Team & Project Management

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.

Building a collaborative roadmap and aligning priorities

GetNinjas, a local services marketplace in LATAM, faced the challenge of defining and prioritizing opportunities in their roadmap. To address this, they categorized opportunities into three buckets, made their roadmap public and accessible to anyone in the company using Notion.so, and encouraged everyone to read and comment on it. Despite a rough start, they have seen success in this new collaborative approach and will likely never go back to the traditional way of creating and communicating a roadmap.

Splitting Your Team Into Two

The author was managing a team responsible for sending out hundreds of millions of emails per day. As the team grew, they decided to split into two teams, one for the product and one for the platform. The author had to justify the split to their manager and product director, and eventually hired a separate engineering manager. After the split, the company had a broader reorganization and the two teams were able to transition smoothly. The author learned that it is important to take a look at the team to gauge whether splitting is the right decision, to confirm the right people are in place, and to have separate metrics for success.

Transitioning from Marketing to Product: A Non-Tech in Tech

A marketer with no traditional tech skillset was given the opportunity to lead a customer migration project for a major replatform project. Through saying yes to the role and taking on tasks, they were able to learn the development lifecycle, build relationships with experts, and ask questions to gain knowledge. They learned that it's ok to not know everything, and to use their strengths to their advantage. They also learned to start conversations with what they do know, and to find advocates to soundboard with when stuck.

Project Estimation Using T-Shirt Sizes

This article discusses an effective agile estimation technique for project estimation in software development, called t-shirt sizing. It involves categorizing tasks into S, M, L, and XL buckets, which can be mapped to a 1 person work week. The scale can be adjusted based on business and project needs, and there are three techniques (T1, T2, and T3) for estimating delivery dates with varying accuracy. This technique helps teams understand their velocity and plan for resources, while avoiding analysis-paralysis.

Establishing Communication in a Growing Engineering and Product Team

The company had difficulty regulating communication between engineering and product teams due to different locations. To fix this, they introduced daily stand-ups, weekly demos and planning, bi-weekly engineering and product staff meetings, monthly OKR reviews, and quarterly Recap and Launch Days. They learned that communication needs to be operational, consistent, and tailored to the user profile.