Knowledge shared by our community

HR: The Helpful Tool That Managers Often Neglect

In this article, the author reflects on a mistake they made as a manager at Box, where they failed to consult HR when dealing with an underperforming team. They learned that it is important to involve HR when making difficult decisions, as it can make the process more systematic and less risky for the company. The author also learned the importance of finding a balance between looking out for the company's interests and making employees feel valued.

New Teams Require More Informal Time

When creating a new team, it is important to take steps to foster a cultural shift. As a manager, this can be done through team lunches, off-site activities, and icebreaker questions. It is important to increase informal time together to ensure people get back to functioning how they were in their previous teams. Knowing each other as human beings, rather than just coworkers, helps to foster a stronger team dynamic.

Identifying If a Future Employee Can Thrive in an Environment of Uncertainties

This article outlines the strategies used by the author to identify the right candidates for a role that does not exist in other companies. The author looks for indicators of future success, evaluates written articulation skills, and poses relevant theoretical problems in the interview. The author also emphasizes the importance of identifying how future employees receive, internalize, and apply feedback, as this is a highly needed skill for the team.

Advertising to Increase Revenue

When starting a new business, increasing revenue can be a challenge. Advertising is one option, but it requires a large user base and long engagement statistics. To make advertising successful, one must measure the number of weekly active users, focus on direct response and conversion rate, focus on traction more than monetization, and prove to investors that there is a future amount of opportunity. Additionally, brand advertising and direct response advertising work best with a large user base and good impressions, and one must find a balance between traction and monetization.

Building Data as a Service

The Bigdata & Analytics team at PubMatic faced challenges when developing data processing pipelines for different products. To address these challenges, they developed a self-service data platform (DaaS) with an API service, an ACL model, and a generic framework for data processing. This improved the efficiency of the development and QA cycle, allowed developers from other teams to write jobs, and improved code quality. They also learned that it was important to identify bottlenecks in the process and build the right tools for the platform.

Platform as a Service

A team of limited people was struggling to keep up with the high-priority requests they were receiving. To solve this problem, they created a platform-as-a-service which exposed functionalities to APIs and interfaces, and built tools which allowed teams to operate independently. This relieved the burden of trying to resolve everyone's requests and improved their own roadmap delivery time, quote coverage, QR admission, and velocity to deliver.

Transitioning Your Team to Agile in a Waterfall Organization

This article discusses the transition from a waterfall approach to an Agile approach in an organization. The author took on the challenge of becoming a certified Scrum Master and Product Owner in order to gain the knowledge required to run Agile. After pitching the idea to leadership, Agile was adopted by the engineering team, while the rest of the organization continued to run waterfall. The author learned that Agile is an investment and that it helps build applications that are sustainable, future proof, and easier to run. They also note that Agile is not limited to engineers and can be used by anyone.

Understanding a Product’s Life Cycle

This article is about the transition of a software engineer to a technical product manager. The author had to learn the entire life cycle of a product on their own, as there is no one-size-fits-all source. They gained knowledge from working with different teams, researching books, and potentially getting mentored. The key lessons learned are to take the time to reflect on the direction of one's career and to be willing to invest the time and effort to make the transition.

Bridging the Gaps in Your Knowledge Base

This article is about the experience of transitioning from a lawyer to an engineering leader. The author faced many hurdles due to their lack of a computer science background. To bridge the gaps in their knowledge, they wrote down their gaps, compared them to people who had done this before, networked with engineers and technical product managers, and took classes offered by third-party organizations. The author learned that networking is difficult, taking classes is important to show initiative, and staying on top of learning is vital to progress.

Building Diverse and Inclusive Teams

Diversity and inclusion are essential for individual and organizational success, but how do we build a diverse and inclusive team? A holistic approach is needed, from defining and implementing culture to employee lifecycle, hiring, onboarding, fair compensation, feedback, and measuring progress. Additionally, intersectionality should be taken into account, and everyone should be better allies for underrepresented groups.

Retaining Women In Tech

After leaving her engineering manager position at Apple due to burnout and lack of supportive leadership, the author started her own small business helping other small business owners with their technological needs. Through this experience, she realized the importance of resilience, an inclusive environment, and strong leadership for women in the tech industry. She encourages women to network outside of their own organization, and to stay in and influence the industry in order to shape the future.

An Outsourcing Success Story

This article discusses a problem faced by a team that was working at full capacity but had the opportunity to bring in a big return on investment. The solution was to outsource the project to a developer who had expertise in the domain and platform, and to bring him onsite to build a connection and trust between him, the team, and the company. The lessons learned from this experience were that it is important to find a good outsource provider, prioritize quality over time and cost, and that bringing an outsourced provider onsite is not always necessary.

Scaling a New Product Area

This article outlines the process of scaling out an organization from three full-time employees to three cross-functional teams. The author details the four-step design process of defining team missions, allocating head count, and finding the right individuals. The author also shares lessons learned from the experience, such as setting the bar high when evaluating potential hires, nailing down the technique of behavioral interviewing, and trusting one's intuition.

Developing Culture Through Gratitude

To create a highly collaborative environment, a chat bot was modified to allow people to thank each other and track 'karma' points. This humorous interaction encourages collaboration and appreciation for people's work, and is more popular among engineers than business people. It should not replace in-person connection or public praise, but it allows introverted people to receive and give recognition.

Navigating a Crisis Situation

In this story, the author recounts a major PR problem they faced when a custom client implementation they were working on failed spectacularly due to lack of load testing. The author was given an opportunity to lead the team out of the mess and formed a blueprint for handling crisis situations. This included delivering the news, accepting responsibility, increasing communications, aligning internally, forming a solid plan, and working the plan while keeping communicating. The author also learned lessons such as relying on mentors, accepting mistakes, avoiding surprises, identifying and communicating risks, trusting their gut, and being willing to deliver bad news.

The Advantageous Way to Push a New Project or Tool

When testers in a company wanted to use different devices, the manager initially said no. The testers then took it upon themselves to tag two or three of their own devices and start using them in their free time, inviting friends to join in. After showing the manager how it worked, they asked if they could continue doing it, and the manager agreed. The lesson learned is that it is easier to say yes to something that people are already using, and to frame it as an experiment rather than introducing a new process or tool.

Tracking Task Estimation

This article discusses the importance of tracking ticket estimation and completion within sprints. It outlines the steps taken to ensure that tickets are estimated and completed within sprints, such as setting a total number of points per person, estimating for QA and ticket closure, and keeping things balanced. It also highlights the importance of tracking progress quarterly and making it open to engineers to ensure that tasks are completed.

Scaling from Startup CTO and Entertaining the Idea of Hiring a VP of Engineering

When a company is scaling, the CTO may need to consider hiring a VP of Engineering to manage the engineering organization. There are various options for the reporting structure, such as having the VP report to the CTO, being peers, or having the CTO report to the VP. Ultimately, the CTO should consider what is best for the company and not be trapped by their ego when making decisions. They may need help with this process and should consider an executive coach or other mentors.

Estimation Spreadsheets That Map Resources

This company had a lot of ambitious redesign projects at the start of the year, but they over-committed themselves and had to put in place a new process. This process involves product and engineering teams breaking down components for each platform, creating estimation spreadsheets, and replanning 2-3 weeks before starting work. The company also learned to take a high-level goal approach when constructing product due dates and milestones, and to start with a design of the ideal state and then consider the resources available to achieve it.

Enabling Your Team to Scale

When transitioning from a lead technical role to a Vice President position, it is important to understand how to scale for the growing organization. This includes leveraging the unique set of capabilities on the team, asking the right questions, providing a vision for the team, and understanding how to convert the vision of the business into something meaningful for the team. It is also important to remember to empower the team to make better decisions and to provide the necessary resources and support needed to succeed.

HR: The Helpful Tool That Managers Often Neglect

In this article, the author reflects on a mistake they made as a manager at Box, where they failed to consult HR when dealing with an underperforming team. They learned that it is important to involve HR when making difficult decisions, as it can make the process more systematic and less risky for the company. The author also learned the importance of finding a balance between looking out for the company's interests and making employees feel valued.

New Teams Require More Informal Time

When creating a new team, it is important to take steps to foster a cultural shift. As a manager, this can be done through team lunches, off-site activities, and icebreaker questions. It is important to increase informal time together to ensure people get back to functioning how they were in their previous teams. Knowing each other as human beings, rather than just coworkers, helps to foster a stronger team dynamic.

Identifying If a Future Employee Can Thrive in an Environment of Uncertainties

This article outlines the strategies used by the author to identify the right candidates for a role that does not exist in other companies. The author looks for indicators of future success, evaluates written articulation skills, and poses relevant theoretical problems in the interview. The author also emphasizes the importance of identifying how future employees receive, internalize, and apply feedback, as this is a highly needed skill for the team.

Advertising to Increase Revenue

When starting a new business, increasing revenue can be a challenge. Advertising is one option, but it requires a large user base and long engagement statistics. To make advertising successful, one must measure the number of weekly active users, focus on direct response and conversion rate, focus on traction more than monetization, and prove to investors that there is a future amount of opportunity. Additionally, brand advertising and direct response advertising work best with a large user base and good impressions, and one must find a balance between traction and monetization.

Building Data as a Service

The Bigdata & Analytics team at PubMatic faced challenges when developing data processing pipelines for different products. To address these challenges, they developed a self-service data platform (DaaS) with an API service, an ACL model, and a generic framework for data processing. This improved the efficiency of the development and QA cycle, allowed developers from other teams to write jobs, and improved code quality. They also learned that it was important to identify bottlenecks in the process and build the right tools for the platform.

Platform as a Service

A team of limited people was struggling to keep up with the high-priority requests they were receiving. To solve this problem, they created a platform-as-a-service which exposed functionalities to APIs and interfaces, and built tools which allowed teams to operate independently. This relieved the burden of trying to resolve everyone's requests and improved their own roadmap delivery time, quote coverage, QR admission, and velocity to deliver.

Transitioning Your Team to Agile in a Waterfall Organization

This article discusses the transition from a waterfall approach to an Agile approach in an organization. The author took on the challenge of becoming a certified Scrum Master and Product Owner in order to gain the knowledge required to run Agile. After pitching the idea to leadership, Agile was adopted by the engineering team, while the rest of the organization continued to run waterfall. The author learned that Agile is an investment and that it helps build applications that are sustainable, future proof, and easier to run. They also note that Agile is not limited to engineers and can be used by anyone.

Understanding a Product’s Life Cycle

This article is about the transition of a software engineer to a technical product manager. The author had to learn the entire life cycle of a product on their own, as there is no one-size-fits-all source. They gained knowledge from working with different teams, researching books, and potentially getting mentored. The key lessons learned are to take the time to reflect on the direction of one's career and to be willing to invest the time and effort to make the transition.

Bridging the Gaps in Your Knowledge Base

This article is about the experience of transitioning from a lawyer to an engineering leader. The author faced many hurdles due to their lack of a computer science background. To bridge the gaps in their knowledge, they wrote down their gaps, compared them to people who had done this before, networked with engineers and technical product managers, and took classes offered by third-party organizations. The author learned that networking is difficult, taking classes is important to show initiative, and staying on top of learning is vital to progress.

Building Diverse and Inclusive Teams

Diversity and inclusion are essential for individual and organizational success, but how do we build a diverse and inclusive team? A holistic approach is needed, from defining and implementing culture to employee lifecycle, hiring, onboarding, fair compensation, feedback, and measuring progress. Additionally, intersectionality should be taken into account, and everyone should be better allies for underrepresented groups.

Retaining Women In Tech

After leaving her engineering manager position at Apple due to burnout and lack of supportive leadership, the author started her own small business helping other small business owners with their technological needs. Through this experience, she realized the importance of resilience, an inclusive environment, and strong leadership for women in the tech industry. She encourages women to network outside of their own organization, and to stay in and influence the industry in order to shape the future.

An Outsourcing Success Story

This article discusses a problem faced by a team that was working at full capacity but had the opportunity to bring in a big return on investment. The solution was to outsource the project to a developer who had expertise in the domain and platform, and to bring him onsite to build a connection and trust between him, the team, and the company. The lessons learned from this experience were that it is important to find a good outsource provider, prioritize quality over time and cost, and that bringing an outsourced provider onsite is not always necessary.

Scaling a New Product Area

This article outlines the process of scaling out an organization from three full-time employees to three cross-functional teams. The author details the four-step design process of defining team missions, allocating head count, and finding the right individuals. The author also shares lessons learned from the experience, such as setting the bar high when evaluating potential hires, nailing down the technique of behavioral interviewing, and trusting one's intuition.

Developing Culture Through Gratitude

To create a highly collaborative environment, a chat bot was modified to allow people to thank each other and track 'karma' points. This humorous interaction encourages collaboration and appreciation for people's work, and is more popular among engineers than business people. It should not replace in-person connection or public praise, but it allows introverted people to receive and give recognition.

Navigating a Crisis Situation

In this story, the author recounts a major PR problem they faced when a custom client implementation they were working on failed spectacularly due to lack of load testing. The author was given an opportunity to lead the team out of the mess and formed a blueprint for handling crisis situations. This included delivering the news, accepting responsibility, increasing communications, aligning internally, forming a solid plan, and working the plan while keeping communicating. The author also learned lessons such as relying on mentors, accepting mistakes, avoiding surprises, identifying and communicating risks, trusting their gut, and being willing to deliver bad news.

The Advantageous Way to Push a New Project or Tool

When testers in a company wanted to use different devices, the manager initially said no. The testers then took it upon themselves to tag two or three of their own devices and start using them in their free time, inviting friends to join in. After showing the manager how it worked, they asked if they could continue doing it, and the manager agreed. The lesson learned is that it is easier to say yes to something that people are already using, and to frame it as an experiment rather than introducing a new process or tool.

Tracking Task Estimation

This article discusses the importance of tracking ticket estimation and completion within sprints. It outlines the steps taken to ensure that tickets are estimated and completed within sprints, such as setting a total number of points per person, estimating for QA and ticket closure, and keeping things balanced. It also highlights the importance of tracking progress quarterly and making it open to engineers to ensure that tasks are completed.

Scaling from Startup CTO and Entertaining the Idea of Hiring a VP of Engineering

When a company is scaling, the CTO may need to consider hiring a VP of Engineering to manage the engineering organization. There are various options for the reporting structure, such as having the VP report to the CTO, being peers, or having the CTO report to the VP. Ultimately, the CTO should consider what is best for the company and not be trapped by their ego when making decisions. They may need help with this process and should consider an executive coach or other mentors.

Estimation Spreadsheets That Map Resources

This company had a lot of ambitious redesign projects at the start of the year, but they over-committed themselves and had to put in place a new process. This process involves product and engineering teams breaking down components for each platform, creating estimation spreadsheets, and replanning 2-3 weeks before starting work. The company also learned to take a high-level goal approach when constructing product due dates and milestones, and to start with a design of the ideal state and then consider the resources available to achieve it.

Enabling Your Team to Scale

When transitioning from a lead technical role to a Vice President position, it is important to understand how to scale for the growing organization. This includes leveraging the unique set of capabilities on the team, asking the right questions, providing a vision for the team, and understanding how to convert the vision of the business into something meaningful for the team. It is also important to remember to empower the team to make better decisions and to provide the necessary resources and support needed to succeed.

HR: The Helpful Tool That Managers Often Neglect

In this article, the author reflects on a mistake they made as a manager at Box, where they failed to consult HR when dealing with an underperforming team. They learned that it is important to involve HR when making difficult decisions, as it can make the process more systematic and less risky for the company. The author also learned the importance of finding a balance between looking out for the company's interests and making employees feel valued.

New Teams Require More Informal Time

When creating a new team, it is important to take steps to foster a cultural shift. As a manager, this can be done through team lunches, off-site activities, and icebreaker questions. It is important to increase informal time together to ensure people get back to functioning how they were in their previous teams. Knowing each other as human beings, rather than just coworkers, helps to foster a stronger team dynamic.

Identifying If a Future Employee Can Thrive in an Environment of Uncertainties

This article outlines the strategies used by the author to identify the right candidates for a role that does not exist in other companies. The author looks for indicators of future success, evaluates written articulation skills, and poses relevant theoretical problems in the interview. The author also emphasizes the importance of identifying how future employees receive, internalize, and apply feedback, as this is a highly needed skill for the team.

Advertising to Increase Revenue

When starting a new business, increasing revenue can be a challenge. Advertising is one option, but it requires a large user base and long engagement statistics. To make advertising successful, one must measure the number of weekly active users, focus on direct response and conversion rate, focus on traction more than monetization, and prove to investors that there is a future amount of opportunity. Additionally, brand advertising and direct response advertising work best with a large user base and good impressions, and one must find a balance between traction and monetization.

Building Data as a Service

The Bigdata & Analytics team at PubMatic faced challenges when developing data processing pipelines for different products. To address these challenges, they developed a self-service data platform (DaaS) with an API service, an ACL model, and a generic framework for data processing. This improved the efficiency of the development and QA cycle, allowed developers from other teams to write jobs, and improved code quality. They also learned that it was important to identify bottlenecks in the process and build the right tools for the platform.

Platform as a Service

A team of limited people was struggling to keep up with the high-priority requests they were receiving. To solve this problem, they created a platform-as-a-service which exposed functionalities to APIs and interfaces, and built tools which allowed teams to operate independently. This relieved the burden of trying to resolve everyone's requests and improved their own roadmap delivery time, quote coverage, QR admission, and velocity to deliver.

Transitioning Your Team to Agile in a Waterfall Organization

This article discusses the transition from a waterfall approach to an Agile approach in an organization. The author took on the challenge of becoming a certified Scrum Master and Product Owner in order to gain the knowledge required to run Agile. After pitching the idea to leadership, Agile was adopted by the engineering team, while the rest of the organization continued to run waterfall. The author learned that Agile is an investment and that it helps build applications that are sustainable, future proof, and easier to run. They also note that Agile is not limited to engineers and can be used by anyone.

Understanding a Product’s Life Cycle

This article is about the transition of a software engineer to a technical product manager. The author had to learn the entire life cycle of a product on their own, as there is no one-size-fits-all source. They gained knowledge from working with different teams, researching books, and potentially getting mentored. The key lessons learned are to take the time to reflect on the direction of one's career and to be willing to invest the time and effort to make the transition.

Bridging the Gaps in Your Knowledge Base

This article is about the experience of transitioning from a lawyer to an engineering leader. The author faced many hurdles due to their lack of a computer science background. To bridge the gaps in their knowledge, they wrote down their gaps, compared them to people who had done this before, networked with engineers and technical product managers, and took classes offered by third-party organizations. The author learned that networking is difficult, taking classes is important to show initiative, and staying on top of learning is vital to progress.

Building Diverse and Inclusive Teams

Diversity and inclusion are essential for individual and organizational success, but how do we build a diverse and inclusive team? A holistic approach is needed, from defining and implementing culture to employee lifecycle, hiring, onboarding, fair compensation, feedback, and measuring progress. Additionally, intersectionality should be taken into account, and everyone should be better allies for underrepresented groups.

Retaining Women In Tech

After leaving her engineering manager position at Apple due to burnout and lack of supportive leadership, the author started her own small business helping other small business owners with their technological needs. Through this experience, she realized the importance of resilience, an inclusive environment, and strong leadership for women in the tech industry. She encourages women to network outside of their own organization, and to stay in and influence the industry in order to shape the future.

An Outsourcing Success Story

This article discusses a problem faced by a team that was working at full capacity but had the opportunity to bring in a big return on investment. The solution was to outsource the project to a developer who had expertise in the domain and platform, and to bring him onsite to build a connection and trust between him, the team, and the company. The lessons learned from this experience were that it is important to find a good outsource provider, prioritize quality over time and cost, and that bringing an outsourced provider onsite is not always necessary.

Scaling a New Product Area

This article outlines the process of scaling out an organization from three full-time employees to three cross-functional teams. The author details the four-step design process of defining team missions, allocating head count, and finding the right individuals. The author also shares lessons learned from the experience, such as setting the bar high when evaluating potential hires, nailing down the technique of behavioral interviewing, and trusting one's intuition.

Developing Culture Through Gratitude

To create a highly collaborative environment, a chat bot was modified to allow people to thank each other and track 'karma' points. This humorous interaction encourages collaboration and appreciation for people's work, and is more popular among engineers than business people. It should not replace in-person connection or public praise, but it allows introverted people to receive and give recognition.

Navigating a Crisis Situation

In this story, the author recounts a major PR problem they faced when a custom client implementation they were working on failed spectacularly due to lack of load testing. The author was given an opportunity to lead the team out of the mess and formed a blueprint for handling crisis situations. This included delivering the news, accepting responsibility, increasing communications, aligning internally, forming a solid plan, and working the plan while keeping communicating. The author also learned lessons such as relying on mentors, accepting mistakes, avoiding surprises, identifying and communicating risks, trusting their gut, and being willing to deliver bad news.

The Advantageous Way to Push a New Project or Tool

When testers in a company wanted to use different devices, the manager initially said no. The testers then took it upon themselves to tag two or three of their own devices and start using them in their free time, inviting friends to join in. After showing the manager how it worked, they asked if they could continue doing it, and the manager agreed. The lesson learned is that it is easier to say yes to something that people are already using, and to frame it as an experiment rather than introducing a new process or tool.

Tracking Task Estimation

This article discusses the importance of tracking ticket estimation and completion within sprints. It outlines the steps taken to ensure that tickets are estimated and completed within sprints, such as setting a total number of points per person, estimating for QA and ticket closure, and keeping things balanced. It also highlights the importance of tracking progress quarterly and making it open to engineers to ensure that tasks are completed.

Scaling from Startup CTO and Entertaining the Idea of Hiring a VP of Engineering

When a company is scaling, the CTO may need to consider hiring a VP of Engineering to manage the engineering organization. There are various options for the reporting structure, such as having the VP report to the CTO, being peers, or having the CTO report to the VP. Ultimately, the CTO should consider what is best for the company and not be trapped by their ego when making decisions. They may need help with this process and should consider an executive coach or other mentors.

Estimation Spreadsheets That Map Resources

This company had a lot of ambitious redesign projects at the start of the year, but they over-committed themselves and had to put in place a new process. This process involves product and engineering teams breaking down components for each platform, creating estimation spreadsheets, and replanning 2-3 weeks before starting work. The company also learned to take a high-level goal approach when constructing product due dates and milestones, and to start with a design of the ideal state and then consider the resources available to achieve it.

Enabling Your Team to Scale

When transitioning from a lead technical role to a Vice President position, it is important to understand how to scale for the growing organization. This includes leveraging the unique set of capabilities on the team, asking the right questions, providing a vision for the team, and understanding how to convert the vision of the business into something meaningful for the team. It is also important to remember to empower the team to make better decisions and to provide the necessary resources and support needed to succeed.

HR: The Helpful Tool That Managers Often Neglect

In this article, the author reflects on a mistake they made as a manager at Box, where they failed to consult HR when dealing with an underperforming team. They learned that it is important to involve HR when making difficult decisions, as it can make the process more systematic and less risky for the company. The author also learned the importance of finding a balance between looking out for the company's interests and making employees feel valued.

New Teams Require More Informal Time

When creating a new team, it is important to take steps to foster a cultural shift. As a manager, this can be done through team lunches, off-site activities, and icebreaker questions. It is important to increase informal time together to ensure people get back to functioning how they were in their previous teams. Knowing each other as human beings, rather than just coworkers, helps to foster a stronger team dynamic.

Identifying If a Future Employee Can Thrive in an Environment of Uncertainties

This article outlines the strategies used by the author to identify the right candidates for a role that does not exist in other companies. The author looks for indicators of future success, evaluates written articulation skills, and poses relevant theoretical problems in the interview. The author also emphasizes the importance of identifying how future employees receive, internalize, and apply feedback, as this is a highly needed skill for the team.

Advertising to Increase Revenue

When starting a new business, increasing revenue can be a challenge. Advertising is one option, but it requires a large user base and long engagement statistics. To make advertising successful, one must measure the number of weekly active users, focus on direct response and conversion rate, focus on traction more than monetization, and prove to investors that there is a future amount of opportunity. Additionally, brand advertising and direct response advertising work best with a large user base and good impressions, and one must find a balance between traction and monetization.

Building Data as a Service

The Bigdata & Analytics team at PubMatic faced challenges when developing data processing pipelines for different products. To address these challenges, they developed a self-service data platform (DaaS) with an API service, an ACL model, and a generic framework for data processing. This improved the efficiency of the development and QA cycle, allowed developers from other teams to write jobs, and improved code quality. They also learned that it was important to identify bottlenecks in the process and build the right tools for the platform.

Platform as a Service

A team of limited people was struggling to keep up with the high-priority requests they were receiving. To solve this problem, they created a platform-as-a-service which exposed functionalities to APIs and interfaces, and built tools which allowed teams to operate independently. This relieved the burden of trying to resolve everyone's requests and improved their own roadmap delivery time, quote coverage, QR admission, and velocity to deliver.

Transitioning Your Team to Agile in a Waterfall Organization

This article discusses the transition from a waterfall approach to an Agile approach in an organization. The author took on the challenge of becoming a certified Scrum Master and Product Owner in order to gain the knowledge required to run Agile. After pitching the idea to leadership, Agile was adopted by the engineering team, while the rest of the organization continued to run waterfall. The author learned that Agile is an investment and that it helps build applications that are sustainable, future proof, and easier to run. They also note that Agile is not limited to engineers and can be used by anyone.

Understanding a Product’s Life Cycle

This article is about the transition of a software engineer to a technical product manager. The author had to learn the entire life cycle of a product on their own, as there is no one-size-fits-all source. They gained knowledge from working with different teams, researching books, and potentially getting mentored. The key lessons learned are to take the time to reflect on the direction of one's career and to be willing to invest the time and effort to make the transition.

Bridging the Gaps in Your Knowledge Base

This article is about the experience of transitioning from a lawyer to an engineering leader. The author faced many hurdles due to their lack of a computer science background. To bridge the gaps in their knowledge, they wrote down their gaps, compared them to people who had done this before, networked with engineers and technical product managers, and took classes offered by third-party organizations. The author learned that networking is difficult, taking classes is important to show initiative, and staying on top of learning is vital to progress.

Building Diverse and Inclusive Teams

Diversity and inclusion are essential for individual and organizational success, but how do we build a diverse and inclusive team? A holistic approach is needed, from defining and implementing culture to employee lifecycle, hiring, onboarding, fair compensation, feedback, and measuring progress. Additionally, intersectionality should be taken into account, and everyone should be better allies for underrepresented groups.

Retaining Women In Tech

After leaving her engineering manager position at Apple due to burnout and lack of supportive leadership, the author started her own small business helping other small business owners with their technological needs. Through this experience, she realized the importance of resilience, an inclusive environment, and strong leadership for women in the tech industry. She encourages women to network outside of their own organization, and to stay in and influence the industry in order to shape the future.

An Outsourcing Success Story

This article discusses a problem faced by a team that was working at full capacity but had the opportunity to bring in a big return on investment. The solution was to outsource the project to a developer who had expertise in the domain and platform, and to bring him onsite to build a connection and trust between him, the team, and the company. The lessons learned from this experience were that it is important to find a good outsource provider, prioritize quality over time and cost, and that bringing an outsourced provider onsite is not always necessary.

Scaling a New Product Area

This article outlines the process of scaling out an organization from three full-time employees to three cross-functional teams. The author details the four-step design process of defining team missions, allocating head count, and finding the right individuals. The author also shares lessons learned from the experience, such as setting the bar high when evaluating potential hires, nailing down the technique of behavioral interviewing, and trusting one's intuition.

Developing Culture Through Gratitude

To create a highly collaborative environment, a chat bot was modified to allow people to thank each other and track 'karma' points. This humorous interaction encourages collaboration and appreciation for people's work, and is more popular among engineers than business people. It should not replace in-person connection or public praise, but it allows introverted people to receive and give recognition.

Navigating a Crisis Situation

In this story, the author recounts a major PR problem they faced when a custom client implementation they were working on failed spectacularly due to lack of load testing. The author was given an opportunity to lead the team out of the mess and formed a blueprint for handling crisis situations. This included delivering the news, accepting responsibility, increasing communications, aligning internally, forming a solid plan, and working the plan while keeping communicating. The author also learned lessons such as relying on mentors, accepting mistakes, avoiding surprises, identifying and communicating risks, trusting their gut, and being willing to deliver bad news.

The Advantageous Way to Push a New Project or Tool

When testers in a company wanted to use different devices, the manager initially said no. The testers then took it upon themselves to tag two or three of their own devices and start using them in their free time, inviting friends to join in. After showing the manager how it worked, they asked if they could continue doing it, and the manager agreed. The lesson learned is that it is easier to say yes to something that people are already using, and to frame it as an experiment rather than introducing a new process or tool.

Tracking Task Estimation

This article discusses the importance of tracking ticket estimation and completion within sprints. It outlines the steps taken to ensure that tickets are estimated and completed within sprints, such as setting a total number of points per person, estimating for QA and ticket closure, and keeping things balanced. It also highlights the importance of tracking progress quarterly and making it open to engineers to ensure that tasks are completed.

Scaling from Startup CTO and Entertaining the Idea of Hiring a VP of Engineering

When a company is scaling, the CTO may need to consider hiring a VP of Engineering to manage the engineering organization. There are various options for the reporting structure, such as having the VP report to the CTO, being peers, or having the CTO report to the VP. Ultimately, the CTO should consider what is best for the company and not be trapped by their ego when making decisions. They may need help with this process and should consider an executive coach or other mentors.

Estimation Spreadsheets That Map Resources

This company had a lot of ambitious redesign projects at the start of the year, but they over-committed themselves and had to put in place a new process. This process involves product and engineering teams breaking down components for each platform, creating estimation spreadsheets, and replanning 2-3 weeks before starting work. The company also learned to take a high-level goal approach when constructing product due dates and milestones, and to start with a design of the ideal state and then consider the resources available to achieve it.

Enabling Your Team to Scale

When transitioning from a lead technical role to a Vice President position, it is important to understand how to scale for the growing organization. This includes leveraging the unique set of capabilities on the team, asking the right questions, providing a vision for the team, and understanding how to convert the vision of the business into something meaningful for the team. It is also important to remember to empower the team to make better decisions and to provide the necessary resources and support needed to succeed.

HR: The Helpful Tool That Managers Often Neglect

In this article, the author reflects on a mistake they made as a manager at Box, where they failed to consult HR when dealing with an underperforming team. They learned that it is important to involve HR when making difficult decisions, as it can make the process more systematic and less risky for the company. The author also learned the importance of finding a balance between looking out for the company's interests and making employees feel valued.

New Teams Require More Informal Time

When creating a new team, it is important to take steps to foster a cultural shift. As a manager, this can be done through team lunches, off-site activities, and icebreaker questions. It is important to increase informal time together to ensure people get back to functioning how they were in their previous teams. Knowing each other as human beings, rather than just coworkers, helps to foster a stronger team dynamic.

Identifying If a Future Employee Can Thrive in an Environment of Uncertainties

This article outlines the strategies used by the author to identify the right candidates for a role that does not exist in other companies. The author looks for indicators of future success, evaluates written articulation skills, and poses relevant theoretical problems in the interview. The author also emphasizes the importance of identifying how future employees receive, internalize, and apply feedback, as this is a highly needed skill for the team.

Advertising to Increase Revenue

When starting a new business, increasing revenue can be a challenge. Advertising is one option, but it requires a large user base and long engagement statistics. To make advertising successful, one must measure the number of weekly active users, focus on direct response and conversion rate, focus on traction more than monetization, and prove to investors that there is a future amount of opportunity. Additionally, brand advertising and direct response advertising work best with a large user base and good impressions, and one must find a balance between traction and monetization.

Building Data as a Service

The Bigdata & Analytics team at PubMatic faced challenges when developing data processing pipelines for different products. To address these challenges, they developed a self-service data platform (DaaS) with an API service, an ACL model, and a generic framework for data processing. This improved the efficiency of the development and QA cycle, allowed developers from other teams to write jobs, and improved code quality. They also learned that it was important to identify bottlenecks in the process and build the right tools for the platform.

Platform as a Service

A team of limited people was struggling to keep up with the high-priority requests they were receiving. To solve this problem, they created a platform-as-a-service which exposed functionalities to APIs and interfaces, and built tools which allowed teams to operate independently. This relieved the burden of trying to resolve everyone's requests and improved their own roadmap delivery time, quote coverage, QR admission, and velocity to deliver.

Transitioning Your Team to Agile in a Waterfall Organization

This article discusses the transition from a waterfall approach to an Agile approach in an organization. The author took on the challenge of becoming a certified Scrum Master and Product Owner in order to gain the knowledge required to run Agile. After pitching the idea to leadership, Agile was adopted by the engineering team, while the rest of the organization continued to run waterfall. The author learned that Agile is an investment and that it helps build applications that are sustainable, future proof, and easier to run. They also note that Agile is not limited to engineers and can be used by anyone.

Understanding a Product’s Life Cycle

This article is about the transition of a software engineer to a technical product manager. The author had to learn the entire life cycle of a product on their own, as there is no one-size-fits-all source. They gained knowledge from working with different teams, researching books, and potentially getting mentored. The key lessons learned are to take the time to reflect on the direction of one's career and to be willing to invest the time and effort to make the transition.

Bridging the Gaps in Your Knowledge Base

This article is about the experience of transitioning from a lawyer to an engineering leader. The author faced many hurdles due to their lack of a computer science background. To bridge the gaps in their knowledge, they wrote down their gaps, compared them to people who had done this before, networked with engineers and technical product managers, and took classes offered by third-party organizations. The author learned that networking is difficult, taking classes is important to show initiative, and staying on top of learning is vital to progress.

Building Diverse and Inclusive Teams

Diversity and inclusion are essential for individual and organizational success, but how do we build a diverse and inclusive team? A holistic approach is needed, from defining and implementing culture to employee lifecycle, hiring, onboarding, fair compensation, feedback, and measuring progress. Additionally, intersectionality should be taken into account, and everyone should be better allies for underrepresented groups.

Retaining Women In Tech

After leaving her engineering manager position at Apple due to burnout and lack of supportive leadership, the author started her own small business helping other small business owners with their technological needs. Through this experience, she realized the importance of resilience, an inclusive environment, and strong leadership for women in the tech industry. She encourages women to network outside of their own organization, and to stay in and influence the industry in order to shape the future.

An Outsourcing Success Story

This article discusses a problem faced by a team that was working at full capacity but had the opportunity to bring in a big return on investment. The solution was to outsource the project to a developer who had expertise in the domain and platform, and to bring him onsite to build a connection and trust between him, the team, and the company. The lessons learned from this experience were that it is important to find a good outsource provider, prioritize quality over time and cost, and that bringing an outsourced provider onsite is not always necessary.

Scaling a New Product Area

This article outlines the process of scaling out an organization from three full-time employees to three cross-functional teams. The author details the four-step design process of defining team missions, allocating head count, and finding the right individuals. The author also shares lessons learned from the experience, such as setting the bar high when evaluating potential hires, nailing down the technique of behavioral interviewing, and trusting one's intuition.

Developing Culture Through Gratitude

To create a highly collaborative environment, a chat bot was modified to allow people to thank each other and track 'karma' points. This humorous interaction encourages collaboration and appreciation for people's work, and is more popular among engineers than business people. It should not replace in-person connection or public praise, but it allows introverted people to receive and give recognition.

Navigating a Crisis Situation

In this story, the author recounts a major PR problem they faced when a custom client implementation they were working on failed spectacularly due to lack of load testing. The author was given an opportunity to lead the team out of the mess and formed a blueprint for handling crisis situations. This included delivering the news, accepting responsibility, increasing communications, aligning internally, forming a solid plan, and working the plan while keeping communicating. The author also learned lessons such as relying on mentors, accepting mistakes, avoiding surprises, identifying and communicating risks, trusting their gut, and being willing to deliver bad news.

The Advantageous Way to Push a New Project or Tool

When testers in a company wanted to use different devices, the manager initially said no. The testers then took it upon themselves to tag two or three of their own devices and start using them in their free time, inviting friends to join in. After showing the manager how it worked, they asked if they could continue doing it, and the manager agreed. The lesson learned is that it is easier to say yes to something that people are already using, and to frame it as an experiment rather than introducing a new process or tool.

Tracking Task Estimation

This article discusses the importance of tracking ticket estimation and completion within sprints. It outlines the steps taken to ensure that tickets are estimated and completed within sprints, such as setting a total number of points per person, estimating for QA and ticket closure, and keeping things balanced. It also highlights the importance of tracking progress quarterly and making it open to engineers to ensure that tasks are completed.

Scaling from Startup CTO and Entertaining the Idea of Hiring a VP of Engineering

When a company is scaling, the CTO may need to consider hiring a VP of Engineering to manage the engineering organization. There are various options for the reporting structure, such as having the VP report to the CTO, being peers, or having the CTO report to the VP. Ultimately, the CTO should consider what is best for the company and not be trapped by their ego when making decisions. They may need help with this process and should consider an executive coach or other mentors.

Estimation Spreadsheets That Map Resources

This company had a lot of ambitious redesign projects at the start of the year, but they over-committed themselves and had to put in place a new process. This process involves product and engineering teams breaking down components for each platform, creating estimation spreadsheets, and replanning 2-3 weeks before starting work. The company also learned to take a high-level goal approach when constructing product due dates and milestones, and to start with a design of the ideal state and then consider the resources available to achieve it.

Enabling Your Team to Scale

When transitioning from a lead technical role to a Vice President position, it is important to understand how to scale for the growing organization. This includes leveraging the unique set of capabilities on the team, asking the right questions, providing a vision for the team, and understanding how to convert the vision of the business into something meaningful for the team. It is also important to remember to empower the team to make better decisions and to provide the necessary resources and support needed to succeed.

HR: The Helpful Tool That Managers Often Neglect

In this article, the author reflects on a mistake they made as a manager at Box, where they failed to consult HR when dealing with an underperforming team. They learned that it is important to involve HR when making difficult decisions, as it can make the process more systematic and less risky for the company. The author also learned the importance of finding a balance between looking out for the company's interests and making employees feel valued.

New Teams Require More Informal Time

When creating a new team, it is important to take steps to foster a cultural shift. As a manager, this can be done through team lunches, off-site activities, and icebreaker questions. It is important to increase informal time together to ensure people get back to functioning how they were in their previous teams. Knowing each other as human beings, rather than just coworkers, helps to foster a stronger team dynamic.

Identifying If a Future Employee Can Thrive in an Environment of Uncertainties

This article outlines the strategies used by the author to identify the right candidates for a role that does not exist in other companies. The author looks for indicators of future success, evaluates written articulation skills, and poses relevant theoretical problems in the interview. The author also emphasizes the importance of identifying how future employees receive, internalize, and apply feedback, as this is a highly needed skill for the team.

Advertising to Increase Revenue

When starting a new business, increasing revenue can be a challenge. Advertising is one option, but it requires a large user base and long engagement statistics. To make advertising successful, one must measure the number of weekly active users, focus on direct response and conversion rate, focus on traction more than monetization, and prove to investors that there is a future amount of opportunity. Additionally, brand advertising and direct response advertising work best with a large user base and good impressions, and one must find a balance between traction and monetization.

Building Data as a Service

The Bigdata & Analytics team at PubMatic faced challenges when developing data processing pipelines for different products. To address these challenges, they developed a self-service data platform (DaaS) with an API service, an ACL model, and a generic framework for data processing. This improved the efficiency of the development and QA cycle, allowed developers from other teams to write jobs, and improved code quality. They also learned that it was important to identify bottlenecks in the process and build the right tools for the platform.

Platform as a Service

A team of limited people was struggling to keep up with the high-priority requests they were receiving. To solve this problem, they created a platform-as-a-service which exposed functionalities to APIs and interfaces, and built tools which allowed teams to operate independently. This relieved the burden of trying to resolve everyone's requests and improved their own roadmap delivery time, quote coverage, QR admission, and velocity to deliver.

Transitioning Your Team to Agile in a Waterfall Organization

This article discusses the transition from a waterfall approach to an Agile approach in an organization. The author took on the challenge of becoming a certified Scrum Master and Product Owner in order to gain the knowledge required to run Agile. After pitching the idea to leadership, Agile was adopted by the engineering team, while the rest of the organization continued to run waterfall. The author learned that Agile is an investment and that it helps build applications that are sustainable, future proof, and easier to run. They also note that Agile is not limited to engineers and can be used by anyone.

Understanding a Product’s Life Cycle

This article is about the transition of a software engineer to a technical product manager. The author had to learn the entire life cycle of a product on their own, as there is no one-size-fits-all source. They gained knowledge from working with different teams, researching books, and potentially getting mentored. The key lessons learned are to take the time to reflect on the direction of one's career and to be willing to invest the time and effort to make the transition.

Bridging the Gaps in Your Knowledge Base

This article is about the experience of transitioning from a lawyer to an engineering leader. The author faced many hurdles due to their lack of a computer science background. To bridge the gaps in their knowledge, they wrote down their gaps, compared them to people who had done this before, networked with engineers and technical product managers, and took classes offered by third-party organizations. The author learned that networking is difficult, taking classes is important to show initiative, and staying on top of learning is vital to progress.

Building Diverse and Inclusive Teams

Diversity and inclusion are essential for individual and organizational success, but how do we build a diverse and inclusive team? A holistic approach is needed, from defining and implementing culture to employee lifecycle, hiring, onboarding, fair compensation, feedback, and measuring progress. Additionally, intersectionality should be taken into account, and everyone should be better allies for underrepresented groups.

Retaining Women In Tech

After leaving her engineering manager position at Apple due to burnout and lack of supportive leadership, the author started her own small business helping other small business owners with their technological needs. Through this experience, she realized the importance of resilience, an inclusive environment, and strong leadership for women in the tech industry. She encourages women to network outside of their own organization, and to stay in and influence the industry in order to shape the future.

An Outsourcing Success Story

This article discusses a problem faced by a team that was working at full capacity but had the opportunity to bring in a big return on investment. The solution was to outsource the project to a developer who had expertise in the domain and platform, and to bring him onsite to build a connection and trust between him, the team, and the company. The lessons learned from this experience were that it is important to find a good outsource provider, prioritize quality over time and cost, and that bringing an outsourced provider onsite is not always necessary.

Scaling a New Product Area

This article outlines the process of scaling out an organization from three full-time employees to three cross-functional teams. The author details the four-step design process of defining team missions, allocating head count, and finding the right individuals. The author also shares lessons learned from the experience, such as setting the bar high when evaluating potential hires, nailing down the technique of behavioral interviewing, and trusting one's intuition.

Developing Culture Through Gratitude

To create a highly collaborative environment, a chat bot was modified to allow people to thank each other and track 'karma' points. This humorous interaction encourages collaboration and appreciation for people's work, and is more popular among engineers than business people. It should not replace in-person connection or public praise, but it allows introverted people to receive and give recognition.

Navigating a Crisis Situation

In this story, the author recounts a major PR problem they faced when a custom client implementation they were working on failed spectacularly due to lack of load testing. The author was given an opportunity to lead the team out of the mess and formed a blueprint for handling crisis situations. This included delivering the news, accepting responsibility, increasing communications, aligning internally, forming a solid plan, and working the plan while keeping communicating. The author also learned lessons such as relying on mentors, accepting mistakes, avoiding surprises, identifying and communicating risks, trusting their gut, and being willing to deliver bad news.

The Advantageous Way to Push a New Project or Tool

When testers in a company wanted to use different devices, the manager initially said no. The testers then took it upon themselves to tag two or three of their own devices and start using them in their free time, inviting friends to join in. After showing the manager how it worked, they asked if they could continue doing it, and the manager agreed. The lesson learned is that it is easier to say yes to something that people are already using, and to frame it as an experiment rather than introducing a new process or tool.

Tracking Task Estimation

This article discusses the importance of tracking ticket estimation and completion within sprints. It outlines the steps taken to ensure that tickets are estimated and completed within sprints, such as setting a total number of points per person, estimating for QA and ticket closure, and keeping things balanced. It also highlights the importance of tracking progress quarterly and making it open to engineers to ensure that tasks are completed.

Scaling from Startup CTO and Entertaining the Idea of Hiring a VP of Engineering

When a company is scaling, the CTO may need to consider hiring a VP of Engineering to manage the engineering organization. There are various options for the reporting structure, such as having the VP report to the CTO, being peers, or having the CTO report to the VP. Ultimately, the CTO should consider what is best for the company and not be trapped by their ego when making decisions. They may need help with this process and should consider an executive coach or other mentors.

Estimation Spreadsheets That Map Resources

This company had a lot of ambitious redesign projects at the start of the year, but they over-committed themselves and had to put in place a new process. This process involves product and engineering teams breaking down components for each platform, creating estimation spreadsheets, and replanning 2-3 weeks before starting work. The company also learned to take a high-level goal approach when constructing product due dates and milestones, and to start with a design of the ideal state and then consider the resources available to achieve it.

Enabling Your Team to Scale

When transitioning from a lead technical role to a Vice President position, it is important to understand how to scale for the growing organization. This includes leveraging the unique set of capabilities on the team, asking the right questions, providing a vision for the team, and understanding how to convert the vision of the business into something meaningful for the team. It is also important to remember to empower the team to make better decisions and to provide the necessary resources and support needed to succeed.