I believe my biggest achievement is building a high performing team amongst a lot of chaos. I started as an engineering manager for replenishment team, soon due to restructuring I was asked to lead a different BU called Parcel and I was given the team from scratch, 8 months into this I heard the leadership is deciding to put Parcel on KTLO and give me a new tier 1 service called channels. This service was highly unstable with a lot of issues and tech debt. This service was transitioned among 4 engg manager in past three years (4th me).
TASK
My job was to do a successful transition of this service and keep the team motivated
Actions
- When I got to. know about Parcel KTLO and having a new product under me, I wanted to ensure this is communicated to the team clearly with empathy and I wanted to ensure the team that this will only benefit their growth
- I started with a team meeting, shared a couple of wins that we did in parcel, shared even though we did so much, Parcel is being put on KTLO for various xyz reasons.
- I told them every crisis situation is an opportunity and by channels coming under us, we can showcase that even the toughest of the services can be maintained if the tech debt is continuously addressed
- Post team meeting I kept 1:1 with every member and listened them, helped answer their questions
- A couple of team members did share that they felt proud about what they developed in Parcel and were feeling sad that it was going in KTLO.
- I shared that products coming in KTLO happens sometime and this in no way reflects the teams performance, infact our teams reputation is very good amongst the leaders thats why they have given us the most important service (which is also in the worst shape)
- Under previous engg managers there was minimal to no improvement in the service on tech and product side because they were busy fixing on call issues
- I worked with the team to fix this by assigning ywo people to on call and rest two on fixing the issues from root cause.
- In a couple of months this gave us brwating space since the oncall issues reduced directly impacting reduction in customer queries
- We got appreciated by leadership for this
Result
- Team members were highly motivated
- Learnt a lot
- Got appreciated by leadership for this hard works
