So far, my time at PetPlace has been a whirlwind. Although I was hired as a senior dev and have been contributing a lot of code, I've gradually moved into a more leadership role. It became increasingly clear that, due to the team composition, there needed to be a strong tech lead to keep things moving in the right direction.
Quickly, I was named the lead for 24PetShelter and have been working not only as a bridge between the product and engineering teams, architecting new features, and also working closely one-on-one with other developers, helping mentor and brainstorm the work. I’m told my official job title will be updated in the new year to align with the responsibilities I’ve been undertaking.
One challenge that I’ve been struggling with is our new use of the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), which has a lot of similarities with Scrum, but with the added component of Program Increments or PIs. A PI is an 8-12 week cycle in which you commit to certain features; the work itself is still broken into two-week iterations (sprints).
The difficulty is that architecting the features requires significant pre-work. The product team does research and has their own planning meetings to identify the features they want to work on, then they pull together what the requirements for the feature will be, then I get involved and work closely with the product owner and the UX designer to start figuring out what the actual flows and deliverables will be. So I’m scrambling to architect features that are sometimes in flux right up to the last minute before we need to start the next PI.
We’ve only been through two PIs so far, and we’re planning for the third PI right now. I’m optimistic we’ll figure out the systems so I can start architecting things sooner and have more time to plan. Some weeks, I’m completely overwhelmed.