Have you ever had to assist a colleague in an area outside of your responsibilities? How did it go?

Question

Anonymous · Accepted Answer

We had a critical release requiring an automated deployment process with
parallel stacks—creating a new stack, deploying the software, running tests, and
then cutting over traffic from the old stack. Our DevOps engineer, who was
responsible for this process, had to take an unexpected leave due to a family
emergency, leaving us without crucial support for this critical phase and
putting our tight schedule and deployment strategy at risk.
Despite my primary role being focused on backend development, I wasn’t initially
responsible for the deployment pipeline. I recognized that without effective
management of the deployment pipeline, our release could be compromised. I took
the initiative to step in and oversee the automated deployment process, even
though it was outside my usual scope of responsibilities.
I quickly familiarized myself with our Gitlab CI/CD pipeline and Terraform
infrastructure setup.
To automate the deployment, I enhanced the pipeline to create a new stack in
parallel to the existing one, deploy our software, and run automated tests to
validate the environment. For the traffic cutover, I implemented a gradual
switch mechanism that allowed us to monitor performance and quickly revert if
any issues arose. I collaborated with the development and QA teams to ensure
alignment and documented the deployment process for future reference.
The deployment was completed successfully with no downtime, and the new stack
performed well under real user traffic. My enhancements reduced deployment time
by 40% and the controlled traffic cutover ensured a seamless transition with no
user impact. The leadership team recognized my initiative and the effective
solutions I implemented, which were adopted as standard practice for future
releases.

Anonymous · Answer

Just one day before a major survey launch at NEPA, we discovered critical logic
errors that threatened to derail the entire project. The operations team
responsible for drafting these surveys had multiple projects running
simultaneously and hence overwhelmed by this error, I stepped up to resolve the
issue, even though it wasn't my direct responsibility and I had no prior
experience with the specific scripting language of the survey tool called
Confirmit.
The problem was with the branching logic of the survey, where the next question
depends on the answer to the previous one. If any of these connections are
wrong, respondents might see irrelevant questions or miss important ones.
'I recognized the urgency of the situation and took full responsibility for
fixing the errors. First, I collaborated with the operations team to understand
the tool's requirements and learned the basics of Confirmit.
To address the issues:
 * I simplified the survey logic to make it easier to test and reuse
 * Using my analytical skills, I meticulously checked each branch to make sure
   the right follow-up questions appeared based on previous answers.I then
   mapped out the correct logic flow using Excel, visualizing the desired
   outcomes before implementing them.
 * I simulated different respondent scenarios to test and ensure everything
   worked correctly.

After implementing and testing the corrections, I conducted a soft launch the
same day to validate the changes. The successful validation allowed us to
proceed with the full launch on schedule, meeting our tight five-day data
collection deadline and maintaining our commitment to client deliverables.
Post-project, I documented lessons learned and recommended having a dedicated
testing day before committing timelines to clients. I also refined testing
protocols to enhance efficiency and minimize future risks.
Further, I took the initiative to personally learn Confirmit scripting to better
address future challenges. I successfully trained over 20 interns and employees,
significantly enhancing their ability to independently maintain and enhance
survey logic. This empowered the team to independently maintain and enhance
survey logic, ensuring scalability and continuity across projects.

Anonymous · Answer

Situation: While working on the platform and reporting teams, an unexpected
early maternity leave occurred on the team responsible for managing employee
ethics disclosures. My manager needed to reassign tasks to ensure continuity.

Task: A critical feature for the system used to track and manage employee ethics
disclosures needed to be completed within a tight three-week sprint. This was a
new domain and team for me, presenting a significant challenge.
Action: I volunteered to take on this feature as I had the capacity and was
eager to contribute. Despite my unfamiliarity with the area, I took the
initiative to:
• Rapid Learning: I spent extra hours studying the project, consulted with
senior team members, and took a short online course to understand the ethics
disclosure management system better. I also had detailed discussions with the
ethics disclosure team to grasp the system's intricacies and requirements.
• Collaborative Workshops: To fully understand user needs and project goals, I
led focused meetings with stakeholders from both the ethics disclosure team and
my existing teams. This approach fostered knowledge sharing and ensured
alignment. We mapped out user journeys, identified key pain points, and defined
clear objectives for the feature.

Result: Through dedication and a proactive approach, I delivered the
high-priority feature on time. Additionally, through user research and
collaboration, I suggested additional functionalities that significantly
enhanced the system's overall value. For example, implementing a more intuitive
user interface and automated compliance checks improved the user experience and
reduced the time required for compliance reviews by 30%. This experience
demonstrated my ability to adapt to new challenges and effectively collaborate
with cross-functional teams.

Relevance to the Role: This experience has equipped me with skills directly
relevant to the target role. Working in cross-functional teams honed my ability
to collaborate with diverse stakeholders, a key requirement for this position.
My ability to quickly learn new areas and take initiative is essential for roles
that involve tackling new domains and leading projects under tight deadlines.
Furthermore, my success in delivering a critical feature within a tight
timeframe demonstrates my capability to manage and execute high-pressure
projects, aligning with the demands of the target role.

Anonymous · Answer

Situation: While leading a team, one of my colleagues inadvertently overlooked
the need to retain a copy of the raw data. Subsequently, we needed to enable new
data elements  from the raw data but realized we didn’t have the required copy
readily available. To address this, we had to reprocess the raw data.
Fortunately, the API provided a 28-day   history, ensuring no data was lost.
However, this oversight caused a slight delay in delivering insights to a key
stakeholder.
Task: As the team lead, it was my responsibility to address the issue, resolve
it promptly, and rebuild trust with the stakeholder.
Action: I took ownership of the situation and communicated the slight delay to
the stakeholder and communicating a plan to address the issue. Internally, I
worked with my   colleague to identify the root cause of the oversight,
providing coaching and additional training to prevent recurrence. I also
improved the team’s quality assurance process to add  an additional layer of
review for future deployments.
Result: The issue was resolved quickly, the stakeholder appreciated the
proactive communication, and the improved process ensured a higher standard of
quality in subsequent  projects.

Anonymous · Answer

Yeah, there are times when we need to get into different roles, even if it is
not a part of our job because communication and collaboration with colleagues
help to foster a healthy work culture. In my recent organisation, we had  a new
program manager joining, who was new to the project. He needed some help in
knowing the verticals and the Engineering Team. I did my part getting him to
understand the work culture and helping him collaborate with the team and got
the Engineering team to sync up with him as well as getting him appropriate
information on the product  by  providing him the appropriate channel access to
the confluence docs to go through as well as helped him setting up 1: 1 calls
with the product owners. This helped him in understanding his team that he/she
would be syncing up with on a day to day basis . Also helped the engineering
team and the product owners to have a open ended communication with him.

Anonymous · Answer

I would like to talk about situation. When I was an engineering  manager at
digital commerce platform org at Amazon, I was handling close to 11 services,
and 
as part of the Rolling Stone initiative where Amazon was trying to move all its
services away from Oracle, I had four services that I was trying to migrate from
Oracle to the databases hosted on Azure. All my fellow colleagues who were
owning services of DCP were doing similar exercise. One of the colleague who was
owning digital redemption service had to go on maternity leave, and then couple
of engineers earmarked to do this migration for digital redemption service wwere
transition out of the organization. That is when I offered to help with the
migration of the service. 
So I now had 5 services with competing  priorities where I 
had to manage very tight schedule of service migrations. Planning a very
ruthless prioritization, figuring out an optimal execution path of a completely
unknown service, interacting with the service upstream clients whom i had not
worked with prior, working with an amalgam of My team members and the service
owner team members were few of the ambiguous paths I navigated to help do on
time migration completion of the   service owned by my collegues.

Anonymous · Answer

One of the QA faced challenges with keeping up with the developer in testing of
CRM application. while my role was of QA, I had understanding of the scrum
activities and also known the business. 
I reviewed the issue and conducted initial assessment of the problem. 
I collaborated with QA to understand their concern and came to know about the
root cause that QA is not involved in all scrum activities which is resulting
into QA lacking of testing, and some stories are missed to be tested.
I worked closely with the QA and scrum master to discuss about the issue and
help to set up a process to involve QA in grooming, and planning meetings,
involve QA in sizing the user story, and a user story can only be completed when
all development, QA and UAT sign offs are given. 
Thus after discussion, a process was set up where in QA was involved in all the
activities and issue was resolved. This helped to ensure high standards of the
delivery of the product and proactive collaboration.

Anonymous · Answer

Good question.

yes, There was a time that i had to participate another team project release. as
something goes wrong with release related to the components that related to my
team, i was there to help that team. This is not my direct responsibility.  i
attended that because my team lead was not available there. within that release
major problem arise related to cloud run instance issue and based on my priror
experience i abled to help that team to slove that problem and   do the release
succfully.

Anonymous · Answer

At CenterCard, we had a TPM who had joined the company recently. As a TPM she
was expected to be part of the architecture discussion. This was a new area for
her and she sought out my help to get upto speed on our Architecture. I decided
to help her so that she can be more productive in her job, I saw an opprotunity
for my Sr. Dev to help him improve his communication and help the TPM as well.
With that in mind, I asked my Sr. Dev to set up meetings with my TPM and help
her get up to speed. I could solve two things by doing this - I saw
communication as area of improvement for my Dev and helping my TPM get more
knowledegable, I could gain that working relationship with my TPM,

Have you ever had to assist a colleague in an area outside of your responsibilities? How did it go?

Did you come across this question in an interview?

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