Focus on keeping teams healthy by proactively managing skills and learning.

1. Keeping Teams Healthy
Managing skill sets through constant change and transformation

2. Context setting:
a story of transformation
How a dev manager ended up building his own tool…

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Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec
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The DevOps effect on Organizational Delays
RFC Days Open RFC Count

4. Traditional Model
Release Management
Team
C
Team
B
Team
A

5. Enterprise DevOps Model
DevOps Enabling Tools: GitHub, TFS, TeamCity, Artifactory, Splunk…etc
CI/CDActivities
CI/CDActivities
CI/CDActivities
CI/CDActivities
DevOps DevOps DevOps DevOps
Internal Tools Team oversight and consulting
Team A Team B Team C …etc

6. Transformation is tricky…
Internal
Tools
• Automation
• Systems
administration
• Constant innovation
Release
Management
• Manual Tasks
• 24/7 schedule
• Repetitive, boring

7. Then the
bombshell…

8. Retrospective and Planning Red Flags
 “We really need Bob in
order to estimate this
story”
 “That task is blocked until
Ashley gets back from
being sick – nobody else
can do that work”
 “I know my estimate was
lower, but Tom knows that
code better than anyone
so we should use his
estimate”
 “Harry is the Jenkins guy,
he can take care of that”

9. Some stats about KPD's
Impacts?
 86%: delays in getting
work done
 64%: difficulty planning
 70%: morale issues and
frustration, burnout
 40%: KPD unable to be
promoted
How common?
 4/5 surveyed have been
on a team with a KPD
 Only 3/10 teams tried to
visualize the problem

10. 87% of millennials say professional development or career growth opportunities are very important
(Gallup)
91% of high performers reported that working for an employer that offered learning and development
opportunities was important to them (Ceridian)
90% of millennials would choose to stay in a job for the next 10 years if they knew they'd get annual
raises and upward career mobility (Qualtrics)
78% of employees expect managers to talk with them about career and learning opportunities, and only
37% agree that managers do that well (Alight Solutions)
59% of employees said that access to projects to help keep their skills up-to-date would keep them
satisfied at their current company (Execu-Search)
76% of millennials think professional development opportunities are one of the most important
elements of company culture (Execu-Search)
Top reasons given by employees for leaving their jobs: career development (22%), work-life balance
(12%), managers' behavior (11%), compensation and benefits (9%) and wellbeing (9%) (Work Institute)
48% of workers say that investing more in professional development is one of the highest-impact
strategies to fight stress that their company can do (Udemy)

11. Managing towards balance
Identifying and visualizing KPD’s and other skill gap problems

12. Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4
JavaScript Shopping Cart UI
Attrition
On-boarding &
Training
Good
Bad
• Tools
• Versions
• Backlog content
• Team members
• Team mission

13. Continuous
Improvement
Plan
Execute
Measure

14. PMP’s are
too heavy
handed…

15. Skill Gap Analysis
Bob Tom Harry Ashley
JavaScript 10 7 3 1
C# 7 10 7 2
CI/CD 10 9 5 4
MySQL 10 7 5 1
Selenium 2 4 1 10
- Traditionally done at the
start of a consulting
engagement
- Used to plan out
transformation work and
hiring/training needs
- Hard to track
history/progression

16. Nothing to
buy, so I built
my own.

19. Skill Types
and
Remediation
Strategies
• Hiring
• External Training
General Skills
• Internal Training
• Lunch and learns
• Pair programming
• Formal Training
• Task assignment
• Documentation
• Automated Tests
Domain Areas

20. Now what?
Assess your team
monthly or quarterly
with Tekata.io
1
Use the assessment
to drive hiring,
training, and tasks
2
Actively manage
closing any key
person dependencies
3