Showing posts with label Professional. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Professional. Show all posts

Tuesday 29 August 2023

Be the leader you wish you had

BE THE LEADER YOU WISH YOU HAD

I use this saying often in my 1:1s with my directs and in my private coaching sessions. It is a powerful way to make one pause for a moment, reflect, adjust to the discomfort, then embrace the excitement of a new energy that is created.

Adopting this mindset has transformed me from standard "manager" to empathetic "leader". Reading Seth Godin's "The Song of Significance" reinforced my instinctual leadership practices. 

Quoting from "13. Let's Get Real or Let's Not Play", Seth says this:

<quote> No one goes to the gym to willingly get punched in the face by the senior vice president of boxing. But some folks eagerly pay for a sparring partner when it's time to get better.  The difference is obvious, but we've forgotten to say it out aloud.  No grades, no check marks, no badges. I'm not in charge of you, and I'm not manipulating you. I'm simply establishing the conditions for you to get to where you said you wanted to go.  You tell me where you're going and what you need. You make promises about your commitment and skills development.  I'll show up to illuminate, question, answer, spar with, and challenge you. I'll make sure you're part of a team of people who are ready to care as much as you do. We can get real. Or let's not play. </quote>
This is not some leadership mumbo jumbo. Some time ago, I developed a model for personal development that borrowed concepts from agile product management by way of user stories (search RAGE tag on this blog). I then used the same methods in the way I work with my direct reports. HR people might call this "contracting with the employee" but I take it further. I get real. It's not about objectives, KPIs & deliver results. I put myself on the line. I reach out. And so when it comes to performance reviews, my reviews are a two-way conversation. My direct also evaluates Mo's performance - because as a leader, I believe leaders mirror & contribute to the performance of their direct reports. 

What's my mechanism then?

I ask each person to write a user story in this format:

In order for me, [Name] to do [XYZ] (e.g. my job | grow | be inspired | learn | etc.) I need my manager (Mo) to support me by doing [....insert your wish-list here] so that I can ....

So I start the year with level setting on our contracts together, and in our 1:1s, we check-in and inspect, comment, re-calibrate, adjust.  

Guess what? 

This mechanism might seem simple but it's quite challenging for people. Usually, it's the first time they're experiencing a manager doing it this way. There's hook both ways. Often, it takes a few iterations to get the user stories crafted in way that is mutually relatable and agreeable. My mechanism goes beyond the standard business SMART goal setting. I make it human. Real. Personal. For me, this is my song of significance.

Here's some real-world examples in play, from senior managers that report into me - See how doing so puts me, Mo, on the hook?

* In order for me to do my job, I need my manager (Mo) to support me by throwing me in the deep end and exposing me to as much as possible so that I can quickly learn and understand this business

* In order for me to do be inspired, I need my manager (Mo) to support me by leading by example so that I can learn from his vast experience

* In order for me to do grow, I need my manager (Mo) to support me by pushing me out my comfort zone so that I can grow in all directions.

* In order for me to do my job. I need my manager (Mo) to support me by throwing me in the deep end and exposing me to as much as possible so that I can quickly learn and understand this business

* In order for me to grow my skillset, I need my manager to support me in blocking out time on my calendar so I can complete the ‘make great hiring decisions’ course (5hrs)

* In order for me to get promoted to L7, I need my manager to support me by identifying key opportunities so that I can start building a roadmap of promotional milestones

Wednesday 14 June 2023

A blast from the past: my experience building a large-scale tech platform

In the years 2003-2011, I worked for a pure technology service provider, NDS (acquired by Cisco in 2012, then later became Synamedia) which was considered at the time, the world leader in end-to-end digital TV software systems. I was fortunate enough to experience as an engineer every major area of platform development for this complex ecosystem; and then later as a software manager, I would own the software delivery for a core piece of the software stack known as "middleware", for NDS's primary anchor customer BSkyB/Sky Darwin and then later would own the full stack delivery of NDS's flagship Mediahighway Fusion/Unity product. This experience would mark my entry into very complex large-scale technology delivery initiatives, which even to this day, thirteen years later, as I work with the world's largest cloud provider, Amazon AWS, in building out its enterprise cloud support systems (AWS Support Center / Technical contact systems), Fusion still takes the prize for the most intense professional experience, learning and growth, technical complexity, risk and high-stakes projects. So yeah, I find myself having to dig deep into my memory to recall this work experience because it's funny that 13 years on, I'm encountering the same topics of engineering management even though it is supposed to be a different domain, turns out "software is just software"!

NDS had captured almost every top-tier PayTV operator around the globe at the time: Sky, DirecTV, UPC, Sky Italia, Sky Deutschland, Foxtel, Sky LA, Yes, Bharti, etc. NDS was prominently known for its conditional access product, a video content protection system call NDS Videoguard, however, NDS offered more than just security and offered customers a fully vertically integrated ecosystem (think "Apple" ecosystem for PayTV customers). Whilst digital TV was built on open standards and interoperability, most customers limited their integration points. So when they opted for NDS as their security provider, they also had the option of integrating all other services - from broadcast backend services in the headend to consumer device hardware development and software service integration with chipset vendors. The consumer device software was known as TV Middleware. At the time, the main players were NDS Mediahighway, OpenTV & TiVo. NDS was known for convincing customers to migrate to NDS Mediahighway, its technology migration programs were demanding, complex and executed flawlessly. As an engineer, I contributed software to replace TiVo, an overnight win for 40 million devices. Later as a software delivery manager for the Sky Darwin migration project, we would replace OpenTV software almost obliterating its presence from Sky, save for a few ancient, ageing hardware profiles.

NDS, with an increasing number of customers using its security, middleware and application services, couldn't afford to scale out with engineering teams for each custom build. A platform strategy was needed, consolidating the best of software from across the globe (US, UK, India, Israel, France) into a new shared technology stack, that offered flexible customisation and tailoring for any type of customer profile (Tier-1 customers like Sky for advanced applications to Tier-3/4 customers in territories just starting off with basic digital TV), using a shared engineering resource pool - and extensible configuration engine for producing tailored custom releases. So was borne, NDS Mediahighway Fusion.

The flagship customer for Fusion was Sky, which went live in 2010, replacing up to ten variants of its consumer device software services, with new Fusion components and Sky's own custom-developed consumer application "EPG" known then as the "Orchid EPG". Fusion provided an SDK/API for customers to develop their own primary applications, along with an interactive HTML engine, that allowed PayTV operators to add additional mini apps to their devices, like games and weather apps. With Sky being the anchor customer, Fusion had proved itself in the market and thus was ready to onboard new customers like Sky Italia, UPC, Foxtel, Yes, etc. Post Darwin launch, I took the lead for building the new platform vision, called Fusion Snowflake EPG through project Sunrise - birthing the platform that would create customer, tailorable configurations for any customer, maximising reuse and minimising customisation but allowing for a selection of custom user experiences.

Why am I claiming Fusion as large-scale (even in 2023, 13 years later)?

I write this in 2023, after spending 2.5 years with Amazon AWS. I am part of the group that build AWS Support Center and related Contact Center services. We are a team of under 100 people, deemed large- scale and building complex systems. Yet, if I have to be brutally honest with myself, I'm mildly impressed by my exposure to date, because my current work pails in comparison to my work on Fusion, 13 years ago. Yes I know it's a different domain, a different paradigm and culture of Amazon's 2-Pizza team model for software product ownership (which I actually find quite cool)...still I'm finding it hard to rationalise my move to AWS almost 2.5 years on, have I gone too far backwards? Am I living too much in the past & not ready to view things from a new perspective? What am I not seeing? (Topics for another post). So whilst I've defintely adapted my mental models since joining Amazon, yet I really can't ignore some software engineering truths which is the reason for my bringing up the past now. 

In 2012, I wrote the first story about Fusion, introducing the term LSSDP I coined to mean Large Scale Software Development Project. I also dived deep, writing lengthy white papers about the product and engineering management processes:
Fast forward to 2023, now using my Amazon AWS experience as a lens for defining a large-scale initiative and indirectly checking engineering manager role guidelines for large-scale:
  • Business Impact - Fusion started off with a $75 million investment and later a joint-venture with the flagship customer, Sky. The entire company pivoted to focus on Fusion as its next-generation software platform, with up to 3000 engineers world-wide working on multiple streams, some strategic foundational streams kicked off at least 2 years before the mainstream program. In my role as software delivery owner for Sky Darwin project, it was critical the project delivered successfully, flawlessly - as it involved migrating software in 10 million people's homes (their living room TVs) seamlessly with no rollback. To the end customer (the person sitting at home watching TV), they would notice very little change to their experience. Overall, Fusion software components delivered to multiple middleware stacks, at the time of 2011 when I departed NDS, our software was running in excess of 60 million people's homes daily, globally.
  • Scope and Size - Fusion introduced a new paradigm of the TV software ecosystem, end-to-end, including broadcast headend components as well as embedded software architecture. The stack was open, based on a Linix/Posix and a complete departure from the initial decade of TV software operating systems. This was before the advent of Android TV or fully open source middleware. Fusion's product backlog captured over 2000 epics in the form of work packages, cutting across multiple customer needs, in parallel. The scope included all layers of the device software stack: Chipset drivers, hardware absraction layer, Linux kernel, Linux abstraction, Middleware services, Application SDK/APIs, multiple frontend application engine proxys for C / C++ / Java / HTML / Flash applications. Take a look at the software architecture diagram - it is multi-layered, multiple service teams. Another point on scope, we managed initiatives or epics in the form of work pacakages (WPs), that could impact up to 25 service teams in one WP, see here.

Wednesday 31 May 2023

Why I never ran a program without a Project Charter

Lessons on large-scale delivery program management ...

I continue to dig into my past artefacts to showcase my work portfolio. I'm using a multi-pronged approach here: 1\ Showcase my work to prospective employers; 2\ Openly share my work so that others (people I coach, my colleagues and boss, etc.) can benefit; and 3\ Act as my own living knowledge repository.  

I spent a decade climbing up the project management ladder, in the same way I climbed up the software engineering ladder (from junior engineer to principal engineer) - I first started project managing small software product development (2-4 teams with 10 services), then scaled up to large middleware services (20+ teams, 50+ services) as lead delivery owner, then up to full stack systems integration (full stack of all major components: kernel, middleware, integration layers, applications), then program managed a full go-to-market product launch scaling out to including Tech, Business (Finance, Marketing, Supply Chain) & Operations (Customer Care, Retention, Content, Legal, Regulatory) - as senior program manager. I also owned the full plan of starting a business from scratch to launch (a video streaming company) in 8 months. I did a stint in management consulting, running the top 5 business projects for a $3 billion run-rate business, which some companies might call Tier 0/1 initiatives - where I co-ordinated these large-scale programs, as Chief Program Director - delivering through multiple business lines, multiple project management offices and multiple product and engineering teams. In a sense, I served as the CxO program manager, advisor and delivery owner.  

It is with this experience and knowledge, that I dare to share about my work experiences - and I'm not making these things up - you can check my LinkedIn recommendations page for proof.

During my tenure as the lead program director mentioned above, I often found myself picking up and repairing distressed programs - and along the way, I'd help improve team processes and coach the management teams as well. I also ran new business & technology initiatives from scratch, start-to-finish-then-handover. So with this diverse experience, I developed a simple method that helped me navigate both types of program scenarios: either resetting or starting from scratch, the simple, powerful mechanism of a Project Charter document. To this day, I'm surprised to see many program & project managers failing to use the Project Charter in the way it was meant to be used (clarifying the essence), and often find less-experienced, newly minted PMP/Prince2 certified professionals, doing it "by the book". My approach to project charters went much deeper than that...

So what do I mean by using the Project Charter in "clarifying the essence" then?

A seasoned, experienced project leader, chief program director, end-to-end project manager, senior technical program manager, etc - call the roles what you like - in my view, is not about just putting a plan together, working backwards from a deadline or target completion date. No, I believe as senior program leaders must apply their minds to appreciate the bigger picture and create a program structure that becomes the north star in guiding and leading multiple delivery teams. I never started a program without first establishing my project charter, which at the top level, focuses on the following:
  • Start by understanding the why. Why is this program needed? Why is it important?
  • Move on to understanding the who. Who are the sponsors, stakeholders and teams impacted? Who will be working on the program? "First who, then what"
    • A program manager must be sufficiently well-versed with all the roles expected from the program, and work hard to secure the roles needed. Yes, this means the program manager must escalate to get the people needed for the program (on the bus, as well as off the bus). A responsible program manager would raise all these risks & concerns up-front, before officially kicking off the program.
  • Clarify the what, including calling out what's missing - Set up the mental model for the program. What is this program about? What is it not about? What's in scope? What's not in scope? What workstreams make up the program? How do all pieces come together?
  • Agree, Align, Action - The 3 As of project execution involve agreement on the deliverable, alignment of all parties involved which includes acceptance of their workstreams and ultimately agreeing on the action plan to execute.
Project charters don't necessarily have to be communicated in a written document, a slide deck is more than adequate to communicate the essence. Depending on the business environment and culture (for example, some business cultures prefer slide decks over detailed documents to save reading time, whilst others like Amazon, insist on detailed text narratives). So a seasoned project leader must adapt their style to suit the particular business need & culture of the teams.

In this post, I'm sharing a version of a Project Charter as a slide deck. In a future post, I will share a detailed 50+ page document project charter that involved the launch of a consumer electronics device, the program covered a mix of engineering, business and operations workstreams.

Example Program: Transform Digital Self-Service of a $3 billion run-rate business

I was called in to help reset and kickstart an overarching cross-cutting program to improve a selection of key metrics that would result in increased usage of digital self-service channels, improving customer satisfaction and overall reducing operational costs. This program covered the full value chain delivering the service: 3rd party technology vendors developing phone "mobi" apps using USSD, iOS/Android self-service app, Website, Payments, a hardware kiosk station, set-top box interactive application, integration with internal & 3rd party CRM/Billing systems - and resulting business workflows: finance, customer care & banking channels. Technology teams were spread between the CTO/CIO lines (3 IT pillars), and business teams reported separately to the CEO. The program also served the needs of Group Strategy, Risk & Regulatory. Bringing all these things together requires a steady hand, a tactful negotiator, a strategic and business mindset as well as a strong technology leader. This is why I enjoyed such challenges as these programs were never boring, limited to only tech/engineering.

Enough said, let the slides talk and let me know what you think in the comments!

Sunday 9 April 2023

How I scaled engineering ops excellence to ±10X with Mission Control


Continuing with me sharing my experiences as CTO, in this post I share the actions I took to help improve an engineering organisation's operational health in our journey of scaling an online video streaming platform from 1X to 10X, from May 2017 to October 2020. To get to 10X improvement takes a journey, which I achieved in under 3 years, and after reaching the goal, I decided I'd learnt enough of the CTO experience and exited, after having set up a strong succession leadership pipeline in place. 

To get an idea of some of the major themes that I tackled during this time, as a leader I had to lead from the front, back, left, right setting the direction of my managers to follow (as all of these interventions were new to them), whilst doing my best to respect what came before:
  • Establishing the team despite constant re-orgs going on at parent company - getting the right people in the right roles at the right time
  • Transforming a rag-tag undisciplined team to a disciplined, clear-headed, focused organised unit 
  • Introducing laser focus on product engineering by unbundling non-core video apps to other businesses
  • Being critical on the technology platform by establishing a baseline of the architecture, using third party auditors to rate the scalability of the platform
  • Improving physical infrastructure: networking, compute, storage and data centres. Move away from self-hosted and self managed data centres to partnering, shutting down data centres as needed.
  • Build an industrial grade networking stack and leveraging modern peering facilities and overhauling the server infrastructure
  • Setting the roadmap for cloud by transitioning first from single region data centres, to multiple data centre deployments, to running multiple stacks simultaneously, introducing containers and microservices then finally getting ready for cloud and leaping first into serverless paradigms
  • Embracing cloud partnerships with big players: Akamai, Microsoft, AWS, etc.
  • Improving product and engineering delivery by revamping and overhauling the agile work processes and backlog management.
  • Introducing communications mechanisms that helped remove doubt and earned trust across the many different business units and teams (we were known as the online pirates doing their own thing)
  • Improving risk, governance and security - bringing it to the top, raising awareness
  • Creating strategic partnerships internally and externally to leverage skills and expertise I couldn't get in-house or afford to build or manage ourselves
  • Introduced technical operations controls - Mission Control, more active management of operations daily, 24/7 with increased focus, planning and prep for peak times, like weekends and major events planning.
  • Aggressively reducing costs on key platform components whilst capitalising on gains through economy of scale
In this post, I'm going to share some of the early context and interventions I introduced in my first 3 months on the job, that remain effective to this day, more than five years later: Mission Control Ops.

The dreaded 403 We're sorry, something went wrong

I took over a team that weren't prepared for the intense discipline needed to run and operate a highly available 24/7/365 platform. There were many reasons for this which I might touch on in another most. I recall coining the term "Bloody May" as the month of so many outages, that I wondered: 1\ What on earth have I taken on? 2\ Is my life going to be consumed by work from now on? 3\ Is there any hope for this platform? 4\ How am I going to turn this platform around? 5\ How much is the job worth to me?

It turned out there was going to be many more "Bloody Mays"in 2017 whilst my team set about improving stability. In 2017, the platform experienced outages that racked up about 20 days of downtime in one year. This equates to ± 95% availability, which is unacceptable for a video streaming platform. When I left the team in Oct 2020, we had turned around the platform to reaching 99.5% availability trending higher. Today, 5 years on, I'm told the availability is much higher but their usage profile has drastically changed (reduced the number of concurrent streams to one device only, also reduced their devices supported, moved most of the services to AWS). 

Sunday 2 April 2023

ChatGPT as CEO/Chief People Officer handling layoffs with empathy?

So this must've been one of my most interesting conversations with ChatGPT to date! This morning, we discussed business challenges Amazon is facing today - the subject of layoffs or "reduction in force" which is top of mind to many folks, including myself as Amazon recently announced another round of layoffs planned to start in April. ChatGPT clearly understands the MBA topics of optimisations that business implement as they seek to navigate downturns in business cycles.

We dove deep on the topic of how to approach layoffs - from the CxO communications plan, to the manager who has to unfortunately break the news to the impacted employee. We delved into diversity topics of how to approach conversations who identify a faith-practicing individuals, to the generational archetypes that exist in the workplace today. As an extract from the conversation, here's how ChatGPT summarised the key focus areas for each generational archetype for a manager when discussing layoff with an employee:


I interacted with GPT-4 and ran out of credits just as I asked my final question to close the loop for advising the manager "What would you recommend to the manager as the person breaking the news to employees about layoffs? What about the manager's state of mind and overall well-being? What advice can you give there?"

It just shows how deep the conversation could flow - I think we were both into a flow state - just reflect on the words I'm using. I know I'm talking about a piece of computer code here, a machine, but I could spend hours just having a chat with this thing. I missed out on my Sunday morning run just talking to this thing!!

How would I rank this conversation - 5 stars?

Very good. The machine set boundaries from the start and made clear its limitations. First fully disclaiming its lack of data for making financial forecasts into business health of Amazon, and warned it wasn't providing financial advice, and that markets are difficult to predicts, etc.

When provided with additional information that seeded the conversation around making decisions due to tough business performance, ChatGPT was able to propose sensible optimisation strategy that would make any MBA proud. I mean, you don't need an expensive MBA consultant to advise you in future if ChatGPT is able to outline an execution strategy, along with a communications plan for impact management. You probably don't even need "Change Management" consultants anymore.

What was quite impressive is how ChatGPT was able to empathise - i.e. promote the message of empathy when communicating with employees - highlighting the importance of transparency, frequent communications and general accessibility of leaders - making breaking the news as comfortable as possible. 

When asked about how to approach conversation from different religious and philosophical and value systems perspective, the advice was generally of a high quality. This makes me question the need in the future for HR counsellors where my work-assistant ChatGPT partner, who in future, will have a keen understand of me as a manager (not just my professional traits, but also what makes me tick as human being) to help me navigate difficult or crucial conversations in the workplace. Maybe HR as function would still exist, but the work will transform into using ChatGPT as a prompt engineer to build compelling HR content for workforce management - saving a ton of time in content production or training for that matter. If I didn't run out of credits, it would've been interesting to have asked ChatGPT to generate an employee FAQ document, along with helpful hints to manage the news in maintaining one's mental well-being.

Unlike my previous conversations with GPT-3.5, the flow and context of the discussion was maintained. I did not have to correct the machine in any way. I used different styles of language and conversation as a test and it maintained context of the thread, sometimes jumping back to a couple threads earlier, it was able to pick up and synthesise the discussion.

So at the end of this hypothetical discussion, if I was a manager preparing for a layoff discussion with one of my impacted people, I think the pointers provided would make a good coaching aid.

Here's the conversation that played out.

Thursday 23 March 2023

Sense making, apples v oranges, finding a path forward from multiple options by asking searching questions

I've been writing about my experiences as technology executive when I was placed in the midst of uncertainty and high ambiguity that impacted both my personal and professional aspirations in a big way. Making the decision to leave my experiment into boutique management consulting behind, after building a solid reputation as a high-level program manager, switching to a deeply technology role into a business unit that was going through disruption due to both external and internal forces -- was not an easy, straightforward transition to make. I experienced classic imposter syndrome (see this post). Nevertheless, looking back now, more than five years on, those experiences helped shape me to becoming more well-rounded, what some would call a diverse Business, Technology and Operations (BTO) executive - or - as Amazon calls it, a Strong General Athlete (SGA).

My writing this month is on communication methods, mechanisms and tools: 
  • How should CTOs (engineering leaders / technology executives) communicate to all groups of stakeholders?
  • What tools of writing and visualisations to use?
  • How to use critical thinking and the art of reflection to deep dive on the technology strategy - calling out the good, the bad and the ugly?
  • How to dive deep to sense make by asking searching questions, that force upwards stakeholder management to engage in guiding the teams on strategy?
  • How to find a common ground and build bridges between two (perceived) competing technology organisations?

Questions & Answers Tree - Seeking Clarity from Executives

Let's recap the situation:

In 2017, I took on the role of CTO for an online video streaming technology platform. The business unit was part of a traditional satellite PayTV company, that created an online companion application to supplement its existing TV subscribers to watch TV on the go, initially through web & mobile applications ("Delta" platform) - by investing in digital media division. Not long after this value added service was created, about two years later, the parent investment company, started up a new video streaming business ("Sierra" platform borne in the cloud, no attachments to traditional PayTV like Netflix), completely independent from the existing PayTV business. The two businesses hardly interacted or shared common product, marketing or technology elements for the first two years. When I joined in 2017, there was talk about potential synergies and closer partnerships - which directed my three year turnaround strategy - to modernise Delta closing the gap on Sierra, thus creating comparable modern video consumer experience (Netflix was the bar). A year later, additional complexity and uncertainty came in when the parent investment company, decided to unbundle its independent video businesses to allow itself to focus solely on e-commerce ventures. What happened? Naturally, Sierra business was folded into Delta - create a new business with two product & engineering organisations running in parallel: 2 CPOs, 2 CTOs - tasked to figure out what the future world could look like in creating a Delta 2.0 strategy.

As part of the interactions, still being the management consultant (at the time, I was regarded as independent without any affiliations to taking any sides - since I worked with all businesses before and had existing relationships with all), I helped the executives tackle their options.

The first one - let's understand the assumptions and questions that challenge assumptions. Can executives be clear about their end game? What is the vision? Why are you so caught up about the apparent duplication in tech platforms?

Here's the tree:

Comparing Apples to Oranges: The decision table view

When two engineering teams are challenged about their platforms doing essentially the same thing, especially when the ask comes from non-technical executives, very often engineering leaders become defensive and say "Ah, you can't compare apples with oranges, you must compare apples with apples". Whilst this might be technically accurate, this is not the way to manage communications with stakeholders. Part of technology leader's job is to simplify technical and product capabilities, meeting your customer and stakeholder needs, where they're at. Even if you feel a visual oversimplifies, you still need to tell a story, like the one I used to gain approval that cemented Delta 2.0 roadmap:


Who knew that four years later, I would be digging out the same mechanisms to help AWS executives, (in my first month barely completed onboarding by the way) to decide on a technology stack that my engineering team would need to build/deploy/operate - for providing calls / chats support as their technical call centre platform, servicing one of their highly-regulated, strictly controlled, private cloud partitions? See below decision table, similar oranges to apples story:


Wednesday 22 March 2023

How to sell a technology strategy to senior executives

I've started writing about my time as a CTO when I was responsible for turning around and transforming an online video platform to scale 10X as the business doubled down on its growth strategy by investing more heavily into marketing, acquisition and retention drives. As a result, the impact on the engineering team was very high, much higher than when the team built the first version of its platform "Delta 1.0" - and now, under new leadership, I was tasked to take this platform that was lacking in several areas and transform the stack to a future 2.0 vision. It all became more complicated and ambiguous a year later, when another business was merged and we ended up with having two video platforms, offering different product experiences, for different segments of customers.

Despite the technology ambiguity and business uncertainty, the ask from the top was for the Delta product & engineering teams to come up with a plan for a unified stack, showcasing the 2.0 experience. 

I previously shared the technical narratives to help communicate my technology plan. Alas, the docs were too lengthy and detailed for high-level business executives. I needed a way to sell my vision and at the same time secure funding to be allowed to multiple tracks of work running.

How do I show to non-technical business executives, the current state and our future desired state?
What words do I use to show we need to leap from A to B?
How do I convey a story that creates excitement?
How do I gain credibility that my planning is sound?
How do I show complex technology stack layers incl. infra to reset mental model of a "simple app"?

If you've been reading my other posts, you'll learn that I like visualisations, a lot. I also like story-telling - and even way back then, in 2017 - I was familiar with Amazon's future press release concept - and decided to use the future press release headline summaries as a way for me to communicate the release plan. Who knew, that five years later, I myself would end up working for Amazon!?

Here's the anonymised deck that shares concepts you could use, if you find yourself owning a technology platform modernisation challenge, moving your platform from V1.0 to a Nextgen 2.0 state, and sell the strategy to non-technical business executives. By the way, I put this strategy together during my first 100 days into my assignment, in the midst of many other operational responsibilities:

Monday 20 March 2023

How I managed a technology budget ($100m) with 5+ CFOs, 3+ CEOs

In a previous post, I shared how I took on a challenging role as CTO for an online video streaming platform, with a business at the time that was going through rapid changes in leadership every year. In my 3.5 years stint, I would see my direct manager (CEO) change at least 4 times, their own ExCo board members change at least 2 times, and at least another 5 changes in CFOs and senior finance managers. Whilst these changes happened, my job was to still keep the technology platform running and my engineering team delivering on the product roadmap. 

Another spanner in the works was the ambiguity around having two engineering teams, led by two separate CTOs, building online video platforms, Delta and Sierra - a change that happened a year into my tenure after just landing the full-time CTO role (I'd stopped consulting, only to find myself in further uncertainty with a business merger and potentially more rounds of org-design changes). Delta was under my ownership, serving traditional TV customers with value-added internet services to access Live TV & Video on Demand (VOD) streaming. Sierra, was a pure internet, deep catalogue subscription video on demand service (like Netflix), built and run by a parallel engineering team, under different CTO, in another country, outside of South Africa.

So, with these many changes in executive leadership, at the top-level financial review - executives would naturally inspect why the business seems to be duplicating engineering efforts at building online video platforms, even though the two products serve a different set of customers, emerged at different timelines, using different set of technologies - but they both appear to "stream video" at the high level. So why is there duplication? Where are the costs going? How do we streamline engineering costs?

Enter the Financial Model & Technology Budget Commentary Document

The first order of business for me, being tasked with a turnaround challenge - was to review the existing cost components, identify the main cost drivers and derive a perpetual financial model based on the core business driver of growing monthly active users.

Starting in 2017, neither the technology team nor the finance managers could tell with a high level of confidence what the true costs of running the technology platform were, and ultimately what the cost of running a technology platform translated to a cost per user value, and ultimately how much from the profit margin this cost was eating into. My platform provided value-added-services for free, existing users were homed to a primary TV subscription package (satellite TV using a dish and decoder / Set Top Box (STB)) as main profile. Additional viewing profiles for online consumption through mobile phones, smart TVs, game consoles and web browsers, were offered at zero cost. Additionally, my platform served internet connected STBs with larger video catalogues for streaming on demand, this too, at zero cost to the subscriber.

Financial Model (brilliant, if I say so myself!)

So I created a detailed financial model that was able to show how to forecast a largely fixed cost investment, to operate in a variable cost domain. The largest cost components for video streaming is the infrastructure cost for the networking pipe (internet transit) and content delivery network (CDN) data costs. Since video consumes large amounts of data, these costs are covered by the streaming operator. CFOs prefer fixed cost accounting than variable costs because it helps manage their cashflows and forecasts better. In an on-demand video world, where customers come and go, or viewing behaviour varies by seasonality or during peak events, the experience is more bursty than constant. This is why video providers focus heavily on content personalisation and recommendation systems to drive stickiness and increase engagement. The more users watching video, the more data is consumed, the costs of data increases. The longer users remain on the platform, the more users are engaged and the more video data is consumed. All these point to increasing costs - but - at some point, the costs per user eventually decreases because the number of users increase, the cost per user eventually decreases. I created a financial model that showed how we could manage variable costs through a fixed cost model, by buying data wholesale upfront, using a minimum commit model with overflow-at-zero-cost into next year for unused data, and also negotiated year-on-year cost savings, since cost of data decreases year on year.

Using my financial model, I was able to show significant cost savings to the tune of R80m ($5-7m) in two years. I also, single-handedly negotiated significant costs savings with our primary transit links and CDN providers, as a result of my financial model forecasting. In year one, I negotiated a 1233% increase in CDN bandwidth and secured 71% decrease in out-of-band data costs, 50% decrease for inband per GB data costs - keeping my overall costs relatively flat to track a fixed expense. In year two, I negotiated additional cuts, reducing in-band data costs by a further 63%, out-of-band by 48%. In year three, I negotiated further deal reductions because of increased competition in both the transit-and-cdn space, landing on a further 20% reduction on inband and out-of-band costs. Over this period, I secured enough guaranteed capacity in the network that exceeded future growth targets, but kept most of the projected fixed costs inline. As a result, when I decided to leave the company, in my 3 years tenure, I drove internet costs down by 84% on a cost per user metric and 96%reduction on costs per GB per user metric.  Additionally, working with the same transit and CDN partners, I secured more than 7X improvement on overall internet throughput, reaching close to 1 terabits/sec on network capacity, which for the African continent, is not bad going indeed! In terms of storage, from 2017, I increased the data commitment by 2000% cumulatively year-on-year.

Sunday 19 March 2023

An example of resource planning a 100 person technology team

Here's an example of how an engineering leader can go about managing headcount and resource planning to deliver on both the technology roadmap as well as business goals. For context, this is a resource plan for a 100-person size engineering organisation who had end-to-end responsibility for building and managing a live-streaming and video-on-demand online video platform "Delta". 

I was the CTO responsible for managing everything, pretty much a CIO in my own right, overseeing: 1\ Physical Infrastructure services: Datacentres, Networking, Compute, Storage; 2\ Internet backbone transit links; 3\ Cloud integrations and peering; 4\ Telecoms integrations; 5\ Software development & testing; 6\ Video broadcast & streaming infrastructure; 7\ CDN management; 8\ Personalisation & Content Recommender systems development; 9\ Agile Program Office; 10\ Technical Operations Command Centre offering 24/7/365 first/second/3rd line support; 11\ Enterprise & Solutions Architecture; 12\ Security, Anti-piracy, Risk & Governance; 13\ Platform Intelligence Dashboards & Analytics; 14\ Vendors.

Whilst I had my own technology strategy to deliver for the underlying platform to serve the scaling needs of the business, as we were aggressively targeting a growth phase - my teams had to also continue to build out product features and enhancements for all devices we supported (sometimes the apps varying by user experience depending on the device itself, e.g. Smart TV versus iOS vs Web app), we also had to deliver new business product offerings and deliver across group-wide projects and initiatives as shared goals.

With these challenges, an engineering leader must have a firm handle on the "resource" allocation. Sorry, agile folks - I myself cringe at the mere mention of "resources" - but heck, since joining Amazon, I was amazed of how natural the term "resources" is used by management. There are two camps, people who belong to "I am NOT a resource" and "I am a resource"!!

Anyway, I digress. As a leader, you have to keep an eye on your workforce. Based on on your existing headcount allocated to you, how do you best organise your people and plan around the various delivery demands placed on your team? How do you show your stakeholders where your resources are allocated? How do you motivate for additional headcount or escalate a change of priorities if you don't have the data that accompanies your story? How do you show that although you might have 100 people under your org, the capacity for doing project work is only 80 or less, because you need to account for management, team leads, shared service work and other internal projects? See below pivot summary table:

As tedious as it might be, an engineering leader has to do some "management" work - no matter how boring it might feel. This stuff is important. The finance folks need this information. The business owners need to have a view of what impact their projects have on your teams. 

A resource allocation plan can be a powerful tool - my advice - use it often, maintain it and let it become a key mechanism for you to have productive, collaborative conversations with your stakeholders.

Yes, I maintained my own list, accounting for each person in the org. 
No, I don't always support the notion that people are fungible resources, can be chopped and changed or "allocated" using numbers on a spreadsheet. I also don't believe the fractional numbers help either, but they are meant to be rough allocations to help with accounting - which I'm afraid is unavoidable - part of any software managers job really.

Below picture shows what goes into headcount planning / forecasting for the year, trying to keep the headcount to 100 people due to the hiring freeze. Just imagine, a 100-person size team responsible for building the full infrastructure and consumer applications for a streaming video platform that served the whole African continent (50+ countries)! Amazon has the Frugality leadership principle - we were frugal on people but wise on partnerships, using another of Amazon's LP - Invent & Simplify.



As an experienced engineering leader, my advice to software managers: If you're not maintaining a resource allocation plan, you're missing a vital tool of software management. Be careful!!

Saturday 18 March 2023

Visualising a technology roadmap and year plan on just one page

Here's something that other engineering leaders might find useful: Showing all the work under one's ownership, a technology roadmap on a single page that nicely prints to A3 paper.

In this example, I capture everything that was important to me as the leader responsible for what was at the time, one of Africa's largest online video streaming platform (Live TV + VOD). I was responsible for the full platform end-to-end:
  • Physical Platform Infrastructure and Networking - Data Centres (Compute, Storage, Networking)
  • Cloud Services commercials & workloads
  • Software Engineering  - multi-platform, multi-device software development & testing
  • Enterprise & Solution Architects
  • Video Streaming Hardware & Software infrastructure integration & management
  • Recommendations & Content Discovery Engines - AI/ML scientists and engineering
  • Agile Program Management Office - Agile Specialists
  • Technical Operations & Integrations - Command Center & Mission Control 24/7/365 support
  • Security, Anti-piracy, Risk & Governance streams
How do I show on one page, the focus areas for the above teams in terms of our year plan, showcasing:
  • The themes that categorise the work so non-technical customers & stakeholders can understand
  • The cadence of releases for product feature delivery for product & marketing teams
  • The key KPIs our work drives - growth targets for monthly active users
  • The key events happening during the year that would put a strain on the platform load/stability
  • Show what the tech team will be producing month-on-month
  • The owners and points-of-contact for each work stream
So if you're a CTO or Head of Engineering responsible for an overarching technical platform, and you're not visualising your work in your own roadmap view, then IMHO, you're missing a trick. I used Excel to craft my roadmap because I was being scrappy - but it is possible to create such views if you invest in a solid product/program planning tool.

Click to enlarge: An example of a technology leader's roadmap / year plan

Friday 17 March 2023

An example of a CTO's operating year's business plan

I'm continuing my series of posts sharing my work portfolio from my past as a technology executive (CTO) when I was directly responsible for a large engineering team (150+ people excluding partners). I approached this role as the next big challenge in my career aspirations. I gave myself a timebox of 3 years, after that, I'd intended venturing on to something else outside of the video world. I'm grateful for the experience as I left with learning all types of executive-management skills for managing business and technology operations. I also accomplished praiseworthy results in what would seem a short amount of time, in just 3 years. This shows how much intensity and density can be packed into a 3 year work experience. I know I would probably not see that much excitement and high-stakes challenges again for some time, even as I write this post in 2023, five years later, whilst working with Amazon's AWS...

Every CTO/Engineering Leader must write an Operating Plan

If you're a technology executive and you're not owning your very own technology operations business plan, in writing and not through high-level powerpoint slide decks, then you're missing a trick and you're missing out on a powerful asset and artefact, that IMHO, is essential for navigating your technology journey. Even before my time with Amazon, I used to write a lot, despite my employer not being a writing-documents oriented company, especially at executive leadership level. Personally, I needed a way to make sense of things, apply critical thinking and process my thoughts into a credible strategy for executing. I also needed to take my senior managers on my journey, lead by setting an example of thought-leadership through writing (because writing documents was unfamiliar to some managers). I also wanted to reach the software engineers on the floor, doing the day-to-day work, help them see the big picture and grasp how the work they do matters to the end goal. 

Another benefit of sharing your technology strategy in written form is to promote alignment and information sharing across many groups of stakeholders - customers, internal partners and external third-party primary partners. As a CTO for a specific business segment (online video), I had my own company's leaders as my primary stakeholders (CEOs, fellow C-Suite top team peers like Customer Acquisition, Retention, Marketing, Sales, Ops, Product, etc.), I also had to support other business' shared goals. In addition, I was part of a wider group structure of the parent group company, inheriting goals from the Group-CTO, Group-CIO, Group-CDO and Group-CISO domains. So the ever familiar problem of having multiple demands placed on a technology organisation. 

As a leader then, you need a mechanism for alignment on your execution plan for the year - this is usually an organisation's yearly operating plan. The aim is to show how you, as the engineering leader are accounting for all the priority goals you're taking on from your various customers and show how the work you plan to deliver, relates to achieving those goals and objectives. Additionally, the specific technology initiatives that you are taking accountability for yourself (like tech platform modernisation, addressing technical debt, etc.) remain nevertheless important for your org to deliver results and meet stakeholder expectations.

Below is one version of a year plan that I authored and used as a constant reminder for checking in and reflections on progress. Let me know if it helped you :-)

[Disclaimer: I write about my past work experiences, this post dating back to 2017-2020 referring to entities that no long exist today (in 2023). Previous mentions of such entities are widely in the public domain through news media outlets, press briefings, launch announcements, etc. I take time to ensure that nothing I share exposes commercially sensitive material. My intent is to share my learnings and experiences to teach and mentor people on a similar path to me; with the side benefit of showcasing my professional work portfolio to current and future prospective employers & head hunters, through my writing].

Thursday 16 March 2023

How I led the turnaround of a tech platform from 1X to ±9X in just 3 years

In a previous post, I shared how I ended up transitioning from a program manager to being the leader of a large engineering organisation as CTO. I then followed up another post sharing my context in this leadership position that was beset with highly volatile, uncertain, complex and unambiguous challenges - the world of online video streaming. A dynamic, tough, competitive space, especially as Africa was only then waking up to the streaming video wars that started in 2015.

[Disclaimer: I write about my past work experiences, this post dating back to 2017-2020 referring to entities that no long exist today (in 2023). Previous mentions of such entities are widely in the public domain through news media outlets, press briefings, launch announcements, etc. I take time to ensure that nothing I share exposes commercially sensitive material. My intent is to share my learnings and experiences to teach and mentor people on a similar path to me; with the side benefit of showcasing my professional work portfolio to current and future prospective employers & head hunters, through my writing].

In my 3.5 years as CTO, I would see the business change executive leadership multiple times - I think by 2020, we'd been through at least six changes in executive leadership (CEO/Exco-heads). This meant that almost every year, I had a new boss, who's strategy shifted to suit their new vision as they aimed to leave their mark on the business goals of an an aggressive growth strategy.

From a CTO perspective, I had to navigate different expectations of these new leaders, who didn't grasp the nature of technology and engineering challenges. Quite often, my team would be compared with the big players like Netflix, Amazon, Hulu - citing the incredible numbers of concurrent users (millions), comparing against our fledgling platform built in Africa, by Africans, for Africans - a platform that emerged not natively online, but an extension of the existing PayTV broadcast ecosystem. Despite whatever truths be valid or not from the engineering perspective, my job as CTO was to manage expectations upwards as best as I could whilst working with my engineering team on the necessary upgrades to scale the platform accordingly.

Once an app is live and already being used daily, with a steady increase in monthly active users - despite technical debt and platform instability - customers expect to receive feature updates and when it comes to consuming video, a stable viewing experience. Add an aggressive marketing and acquisition strategy, my technology team didn't have the luxury to pause, stop and fix things. Business goes and and IT tech folks just have to get on and deliver, smartly.

One of the first things I did with my team, in addition to resetting their mental model - was to create a simple graph of our state - not so dissimilar to Amazon's infamous flywheel. Based on the business growth strategy, the key drivers impacting my technology team pivoted around two fundamental missions: 1\ Increase the number of active users (growth) and 2\ Increase Engagement. So I created this map, as our North Star - that would remain, un-erased on the whiteboard for 3 years since creating. This picture would become my constant reference during my management meetings (reminding my directs and technical leads why we exist, what areas are important) as well as my all-hands updates:

Technology Strategy Map - North Star / Key Focus Areas

A video streaming business is about reaching as many customers as possible, providing engaging content that captivates their users to return and consume more and more content, staying longer on the app, remaining more engaged. The app user experience needs to be seamless, easy, intuitive and on-par with other well known players (ala Netflix). The tech platform then becomes core in providing the experience. What the picture highlights are the key pillars, which became the driving force for our improvement goals. I focused our attention to execute on these and only these: 1\ Product development (software delivery of app features across as many devices and platforms as possible); 2\ Streaming & Networking infrastructure - CDN & cost optimisation; 2\ Platform Scaling challenges (big area of technical debt - transition to AWS cloud); 3\ Platform Intelligence (don't fly blind); 4\ Content Discovery (AI/ML recommenders); 5\ Telco partnerships (we didn't own the full network). Controlling all of this, was technical operations excellence, something I called "Mission Control" - active, preventative and proactive monitoring of the live platform (technical alerting and social media monitoring).

A large part of this challenge was managing cost. Based on the business growth targets, the cost to serve the technology platform per customer had to remain low. In parallel with me turning around not only a distressed platform whilst keeping the integrity of the engineering teams together (because of layoffs and re-org), I had to work on delivering cost-savings whilst armed with my own sizeable budget. We could no longer be operating on a shoestring budget anymore, and at the same time, we couldn't afford to be wasteful - frugality was still top-of-mind. My budget over my tenure would amount to R1.5 billion (±100 million USD) covering people, capital expenditure, and operations expenditure (video streaming businesses is a costly game), aligned to a Buy / Partner strategy instead of Build-your-Own.

As a result of this strategy, my team were able to execute year-on-year, exceeding expectations and turning around what was once a platform on the brink of extinction, rebooting and refreshing in 2017 to deliver a nett ±9X improvement on active users and availability of the platform:

Platform growth over 3 years under my leadership


As a result of this experience, I wrote a white paper that dived quite deep into the technical challenges a CTO in the online video streaming business must not overlook - check it out here.

My engagement as a CTO was timeboxed from the start - I wasn't expecting to work longer than 3 years as I'd set myself the challenge of learning and setting up a leadership succession plan that would continue to lead the team and deliver on the technology transformation strategy I created. At the end of that experience in 2020, just around Covid times, it was clear I needed to reset myself, and after 20+ years career in video technology, I sought a change...and decided to leave the TV world behind.

Looking back, more than two years later, I somewhat miss the thrill of high-stakes leadership, and the intensity of the experience. More so, leading a large group of people (150+), rallying them to raise the bar and turnaround their tech platform (that I had no prior experience in building, nor was I familiar with the code) and also themselves, in trusting me to lead them - and get past their stigma of not trusting a business program manager... 

My next posts will dive deeper into some of the streams on how we got to 9X, covering some hits and also some big misses too!!

Wednesday 15 March 2023

How I communicated a CTO's 3 year plan through writing

In my previous post, I shared my method for applying visualisation in simplifying complex technology migration programs, communicating effectively by way of one-piece-of-paper. I also shared how I communicated progress updates for a plan with multiple programs using a simple slide show. Before getting to the stage of summarising complex topics through the powerful, simplifying visual means, one must do the deep work of critical thinking, reflection & reviews. This process usually takes the form of written word which serve as inputs into the visualisation and storytelling stage.

[Disclaimer: I write about my past work experiences, this post dating back to 2017-2020 referring to entities that no long exist today (in 2023). Previous mentions of such entities are widely in the public domain through news media outlets, press briefings, launch announcements, etc. I take time to ensure that nothing I share exposes commercially sensitive material. My intent is to share my learnings and experiences to teach and mentor people on a similar path to me; with the side benefit of showcasing my professional work portfolio to current and future prospective employers, through my writing].

How does deep work happen then? Well, through writing narratives, of course! I love writing. Even before joining Amazon, I was rather Amazonian! As I reviewed the content I produced over my past work experiences, it became clear that what I was doing way back then in 2016-2020, was actually preparing for my future work at Amazon!! Amazon is infamous for its writing culture. Powerpoints be damned! If you aren't able to articulate your thoughts and ideas through writing at Amazon, then you're not going to get much traction!

In this post, I share what I wrote back in 2018, basically reflections that I'd written for an audience consisting of ExCo (Group CTO & CIO members), my senior engineering direct reports as well as some non-technical board members who expressed some curiosity on the learnings from our journey to date, since the massive re-organisation of the business and resetting 2017 strategy (as I shared previously in my experience as CTO in  my first 100 days). 

The situation in 2018 at high level, executive board level: 
In Q1 2017, I was tasked to build the future online video platform (Delta) for the group. By the end of 2017, the group inherited another business unit, bringing its own video platform (Sierra) into the mix. The parent company created a new business unit as a result, consolidating a new operating model, bringing all entities servicing online video customer segments into a single operating business unit. With two different product portfolios, serving different market segments and powered by two different technology stacks, Sierra & Delta. Sierra was borne in the digital world from day-one cloud-native, with Delta having evolved from the traditional broadcast PaytTV world, pre-cloud. So you now have two independent CTOs (separated by continents apart) responsible for two different tech platforms, talk about ambiguity! From a high-level cost accounting perspective, it looks like there's much duplication going on surely!? Simply put: both organisations build apps that consume video, why don't you guys merge into a single platform? :-) 
I thrive in thinking big and looking around corners. I also enjoy solving what seems at first, to be intractable problems. I also love to cooperate and collaborate - always seeking out the best interest for the business in the end, even at the expense of my own career (I was never one for empire building). Setting all personal differences and healthy tech competition aside, I chose to focus on building bridges, looking for reasonable compromises. I also set out to describe the situation in terms that both technical and business stakeholders could understand. So I created this doc, to share my thinking into a 3 year technical strategy would look like, taking into account the learnings from the conversations to date. 

I'm sharing this with my readers as an example of what is expected from a senior engineering leader when it comes to strategic thinking and planning longer term - you have to do the deep work, confront the brutal facts of the current reality and set clear goals and aspirations for a future state. 

Incidentally, the contents of the doc is not so dissimilar to the content one would find in the Amazon Operating Plans (OP1/OP2):

Tuesday 14 March 2023

How to Visualise & Communicate Technology Migration 3 Year Plan

My previous post shared my journey into my early days as a CTO, taking you through my challenges and opportunities in my new role that experienced high degrees and uncertainty, and despite the ambiguity, I had to not only come up with a 100 day plan, but also win hearts-and-minds all-round. 

[Disclaimer: I write about my past work experiences, dating back to 2017 referring to entities that no long exist today (in 2023). Previous mentions of such entities are widely in the public domain through news media outlets, press briefings, launch announcements, etc. I take time to ensure that nothing I share exposes commercially sensitive material. My intent is to rather showcase my work portfolio to current and future prospective employers, through my writing].

Despite the uncertainty with the mothership corporate's complete overhaul of its business operating models, we had to go on as business-as-usual. As such, I had to create a credible three year plan for the technology platform: Create future online video platform V2.0 that replaced the existing V1.0 (let's call this platform Delta) and combined the best of a standalone partner platform (Sierra). 

Both platforms were roughly the same age, with Delta create to pretty-much replicate the traditional PayTV's Set Top Box (STB) experience (via a Satellite broadcast) but over the internet and consumed through devices other than STBs (i.e. mobile phones, web browsers, game consoles, smart TVs). Delta wasn't a truly home-grown, native internet application, being tightly coupled to existing broadcast and satellite workflows. (To understand the world of difference between Internet Over-the-Top video and traditional Broadcast TV systems, refer to my white paper here).

Sierra, on-the-other-hand, was built from the ground-up, as a pure internet streaming platform, but only for on-demand content, like Netflix - but didn't provide live broadcast TV & thus didn't experience the realtime expectations that the Delta platform did. 

Nevertheless, the business strategy was to create a more unified, homogenous viewing experience for the customer, simplify the multiple applications problem by providing the customer (end-users that consume video over the internet), a single container application to enjoy any type of media content, on-demand - i.e. xVOD. From a product and user experience perspective, this made perfect sense. For the technology platforms though, it meant choosing a path forward that involved a technology modernisation program: Build out the new platform, migrate as much as possible, reach parity and provide the new 2.0 experience.

The job of creating this technology strategy naturally falls on the CTO, me. This initiative, to be a success would need the full co-operation of 5 separate commercial entities, impacting the day-to-day work and operations of 500+ people, including 50+ resources from our partners. 

How do I simplify a complex technology strategy & execution plan on a single piece of paper?
How do I ensure the picture shows all the key elements (workstreams) that tell a credible story?
How do I present and communicate progress overall to non-technical stakeholders?
How do I influence stakeholders & bring in a wider audience than just the engineering teams?

Monday 13 March 2023

My One Page Project Scorecard

Back when I was an independent management consultant, I used to lead very large enterprise-wide programs that cut across multiple business units, each with its own project management office. My job was to lead, direct, coach and deliver through others, without myself having any hierarchical power - apart from referent power as my sponsors were the C-suite themselves. The job itself was interesting as I had to wear multiple hats: dive into the detail working with implementation teams whilst at the same time, be ready to communicate with my higher-level stakeholders, abstracting the detail. But if asked any questions, I must have the answers for them, without differing to the workstream owners.

Typically my programs would entail any number of workstreams, from ten to fifty. Some workstreams (or work packages) themselves would be considered programs in their own right. A program being a collection of multiple projects. Projects being a unit of work usually involving a single group, to deliver a series of tasks. I would be leading and executing through many program and project managers, as well as individual functional managers.

Over time, I'd developed my own mechanisms for structuring and managing these large-scale initiatives. One such mechanism is a simple project dashboard, on a single piece of paper, that shows the full map of all the initiatives, calls out the owners responsible and overall status - highlighting a call to action.

As a consultant however, my role was to guide, raise risks and mitigate as much as I could (within my scope of influence and control), and then escalating upwards for decisions outside my control. What's a consultant to do, eh?

Let me know what you think of this visual?

An example One Page Project Report from 2015: large-scale media workflows automation program