(Decorist : 8/18-12/19)
Challenge
Inherited a new, flat, remote, full-time team (web) of 25 (mostly) junior engineers in Delhi when dominant local (SF) office culture was not optimized for remote work. Needed to transform them into Bay Area-level talent while maneuvering them into a manageable hierarchy while at the same time incorporating a contracting team (VR) of 13 in Lahore
Action
Team Organization
Re-organized (and became productive) as Tribes.
Transitioned work culture to remote by getting stakeholders more comfortable with off-peak-hour meetings.
Processes
Introduced Agile paradigm / SCRUM meetings.
Leveraged Google Forms to craft surveys towards quantitatively and qualitatively bettering processes.
Introduced story-point estimations.
Began mastering Jira / work-breakdown through Epics, etc. Started Automated Testing.
Introduced Coda for Program Management
Performance
Tried Koan for performance management and remote visibility.
Introduced reviews and performance tracking with PeopleGoal, empowering local Indian General Manager with structural tools.
Introduced OKRs.
Introduced accountability through personal / sprint goals.
Introduced bi-weekly series email “Get to Know Me!” (as managed through Google Forms); highlighting two Delhi team members per installment. Also eventally created team videos using smartphone-captured content, stitched together through iMovie.
Releases
Created branching and release strategies.
Provided team with Release Notes template for improving communication with stakeholders.
Speed
Incorporated Performance Engineering mindset.
Quality
Led by example by including hyperlinks and project IDs in correspondance.
Reminded people to provide more context in Jira stories.
Reminded QA to provide easy, concise steps-to-verify and testing credentials to stakeholders.
Introduced the concept of “Bug Severity,” Estimated Time to Resolution, and a simple Google Form for reporting (and emailing) bugs to multiple engineering stakeholders who can triage.
Overall, the whole company has seen a qualitative improvement of content of communications between distributed offices; we are all now incorporating more details leading to faster turn-around of higher-quality code.
Results
- Created outcome-driven processes, best practices, structure, and mentorship for a new, offshore engineering team.