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Yeah, so let me break it down in terms of the first part of the question, which is who are typically my stakeholders. So I often work with startups, in which case stakeholders are often my CEO, my co-founders, cross-functional partners in design, marketing, at times compliance and legal, and then oftentimes just the investors, straight up. And for the second part of the question, you asked what's a time that we didn't meet expectations in a timely manner, and how do I go about managing their expectations, right? And concretely what that looked like, my process is essentially getting the status report internally, get all the details. Two, present that information, communicate what the situation is. Three, manage expectations in terms of what we believe we'll be able to get done, what the next steps are to remedy, and when we can get back on track. Four, have milestones and metrics in order to inform our progress, so make sure we're on track for the next milestone. And five, support and follow-up in terms of I'm blocking my team, keeping everyone in the loop, and making sure having a retrospective on the next cycle when we did or did not meet those expectations. So concretely what this looked like was there was a cycle at Dendron, this company where I was an engineering manager essentially for a team of 10, and we had not yet found product-market fit in terms of finding the right users, needed to hit retention metrics of a very high percentage, and this was taking more time than expected. This is like the most important metric for any startup. So internally, well, I talked with the team and it looks like, yeah, we're mixed it, where there's an interesting hypothesis developing around what's possible, and we have figured out possible next steps in terms of new features that we wanted to build. We brought this information to our meetings with our investors, and we were able to say, look, these metrics look promising, and we're developing new hypotheses, new features to test in those. So we were able to keep them up-to-date on what our progress was, what our plan was going to be, and we had these metrics in terms of goals we wanted to hit. For example, we wanted to hit 70% four-week retention on these metrics, these milestones, and we were able to inform them in the next couple of weeks on our progress with respect to those metrics. And concretely, we were able to engineer these solutions, in particular with infrastructure engineers, actually, for this note-taking app that we were building. So we realized a lot of parts that they were missing was they didn't need to context switch, so we built features that allowed them to take notes as efficiently as possible on the configurations or whatever they're working on without context switching out of that engineering mode. And we were able to deliver and grew retention from something like 50% to 70% within that particular niche, and we were able to get the buy-in and the trust of all those stakeholders back again.

I will call the respective for a review meeting. I will explain our use case and why we are looking for information and access and also what we are trying create out of it. I will make sure I reach them out via proper channels ex: creating an incident on service now and assigning them, adding all of my leadership and directors right from the get go. If the use case calls for it, I will include governance team to make sure that my request is data compliant. 

At Auctane, I had a senior dev working on tech debt, this was critical for some small segment of customers and my PM was looking forward to it being devliered. A churn happend on other team and they had a higher priority project. That EM approaced me to help him deliver the project. I had to reshffle the resource and had to push back on the timing for this tech debt project . The compramise I made was to put hold the project we had been working and convince my PM that this was most optimal approach for the company.

I was working with 5 customers at once, and had to focus on those activities where I could make a difference, make the most impact, that I could not delegate, and where I could balance with other priorities - in order to do that, I measured the priority of the tasks by the cost of delay, in other words, the impact of not doing them at that time. Then, with more clarity about the priorities, I thought which ones I could delegate to other team members, and if that made sense, with the required support and guidance from my side. Working as a team and not trying to get everything done yourself is key in the long term with multiple, competing priorities. Then, organizing my time well in short, focused timeslots for the most important tasks, made a difference.

I would have detailed discussion about the area of improvement. I would go do a self retrospective on the projects, deliverables, behavioral aspects where I lacked and needed to do better. I will note down those things and come with a plan on how I plan to close the gap and share that with my manager. I will be extra conginizant going forward in those situation to make sure i do not repeat the same behavior and demostrate the actions pointed out as gaps. In my next few 1:1 try to gather constant feedback from manager on how he percieves the change and how I can improve it further. Also gather feedback from peers about the same to have incremental improvement. 

In my previous role at Liberty, we undertook a significant data migration project that involved transitioning legacy systems to modern platforms like Salesforce and AWS Workforce. Initially, the project was planned with a strict timeline, and we had accounted for potential issues such as data compatibility and system downtime.

However, during the migration, we encountered unexpected challenges with data inconsistencies and quality issues that were more severe than anticipated. These issues arose because the legacy systems had inconsistent data formats and lacked comprehensive data validation rules, leading to discrepancies when transferring data to the new systems.

To address these challenges, we had to pause the migration process and implement an extensive data cleansing and validation phase. This involved using Python scripts and tools like Salesforce Inspector to standardize data formats and validate data accuracy. While this extended the project timeline, it was crucial to ensure that the data integrity was maintained post-migration.

After the adjustments, we successfully completed the migration with improved data accuracy, which was a critical requirement for the project's success. This experience taught me the importance of thorough data assessment and planning for contingencies, especially when dealing with complex data systems. It also reinforced the value of a flexible project management approach to accommodate unforeseen challenges.

In my role leading the launch of that new customer onboarding system, the pressure was really on. We had that tight three-month window and a lean team to build something that would be the first impression for all our new users. One specific hurdle we faced was integrating our legacy customer database with this brand-new system. The data structures were quite different, and initially, the data migration process was proving to be much slower and more error-prone than anticipated. This threatened to push our launch date.

To tackle this head-on, I didn't just delegate. I dove into the technical details with the lead engineer. We mapped out the data fields meticulously, identified the key transformation rules needed, and actually prototyped a more efficient data migration script using Python. This allowed us to automate a significant portion of the process that was previously manual.

Furthermore, to ensure we were building the right thing quickly, we implemented very short feedback loops. We'd build a small piece of the onboarding flow, get immediate feedback from a small group of internal users, and iterate based on their input. For example, early on, users found a particular step in the registration process confusing. Based on their feedback, we completely redesigned that screen within a couple of days, leading to a much smoother experience.

By getting into the technical weeds to optimize the data migration and by relentlessly focusing on user feedback through rapid iterations, we not only overcame the risk of a delayed launch but also delivered an onboarding experience that was significantly more user-friendly than initially envisioned. It was incredibly rewarding to see new customers move through the system so smoothly right from day one. That success really underscored the power of combining technical problem-solving with a user-centric approach