Maria Gutierrez — What Should We Work On? (Turing Fest 2018)

"What should we work on?" is probably the most consequential question you need to help your team and company answer. Should we focus on:

- fixing bugs that are causing many support calls
- building a strategic new feature
- implementing a tactical solution that will help bring more customers
- re-architecting systems and addressing technical debt
- interviewing new engineers
- onboarding new colleagues and improving documentation

As an engineer, you can influence that decision to ensure your team provides the best experience for your customers and the best opportunity for the business. Clearly mapping your work to the company's goals and success will give you the motivation and purpose needed to engage with and feel proud of your work. It will likely get you your next promotion too!

Let's discuss how you can make sure the work you do has the best impact by:

- learning about your customers and business key performance metrics
- better collaborating with other functions in the business
- successfully communicating priorities, risks and tradeoffs

Transcript

1. What should we work on? Maria Gutierrez, VP Engineering @mariagutierrez
9. OOH, SHINY! BUILDING ALL THE THINGS! HOW CAN I HELP YOU BUILD ALL THE THINGS? 2001 2004 2008 2011 2016
10. Sound more familiar? “Don’t worry about that error, it happens all the time” “I want to build new features, not fix customers problems.” “I was playing with technology X and I decided to try it in this project” “I deployed before leaving but didn’t check it worked after” “We should rewrite this from scratch” “I don’t have time to write documentation or good git commits” “It’ll be done when it’s done” “I want to decide what I work on not what product wants me to do” “I’m wasting my time interviewing people all the time” “I don’t like meetings, they are a waste of time”
11. RISKS Team availability Team retention Hiring Technical debt Security Reliability and Resilience Error noise/false alerts Systems scalability and integrity Team productivity
14. UNDERSTAND THE BUSINESS
15. TRANSPARENCY
16. ACCOUNTABILITY
17. CODING NOT ENOUGH
20. “Ada Twist, Scientist” by Andrea Beaty
21. “Success is liking yourself, liking what you do and liking how you do it” Maya Angelou Image by York College ISLGP
22. “Success is liking yourself, liking what you do and liking how you do it” Maya Angelou
23. Why do we exist? How do we behave? What do we do? How will we succeed? What’s important now?
28. What’s important now? Why do we exist? How do we behave? What do we do? How will we succeed?
29. STRATEGIC WORK IMPROVEMENTS HOUSEKEEPING
30. MOMENTUM PREDICTABILITY
31. HAPPINESS ENGAGEMENT ADOPTION TASK SUCCESS 70 RETENTION Net Promoter Score App store reviews 4.5 30% Bank feed setup 52% Monthly active users Mobile active users 1.1K Free trial conversion Mobile downloads Customer churn Open bugs Scorecard 20% 2% 35 76% SECURITY Security bugs 0 SCALABILITY RELIABILITY PRODUCTIVITY 1.26 End user page load 3-month rolling availability 220 Deployment time # deployments/mo 192s 100%
35. OKRs Objectives and Key Results
37. AUTONOMY
38. “Hoping for the best, prepared for the worst, and unsurprised by anything in between.” Maya Angelou
39. “Success is liking yourself, liking what you do and liking how you do it” Maya Angelou
40. GROWTH PATHS
41. SELF ASSESSMENT TECHNICAL PROFICIENCY PROBLEM SOLVING COMMUNICATION TEAMWORK OWNERSHIP & LEADERSHIP DOMAIN KNOWLEDGE BUSINESS IMPACT TEAM COMMITMENTS & BEHAVIOURS
47. “I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” Maya Angelou
48. “Success is liking yourself, liking what you do and liking how you do it” Maya Angelou
50. YOU own your personal development
51. “If you get, give. If you learn, teach.” Maya Angelou
52. ETHICS
53. “Courage is the most important of all virtues, because without courage, you cannot practice any of the other virtues consistently.” Maya Angelou
54. BE INTENTIONAL
55. “Be a rainbow in someone else's cloud.” Maya Angelou
56. THANKS! @mariagutierrez