Tag Archives: organization

Some Pathways for Career Development in a Product Engineering Organization

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The diagram below illustrates some pathways for career development in an engineering-focussed product development organization. It shows an organization where software engineering is a major discipline. The pathways shown here map out career paths that we have seen work well in a number of organizations. (There are also other pathways that work well that are not shown here.)

 

Shorter paths (fewer arrows along the way) do not indicate a quicker career growth path. To the contrary, often gaining experience in multiple areas helps develop as a well-rounded executive prepared for senior leadership roles.

Certain roles are not listed explicitly but are combined into other roles in this illustration. For example, the roles of Security are merged into Systems in this view. Also, roles like Senior Engineer and Lead Engineer are not shown separately, but covered by Engineer and Engineering Manager. Similarly, Senior Manager and Senior Director are also not shown separately. Incorporating that level of detail would have significantly increased the complexity and decreased the readability of the diagram.

Trinity Method of Technology Management

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In the Trinity Method of Technology Management, tasks and responsibilities are categorized under three types of roles: Creator, Guardian and Recycler.

If you are the CTO or VP of Technology at an organization, your team needs to do three things effectively and regularly:

  1. Innovate; improve; create new products, features, services & processes
  2. Operate; maintain; execute existing processes & systems with predictable results
  3. Seek & identify products, features, services and processes that are no longer necessary; Decommission systems; Free up resources for reassignment

The above are the roles of creator, guardian and recycler, respectively.

An example of a creator-type manager is someone whose primary background is software engineering and that their strength is in delivering client satisfaction & happiness via innovative products & services.

A example of a guardian-type manager is someone who does a good job heading up technology operations.

The dedicated recycler-type role rarely exists in many organizations, resulting in unnecessary systems (whole or in part), features and processes consuming money, causing unnecessary complexity and slowing down productivity and innovation. Recycling should be a part of everyday work in a technology organization. Reduce waste by recycling.

There are many benefits of having a dedicated recycler role in your management team:

  • Higher productivity due to reduction of complexity, removal of obstacles and availability of freed-up resources
  • Helps eliminate or minimize ‘process creep’
  • A happier workplace resulting from the above
  • Cost savings

I recommend that you have these three distinct roles, with a manager focussed on only one of creator, guardian, or recycler type tasks & responsibilities at a given time.

The table below gives some examples of tasks and responsibilities under the three areas.

Creator Tasks & ResponsibilitiesGuardian Tasks & ResponsibilitiesRecycler Tasks & Responsibilities
Develop new products, functionality, services, systems & processesOperations, execution, delivering predictable results, maintenance & supportExamine existing systems, products, processes and resource assignments seeking areas for recycling
Add a major new feature to an existing Web applicationTrack expenses to budget, monthlyDecommissioning a system no longer in use
Develop a new mobile applicationCompile status reports, weeklyElimination of unnecessary steps and waste in a process or workflow
Mentor and coach employees on a regular basisIdentification of areas for cost reductions
Review and approve requests like vacations, expenses andWhen an employee leaves, don’t immediately assume that you need to fill the position. The recycler manager should urge the team to determine if this work can be absorbed elsewhere. This will help eliminate waste and avoid or minimize layoffs in the future when business requires reducing staff.

This article was inspired by the Indian concept of Trimurti in which in which the cosmic functions of creation, maintenance, and destruction are personified. It was also inspired by the Harvard Business Review article titled “What 17th-Century Pirates Can Teach Us About Job Design“ by Hayagreeva Rao, Professor of at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business.

This post about the Trinity Method of Technology Management is part of a series on technology leadership & management.

How to Avoid Duplicate Search Results when using Apple Mail.app with Gmail

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I use Gmail’s IMAP feature with my Apple Mac OS’s built in Mail.app program. Mail.app keeps local copies (on all my personal Macs) of all my email messages that I’ve kept (since 1994). It enables me to:

  • Effectively work offline with all my emails (searching, reading and composing), when my computer is not online. That’s sometimes the case when I’m traveling, especially in places where Internet access is unavailable, unreliable, slow, insecure or too expensive.
  • Regularly back up all my saved emails using Apple’s Time Machine. It is also a precaution in case I someday no longer have my Gmail account and/or move to another email service. With email account theft rampant these days, it is important to have up to date backups of all your emails.
  • Send digitally signed and encrypted emails when needed.
  • Compose greeting cards and other visually rich emails with pictures on Mail.app’s stationary.

The Problem:

When you initially set up Mail.app to use Gmail via IMAP, you will observe that when you search your mail using Apple’s built in Spotlight feature, the search results will show duplicate (or more) copies of your email. This is because Gmail’s labels and special views (like “All Mail” or “Starred”) appear as separate IMAP folders in Mail.app. Messages in these seemingly “separate IMAP folders” appear to be duplicates to Mail.app and Spotlight search.

The Solution:

To solve this problem, I suggest showing only essential Gmail special views and labels as IMAP folders to Gmail and then telling Spotlight search to only index the master copies of the messages in Gmail’s “All Mail” folder. To accomplish this, I did the following.

Note: I do the labeling of my messages via the Gmail Web interface and do not need to see the labels applied to messages when I’m using Mail.app. My solution below hides all my custom Gmail labels from Mail.app and that’s fine with me.

In Gmail (via the Web interface)

Go to “Settings > Labs” and activate “Advanced IMAP Controls“. After enabling it, go to “Settings > Labels” and uncheck “Show in IMAP” for each custom Gmail label you have created. Also uncheck it for “Starred” since Mail.app shows to do flags in messages in other folders.

Leave “Show in IMAP” checked yes for “Inbox“, “Sent Mail“, “Drafts“, “All Mail” and “Trash” since these are system folders and Apple Mail.app should be configured to use them. Also leave it checked yes for a label folder called “Apple Mail To Do” which is an Apple Mail system folder.

On your Macs

Go to “System Preferences > Spotlight > Privacy“, exclude the following folders from appearing in search results. Where it says [email protected] below, use your Gmail account name.

~/Library/Mail/IMAP-[email protected]/INBOX.imapmbox

~/Library/Mail/IMAP-[email protected]/[Gmail]/Sent Mail.imapmbox

Also, if you are displaying your starred folder via IMAP, exclude:

~/Library/Mail/IMAP-[email protected]/[Gmail]/Starred.imapmbox

Now when you search messages in your Mac’s Mail.app, only results from your Gmail All Mail folder will appear.

Build and maintain a cohesive leadership team

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For an executive, having a management team of people who are good at their jobs and work well with each other is one of the most important factors that lead to success together. Observing a number of successful projects, I realized that it is critical that your management team members care for each other, work well together and give to each other. Their sincere collaboration is far more important than their individual strengths.

I began to write this article impressed by how well the management team comprising of my direct reports functioned, collaborating with each other towards shared success. I was pleasantly surprised by how these directors shared responsibilities, how closely they worked with people in each other’s teams and how comfortably they gave credit to each other. When conflicts arose between them, they frankly, respectfully and nicely expressed them to each other, often one-on-one. Every time, they resolved them quickly and came out with a closer professional relationship. They actively and regularly talked to quell any turf battles between each other’s departments before they could form.

They had a wonderful professional relationship. They barely knew each other outside of work, having busy personal lives with their families on most evenings and weekends. I felt that my management team and I were like a work-family, sticking together through good and bad times, always believing that our success comes as a team.

When you manage and organize your company or your department, spend time multiple times a week with your direct reports together so that you all work well with each other towards shared success. In turn, they should ensure that their direct reports care about each other and collaborate. If you have, say five direct reports, make sure that just the six of you get together in a room to work openly and collaboratively at least twice a week (assuming you are in the same geographic location). The forum for this need not be always a staff meeting, it could be a working session on a project.

I was struggling to come up with suitable words to describe this and its importance. While reading the book The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive: A Leadership Fable by Patrick Lencioni, I found that the first discipline described in the story talks exactly of this and hence is the title of this article. The book is written as a fictional story that teaches leadership lessons. It is easy to read being under 200 pages in large typeface which you can read in one evening. I highly recommend it.

Organizing a Digital Technology Department of Medium Size in a Media Company

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There are many good ways to organize your technology department. This article presents some of them. It is written for a CTO or VP Technology leading a medium size department looking for suggestions on organizing or reorganizing your Digital (Web, Mobile) technology department. It is best suited for you if your organization has the following characteristics:

  • You manage software engineering, implementation and technology operations for 3 or more digital brands.
  • Yours is a medium size technology department with somewhere between 20 to 100 technology staff.
  • Internal corporate IT functions such as desktop support, telecommunications services and internal business systems are beyond the scope of this article.

The Venn diagram below presents one model of organizing your department into 3 sub-departments.

Web Technology Department Organization

Web Technology Department Organization Venn Diagram Illustrating Purposeful Overlap Among Sub-Departments

Some CTOs in smaller companies organize their technology departments as 2 sub-departments: Software Engineering and Technology Operations. Software engineering is the function that is responsible for developing and implementing Web & Mobile application software. Technology Operations is responsible for running, maintaining and supporting the Web applications.

If you operate 1 or 2 digital brands (Web sites), having these 2 sub-departments is a good approach. For 3 or more Web sites, organizing Software Engineering into Site Engineering and Platform Engineering has some benefits.

Site Engineering is focused on working on the Web sites’ direct projects. Its work includes

  • Small and large projects for adding or changing functionality on the Web sites
  • Bug fixes on the Web site applications

Platform Engineering is typically smaller than the other two organizations and typically includes functions like:

  • Architecture across sites
  • Shared applications across sites
  • Common libraries across sites
  • Research & Development (R&D)

Technology Operations includes functions such as:

  • Systems & Applications Administration
  • Infrastructure Management
  • 24×7 Tech Support
  • Builds & Configuration
  • Release Management
  • Testing & Quality Assurance (QA)1
  • Technical Analysis
  • Technical Project Management
  • Budget Management

These three departments have purposeful overlap of responsibilities as illustrated in the Venn diagram above. That helps minimize the chances of the departments becoming silos with walls between them. For success, it is important that your entire department functions as one integrated unit. Some shared goals & responsibilities are required for mutual success.

DevOps2 is a set of processes, methods and systems for communication, collaboration and integration between departments for Development (Applications/Software Engineering) and Technology Operations. Its purpose is to facilitate meeting business goals by producing good quality software products and services in a timely fashion. It is where development methodologies (such as agile software development) occur in an organization with separate departments for Development, Technology Operations and Quality Assurance. Development and deployment activities that need deep cross-departmental integration with Technology Support or QA require intimate multi-departmental collaboration.3

DevOps

llustration showing DevOps as the intersection of Development (Software Engineering), Technology Operations and Quality Assurance (QA)

To make this work, you need 3 directors who head up these departments who work well together, collaborate often and are not sensitive about their turf. They should know that a successful technology manager is not an individual-only contributor, but a great team player with peers. They should have strong goodwill among each other and welcome each other to work directly with their teams. Such a collaborative team is essential.

Article Updated: September 25, 2010

  1. QA can also be set up as an independent department. [↩]
  2. WikiPedia entry on DevOps [↩]
  3. Article: What is DevOps? [↩]

Management & Technical Career Growth Tracks

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Described here is one way to enable technologists to grow their careers in your organization while still allowing them to focus on the type of work they are best at and enjoy most.

The typical management career growth path does not suit some technical people. These information workers need to grow in their careers (gain greater compensation, responsibilities and influence) without having to become managers of other people. A good way to achieve that goal is to create a technical career growth track in your organization.

The following diagram and table illustrate management positions alongside technical positions of similar levels.

Click on the diagram above to view it as a zooming presentation.

People Management TrackTechnical (Engineering) TrackTechnical (Project Management) TrackBandSalary
From
(Typical)		To (Max)
Manages team of people and/or manages work assigned to othersMay lead people, but usually does not manage people from HR perspectiveMay lead people, but usually does not manage people from HR perspectivePlease refer to the notes at the bottom of this table.
CTO, Executive Vice PresentChief Scientist & EVPEVP [Program]5.2300600
Senior Vice PresidentDistinguished Fellow & SVPSVP [Program]5.1250500
Vice PresidentFellow & VPVP [Program]5.0200400
Executive DirectorArchitect & Executive DirectorExecutive Program Director4.2180220
Senior DirectorArchitect & Senior DirectorSenior Program Director4.1160200
DirectorArchitect & DirectorProgram Director4.0140180
Deputy DirectorArchitect & Deputy DirectorDeputy Program Director3.2140180
Senior ManagerSenior ArchitectSenior Program Manager3.1120160
ManagerArchitectProgram Manager3.0100140
Lead Technical Business AnalystLead EngineerLead Project Manager2.2100140
Senior Technical Business AnalystSenior EngineerSenior Project Manager2.180120
Technical Business AnalystEngineerProject Manager2.060100
Apprentice
Technical Analyst		Apprentice
Engineer		Project Coordinator1.03060
Notes:

  • In this table, a number like 100 may correspond to a salary of US $100,000/year. However, please note that salaries vary greatly based on industry, the particular company, market conditions and location. Comparing your salary to the To (read: Often The Maximum) end of the range is unrealistic. The From (read: Typical) is not the Minimum. In many markets and companies, the minimum of the range is lower than that.
  • The example salary ranges shown here are based on data from online research (Salary.com, RobertHalf.com, GlassDoor.com, etc.), experience and discussions with people in the industry.
  • The salary range within any particular rank is wide since salary is based not just on rank, but also on factors like performance and specific job roles and requirements.
  • There is significant overlap in salary ranges in nearby ranks to reflect the realities of salary differences among employees based on factors like areas of expertise of the employee, the person’s prior salary history and market/company conditions at the time of hiring.
  • Salaries for VP and above jobs vary widely across industries, organizations and even within the same company, especially since performance based bonuses vary greatly.

This system isn’t meant to be rigid. It is designed to find a good balance with most organizations. That balance, i.e. how may “levels of authority” there are will differ across organizations. The focus of this article is to provide a technical track as an alternative to management tracks, whether there are 3 levels or 13. There are pros and cons of having fewer “bands” or ranks. (As a side note, some organizations like the military1 require lots of ranks.) Ranks need not signify a strict hierarchy where one can only go from one rank to the one immediately above. The ranks could simply be used as “salary bands” and the levels of “hierarchy of authority” could be fewer.

In this model, for example, an architect role is at the same compensation and influence level as a manager role, assuming that the particular manager and architect being compared add similar value to the company. To accommodate more ranks, a senior architect would be at the same level as a senior manager.

If the organization prefers consistent titles for levels regardless of track, the system could name them like this: vice president & fellow, senior director & architect, etc. In the case of a fellow who is at an SVP level, they could be named SVP & distinguished fellow.

Here is a definition of the fellow role from WikiPedia:2

Large corporations in research and development-intensive industries3 appoint a small number of senior scientists and engineers as Fellows. Fellow is the most senior rank or title one can achieve on a technical career, though some fellows also hold business titles such as vice president or chief technology officer.

Such a technical career growth plan brings many benefits to your organization.

  • It helps retain good technologists who want to grow in their careers, but want to do keep doing the type of work they are best at and enjoy doing: technical work.
  • It avoids brilliant technical people from being “pushed” (by themselves or their supervisors trying to “reward” them) into people-management responsibilities.
  • It reduces situations of having too many people-managers but not enough people-management positions over time as people get promoted.

Care should be taken to recognize that some technical people do enjoy making the transition to people-management roles and the presence such a technical track should not discourage them. Having an alternate career growth track option is about presenting employees with more than one choice.

Similar system are also used to enable non-managerial career paths at editorial and design departments at newspapers, magazines and other newsrooms.

Related Articles on Other Sites

(Updated: 2011-Oct-29)

  1. US Military Ranks [↩]
  2. Definition of Fellow at WikiPedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fellow and Wikitionary http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fellow [↩]
  3. IBM or Sun Microsystems in information technology, and Boston Scientific in Medical Devices for example [↩]

Business Travel Checklist

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Update 2010-Jan-24: This checklist is mirrored on the Checklists Wiki Web site at www.checklistnow.org/wiki/Business_Travel_Checklist

Do carry

  • Clothes 

    • 2 suits
    • 3 ties
    • 1 belt
    • 1 shirt for every two days minimum 2 shirts
    • 1 set of undergarments for each day
    • 1 pair semi-formal/outdoor shoes
    • 1 pair of socks per day
    • spare shoelaces
    • plastic/cloth bag for used clothes
  • Documents & Information 

    • wallet: id cards, money cards, memberships
    • to do lists
    • airline tickets and schedules
    • hotel reservation info
    • car rental reservation info
    • 50 business cards to give out
    • directions to and from key places
    • phone & address book: electronic or printout
    • phone numbers, addresses and directions to friends and associates in the area printed on a separate piece of paper
    • tourism guidebook for the area. eyewitness guide or similar
  • Electronic Devices 

    • portable computer or pda with modem, a/c charger
    • cell phone
    • cell phone charger – car
    • cell phone charger – wall socket
    • spare cell phone battery
    • digital camera, CF card, 4 spare AA batteries
  • Misc Items 

    • bathroom kit: comb, toothbrush, toothpaste, razor, shaving cream, deodorant, nail cutter
    • 3 handkerchiefs
    • 1 compact towel
    • 3 empty plastic bags
    • food to eat on plane/train something healthy and energy giving. keep a few energy bars for reserve
    • wheels for baggage. carrying luggage at the airport is tiresome

Do not carry

  • Too many books to read. I haven’t gotten time to read all the books I carry on trips in the past. Too many books are a burden to carry.

Before leaving, do the following

  • change voicemail message at work. provide alternate contact person and number
  • enable email out-of-office auto-response at work. provide alternate contact person
  • ensure that any tasks one-time or recurring that i had scheduled for the duration i’m away are assigned to alternates
  • reach out to some family and friends in the places i’ll be visiting, even if i may not be able to meet
  • backup laptop computer i’ll be carrying with me in case it is lost or stolen
  • backup mobile phone i’ll be carrying with me in case it is lost or stolen

After returning, do the following

  • change voicemail back to usual message
  • disable email out-of-office auto-response

Document Revision 2.2 2001/07/20