Training & Mentorship

Streamlining Product Processes After a Reorganization

As program manager, the author faced the challenge of unifying a newly acquired team of 150 people who had no experience with program management. The author's strategy included unifying the toolset, getting leadership buy-in, informing the teams, and executing the plan. The author was successful in achieving the goal, and the teams began to collaborate and share knowledge. The author learned that it takes time for people to get used to new things, and it can be challenging to change people's opinions.

V2 infrastructure project

Multi-year infrastructure overhaul (V2) projects are complex and require a clear business driver and customer-facing value. The engineering leader needs to work closely with business leaders and stakeholders to ensure there is consensus on making the long-term investment. The team needs to go through a prototyping phase to identify components that need refactoring/re-architecting, risks associated with the proposed architecture, and the resources/time required to deliver the project. The engineering leader must also decide how to organize the team for success, either by embedding the V2 team in the V1 team or by spinning up a new V2 team. The project plan should include deliverables, budget, resources, and time, and the team should identify risks early and have mitigation plans. The team should also set KPIs and OKRs and celebrate small victories and demos to stakeholders.

Building a New Team in a Foreign Country

This is a story about the experience of traveling to India to build a team for a Swedish company. There was a significant cultural gap in terms of working style, and the team had to adjust their expectations and onboarding process. Through dedicated mentoring and pairing, the team was able to train their new recruits to think more about test-driven development and software architecture, and give them the opportunity to attain a level of success that is difficult to come by in India.

Implementing and Reviewing Roadmaps: Strategies for Transparency and Alignment

As Chief Technology Officer, it is essential to create structures and processes that help align engineering teams with their goals. This includes investing in the hiring process, creating roadmaps for success, and fostering diversity within teams. Additionally, it is important to review and refine processes to ensure they are relevant to the current moment in time, and to build a network to help stakeholders understand the roadmap.

Creating a Useful Product Vision

A product vision is an important part of a company strategy that serves as a North Star for the product organization, motivating them to create a compelling product that solves customer problems. It should not be confused with the company mission or product roadmap. It is important to create a product vision when teams need to be aligned in a common direction. It is worth the investment to create a product vision that is short and straightforward, and everyone should understand the purpose behind it.

Adopting DevOps: How To Make It Happen

A large bank hired a consultant to assess their DevOps strategy, which had been in progress for two years. After interviewing teams and creating a model of what was missing, the consultant became a trusted advisor to the executive team in charge of the transformation. The consultant set up metrics for measuring progress, created frameworks and architecture for the management of tools, and helped with the mindset change within the teams. As a result of the consultant's work, the bank was able to reduce their lead time for a change from 3 months to 2 weeks, and quickly respond to changes, such as pushing out a new loan processing platform for the COVID-19 pandemic. The consultant's lessons learned included building out high-performance teams, successful transformation requires the right people, and understanding how to deliver value.