Knowledge shared by our community

Framing a Roadmap

This article outlines the process of creating a roadmap for a product space. The author suggests dividing the framework into four categories and measuring impact. They also suggest understanding the 'why', 'what', and 'how' of the roadmap, and constantly driving alignment with stakeholders. This process was used to create a roadmap for a startup incubation app.

Flipping Your Perspective in Every Situation and Assuming Good Intent

The Arbinger Institute's book Leadership and Self Deception uses a scenario of a married couple with a newborn baby to illustrate the power of changing one's perception. By assuming good intent in all interactions, one can create a safe space for others to open up and trust them, leading to better interactions. This approach can be applied to all situations, such as reading emails with interest instead of anger, and assuming good intent even if the other person does not. Shifting one's mindset takes energy and hard work, but is worth it in the end.

The Benefits of Hackathons

Hackathons are a great way to promote collaboration and innovation across a company. They allow people to work with others they may not have known before and to work on projects they may not have had the chance to work on before. Hackathons should be planned with objectives in mind and can last from 24 hours to a full week. Themes should be creative and swag can be included. Scheduling two hackathons a year, one in the summer and one in the winter, is a great way to include interns.

Introducing Agile Into the Workforce with a few simple steps.

Introducing Agile/Scrum into an organization can be challenging, as teams often have lax approaches to development. To address this, a modest method has been developed to introduce the framework. This includes setting measurable and achievable goals, using Story Points to measure actual work, and prioritizing the backlog of work based on team velocity. After a few quarters of this process, teams become more consistent and reliable, and morale and trust within the organization improves.

Managing Stressful Situations and Consequential Randomization Caused by External Teams

This article discusses how to manage a team in order to reduce randomization and increase motivation. It suggests managing and helping people align in their career, getting in on all the across team planning, clearly defining tradeoffs, and allocating dedicated time or a percentage of the workforce to specific needs. The goal is to become more predictable and align people's passions, interests, and career goals with the company goals.

Parent Friendly Work Culture

ITA's Women Influence Chicago initiative brought together tech leaders to discuss best practices for creating inclusive work cultures for parents. Discussions focused on transparency, creating an even playing field, having a robust leave policy, and changing the profession to accommodate working parents. The event was sponsored by Lantern Partners and the top four takeaways were shared.

The Best Leaders are Storytellers

Companies have traditionally relied on data-driven presentations to provide insights and ideas for change. However, the power of storytelling can be used to communicate and educate about a brand and focus, and to connect with audiences from all backgrounds. Stories are universal and create authentic meaning, and can be used to demonstrate passions and successes. Leaders should use storytelling to create meaningful connections and collaboration.

Networking 101

This article discusses how to effectively network without feeling anxious. It suggests changing one's mindset to focus on what they can do for others, letting go of the fear of sounding dumb, and following up on every interaction. It also suggests providing something of value to the other person in follow up, which helps to remember names and build meaningful connections.

The Power of Mentorship

This article discusses the importance of mentorship and encourages leaders to invest their time and energy in this activity. It highlights the benefits of mentorship, such as diversifying teams and boards, and emphasizes the importance of helping young professionals cultivate their leadership skills. The article also stresses that mentorship is an easy place to start and does not require a monetary investment.

Antidotes for Bro-Culture

At the Chicago Tech Summit, it was observed that the city has managed to keep bro-culture to a minimum due to the nature of the region, such as the way VCs invest in companies and the people who choose to reside there. This has created a culture of measured enthusiasm and collaboration, but it also curtails the exhibitionism that tech values. Chicago tech's national presence is a victim of this false conflation between showmanship and innovation.

Saving a Team from Certain Burnout

This article discusses a problem of a team working 10-12 hour days and six days a week. The root cause of the problem was identified as delayed deliverables and working on small details that would eventually change. To solve the problem, the author implemented strict guidelines and the necessary scrum process to ensure deliverables were on time, and shifted the team's focus to high-level end-user scenarios. As a result, the team was able to produce a product that satisfied 95% of customers, and the team's attitude changed to one of wanting to come to work.

Extracting, Processing, and Relaying Essential Information Only

In this situation, the person had difficulty providing their boss with daily reports on all projects. To address this, they reevaluated their boss's expectations and only provided the necessary information. Additionally, they asked to be invited to meetings and solicited feedback from higher level managers to understand the level of information needed. The lessons learned were to be specific when providing information and to understand what type of information the manager is looking for.

Reorg/ Restructuring for Increased Efficiency and Happiness Levels

In this case study, the author was hired to make the reorganization and restructuring process more efficient. After interviewing leads and managers, they reevaluated everyone's admission skills, technical skills, and their desire to work on different technology stacks. This resulted in the reorganization of the teams into six different teams, each utilizing different skills. This shortened the regression testing by 50% and improved team atmosphere and happiness. The author learned that when doing restructuring and reorganization, one must consider the cultural fit of each person and team, and continuously assess technical background and personal goals.

Reflections on Hiring and Growing a Team as a New Manager

A transition from individual contributor to manager can be challenging, but with the right mindset and support, it can be a rewarding experience. This article discusses the author's experience transitioning from IC to manager, the actions they took to make the transition smoother, and the lessons they learned along the way. These lessons include being aware of the challenge of balancing IC and managerial work, and giving new hires the time and space to learn and grow.

Aligning Business with Poker Planning

This CTO experienced difficulty with team efficiency due to a lack of engagement and alignment in the company's product vision. To address this, they set up bi-monthly meetings to involve all departments in the estimation of tasks and the sorting of the roadmap. This improved communication, understanding, and engagement, resulting in better team efficiency.

Managing Up: Regular One-On-Ones versus Career One-On-Ones

After struggling to manage up in the first two years of his career, the author learned to advocate for himself in a smaller company. He then became more deliberate in his one-on-one meetings with his current manager, and initiated separate career one-on-ones to discuss his goals and progress. This allowed him to have visibility into his career goals and document his progress.

It’s Never Too Late in a Product to Conduct User Research

When working at Glassdoor, the product manager was tasked with redesigning the salary experience to stay competitive in the market. After initial designs were deemed too iterative, the product manager took a step back and started from scratch, conducting user research to identify user needs and create a roadmap for the product. Through this process, the product manager learned the importance of conducting user research and starting from scratch to ensure the product is meeting user needs.

Preparing, Transitioning, and Restructuring into a Netflix Model

The author was tasked with transitioning an engineering organization of 150 people from traditional software development practices to a Netflix model. To do so, they created a manifesto and got buy-in from executives and product, formed a platform engineering organization, and surveyed the engineering organization to identify problems and common patterns. Through this process, 98% of the services were migrated to the new model and adoption was organic. The key lessons learned were to focus on alignment, maintain existing operations while empowering engineers, get key people into the platform organization, ask the team to define the problems, and have transparency.

Engineering Teams Run as a Product Organization

This article discusses the experience of transitioning from a consumer web application to enterprise software, and the difficulty of connecting to the business value. The author took action by retraining their mind to think like a product organization, hiring a technical program manager, and implementing product metrics and a feature prioritization framework. As a result, the engineering teams were able to build customer-facing products and create a revenue-generating feature in less than a month. The author learned that product and engineering should be under one organization, and that having a product-minded engineering leader will result in better products.

Implementing an Internship Program

An internship committee was created within the web organization to vet interns and assign them to teams with mentors. The interns participate in all work scrum activities and are embedded as part of the team for three months. Community service projects, lunches with mentors, and a final presentation are also incorporated into the program. The program has been successful, with one intern hired per year, and feedback from interns has been positive.

Framing a Roadmap

This article outlines the process of creating a roadmap for a product space. The author suggests dividing the framework into four categories and measuring impact. They also suggest understanding the 'why', 'what', and 'how' of the roadmap, and constantly driving alignment with stakeholders. This process was used to create a roadmap for a startup incubation app.

Flipping Your Perspective in Every Situation and Assuming Good Intent

The Arbinger Institute's book Leadership and Self Deception uses a scenario of a married couple with a newborn baby to illustrate the power of changing one's perception. By assuming good intent in all interactions, one can create a safe space for others to open up and trust them, leading to better interactions. This approach can be applied to all situations, such as reading emails with interest instead of anger, and assuming good intent even if the other person does not. Shifting one's mindset takes energy and hard work, but is worth it in the end.

The Benefits of Hackathons

Hackathons are a great way to promote collaboration and innovation across a company. They allow people to work with others they may not have known before and to work on projects they may not have had the chance to work on before. Hackathons should be planned with objectives in mind and can last from 24 hours to a full week. Themes should be creative and swag can be included. Scheduling two hackathons a year, one in the summer and one in the winter, is a great way to include interns.

Introducing Agile Into the Workforce with a few simple steps.

Introducing Agile/Scrum into an organization can be challenging, as teams often have lax approaches to development. To address this, a modest method has been developed to introduce the framework. This includes setting measurable and achievable goals, using Story Points to measure actual work, and prioritizing the backlog of work based on team velocity. After a few quarters of this process, teams become more consistent and reliable, and morale and trust within the organization improves.

Managing Stressful Situations and Consequential Randomization Caused by External Teams

This article discusses how to manage a team in order to reduce randomization and increase motivation. It suggests managing and helping people align in their career, getting in on all the across team planning, clearly defining tradeoffs, and allocating dedicated time or a percentage of the workforce to specific needs. The goal is to become more predictable and align people's passions, interests, and career goals with the company goals.

Parent Friendly Work Culture

ITA's Women Influence Chicago initiative brought together tech leaders to discuss best practices for creating inclusive work cultures for parents. Discussions focused on transparency, creating an even playing field, having a robust leave policy, and changing the profession to accommodate working parents. The event was sponsored by Lantern Partners and the top four takeaways were shared.

The Best Leaders are Storytellers

Companies have traditionally relied on data-driven presentations to provide insights and ideas for change. However, the power of storytelling can be used to communicate and educate about a brand and focus, and to connect with audiences from all backgrounds. Stories are universal and create authentic meaning, and can be used to demonstrate passions and successes. Leaders should use storytelling to create meaningful connections and collaboration.

Networking 101

This article discusses how to effectively network without feeling anxious. It suggests changing one's mindset to focus on what they can do for others, letting go of the fear of sounding dumb, and following up on every interaction. It also suggests providing something of value to the other person in follow up, which helps to remember names and build meaningful connections.

The Power of Mentorship

This article discusses the importance of mentorship and encourages leaders to invest their time and energy in this activity. It highlights the benefits of mentorship, such as diversifying teams and boards, and emphasizes the importance of helping young professionals cultivate their leadership skills. The article also stresses that mentorship is an easy place to start and does not require a monetary investment.

Antidotes for Bro-Culture

At the Chicago Tech Summit, it was observed that the city has managed to keep bro-culture to a minimum due to the nature of the region, such as the way VCs invest in companies and the people who choose to reside there. This has created a culture of measured enthusiasm and collaboration, but it also curtails the exhibitionism that tech values. Chicago tech's national presence is a victim of this false conflation between showmanship and innovation.

Saving a Team from Certain Burnout

This article discusses a problem of a team working 10-12 hour days and six days a week. The root cause of the problem was identified as delayed deliverables and working on small details that would eventually change. To solve the problem, the author implemented strict guidelines and the necessary scrum process to ensure deliverables were on time, and shifted the team's focus to high-level end-user scenarios. As a result, the team was able to produce a product that satisfied 95% of customers, and the team's attitude changed to one of wanting to come to work.

Extracting, Processing, and Relaying Essential Information Only

In this situation, the person had difficulty providing their boss with daily reports on all projects. To address this, they reevaluated their boss's expectations and only provided the necessary information. Additionally, they asked to be invited to meetings and solicited feedback from higher level managers to understand the level of information needed. The lessons learned were to be specific when providing information and to understand what type of information the manager is looking for.

Reorg/ Restructuring for Increased Efficiency and Happiness Levels

In this case study, the author was hired to make the reorganization and restructuring process more efficient. After interviewing leads and managers, they reevaluated everyone's admission skills, technical skills, and their desire to work on different technology stacks. This resulted in the reorganization of the teams into six different teams, each utilizing different skills. This shortened the regression testing by 50% and improved team atmosphere and happiness. The author learned that when doing restructuring and reorganization, one must consider the cultural fit of each person and team, and continuously assess technical background and personal goals.

Reflections on Hiring and Growing a Team as a New Manager

A transition from individual contributor to manager can be challenging, but with the right mindset and support, it can be a rewarding experience. This article discusses the author's experience transitioning from IC to manager, the actions they took to make the transition smoother, and the lessons they learned along the way. These lessons include being aware of the challenge of balancing IC and managerial work, and giving new hires the time and space to learn and grow.

Aligning Business with Poker Planning

This CTO experienced difficulty with team efficiency due to a lack of engagement and alignment in the company's product vision. To address this, they set up bi-monthly meetings to involve all departments in the estimation of tasks and the sorting of the roadmap. This improved communication, understanding, and engagement, resulting in better team efficiency.

Managing Up: Regular One-On-Ones versus Career One-On-Ones

After struggling to manage up in the first two years of his career, the author learned to advocate for himself in a smaller company. He then became more deliberate in his one-on-one meetings with his current manager, and initiated separate career one-on-ones to discuss his goals and progress. This allowed him to have visibility into his career goals and document his progress.

It’s Never Too Late in a Product to Conduct User Research

When working at Glassdoor, the product manager was tasked with redesigning the salary experience to stay competitive in the market. After initial designs were deemed too iterative, the product manager took a step back and started from scratch, conducting user research to identify user needs and create a roadmap for the product. Through this process, the product manager learned the importance of conducting user research and starting from scratch to ensure the product is meeting user needs.

Preparing, Transitioning, and Restructuring into a Netflix Model

The author was tasked with transitioning an engineering organization of 150 people from traditional software development practices to a Netflix model. To do so, they created a manifesto and got buy-in from executives and product, formed a platform engineering organization, and surveyed the engineering organization to identify problems and common patterns. Through this process, 98% of the services were migrated to the new model and adoption was organic. The key lessons learned were to focus on alignment, maintain existing operations while empowering engineers, get key people into the platform organization, ask the team to define the problems, and have transparency.

Engineering Teams Run as a Product Organization

This article discusses the experience of transitioning from a consumer web application to enterprise software, and the difficulty of connecting to the business value. The author took action by retraining their mind to think like a product organization, hiring a technical program manager, and implementing product metrics and a feature prioritization framework. As a result, the engineering teams were able to build customer-facing products and create a revenue-generating feature in less than a month. The author learned that product and engineering should be under one organization, and that having a product-minded engineering leader will result in better products.

Implementing an Internship Program

An internship committee was created within the web organization to vet interns and assign them to teams with mentors. The interns participate in all work scrum activities and are embedded as part of the team for three months. Community service projects, lunches with mentors, and a final presentation are also incorporated into the program. The program has been successful, with one intern hired per year, and feedback from interns has been positive.

Framing a Roadmap

This article outlines the process of creating a roadmap for a product space. The author suggests dividing the framework into four categories and measuring impact. They also suggest understanding the 'why', 'what', and 'how' of the roadmap, and constantly driving alignment with stakeholders. This process was used to create a roadmap for a startup incubation app.

Flipping Your Perspective in Every Situation and Assuming Good Intent

The Arbinger Institute's book Leadership and Self Deception uses a scenario of a married couple with a newborn baby to illustrate the power of changing one's perception. By assuming good intent in all interactions, one can create a safe space for others to open up and trust them, leading to better interactions. This approach can be applied to all situations, such as reading emails with interest instead of anger, and assuming good intent even if the other person does not. Shifting one's mindset takes energy and hard work, but is worth it in the end.

The Benefits of Hackathons

Hackathons are a great way to promote collaboration and innovation across a company. They allow people to work with others they may not have known before and to work on projects they may not have had the chance to work on before. Hackathons should be planned with objectives in mind and can last from 24 hours to a full week. Themes should be creative and swag can be included. Scheduling two hackathons a year, one in the summer and one in the winter, is a great way to include interns.

Introducing Agile Into the Workforce with a few simple steps.

Introducing Agile/Scrum into an organization can be challenging, as teams often have lax approaches to development. To address this, a modest method has been developed to introduce the framework. This includes setting measurable and achievable goals, using Story Points to measure actual work, and prioritizing the backlog of work based on team velocity. After a few quarters of this process, teams become more consistent and reliable, and morale and trust within the organization improves.

Managing Stressful Situations and Consequential Randomization Caused by External Teams

This article discusses how to manage a team in order to reduce randomization and increase motivation. It suggests managing and helping people align in their career, getting in on all the across team planning, clearly defining tradeoffs, and allocating dedicated time or a percentage of the workforce to specific needs. The goal is to become more predictable and align people's passions, interests, and career goals with the company goals.

Parent Friendly Work Culture

ITA's Women Influence Chicago initiative brought together tech leaders to discuss best practices for creating inclusive work cultures for parents. Discussions focused on transparency, creating an even playing field, having a robust leave policy, and changing the profession to accommodate working parents. The event was sponsored by Lantern Partners and the top four takeaways were shared.

The Best Leaders are Storytellers

Companies have traditionally relied on data-driven presentations to provide insights and ideas for change. However, the power of storytelling can be used to communicate and educate about a brand and focus, and to connect with audiences from all backgrounds. Stories are universal and create authentic meaning, and can be used to demonstrate passions and successes. Leaders should use storytelling to create meaningful connections and collaboration.

Networking 101

This article discusses how to effectively network without feeling anxious. It suggests changing one's mindset to focus on what they can do for others, letting go of the fear of sounding dumb, and following up on every interaction. It also suggests providing something of value to the other person in follow up, which helps to remember names and build meaningful connections.

The Power of Mentorship

This article discusses the importance of mentorship and encourages leaders to invest their time and energy in this activity. It highlights the benefits of mentorship, such as diversifying teams and boards, and emphasizes the importance of helping young professionals cultivate their leadership skills. The article also stresses that mentorship is an easy place to start and does not require a monetary investment.

Antidotes for Bro-Culture

At the Chicago Tech Summit, it was observed that the city has managed to keep bro-culture to a minimum due to the nature of the region, such as the way VCs invest in companies and the people who choose to reside there. This has created a culture of measured enthusiasm and collaboration, but it also curtails the exhibitionism that tech values. Chicago tech's national presence is a victim of this false conflation between showmanship and innovation.

Saving a Team from Certain Burnout

This article discusses a problem of a team working 10-12 hour days and six days a week. The root cause of the problem was identified as delayed deliverables and working on small details that would eventually change. To solve the problem, the author implemented strict guidelines and the necessary scrum process to ensure deliverables were on time, and shifted the team's focus to high-level end-user scenarios. As a result, the team was able to produce a product that satisfied 95% of customers, and the team's attitude changed to one of wanting to come to work.

Extracting, Processing, and Relaying Essential Information Only

In this situation, the person had difficulty providing their boss with daily reports on all projects. To address this, they reevaluated their boss's expectations and only provided the necessary information. Additionally, they asked to be invited to meetings and solicited feedback from higher level managers to understand the level of information needed. The lessons learned were to be specific when providing information and to understand what type of information the manager is looking for.

Reorg/ Restructuring for Increased Efficiency and Happiness Levels

In this case study, the author was hired to make the reorganization and restructuring process more efficient. After interviewing leads and managers, they reevaluated everyone's admission skills, technical skills, and their desire to work on different technology stacks. This resulted in the reorganization of the teams into six different teams, each utilizing different skills. This shortened the regression testing by 50% and improved team atmosphere and happiness. The author learned that when doing restructuring and reorganization, one must consider the cultural fit of each person and team, and continuously assess technical background and personal goals.

Reflections on Hiring and Growing a Team as a New Manager

A transition from individual contributor to manager can be challenging, but with the right mindset and support, it can be a rewarding experience. This article discusses the author's experience transitioning from IC to manager, the actions they took to make the transition smoother, and the lessons they learned along the way. These lessons include being aware of the challenge of balancing IC and managerial work, and giving new hires the time and space to learn and grow.

Aligning Business with Poker Planning

This CTO experienced difficulty with team efficiency due to a lack of engagement and alignment in the company's product vision. To address this, they set up bi-monthly meetings to involve all departments in the estimation of tasks and the sorting of the roadmap. This improved communication, understanding, and engagement, resulting in better team efficiency.

Managing Up: Regular One-On-Ones versus Career One-On-Ones

After struggling to manage up in the first two years of his career, the author learned to advocate for himself in a smaller company. He then became more deliberate in his one-on-one meetings with his current manager, and initiated separate career one-on-ones to discuss his goals and progress. This allowed him to have visibility into his career goals and document his progress.

It’s Never Too Late in a Product to Conduct User Research

When working at Glassdoor, the product manager was tasked with redesigning the salary experience to stay competitive in the market. After initial designs were deemed too iterative, the product manager took a step back and started from scratch, conducting user research to identify user needs and create a roadmap for the product. Through this process, the product manager learned the importance of conducting user research and starting from scratch to ensure the product is meeting user needs.

Preparing, Transitioning, and Restructuring into a Netflix Model

The author was tasked with transitioning an engineering organization of 150 people from traditional software development practices to a Netflix model. To do so, they created a manifesto and got buy-in from executives and product, formed a platform engineering organization, and surveyed the engineering organization to identify problems and common patterns. Through this process, 98% of the services were migrated to the new model and adoption was organic. The key lessons learned were to focus on alignment, maintain existing operations while empowering engineers, get key people into the platform organization, ask the team to define the problems, and have transparency.

Engineering Teams Run as a Product Organization

This article discusses the experience of transitioning from a consumer web application to enterprise software, and the difficulty of connecting to the business value. The author took action by retraining their mind to think like a product organization, hiring a technical program manager, and implementing product metrics and a feature prioritization framework. As a result, the engineering teams were able to build customer-facing products and create a revenue-generating feature in less than a month. The author learned that product and engineering should be under one organization, and that having a product-minded engineering leader will result in better products.

Implementing an Internship Program

An internship committee was created within the web organization to vet interns and assign them to teams with mentors. The interns participate in all work scrum activities and are embedded as part of the team for three months. Community service projects, lunches with mentors, and a final presentation are also incorporated into the program. The program has been successful, with one intern hired per year, and feedback from interns has been positive.

Framing a Roadmap

This article outlines the process of creating a roadmap for a product space. The author suggests dividing the framework into four categories and measuring impact. They also suggest understanding the 'why', 'what', and 'how' of the roadmap, and constantly driving alignment with stakeholders. This process was used to create a roadmap for a startup incubation app.

Flipping Your Perspective in Every Situation and Assuming Good Intent

The Arbinger Institute's book Leadership and Self Deception uses a scenario of a married couple with a newborn baby to illustrate the power of changing one's perception. By assuming good intent in all interactions, one can create a safe space for others to open up and trust them, leading to better interactions. This approach can be applied to all situations, such as reading emails with interest instead of anger, and assuming good intent even if the other person does not. Shifting one's mindset takes energy and hard work, but is worth it in the end.

The Benefits of Hackathons

Hackathons are a great way to promote collaboration and innovation across a company. They allow people to work with others they may not have known before and to work on projects they may not have had the chance to work on before. Hackathons should be planned with objectives in mind and can last from 24 hours to a full week. Themes should be creative and swag can be included. Scheduling two hackathons a year, one in the summer and one in the winter, is a great way to include interns.

Introducing Agile Into the Workforce with a few simple steps.

Introducing Agile/Scrum into an organization can be challenging, as teams often have lax approaches to development. To address this, a modest method has been developed to introduce the framework. This includes setting measurable and achievable goals, using Story Points to measure actual work, and prioritizing the backlog of work based on team velocity. After a few quarters of this process, teams become more consistent and reliable, and morale and trust within the organization improves.

Managing Stressful Situations and Consequential Randomization Caused by External Teams

This article discusses how to manage a team in order to reduce randomization and increase motivation. It suggests managing and helping people align in their career, getting in on all the across team planning, clearly defining tradeoffs, and allocating dedicated time or a percentage of the workforce to specific needs. The goal is to become more predictable and align people's passions, interests, and career goals with the company goals.

Parent Friendly Work Culture

ITA's Women Influence Chicago initiative brought together tech leaders to discuss best practices for creating inclusive work cultures for parents. Discussions focused on transparency, creating an even playing field, having a robust leave policy, and changing the profession to accommodate working parents. The event was sponsored by Lantern Partners and the top four takeaways were shared.

The Best Leaders are Storytellers

Companies have traditionally relied on data-driven presentations to provide insights and ideas for change. However, the power of storytelling can be used to communicate and educate about a brand and focus, and to connect with audiences from all backgrounds. Stories are universal and create authentic meaning, and can be used to demonstrate passions and successes. Leaders should use storytelling to create meaningful connections and collaboration.

Networking 101

This article discusses how to effectively network without feeling anxious. It suggests changing one's mindset to focus on what they can do for others, letting go of the fear of sounding dumb, and following up on every interaction. It also suggests providing something of value to the other person in follow up, which helps to remember names and build meaningful connections.

The Power of Mentorship

This article discusses the importance of mentorship and encourages leaders to invest their time and energy in this activity. It highlights the benefits of mentorship, such as diversifying teams and boards, and emphasizes the importance of helping young professionals cultivate their leadership skills. The article also stresses that mentorship is an easy place to start and does not require a monetary investment.

Antidotes for Bro-Culture

At the Chicago Tech Summit, it was observed that the city has managed to keep bro-culture to a minimum due to the nature of the region, such as the way VCs invest in companies and the people who choose to reside there. This has created a culture of measured enthusiasm and collaboration, but it also curtails the exhibitionism that tech values. Chicago tech's national presence is a victim of this false conflation between showmanship and innovation.

Saving a Team from Certain Burnout

This article discusses a problem of a team working 10-12 hour days and six days a week. The root cause of the problem was identified as delayed deliverables and working on small details that would eventually change. To solve the problem, the author implemented strict guidelines and the necessary scrum process to ensure deliverables were on time, and shifted the team's focus to high-level end-user scenarios. As a result, the team was able to produce a product that satisfied 95% of customers, and the team's attitude changed to one of wanting to come to work.

Extracting, Processing, and Relaying Essential Information Only

In this situation, the person had difficulty providing their boss with daily reports on all projects. To address this, they reevaluated their boss's expectations and only provided the necessary information. Additionally, they asked to be invited to meetings and solicited feedback from higher level managers to understand the level of information needed. The lessons learned were to be specific when providing information and to understand what type of information the manager is looking for.

Reorg/ Restructuring for Increased Efficiency and Happiness Levels

In this case study, the author was hired to make the reorganization and restructuring process more efficient. After interviewing leads and managers, they reevaluated everyone's admission skills, technical skills, and their desire to work on different technology stacks. This resulted in the reorganization of the teams into six different teams, each utilizing different skills. This shortened the regression testing by 50% and improved team atmosphere and happiness. The author learned that when doing restructuring and reorganization, one must consider the cultural fit of each person and team, and continuously assess technical background and personal goals.

Reflections on Hiring and Growing a Team as a New Manager

A transition from individual contributor to manager can be challenging, but with the right mindset and support, it can be a rewarding experience. This article discusses the author's experience transitioning from IC to manager, the actions they took to make the transition smoother, and the lessons they learned along the way. These lessons include being aware of the challenge of balancing IC and managerial work, and giving new hires the time and space to learn and grow.

Aligning Business with Poker Planning

This CTO experienced difficulty with team efficiency due to a lack of engagement and alignment in the company's product vision. To address this, they set up bi-monthly meetings to involve all departments in the estimation of tasks and the sorting of the roadmap. This improved communication, understanding, and engagement, resulting in better team efficiency.

Managing Up: Regular One-On-Ones versus Career One-On-Ones

After struggling to manage up in the first two years of his career, the author learned to advocate for himself in a smaller company. He then became more deliberate in his one-on-one meetings with his current manager, and initiated separate career one-on-ones to discuss his goals and progress. This allowed him to have visibility into his career goals and document his progress.

It’s Never Too Late in a Product to Conduct User Research

When working at Glassdoor, the product manager was tasked with redesigning the salary experience to stay competitive in the market. After initial designs were deemed too iterative, the product manager took a step back and started from scratch, conducting user research to identify user needs and create a roadmap for the product. Through this process, the product manager learned the importance of conducting user research and starting from scratch to ensure the product is meeting user needs.

Preparing, Transitioning, and Restructuring into a Netflix Model

The author was tasked with transitioning an engineering organization of 150 people from traditional software development practices to a Netflix model. To do so, they created a manifesto and got buy-in from executives and product, formed a platform engineering organization, and surveyed the engineering organization to identify problems and common patterns. Through this process, 98% of the services were migrated to the new model and adoption was organic. The key lessons learned were to focus on alignment, maintain existing operations while empowering engineers, get key people into the platform organization, ask the team to define the problems, and have transparency.

Engineering Teams Run as a Product Organization

This article discusses the experience of transitioning from a consumer web application to enterprise software, and the difficulty of connecting to the business value. The author took action by retraining their mind to think like a product organization, hiring a technical program manager, and implementing product metrics and a feature prioritization framework. As a result, the engineering teams were able to build customer-facing products and create a revenue-generating feature in less than a month. The author learned that product and engineering should be under one organization, and that having a product-minded engineering leader will result in better products.

Implementing an Internship Program

An internship committee was created within the web organization to vet interns and assign them to teams with mentors. The interns participate in all work scrum activities and are embedded as part of the team for three months. Community service projects, lunches with mentors, and a final presentation are also incorporated into the program. The program has been successful, with one intern hired per year, and feedback from interns has been positive.

Framing a Roadmap

This article outlines the process of creating a roadmap for a product space. The author suggests dividing the framework into four categories and measuring impact. They also suggest understanding the 'why', 'what', and 'how' of the roadmap, and constantly driving alignment with stakeholders. This process was used to create a roadmap for a startup incubation app.

Flipping Your Perspective in Every Situation and Assuming Good Intent

The Arbinger Institute's book Leadership and Self Deception uses a scenario of a married couple with a newborn baby to illustrate the power of changing one's perception. By assuming good intent in all interactions, one can create a safe space for others to open up and trust them, leading to better interactions. This approach can be applied to all situations, such as reading emails with interest instead of anger, and assuming good intent even if the other person does not. Shifting one's mindset takes energy and hard work, but is worth it in the end.

The Benefits of Hackathons

Hackathons are a great way to promote collaboration and innovation across a company. They allow people to work with others they may not have known before and to work on projects they may not have had the chance to work on before. Hackathons should be planned with objectives in mind and can last from 24 hours to a full week. Themes should be creative and swag can be included. Scheduling two hackathons a year, one in the summer and one in the winter, is a great way to include interns.

Introducing Agile Into the Workforce with a few simple steps.

Introducing Agile/Scrum into an organization can be challenging, as teams often have lax approaches to development. To address this, a modest method has been developed to introduce the framework. This includes setting measurable and achievable goals, using Story Points to measure actual work, and prioritizing the backlog of work based on team velocity. After a few quarters of this process, teams become more consistent and reliable, and morale and trust within the organization improves.

Managing Stressful Situations and Consequential Randomization Caused by External Teams

This article discusses how to manage a team in order to reduce randomization and increase motivation. It suggests managing and helping people align in their career, getting in on all the across team planning, clearly defining tradeoffs, and allocating dedicated time or a percentage of the workforce to specific needs. The goal is to become more predictable and align people's passions, interests, and career goals with the company goals.

Parent Friendly Work Culture

ITA's Women Influence Chicago initiative brought together tech leaders to discuss best practices for creating inclusive work cultures for parents. Discussions focused on transparency, creating an even playing field, having a robust leave policy, and changing the profession to accommodate working parents. The event was sponsored by Lantern Partners and the top four takeaways were shared.

The Best Leaders are Storytellers

Companies have traditionally relied on data-driven presentations to provide insights and ideas for change. However, the power of storytelling can be used to communicate and educate about a brand and focus, and to connect with audiences from all backgrounds. Stories are universal and create authentic meaning, and can be used to demonstrate passions and successes. Leaders should use storytelling to create meaningful connections and collaboration.

Networking 101

This article discusses how to effectively network without feeling anxious. It suggests changing one's mindset to focus on what they can do for others, letting go of the fear of sounding dumb, and following up on every interaction. It also suggests providing something of value to the other person in follow up, which helps to remember names and build meaningful connections.

The Power of Mentorship

This article discusses the importance of mentorship and encourages leaders to invest their time and energy in this activity. It highlights the benefits of mentorship, such as diversifying teams and boards, and emphasizes the importance of helping young professionals cultivate their leadership skills. The article also stresses that mentorship is an easy place to start and does not require a monetary investment.

Antidotes for Bro-Culture

At the Chicago Tech Summit, it was observed that the city has managed to keep bro-culture to a minimum due to the nature of the region, such as the way VCs invest in companies and the people who choose to reside there. This has created a culture of measured enthusiasm and collaboration, but it also curtails the exhibitionism that tech values. Chicago tech's national presence is a victim of this false conflation between showmanship and innovation.

Saving a Team from Certain Burnout

This article discusses a problem of a team working 10-12 hour days and six days a week. The root cause of the problem was identified as delayed deliverables and working on small details that would eventually change. To solve the problem, the author implemented strict guidelines and the necessary scrum process to ensure deliverables were on time, and shifted the team's focus to high-level end-user scenarios. As a result, the team was able to produce a product that satisfied 95% of customers, and the team's attitude changed to one of wanting to come to work.

Extracting, Processing, and Relaying Essential Information Only

In this situation, the person had difficulty providing their boss with daily reports on all projects. To address this, they reevaluated their boss's expectations and only provided the necessary information. Additionally, they asked to be invited to meetings and solicited feedback from higher level managers to understand the level of information needed. The lessons learned were to be specific when providing information and to understand what type of information the manager is looking for.

Reorg/ Restructuring for Increased Efficiency and Happiness Levels

In this case study, the author was hired to make the reorganization and restructuring process more efficient. After interviewing leads and managers, they reevaluated everyone's admission skills, technical skills, and their desire to work on different technology stacks. This resulted in the reorganization of the teams into six different teams, each utilizing different skills. This shortened the regression testing by 50% and improved team atmosphere and happiness. The author learned that when doing restructuring and reorganization, one must consider the cultural fit of each person and team, and continuously assess technical background and personal goals.

Reflections on Hiring and Growing a Team as a New Manager

A transition from individual contributor to manager can be challenging, but with the right mindset and support, it can be a rewarding experience. This article discusses the author's experience transitioning from IC to manager, the actions they took to make the transition smoother, and the lessons they learned along the way. These lessons include being aware of the challenge of balancing IC and managerial work, and giving new hires the time and space to learn and grow.

Aligning Business with Poker Planning

This CTO experienced difficulty with team efficiency due to a lack of engagement and alignment in the company's product vision. To address this, they set up bi-monthly meetings to involve all departments in the estimation of tasks and the sorting of the roadmap. This improved communication, understanding, and engagement, resulting in better team efficiency.

Managing Up: Regular One-On-Ones versus Career One-On-Ones

After struggling to manage up in the first two years of his career, the author learned to advocate for himself in a smaller company. He then became more deliberate in his one-on-one meetings with his current manager, and initiated separate career one-on-ones to discuss his goals and progress. This allowed him to have visibility into his career goals and document his progress.

It’s Never Too Late in a Product to Conduct User Research

When working at Glassdoor, the product manager was tasked with redesigning the salary experience to stay competitive in the market. After initial designs were deemed too iterative, the product manager took a step back and started from scratch, conducting user research to identify user needs and create a roadmap for the product. Through this process, the product manager learned the importance of conducting user research and starting from scratch to ensure the product is meeting user needs.

Preparing, Transitioning, and Restructuring into a Netflix Model

The author was tasked with transitioning an engineering organization of 150 people from traditional software development practices to a Netflix model. To do so, they created a manifesto and got buy-in from executives and product, formed a platform engineering organization, and surveyed the engineering organization to identify problems and common patterns. Through this process, 98% of the services were migrated to the new model and adoption was organic. The key lessons learned were to focus on alignment, maintain existing operations while empowering engineers, get key people into the platform organization, ask the team to define the problems, and have transparency.

Engineering Teams Run as a Product Organization

This article discusses the experience of transitioning from a consumer web application to enterprise software, and the difficulty of connecting to the business value. The author took action by retraining their mind to think like a product organization, hiring a technical program manager, and implementing product metrics and a feature prioritization framework. As a result, the engineering teams were able to build customer-facing products and create a revenue-generating feature in less than a month. The author learned that product and engineering should be under one organization, and that having a product-minded engineering leader will result in better products.

Implementing an Internship Program

An internship committee was created within the web organization to vet interns and assign them to teams with mentors. The interns participate in all work scrum activities and are embedded as part of the team for three months. Community service projects, lunches with mentors, and a final presentation are also incorporated into the program. The program has been successful, with one intern hired per year, and feedback from interns has been positive.

Framing a Roadmap

This article outlines the process of creating a roadmap for a product space. The author suggests dividing the framework into four categories and measuring impact. They also suggest understanding the 'why', 'what', and 'how' of the roadmap, and constantly driving alignment with stakeholders. This process was used to create a roadmap for a startup incubation app.

Flipping Your Perspective in Every Situation and Assuming Good Intent

The Arbinger Institute's book Leadership and Self Deception uses a scenario of a married couple with a newborn baby to illustrate the power of changing one's perception. By assuming good intent in all interactions, one can create a safe space for others to open up and trust them, leading to better interactions. This approach can be applied to all situations, such as reading emails with interest instead of anger, and assuming good intent even if the other person does not. Shifting one's mindset takes energy and hard work, but is worth it in the end.

The Benefits of Hackathons

Hackathons are a great way to promote collaboration and innovation across a company. They allow people to work with others they may not have known before and to work on projects they may not have had the chance to work on before. Hackathons should be planned with objectives in mind and can last from 24 hours to a full week. Themes should be creative and swag can be included. Scheduling two hackathons a year, one in the summer and one in the winter, is a great way to include interns.

Introducing Agile Into the Workforce with a few simple steps.

Introducing Agile/Scrum into an organization can be challenging, as teams often have lax approaches to development. To address this, a modest method has been developed to introduce the framework. This includes setting measurable and achievable goals, using Story Points to measure actual work, and prioritizing the backlog of work based on team velocity. After a few quarters of this process, teams become more consistent and reliable, and morale and trust within the organization improves.

Managing Stressful Situations and Consequential Randomization Caused by External Teams

This article discusses how to manage a team in order to reduce randomization and increase motivation. It suggests managing and helping people align in their career, getting in on all the across team planning, clearly defining tradeoffs, and allocating dedicated time or a percentage of the workforce to specific needs. The goal is to become more predictable and align people's passions, interests, and career goals with the company goals.

Parent Friendly Work Culture

ITA's Women Influence Chicago initiative brought together tech leaders to discuss best practices for creating inclusive work cultures for parents. Discussions focused on transparency, creating an even playing field, having a robust leave policy, and changing the profession to accommodate working parents. The event was sponsored by Lantern Partners and the top four takeaways were shared.

The Best Leaders are Storytellers

Companies have traditionally relied on data-driven presentations to provide insights and ideas for change. However, the power of storytelling can be used to communicate and educate about a brand and focus, and to connect with audiences from all backgrounds. Stories are universal and create authentic meaning, and can be used to demonstrate passions and successes. Leaders should use storytelling to create meaningful connections and collaboration.

Networking 101

This article discusses how to effectively network without feeling anxious. It suggests changing one's mindset to focus on what they can do for others, letting go of the fear of sounding dumb, and following up on every interaction. It also suggests providing something of value to the other person in follow up, which helps to remember names and build meaningful connections.

The Power of Mentorship

This article discusses the importance of mentorship and encourages leaders to invest their time and energy in this activity. It highlights the benefits of mentorship, such as diversifying teams and boards, and emphasizes the importance of helping young professionals cultivate their leadership skills. The article also stresses that mentorship is an easy place to start and does not require a monetary investment.

Antidotes for Bro-Culture

At the Chicago Tech Summit, it was observed that the city has managed to keep bro-culture to a minimum due to the nature of the region, such as the way VCs invest in companies and the people who choose to reside there. This has created a culture of measured enthusiasm and collaboration, but it also curtails the exhibitionism that tech values. Chicago tech's national presence is a victim of this false conflation between showmanship and innovation.

Saving a Team from Certain Burnout

This article discusses a problem of a team working 10-12 hour days and six days a week. The root cause of the problem was identified as delayed deliverables and working on small details that would eventually change. To solve the problem, the author implemented strict guidelines and the necessary scrum process to ensure deliverables were on time, and shifted the team's focus to high-level end-user scenarios. As a result, the team was able to produce a product that satisfied 95% of customers, and the team's attitude changed to one of wanting to come to work.

Extracting, Processing, and Relaying Essential Information Only

In this situation, the person had difficulty providing their boss with daily reports on all projects. To address this, they reevaluated their boss's expectations and only provided the necessary information. Additionally, they asked to be invited to meetings and solicited feedback from higher level managers to understand the level of information needed. The lessons learned were to be specific when providing information and to understand what type of information the manager is looking for.

Reorg/ Restructuring for Increased Efficiency and Happiness Levels

In this case study, the author was hired to make the reorganization and restructuring process more efficient. After interviewing leads and managers, they reevaluated everyone's admission skills, technical skills, and their desire to work on different technology stacks. This resulted in the reorganization of the teams into six different teams, each utilizing different skills. This shortened the regression testing by 50% and improved team atmosphere and happiness. The author learned that when doing restructuring and reorganization, one must consider the cultural fit of each person and team, and continuously assess technical background and personal goals.

Reflections on Hiring and Growing a Team as a New Manager

A transition from individual contributor to manager can be challenging, but with the right mindset and support, it can be a rewarding experience. This article discusses the author's experience transitioning from IC to manager, the actions they took to make the transition smoother, and the lessons they learned along the way. These lessons include being aware of the challenge of balancing IC and managerial work, and giving new hires the time and space to learn and grow.

Aligning Business with Poker Planning

This CTO experienced difficulty with team efficiency due to a lack of engagement and alignment in the company's product vision. To address this, they set up bi-monthly meetings to involve all departments in the estimation of tasks and the sorting of the roadmap. This improved communication, understanding, and engagement, resulting in better team efficiency.

Managing Up: Regular One-On-Ones versus Career One-On-Ones

After struggling to manage up in the first two years of his career, the author learned to advocate for himself in a smaller company. He then became more deliberate in his one-on-one meetings with his current manager, and initiated separate career one-on-ones to discuss his goals and progress. This allowed him to have visibility into his career goals and document his progress.

It’s Never Too Late in a Product to Conduct User Research

When working at Glassdoor, the product manager was tasked with redesigning the salary experience to stay competitive in the market. After initial designs were deemed too iterative, the product manager took a step back and started from scratch, conducting user research to identify user needs and create a roadmap for the product. Through this process, the product manager learned the importance of conducting user research and starting from scratch to ensure the product is meeting user needs.

Preparing, Transitioning, and Restructuring into a Netflix Model

The author was tasked with transitioning an engineering organization of 150 people from traditional software development practices to a Netflix model. To do so, they created a manifesto and got buy-in from executives and product, formed a platform engineering organization, and surveyed the engineering organization to identify problems and common patterns. Through this process, 98% of the services were migrated to the new model and adoption was organic. The key lessons learned were to focus on alignment, maintain existing operations while empowering engineers, get key people into the platform organization, ask the team to define the problems, and have transparency.

Engineering Teams Run as a Product Organization

This article discusses the experience of transitioning from a consumer web application to enterprise software, and the difficulty of connecting to the business value. The author took action by retraining their mind to think like a product organization, hiring a technical program manager, and implementing product metrics and a feature prioritization framework. As a result, the engineering teams were able to build customer-facing products and create a revenue-generating feature in less than a month. The author learned that product and engineering should be under one organization, and that having a product-minded engineering leader will result in better products.

Implementing an Internship Program

An internship committee was created within the web organization to vet interns and assign them to teams with mentors. The interns participate in all work scrum activities and are embedded as part of the team for three months. Community service projects, lunches with mentors, and a final presentation are also incorporated into the program. The program has been successful, with one intern hired per year, and feedback from interns has been positive.