Behavioral
What is the most innovative idea you have ever had? How did you come up with it and how did you go about implementing it?
Backend EngineerFrontend EngineerFull Stack Software EngineerProduct Manager
Palo Alto Networks
Snap
Microsoft
Shopify
Stripe
Meta
Answers
Anonymous
8 months ago
In a project where I was part of building an event-driven messaging system for our company, we encountered a significant challenge reported by our customers. They needed a way to track the status of messages they published, including whether a message was archived in S3, routed to specific queues, or successfully consumed by downstream applications. This end-to-end tracking was crucial for ensuring transparency and reliability in message delivery.
My task was to design a solution that would allow customers to monitor the status of their messages from ingestion to delivery in near real-time. Additionally, we needed to address the issue that when customers requested status updates or needed debugging, we had to manually check logs, which was time-consuming and inefficient.
I proposed a design where each part of the system that handled the message would update its status at important stages to AWS Kinesis stream. We then implemented a consumer service that processes these status updates from the stream and stores them in a database optimized for querying. This setup allowed our customers to query the status of any message, and our microservice would return the relevant status updates, providing a clear view of the message’s journey through the system.
This solution was accepted and successfully implemented. It proved to be highly scalable, capable of handling large volumes of status updates without impacting system performance. Customers now have the ability to check message statuses in near real-time, greatly enhancing their ability to monitor and trust the system’s end-to-end delivery process. Moreover, the solution significantly reduced the time and effort required for debugging, as customers could now access status information directly, without needing our team to manually check logs. This not only improved customer satisfaction but also allowed our team to focus on more strategic tasks.
Anonymous
8 months ago
I was designing a feature for custom creation and since it was a new space the requirement were abstract. I was designing the experience and would always like to prpose ideas . one of them was to elt users save their custom templates so if there was a similar requirement that they would have it ready to go and not have to do the process again. after discussing some ligistics with product team on setting a limit to creaiton we imlemented it
Anonymous
9 months ago
Situation: At Dayforward, our manual underwriting process for policy approvals was slow, error-prone, and inefficient. This resulted in delays and inaccuracies, which affected our overall operational efficiency and customer satisfaction.
Task: My task was to develop a solution to automate the policy approval process, replacing the manual tasks with an automated system to streamline operations and improve accuracy.
Action:
- Research & Design: I began by analyzing the existing manual process to identify key areas for automation. I worked closely with the underwriting team to understand their criteria for policy approvals and designed an automated system using machine learning algorithms.
- Development: I developed the system using Python, integrating it with our policy management platform. The system included modules for data extraction, risk assessment, and decision-making based on historical data.
- Testing & Deployment: I rigorously tested the system with historical data and conducted user acceptance testing with the underwriting team. After successful validation, I implemented the system in phases, starting with a pilot program to gather feedback and refine the solution.
- Monitoring & Improvement: I continuously monitored the system’s performance and made iterative improvements based on feedback and real-time data.
Result: The automated policy approval system reduced processing times by 50% and significantly decreased errors associated with manual underwriting. This enhancement improved operational efficiency and allowed the underwriting team to focus on more complex cases, leading to higher productivity and increased customer satisfaction.
This project was a prime example of leveraging innovative technology to solve real business problems and achieve substantial improvements in both operational efficiency and service quality.
Anonymous
10 months ago
The most innovative idea I've ever had was to utilize check system when completing payment via check when starting a new policy. When you accept a payment that is not a secured form of payment such as credit card or western union, depending on the state you are required to provide insurance based on the state regulations. For example NY requires the company to send out a cancelation letter which gives an additional 14 days to make the payment.
During planning season, I introduce check system based on my observation of the system in local stores. I was task to run a controlled pilot with the region of 240 associate for 60 days. The results indicate immediate reduction of cancelations due to invalid checks. Based on the success rate, the process was implemented countrywide and the director was pleased with the results.
Anonymous
10 months ago
Initially when I joined the project, my manager asked about whether the given testcase was automated. Since, there was no documentation, I had to go over the regression suite which consisted of almost 2000 testcases and find out if it was automated. This was a tedious task and the challenge here deep dive into the code and find out the testcase which took couple of hours.
So to overcome this challenge, I came up an idea to document the testcases at one place so whenever someone has to learn or get information about the regression can look at the document and easily find out the details.
For this, I started by consolidating testcases from code and their existence on test case management tool, and bifurcate these testcases based on the high level scenario and application. Once testcases were bifurcated, I created separate issue links and documented. I also created a separate table which included no of testcases for a particular scenario. This helped to standardize the QA process by maintaining high quality standards and save lot of time when someone asks about particular testcase, or when automation had to be updated, or for new comer it is a place to start consolidating details from.
Thus after setting up the processes, it helped in standardizing QA practices and I was also appreciated by the time as making the process simple helped to save time and efforts going forward.
After this, we documented other critical processes and flows as well which helped the team to learn and save critical time, and maintain high quality standards for QA process.
Thus from this incident I learnt how setting up the process and maintaining high quality standards helps in saving crucial time.
Anonymous
10 months ago
Because my current role have to monitor and track status of 8d for approx 100 cases/month, previously, we had to do manual tracking case by case and follow up with team. My idea was we should have some tool that can assist us to monitor cases and I asked my team to brainstorm and emphasized benefit that we will get if we have this tool. We did small workshop and came out with idea for creating semi-auto tracker. Then we list down task and planned it together. We had weekly meeting to follow up pending tasks and discussed about obstacles and tried to fix it. Until we can implement this tracker then we evaluated effectiveness of it. We found it can reduced tracking time down 80%
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