Engineering Operations

Operations objective is to ensure that engineering can focus on their jobs, i.e. clearing hurdles, reducing outside “noise”, and providing necessary tools. Doing whatever is needed to get the job done.

• Maintain an understanding of overall company/business priorities and how the specific projects fit and track priority shifts
• Use scenario planning to determine resource loading
• Communicate approved changes appropriately
• Be the front line for change requests impacting the organization
• Ensure teams have access to and use common tools, methodologies and terminology
• Evolve and improve processes to adapt to new opportunities

Program Management​

Program Management is practicing the art of influencing and guiding teams to achieve a common goal. Teams are often cross-functional, belonging to different reporting structures and often have different priorities.

• Take ownership of the project and provide leadership
  
• Determine, communicate and execute a clear plan
• Anticipate bumps in the road and driving course correction
• Use metrics and accountability to drive performance and quality
• Report regular status across business levels – from program team through senior leadership
• Continually improve methodologies, templates and tools

 

Business/Budget Management

Managing budget and business requires not only having the acumen but having an understanding of the industry/company/organization. Combining traditional business management with the needs of the company lends to optimization of both overall and specific needs. Common Tools, Overlapping Spend, Trade-offs & Modeling.

• Scalable, integrated tools & systems
• Provide visibility to plan/actual status and forecasts
• Decisions made based on facts and data
• Transparency demonstrated with Say-Do
• Involve the right people in cross functional projects
• Maintain holistic overview while focusing on the details

​Technology Strategy and Planning

Planning for success requires a clear strategy and understanding of the end goal. Given the speed of technological change, continual revisiting and verifying the plan confirms relevancy and viability.

Ensure that your teams have the right tools and necessary processes; "the way we've always done it" isn't always the best way. 

• Understand the difference between Customer and Consumer – Success will require satisfying requirements from both
• Maintain a current assessment of resources and capabilities available to meet the portfolio/business plans
• Align resources & budget to business needs – be familiar with the constraints of the org structure in order to analyze the viability of change requests
• Deploy and update processes and tools for efficiency and accuracy

Application & Product Deployment

The key to successful application and product deployment is to understand how the “product” fits into the overall business plan. Then the goal is to drive the schedule and dependencies including:

• Never loose site of the end user and their overall satisfaction
• Plan for the full lifecycle: Cradle to Grave, especially important for applications that are not tied to hardware constraints
• Ensure there is a way to retire apps or plan for minimal maintenance.
• Pride + Accountability = Quality  (Metrics/KPIs)
• Know when it is “good enough” to ship 
• Anticipate and respond to feedback
• Plan for updates

“People in any organization are always attached to the obsolete - the things that should have worked but did not, the things that once were productive and no longer are.”  ― Peter F. Drucker