Taking stock of 2015



I was inspired by this post by femgineer to write my own post about acknowledging my accomplishments of the past year.

One of my 2015 resolutions was a continuation of the previous years' - Be more active in the tech community. This goal was big enough to try out different things so I pretty much said YES to any opportunity that came along.

2015 was my year of firsts. Here's my list of tech accomplishments in chronological order:
  1. First-time team lead at work
  2. Submitted my first abstract to a conference (and many more after that!)
  3. Wrote my first blog post
  4. Gave my first technical talk at the Android Alliance meetup
  5. Gave my first technical conference talk at AnDevCon Boston (and DroidCon NYC after that!)
  6. Hosted my first luncheon at AnDevCon Boston
  7. Was a first time panelist on Girl Develop It's A Day in the life of a Developer series
  8. Was interviewed for the first time on Youtube for Android Dialogs
  9. Gave my first non-technical conference talk at ElaConf
Writing this down inspires me to continue doing a lot more in 2016!

Image Credit


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Communicating Paid Time Off and Coverage Plans

Image
As an engineering manager, I often ask people to take at least a week off every quarter depending on the PTO (Paid Time Off) policy at their workplace. This comes up to 4 weeks or 20 business days in a workplace with unlimited PTO which is pretty good for US-based companies, where the standard is usually 2 weeks or 10 business days of PTO.  It’s also important to me to communicate to my teammates and people across the organization that I will be out of office and they can reach out to others in that situation. “How we vacation” is a section that I like to add in my Team Charter which is a document that contains all the rules of engagement on a team - how we do retrospectives and team meetings, how often we meet, how we take time off, how we track metrics, our scope of work, and so on. 🌴 Paid Time Off Here are some of the places I update at my workplace if I am going to be out on vacation for a few days: Slack status Company Time Off calendar My work calendar My Google workspace o...
Read more

Team Charter and Norms: Working together

Image
In my previous blog post , I wrote about setting up a Team Charter and Team Norms on a team. In this post, I elaborate on some of the rules of engagement that teams I have worked on have generally used. Most software development teams that I have worked on have used some sort of Agile practices like the Scrum framework where cross-functional teams use iterative and incremental processes to improve their software delivery process. I have always used Agile in a way that works best for my team and the company’s culture at that time.  🧱 Team Structure I have had to occasionally run Scrum meetings as an Engineering leader since I have been on teams without dedicated Scrum Facilitators or Product Owners. Each Scrum team usually includes an Engineering Manager, Scrum Facilitator or Project Manager, Product Manager and Developers. In the absence of dedicated Project Managers or if there is leadership interest on the team, I make the Scrum lead role rotational so that every person on the t...
Read more

Team Charter and Norms

Image
A Team Charter in the context of a software engineering team is a team document that lists their goals, objectives, scope of work, and rules of engagement. This is a working agreement between all members of the team on how the team collaborates and communicates, and how they hold each other accountable while working towards common goals. Here are some areas I like to cover in a team’s Team Charter. This can be at the team level or the organization level.  Goals: This is a one-line sentence that explains the goal(s) of this team.  Objectives: This section links to the team or organization's objectives, key performance indicators (KPI) or Objectives and Key Results (OKR) which can be quarterly, semi-annual or annual. Organization Chart and Team Structure: This helps people know where they are in the organization and what teams and people they interact with regularly. Helpful Resources: This links to the team’s Request For Comment or Technical Design Documents, Slack channels, me...
Read more