Stories

Front 1

Take over of Agile scrum of scrum story

Process Improvement

Collaboration

Communication

Back 1

S: sucked, low attendance

A: walk the room (this sprint, next sprint, release, dep/risks)

R: collaboration, communication attendance went up.

Front 2

Web kit story

Process Improvement

Accomplishment

Partnership with app dev

Back 2

S: Release were "kitted"

• Def of done was "code complete"
• Tons of contention /debates over hypotheticals of will be done in time.
• 6 weeks reg. 6 weeks functional.
  

A: Shifted left

• testing with coding
• def. done = QA & biz signed off.
• Automation with selnium
• Jenks CD/CI commit = build
• automated unit tests
• scripted deploys ( no humans)

R: Release went from once every 3 months to 1x a month

• Less contention as new "done" was biz signoff so only issue was risk / merge issues.
• Everybody committing to trunk was next goal.

Front 3

MGP story

Leadership

Calm under pressure

Back 3

S: Sales team need a new product for Jan

• Other team was delivering a new tool for Jan release.
• They hit an issue in Oct and came to me
• I said I can deliver something if you work with me

A:

• set up a tiger team of all stars i know ( self starters)
• not scrum bc of time crunch
• Requested an empowered PO. No time to run up the flag pole.
• Told Biz have to have skin in the game and we are short on QA so need them to pitch in
• Explained we need to be ruthless MVP and they agreed.
• pumped up team set goal, explained purpose, freedom
  

R:

• MVP was delivered in 8 weeks
• We added 2 extra features
• 1 person on the Sales team landed a 2M account using the tool in the first week of operation

Front 4

Luke yelling story

Back 4

S: Biz was upset around the release cadence

• Met to discuss
• offered shift left testing,etc to increase throughput
• He did not agree with my suggestions
• Yelled in my office "we don't functionally test projects we test releases!!"

A:

• Said happy to dicuss and hear why you feel that way but not doing it if you continue to yell.
• Listened to his side ( worried about QA resources)
• Explained why i think QA upfront is better (contention up front rather then stale code)
• Said i will put together a deck with some illustration to explain and we can review later in the week.

R: Asked for 1qtr trail.. he agreed.

• Loved it,
• Less stress less contention
• More predictable
• Less QA stress.
• Code less stale.

Front 5

Director in wrong Role Story

Fire someone

Difficult situation

Tough problem.

Back 5

S:

• Inherited a director
• Previous boss made a bad choice in promoting her
• Did not take any steps to coach or rectify.

A:

• Started official coaching after some dropped balls.
• SMART goals around time mgmt & communication.
  
• Timely, concise and accurate communications to stake holders.
• Stakeholder requested weekly update on Thursday it was missed and I real time coached.
• Fact / Figures where incorrect
• Fill with misspellings
• Coached after 1st miss, 2nd was not better so put on verbal.

R: 1st defensive

• eventually admitted role was bigger then she thought
• Option 1 back to Sr Manager
• felt she could not do that
• Option 2 small package

Front 6

Come back story Sandi

turn around story

Back 6

S: Jr associate i worked with a lot in QA

• Friends with a lot of my directs
• asked if i would mind meeting with her for advice.
• Struggled with her boss on getting clear direction
• autonomous and had good judgement but was on a very tight leash.

A: Gave some tips on how to approach the boss.

• Find the source of why
• Get ahead of him and say yes did that already so he backs off the checks in
• She still struggled with him and i had a job req.
• Offered my req to her old boss who say her as a problem.

R: She flourished on my team.

• Gave her a garden to groom and she killed it.
• She went from her boss giving her away to getting poached from me a year later to run a huge hight profile project for the firm

Front 7

Share award story

motivation

rewards

leadership style

Back 7

• Share awards given to peers
• I am CC-ed on note
• Always send a quick note of praise
• CC-ed my boss and his boss
• Associates love the recgonition

Front 8

Meryl take over story

Stress

Back 8

• S: division major reorganization.
  
• The head left the firm and they brought in someone new from outside.
• new boss brought inna ton of people
• speculation about who was staying and who was going and who to align oneself with

• A: It was a fairly stressful time, but I found that the best thing for me was to focus on doing a great job
• maintaining positive relationships with everyone (old regime or new regime)!
• I tried not to get too distracted by the gossip or worry too much about things I couldn’t control.

Front 9

NAO keywack story

innovation

lean

improvements

Back 9

S: assigned to a new NAO innovative to improve account opening / fund rate

A: Did a go see

• found out ton of dup efforts ( digital to PDF, wet sig, keywacked)

R: added bar code and save client as prospect so key wack eliminated

• Work with app dev to develop an api for account opening (use for bulk opening too)
  

Front 10

Hired tech rock star with bad personality

Mistake

Regret

Back 10

• S: In my earlier days i use to put to much weight on tech skills.
• Gotta ya type test to show aptitude
• This guy aced every question so I hired
• Quickly found out not a team player
  
• Condescending and rude.

R: For then forward I change the test to include some pairing and behavioral questions.

• EQ as all as there IQ.
  
• You can always teach a good engineer some new technology, but it can be very hard to improve someone’s soft skills
  

Front 11

crazy contractor story

Tough situation

Dispute between associates

Back 11

• Heard two of my associate yelling.
  
• Separated the two of them
  
• Asked associate to come in my office 1st
  
• Explained she was yelling at her for now reason
  
• Got her a back car home and arranged for emergency contact to meet her.
  
• Called agency and said she can't come back in office as associate was uncomfortable.
  

Front 12

Bench seating story

leading by example

Tough call

unpopular call

Back 12

S: team was scattered and wanted together

• They resisted
• heard their side ( a lot was around prestige of cubes, etc)

A: Made the unpopular call

R: team actually loved it

Front 13

Mike A Story

Tough time

Time performance was bad

Back 13

helped Mike

Front 14

DNS Story

Back 14

story DNS attack story explain to COO / CEO

Front 15

Web Outage

Pressure

Risk

Back 15

fill in

Front 16

CPC story

Back 16

Fill in:

did not go as planed

Front 17

procurement story

Back 17

Fill in: procurement story -Procurement example of ticket hell. - Waiting 2 weeks for the next meeting etc.-Asked for a 60 minute riff session with his team

Front 18

Poker Chip Meeting

Back 18

Fill in: story se poker chip meeting example-had a great plan to manage supply demand-get to a sane number of projects.- ask for all the work they wanted, broke down by system,-obfuscated the $ with chips to show how large a bet we were placing.-was going to order and resolve contention in real time. Major flaw: POs did not speak to each other, even with the same boss. Could not argue for or conceded."How do you think that went?"