Upon joining a new team at Shopzilla.com, it was fascinating to see how much our myriad legacy systems were impacting our ability to evolve. I am lucky enough to work with a very mature engineer who is passionate about both cross-trained teams, and the evolution of our legacy systems. My recent blog post details how we were able to craft a fun and interesting way to;
- Improve our legacy systems and services
- Maintain our production uptime
- Build a high performing team, focused solely on net-new systems and services
- Create a fun, light-hearted but professional atmosphere for the above
- Promote passion for our team and what we do within the organization
My teams deliver high-performing solutions to serious business problems, but they have a ton of fun too! From the article;
On a team with myriad legacy systems, production problems will often be a significant burden for the team. In my experience, without a strategy for managing the team’s approach to tackling these production ‘fires’, the team’s yield for new value creation will be far below it’s potential.
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Our approach has been to define a new role – the Engineering Fire Chief. Simply put, our Fire Chief is an engineer (or two) who actively accepts the role of providing distraction-free “cover” for their team. (yes, we actually bought a Fire Chief hat.)
The Fire Chief concept, and hat are popular.
A fire chief wearing multiple hats, and proud to fight fires!
