How to think about non-managerial roles in software, which generally are less talked about / recognised as people tend to push people who have good teamwork / collaboration / managerial skills are pushed towards a managerial career path, rather than to what this book refers to as a Staff Engineer, which is the iterations after Senior Engineer where the engineer would still do some coding in a capacity, but would be more orientated towards providing input on aspects like engineering strategy, visions, and helping be the glue which holds the teams together.
The author argues that good strategies aren’t hard to write, but that they are boring which is why bad strategies tend to get written.
A form of being able to ensure that a strategy is relevant to the company and engineering group you currently exist within is to take 5 design documents and map the similarities and differences - these should help build what is the Engineering Strategy (within that domain?).
If you then multiply this out, to produce 5 Engineering Strategies and do the same again, mapping similarities and differences, an effective Engineering Vision can be produced. One point which I imagine will be difficult for people to work with is that the publication of the Engineering Vision may be met with relative indifference by the teams around you, as this should essentially look like a vision that everyone takes for granted - however the value in having it published is that engineers can make decisions based on a published and agreed set of values, rather than having to run it by multiple review sessions with people who own the vision in their heads. What is advised is that you compare a new design doc compared to a design doc from a year or two ago, to see if the new values are being implemented.
I’ve flown past another point which mentioned publishing earlier for review is better than providing a fully polished artefact - it will be difficult to get a finalised product which you are happy with and delays the feedback loop, and effectively could delay the final publication.