Picture an elegant lady. What does she look like? Most probably, she wears a low-key and unpretentious outfit. However, all items of clothing are relevant and perfectly matched with each other. Everything together looks harmonious. A unique style complements her inner world and emphasizes her merits. There may be a few accessories, but they are high-quality and fit perfectly into the look.
Now let's move over to the corporate world. What is elegance in the context of a tech company?
Elegant Processes: First Of All, It's Stylish
The elegance of the processes is expressed in their small number and the absence of clutter. Both worlds — fashion and IT — have thousands of products, trends, tendencies, and trending solutions. The choice is enormous, and sometimes you want to have everything at once. Calendar variations alone make your eyes diverge. The smart move is to pick what’s right for you. A deep analysis and understanding of the owners' personality, corporate culture, and the company’s essence allow for picking a harmonious solution.
When a company chooses randomly, it ends up with departments using their preferred programs and working inconsistently. Without proper interaction, the very meaning of digital transformation is lost.
How To Transform And Not To Die
I am service-oriented. This means that initially, I need to understand who the customer of my services is. It can be either internal departments, external clients, or business owners. My task is to correlate my work's result with the customer's expected outcome, understand the original problem, and analyze whether or not a transformation is required.
First things first: you should figure out what meanings a person gives to the concept of transformation. This can be either the introduction of basic chatbots or the use of complex ML algorithms for experience analytics. A customer might want to develop a new digital direction for the business even without realizing it. In this case, you need to think about sales, customers, the end consumer, and culture, and only then about the system.
Now let's consider digital transformation from a technical viewpoint. Imagine a company with its own unique experience and expertise that distinguish it from competitors. All of this is decomposed into data that the company analyzes, whether it is data about the client, errors, or the work of the internal engineering department. People collect and systematize all this colossal information in their heads or spreadsheets and make appropriate decisions. But here comes the question: is this data ready for reuse?
Each data unit must have a single sign-on. Suppose there is a department that collects this data, and other departments will use it in the future. When we manage to build such an ecosystem, then we can talk about the seamlessness of transformation. It is primarily reflected in the processes and interactions of people. It is necessary to determine who is responsible for the collection — departments, business units, or job units — and who will use the information further. And only after that do you move on to microservices, building architecture, and choosing systems, but not vice versa.
Managing Risks In A Crisis: A Fighting Spirit
In this particular matter, I refer to Ben Horowitz's book “The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers”. In normal times, a manager is a leader with a prosperity strategy, who builds it for several years ahead. The primary focus is on development, traveling to conferences, and gaining new experiences. That is, all actions are aimed at growth in the long term.
The times of crisis demand survival strategy — how the company can stay afloat at any given moment and what to do differently. The survival stage of a company generates uncertainty. A CEO must always be prepared for unexpected changes, consider risks, and make difficult decisions quickly.
Here, we can talk about a more dynamic entrepreneurial approach. Everything is undergoing rapid changes: today, we can follow one path, and tomorrow, it may change. Crisis demands smart tactical moves. And under these circumstances, building a system is simply impossible.
Engineering Leadership As A Success Formula
I remember the case when a good engineer joined the team. While working with him, I noticed he could make a great mentor — he had a pronounced talent for teaching people. By nurturing him in this area, we as a company have received a more significant benefit from his knowledge, and moreover, the work brought him much more enjoyable than it could have. Since then, this mentor has developed more than one robust team.
An engineering leader helps other engineering talents, understands their essence, interacts with them in a certain way, and has their own approach. One knows how to negotiate correctly, build communication, use the right tools, and identify motivation. There are no competitive motives in engineering, therefore, giving more tasks and making it a contest will not be the right approach. Engineers are team players, and their interaction is pivotal.
For me, engineering leadership means empowering people to evolve in a broad sense. This is not only about the company’s growth — it is also about satisfying the personal ambitions of everyone, and realizing core purposes, talents, and strengths. All these things can be carefully hidden.
In this article, Nataliia Zub, a VP of Delivery at Innovecs, shared her perspective on secure digital transformation, risk management in times of crisis, as well as Engineering Leadership as a mindset.