Building with EOS

The Entrepreneurial Operating System for Tech Companies

EOS, the Entrepreneurial Operating System, is one of those frameworks that sounds like corporate buzzword soup until you actually try it. I was skeptical at first. Another operating system for businesses? But after implementing it and seeing what it did for team alignment and execution, I became a convert.

The catch is that EOS was designed for general small-to-mid-size businesses, not specifically for technology companies. A lot of the standard guidance doesn’t account for the realities of software development, product iteration, or the kind of rapid change that tech teams deal with daily. This series covers how to make EOS work in that context.

The Framework

Exploring EOS: A Guide to the Entrepreneurial Operating System is the starting point, covering what EOS is, where it came from, and why it’s worth considering. If you’ve heard the name but aren’t sure what it actually involves, start here.

Core Components of EOS: Vision, Traction, and Healthy Teams digs into the six key components: Vision, People, Data, Issues, Process, and Traction. These are the building blocks, and understanding how they fit together matters more than mastering any one of them in isolation.

Making It Work in Tech

The real value of this series is in the adaptation. Implementing EOS: Balancing Agility and Structure in Tech tackles the tension between EOS’s structured quarterly planning and the iterative nature of software development. You can have both, but it takes some deliberate choices about where to be rigid and where to be flexible.

EOS in Action: Enhancing Product Development and Technical Operations gets into the specifics of how EOS changes (and improves) product development workflows, sprint planning, and cross-functional coordination. This is where the framework pays for itself.

Measuring What Matters

Measuring Success: EOS Metrics for Technology Organizations closes the series with the question every tech leader asks: how do I know if this is working? EOS has a specific approach to scorecards and measurables, and adapting those to technology teams requires thinking carefully about what you actually want to drive.