency with a strong narrative understanding, teams can move faster, build better products and drive meaningful impact. In the process, everyone wins.
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