structure and process

structure

"Structure is how we scale, diversify, and take on more complex long-term tasks. We do it to our software, we do it to our teams, and we do it to our processes."

- The Manager’s Path

process

Just steps (baby steps) we take towards our goals:

• Embed customer communication into the culture
• Build relevant things and stay focused
• Iterate and release faster
• Guide product decision making

processes should

• be small, incremental, and easy to adopt
• be defensible, not be drudgery
• enable not curtail freedom
• allow us to work smart, best bang for buck
• be transparent
• bring problems to the surface, not hide them
• build good habits as individuals and teams

Our first baby step

Themed Days™

Each day has a theme that will guide work in the company.

But why?

• supports the organizational goals of staying focused
• increase communication, consistency, and accountability
  • Conway's Law predicts: "Organizations which design systems are constrained to produce systems which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations."
• reduce uncertainty
• loose enough to encourage creativity and self-expression

OK, how?

First, determine a facilitator who helps his/her team go through the processes.

Next, just follow the following...

Meeting Mondays

• a short, useful meeting that decomposes problems, is an avenue to ask for help, sets focus for the week, and check the sanity of your goals
• Each member goes through each stage
• Goal: 10 minutes per person

Parts

• Week in Review
• Roadblocks / Resource Requisition
• Focus setting
• Sanity Checks

Week in Review

A quick review of last week's milestone and goals.

• What got done?
• What needs to be moved? 

Roadblocks /Resource Req

• What was the most frustrating thing about last week?
• Can we help you solve it? (via collaboration, services, hardware, manpower, etc)

Focus Setting

• What are your Technical Debt Tuesday initiatives for this week?

• What feature/issue should you work on?

• Github issues are generated and assigned

• Milestone is set for Friday

• Goals set are posted on Monday’s standup.

   

   

Sanity Check

• From a big picture perspective, are what you've set in the Focus Setting section aligned with Insync's goals?

• This is where other members are encouraged to participate. The team can help set what is a priority and what is not for a member.
• If tasks are not aligned, revisit Focus Setting section and amend issues.

Technical Debt Tuesdays (TDT)

• Refactor code
• Create guides and documentation
• Create curricula for different jobs
• If none, do support and document the problem

“Budget 20% of time for generic sustaining engineering work across the board By “generic sustaining engineering work,” I mean testing, debugging, cleaning up legacy code, migrating language or platform versions, and doing other work that has to happen. If you make this a habit, you can use it to tackle some of the midsize legacy code every quarter and get decent improvements. Cleaning up systems as you go keeps those systems easy to work in, which keeps your teams moving forward on new features.”

- The Manager’s Path

Deep Work Wednesdays & Thursdays

• Wednesdays are apparently the most productive day of the week.
• lock down, dig in and focus on completing your goals for the week

Effing Fridays

• Posting each team’s weekly progress reports on #standup

• Insync’s weekly festival of events
• Learning sessions, workshops, talks, hackathons, demo days, all-hands meetings
• going to the office is most encouraged

We
are
a WIP.

Getting
Insync
in sync.