Team Management

Team Management

Team management is all about how our teams work. Our biggest challenge for team management is how to provide context given the scenario we face:

• Our teams are growing at a very fast pace
  
• We are selling a niche product
  
• Our customers are distributed worldwide
  

We already established that we want to enforce Strategic Management in our business. We also mentioned that we believe in providing Context, Not Control and that our Leadership style enables us to do that. But in practice, it's what we call: Strategic Management vs. Leadership.

This is all about managing with goals. To achieve that there are some key principles to follow:

• There is a need for accountability to meet deliverables
  
• Deliverables must be followed up
  
• Leaders exist in our structure to help and coach.
  

At the same time, our Managers must:

• Identify employees in need of help or who are underperforming
  
• Recognize and encourage high performers and possible future leaders
  
• Encourage teams through empowering, not micromanaging.
  

To manage our technical engineering teams we follow some Agile principles and Scrum practices. Why some?
In a world where hackers and data-collectors threaten the integrity of technology and society as a construct, to be at the forefront of mobile security, we need to constantly evaluate that are processes are not enabling any data breaches. Yet within this context, we also want accountability between teams, and for individuals to be mentored.
This led us to define another very important role in our structure: Tech Leads.

Managers vs. Tech Lead

While a manager is responsible for their department's career management, a Tech Lead as the name implies is the leader of a department when it comes to operations. This position is assigned to a subject matter expert that masters the department's processes and tools. It's under their responsibility to manage the department's standard operating procedures in Confluence, our internal wiki, and also to ensure cross-department processes are well-documented and understood on an organizational level.

A Tech Lead can be a coordinator, an Individual Contributor, or even a manager and because they are accountable for knowledge transfer, they are also responsible for on-boarding new employees in their departments.

In terms of structure, in simple words, each department has a manager and a tech lead to support them and to ensure we are getting the work done effectively while progressing in our careers.

Leadership	Responsibility	Activities	Focus
Manager	Growth of Individuals and Teams	Provides 1:1 coaching: based on data Responsible for Career Development and Performance Reviews (with inputs from Scrum Master and Tech Lead) Levels up a functional skill set Organizes communities of practices that encourage members from different cross-functional teams to share knowledge through regular meetings, raising the bar in their area of expertise Protects teams from distractions and unrelated or unnecessary work Understands, teaches, or sponsors the software and hardware engineering skills needed to support the development of high-quality code, components, systems, and solutions	Processes Improvement Identifies and addresses process inefficiency: Ceremonies (Sprint review/Demo) Provides the necessary tools Establishes Standards and Best Practices: Ceremonies (Sprint review/Demo) Provides training Helps to build Agile Milestones and Roadmaps, and the plans to enable them Helps to develop, implement, and communicate the strategic framework Supports teams by helping them remove systemic impediments and by implementing continuous improvement backlog items
Tech Lead	Technology (Subject Matter Expert)	Provides expert opinion and direction regarding projects: Sprints Transfers knowledge to others: Tech-session	Get work Done Resource Allocation Task management and tracking: Data Fire fighting

To promote accountability and avoid micromanagement we decided that the best way to keep our leaders informed about everything happening in the teams would be through structured touchpoints called ceremonies.

Ceremonies

Our Ceremonies are touchpoints for leaders and teams to get aligned and it helps to avoid chaos, to broadcast information to all team members, to bring common goals and vision, to share team progress, and to reduce dependency and communication issues.

In most traditional teams, the lower levels communicate with their leaders to align tasks and obtain approvals and maybe with their partners when it comes to the operational side of the projects. In Secure Group, on the other hand, every employee communicates with every employee related to their project in order to share information. The role of the leader, in this case, is to guarantee that both parts reached an agreement that will help Secure Group reaches its strategic goals.

Business Teams Ceremonies

• Strategic Session
  

The objective of strategic sessions is to solve problems and spark ideas and innovation to achieve business goals.

- Discussion stage 1: Problem Framing
The goal is to walk out with a single (yes: single) problem statement.

1. Who - Who has this problem? Have you validated that the problem is real? Can you prove it?
   
2. What - What is the nature of the problem? What research or supporting evidence do you have?
   
3. Why - Why is the problem worth solving? What is the impact on the customer?
   
4. Where - Where does this problem arise? Have you/your team observed this problem occurring?
   

- Discussion stage 2: Strategic goals and initiatives to address the problem

- Participants:   All internal stakeholders for the issue of discussion

Hiring & Recruiting Ceremonies

• Hand-off Meeting
  

A 15 to 20-minute meeting to discuss the perfect fit for any given position. That means clarifying the skills and experience of the perfect candidate and understanding the minimum requirements for the position.
The meeting should also cover the processes for which the person in this role will be responsible and accountable, and the technical skills for the position (the required and desirable skills and knowledge of the candidate).

- Participants:  
Social Media Marketing & Recruitment Expert, Marketing Manager, Hiring Manager, Talent Acquisition and HR Manager

• Retrospective Meeting
  

The retrospective meeting has the objective of evaluating the recruitment process for each position filled. The discussion topics are usually related to what went right and what went wrong during the recruitment process. We also cover any specific characteristics related to a position.

- Participants: Social Media Marketing & Recruitment Expert, Marketing Manager, Hiring Manager, Talent Acquisition and HR Manager.

Product Management Ceremonies

• Product Idea-Problem & Scoring Sessions
  

This session has the objective of clarifying our product roadmap structure and future planning items. We usually discuss specific issues with the aim of:

1. evaluating their meaning
   
2. clarifying if they are problems or ideas
   
3. shaping the idea.
   

- Participants: Shareholder, CEO, Technical Expert, Lead Developer, Development Team Representative(s).

• Product Prototype Session
  

The objectives are to understand the problem we are solving, the solution we need, and what matters to the business or customer, to provide a more thorough understanding of the Development team and Stakeholders and to understand whether the proposed solution meets the required standards.

- Discussion Stage Product Owner presents a prototype of a feature with the business logic behind it.
5-10 min - Q&A / Discussion - to check whether the feature is as anticipated, and to polish it according to business/customer needs. Also, to understand the business logic or discuss development needs. Each participant evaluates the Prototype and then the Prototype is Rejected or Accepted based on the evaluation.

- Participants: Product Owner, Product Marketing, CEO, Technical Expert / Lead Developer, Business Development, Head of Marketing.

• Product Validation Session
  

This aims to understand the problem we are solving, gather information on what matters to the business or customer, validate if that information is accurate and identify possible development ideas.

- Participants: Product Owner, Product Marketing, CEO, Technical Expert / Lead Developer, Business Development, Head of Marketing.

Marketing Team Ceremonies

• Sprint Planning
  

Each sprint lasts for two weeks and the objective is to plan and prioritize the tasks for the upcoming two weeks, as well as reflecting on the sprint that just ended: what went well, what didn’t go as expected and how can we improve to avoid problems in the next sprint.

• Scrum Meeting
  

These happen three times a week throughout each sprint in the Marketing department. They are a 15-minute update from each person about how their tasks are going, if they have any issues or impediments, what they managed to achieve so far and what they will focus on for the next days.

Engineering Teams Ceremonies

• Sprint Planning
  

This ceremony occurs every two weeks and has the purpose of further maturing and refining the product backlog with the entire agile team.
The team gathers at the start of the Sprint to discuss all tasks and features that will be included and what can be delivered. The activity starts with the highest prioritized story as determined by the Product Owner. He/she presents the priority Story, its Acceptance Criteria, and Value and the agile team will ask any clarifying questions and use story points to size the effort. The Product Owner uses the number of story points to estimate how long it might take to deliver based on the average velocity of the team (how many story points the team can deliver in a sprint). This is used in combination with the value it brings, to validate the priority of the story among the others. This helps with forecasting, as well as transparency among team members. The ceremony is conducted by the Product Owner. It may take 1-2 hours and it occurs once per sprint, marking the beginning of the sprint.
It concludes with the team's generation of a Sprint Goal which keeps everyone on track during the sprint. It results in a list of committed outcomes for the stakeholders.

• Sprint Demo
  

In this ceremony, our team members demo the features that have been delivered during the sprint that is tested and ready to ship. This does not include bug fixes, refactoring, and code improvements. This activity allows feedback and discussion with the Product Owner and Scrum team.
The feedback and discussion provide input for the Product Backlog to maximize value. Such discussions can inform the planning of the next sprint and the content of the next sprint backlog. It may result in stories being added further down the product backlog too.

• Sprint Retrospective
  

This ceremony reviews how the previous sprint went, including the ways in which the agile team worked during the sprint. It evaluates what went well and what could be improved. The sprint retrospective is critical because we could be doing everything wrong, but at this time we can reflect on it and turn it around. This ceremony is conducted by the Agile Team and usually lasts 1 to 2 hours. The outcome is that the team can adjust the Working Agreement based on what is decided. Once complete, the Retrospective marks the end of the sprint and the team rolls right into the next Sprint Planning session based on the refinement the Product Owner has carried out since the last Sprint Planning session.

• Post Mortem
  

This meeting happens after we have encountered major obstacles. We discuss what happened and list all the events that caused the issue. We look at how these can be avoided in the future. There are a few ways to run this ceremony, but it is important to keep the focus on the main goal: to find better ways for us to work together.

• Daily Stand Up
  

This ceremony brings the agile team together to increase transparency and collaboration among all members. Each team member takes a turn answering three questions:

1. What did I do since the last Stand-Up?
   
2. What do I plan to do before the next Stand-Up?
   
3. What obstacles are blocking my progress?
   

This ceremony is primarily conducted by the Agile Team, but the Product Owner and other Stakeholders can attend to get an update on the status of the deliverables. However, they should not disrupt the progress of the meeting. These meetings are usually held for 15 minutes per day during the sprint.