Management on Panji Gautama

Software Estimation

Tue, 12 Mar 2024 15:07:25 +0000

You may be surprised that we are not able to give an estimation as well as we think, and you may be more surprised that not all of the software engineers are able to estimate (properly), most just guesstimate with rough intuition. Though it’s not completely wrong, we can actually learn how to estimate properly. If you are graduated from Computer Science major like me, you will remember that software estimation technique is one of the courses by itself.

Thoughts on Developer Productivity

Wed, 15 Nov 2023 07:29:59 +0000

I used to have a dream to work at a consulting giant until a few years ago. I worked with a bunch of them, as my parent company decided to hire one of the consulting companies, and they gave me nothing but a mess (Duh! 🙄). A while back, I stumbled upon this “Yes, you can measure software developer productivity” article from the consulting giant, and it sparked debate in a lot of tech blogs/newsletters.

Convergence as Tech Debt Safeguard

Wed, 23 Aug 2023 11:57:15 +0000

Managing technical debt is never an easy game. Even if we have ideas, we need to compare the impact with the product initiatives/feature that we need to build to ensure we stay strong on the product side and boost the business. So what to do? lo and behold : Diverge-Convergence, comes as one of the strategies.

Each Sprint diverged into two streams: shaping & building, execute convergence sprint every triples.

Talking about Runbook

Tue, 24 Jan 2023 21:18:29 +0000

Why do we need a runbook?

the alert is only a signal, the very first step; reducing MTTR and solving the customer problem is the ultimate goal;

an actionable alert is one of the repetitive tasks; Adding a runbook for the repetitive task will help to increase debugging, accuracy, and efficiency in the triaging process.

But.. what exactly is runbook?

A runbook is a series of steps and detailed instructions to solve common issues or tasks effectively.

Engineering Metrics

Tue, 06 Sep 2022 09:16:02 +0000

https://www.slideshare.net/panjigautama/metrics-that-matters-in-software-engineering

bunch of metrics are available to track and give us insights, but are they really that important?

How to work with Panji

Tue, 12 Jul 2022 10:49:23 +0000

A while ago, I wrote this https://github.com/rhapsodixx/manager-readme, inspired by the other manager readme. Though it’s debatable whether the doc is useful, to me, writing this kind of doc is intended for ourselves - as managers - to force us to think about what kind of managers we want to be and what is our expectation to work with our directs, explicitly.

3 years afterward, I’m rethinking and came up with this…

Tech Debt Management

Tue, 08 Mar 2022 20:25:54 +0000

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9BUA96ymC0

🔗 https://www.slideshare.net/panjigautama/taming-technical-debt

Defect/Bug Management

Wed, 17 Nov 2021 08:30:33 +0000

who doesn’t love bugs? they are small yet beautiful…ly ruining our life 🙂. Bug is inevitable, choosing 0 Bug as your OKR/KPI is an insane choice, it’s not impossible but it will astronomically hit your productivity & cost, your best bet is to manage it properly. So how are you organizing and managing these bugs? Assigning the right priority(by assessing its severity) is the key, inspired by a couple of references, here is how I typically categorize them.

Scrum != Agile

Thu, 26 Aug 2021 09:54:22 +0000

On demystifying agile and scrum in software engineering ..

https://www.slideshare.net/panjigautama/agile-software-development-compfest-13

Software Fragmentation - The Golden Path

Wed, 25 Aug 2021 09:29:07 +0000

There is a direct correlation between teams that give their engineers autonomy to own their technical decisions and the team’s ability to hire and retain A-class or Senior talent. There is a tradeoff, but an acceptable level of chaos in exchange for a stronger sense of individual/team ownership is usually the right one and leads to higher performing teams in the long run - at least this is what I’ve been seeing if a couple of companies in Indonesia.

Engineering Growth Framework

Wed, 12 May 2021 13:56:50 +0000

Growth Framework, Career Guideline, Career Ladder, whatever you call it, is essentially general expectations of each of the grade, sometimes people call it as career ladder, but we at Mekari wanted to take it further down into its philosophy: Framework. In general, a framework is a real or conceptual structure intended to serve as a support or guide for the building of something that expands the structure into something useful.

Manager Manifesto

Fri, 16 Apr 2021 11:41:27 +0000

Manifesto

Giving critical feedback or having difficult conversations
Assessing whether a product is ready for launch
Designing and executing a realistic roadmap
Setting good goals with accountability
Building viable new products
Managing a team during “war time” versus “peace time”
Defining quality
Determining who to hire
Understanding people’s skills, strengths, and growth trajectories

Helping people reach a common goal

Listening and learning about people’s aspirations and frustrations.
Mentoring and advising, generally in the form of providing frameworks rather than here’s-what-you-should-be-doing’s (which is a whole topic for another time).
Designing better and more efficient ways for people to communicate, work, or learn.
Context-switching often in your day-to-day.
Playing a key role in the flow of communication (writing, sharing, meeting, presenting).
Owning the outcome of the team’s successes and failures, even if you won’t make all the decisions yourself.

note : not mine and nor I wanted to take credit on this points. I took this note awhile ago and unfortunately didn’t put the source link.

Excerpt on Regulated Data : Amount, Duration Data Holding, and Archiving

Thu, 04 Mar 2021 10:33:06 +0000

Data subjects are entitled to request the ESO delete their PII, and the ESO must do so accordingly. If the data subject does not request such deletion, under MoCI Regulation 20, an ESO shall comply with a five-year minimum statutory retention period or as otherwise required by the relevant supervisory authority. This retention period is calculated from the moment the data subject terminates the use of services of the ESO.

On Establishing Technical Documentation at Mekari

Thu, 04 Mar 2021 10:21:42 +0000

**
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We all hate time wasters. Documentation often is seen as one of these time wasters, mostly because it is boring to do. Planning is often seen as kind documentation, so there is a natural tendency to just skip this step for efficiency. However, people forget the hidden cost of skipping this documentation step: no agreement on shared understanding may cause the project will take a lot longer than people think, and this is only the beginning of other disadvantages of not having proper documentation.

Engineering North Star Metrics

Sat, 09 Jan 2021 12:11:10 +0000

In the world where all of the metrics are available to be fetch and tracked, we end up on too many things being measured or worst, too little things that are being measured. It is impractical to make smart decisions based upon all available data and impossible to make any decision without data, and virtually impossible to make every metric as a priority worthy of improvement. The first challenge is deciding on what to measure, this article is intended to propose following metrics as the de jure metrics that being tracked and constantly improved going forward within tech team that I led so far.

On forming Technical Program Manager team at Mekari

Sun, 03 Jan 2021 17:12:39 +0000

credit

As the company growing and more product verticals are coming in, and more competitors coming in not only from Indonesia but also big players from outside the country, there are needs from stakeholders and management (C/VP levels) to ensure we are delivering our initiatives more than ever. Hence, ensuring a team to be self-organized, transparent, and great visibility of ongoing and upcoming project progress are very critical. Spotting potential delays early and doing continuous improvement on how we structure the team and do communication within the team is also essential for us to achieve effective & efficient productivity.

Answering Yes/No Question

Sun, 03 Jan 2021 16:41:04 +0000

Your boss answering a simple yes or no question: pic.twitter.com/8uTFWpNyTV

– shelby wolstein (@ShelbyWolstein) May 8, 2020

Different types of 1:1 conversations visualised

Sat, 02 Jan 2021 13:50:43 +0000

Original Thread

#1. Ping Pong

Both parties are equally engaged and curious about the other. Answers are thoughtful, and each participant always turns their answer back into a question for the other.

#2. Interview

One person takes the role of questioner, the other person takes the role of answerer. Conversations like these can have two implications:
i) imbalance in interest in the other
ii) perceived hierarchy or power dynamics

Tech Resume

Sat, 02 Jan 2021 10:07:21 +0000

Tech Resume is an internal personal profile managed and updated by us as an employee with information including current and past projects, accomplishments in our current company, expertise, impact, motivation, career aspirations.

The idea itself comes from https://jvns.ca/blog/brag-documents/, since ourselves don’t remember everything we did in the last 6 months, higher chance that doesn’t remember everything we did. it’s important for our works to be recognized and it also useful for us to see our progression so far as part of our retrospective.

My Ex-Boss Cultural Hints

Sat, 02 Jan 2021 09:46:38 +0000

⚠️ This isn’t my note nor intent to take any credit.

TL;DR: We take our job of building quality services for our customers seriously in every way. Rigor at every level is the only way to do that reliably and efficiently.

TTT - Try Three Things

Don’t reach out to others unless you have tried a reasonable number of things first. Not only will this stop you from task-switching others, but it will slowly build up your expertise in our tools and procedures. Most of the time, you’ll find the answer to your question by the time you’ve tried that third thing - without bothering somebody else. This is our equivalent of “LMGTFY”. Of course, don’t go overboard and unproductively go into a black hole of learning everything yourself - that would be the fourth thing and be a waste of time too.

Personal Development — Silent Killers of Productivity

Sat, 02 Jan 2021 09:32:31 +0000

Beberapa saat ini saya gemar membaca dan mengikuti beberapa buku dan kursus mengenai personal development. Salah satu kursus yang saya ikuti adalah : https://www.udemy.com/productivity-and-time-management

Semakin kita merasa sibuk, disaat itulah kita harus berhati-hati untuk tidak terjebak pada kesibukan yang bisa mengakibatkan produktivitas menurun.

Dari kursus tersebut, salah satu topik menarik adalah ada beberapa hal yang tanpa kita sadari mampu menurunkan produktivitas kita secara signifikan. Banyak ‘aha’ moment yang saya dapatkan di kursus ini.

Muhasabah

Wed, 02 Jan 2019 08:20:00 +0000

So lately I’ve been thinking about what should I do better this year and trying to learn from other experienced leaders on how they run their high-performance team. They definitely have some sort of framework/structure on whatever they do, and it’s becoming a routine, they do it every day and improve it at the same time - over and over again.

Then I remember Lara Hogan’s blog post on management expectation which brilliant. I realize that to improve ourselves, we need to understand ourselves. I decided to write a manager readme, to get myself know better about myself ( well..its some sort of Panji Gautama’s Manual ) - and give a clear and explicit expectation to my team, and here I go: https://github.com/rhapsodixx/manager-readme. I found this very useful, and now I’m confident about things I should pursue this year.