Link Technology to Your Long-Term Business Goals : How to Use Technology to Mobilize Your People, Strategy and Operations

Link the use of technology with long-term business goals to optimize the core elements in your organization: people, strategy, and operations. This book will show you how effective planning of processes and execution of strategies with the help of technology can bring about an organization-wide increase in productivity and performance. Business environments have grown increasingly competitive. Before an organization realizes what has happened, it can lose or gain market share. Being agile is the key to success. This book covers the processes that can help your enterprise be agile and follow best practices when executing your business strategy. You'll review case studies from real-world experiences that dive deep into the problems a business encounters and the ways to solve those challenges. They deal with the different ways in which your organization can achieve dramatic performance improvements by changing your company’s processes. The bookalso explains how objectives and key results can be used to align business teams for increased productivity. With Use Tech to Mobilize Your People, Strategy, and Operations you'll learn how the intensity of core processes can ensure that growth does not wane in your organization. What You'll Learn Know the role of three core elements in organizations: people, strategy, operations Understand how technology can enhance these three core elements Be aware of the importance of scale and security in the information era Eliminate distractions and uncertainty in core processes Who This Book Is For People with experience building businesses (founders, CEOs, COOs, CTOs, project managers, product managers, operation heads, sales heads, finance heads, strategy heads,technology leaders) who are looking for technology solutions to business problems Table of Contents 4 About the Author 12 Part I: People 13 Chapter 1: Teams and Divisions 14 Why Divide Teams? 14 Parallel Triumphs Over Sequential Work 18 Summary 19 Chapter 2: Hiring 20 Referrals 20 HR Sourcing 22 Consultants 23 Recruitment Drives 23 Summary 26 Chapter 3: Upskilling 27 Training Plan 27 On-the-Job Training 29 Summary 30 Chapter 4: People Management 31 One-on-One Meetings 32 Reviews and Performance Management 34 Individual 34 Reporting Manager 35 Team’s Performance Measurement Officer 35 Structures 36 Summary 37 Chapter 5: Rewards and Recognition 38 Quarterly Rewards 38 Ad Hoc Rewards and Recognition 40 Summary 41 Chapter 6: People Processes 42 Manager-Reportee Employee Relations 42 Promotions and Remuneration 44 Summary 45 Chapter 7: Rituals 46 Daily Scrum 46 Retrospective 47 All-Hands Meeting 49 Summary 50 Part II: Strategy 51 Chapter 8: Objectives and Key Results 52 What Are OKRs? 52 Why OKRs? 54 Summary 55 Chapter 9: Setting Up OKRs 56 Defining OKRs 56 Growth Warriors 58 OKR Grooming 59 Summary 60 Chapter 10: Linking OKRs to Strategy 61 Team Alignment and Linking Objectives to Long-Term Strategy 61 Sustaining OKRs: Setting a Weekly Cadence 63 Summary 64 Chapter 11: Ensuring Execution of Strategy 65 OKR Tools 65 Check-in Meetings 66 Summary 68 Chapter 12: OKR as a Continuous Process 69 Champions 69 Stretch Goals 70 Summary 71 Part III: Operations 72 Chapter 13: People and Processes 73 Requirements 73 Tools 79 Prioritization 79 Reviews 81 Summary 84 Chapter 14: Prototyping 85 Innovative Projects 85 Quick Turnarounds 88 Long-Term Projects 90 Summary 93 Chapter 15: Scaling Operations 94 Agility vs. Scale 94 Team Culture 98 Technical Skills of the Team 99 Nature of the Problem 99 Business Constraints 100 Alerts and Flags 101 Tech-Driven Operations at Scale 102 Summary 104 Part IV: Technology 105 Chapter 16: Technology’s Role in Helping Business Needs 106 Tech Organization in Relation to Business Units 106 Tech Team Structure 109 Role of Engineering Managers and Architects 109 Role of Tech Leads 110 Responsibilities of a Software Engineer 111 Responsibilities of a Quality Assurance Lead 111 Responsibilities of a Quality Assurance Engineer 112 Summary 113 Chapter 17: Technology Stack 114 Front-End Stack 114 What Is HTML? 114 What’s in the “Head” or Metadata in HTML? 115 What Are the Elements of HTML? 115 CSS Properties 116 What Is the Box Model? 116 What Is Bootstrap? 117 Why Use Bootstrap? 118 Why Use JavaScript? 119 What Is React.js? 119 ECMAScript 119 Backend Technology 120 What Is ExpressJS? 121 What Is REST? 121 Databases 122 MongoDB 122 Postgres SQL 122 Summary 123 Chapter 18: Key Processes and Rituals of Technology Teams 124 Communication 125 Problem Solving 125 Innovation 126 Change Management 127 Scrum for Tech Team 128 What is Scrum from a Tech Team’s Angle 128 Scrum Master 129 Scrum Master Responsibilities and Services to the Product Owner 129 Scrum Master Responsibilities Toward the Development Team 130 Product Owner 130 Scrum Team 131 Communication Cadence 131 Escalation Process 131 Overall Review Process 132 Summary 132 Chapter 19: Business Analytics and Its Importance in Scaling and Execution 133 Strategy 134 Determine Business Objectives 134 Collect and Analyze Information 135 Identify Core Business Processes 136 Construct a Conceptual Data Model 136 Locate Data Sources and Plan Data Transformations 137 Implement the MVP Plan and Deploy in Production 137 Benefits 138 Independence 138 Upskilling 138 Cross-Functional Collaboration 138 Data Democratization 139 Tactics and Phases 139 The Data Stack Architecture 139 Data Flow 140 Metadata Layer 140 The Hero of the Story: Microservices 143 Benefits of Microservices 144 Precise Scaling 144 Experimentation and Lower Risk 144 Independently Deployable 145 Microservices Architecture Options 145 Database Integration 145 Synchronous API Calls 147 Winner: Extract, Transform, and Load 148 Summary 150 Part V: Processes 151 Chapter 20: Data Security 152 Business Challenges 152 Data Security Strategies 153 Physical Security of Servers and User Devices 153 Access Management and Controls 154 Application Security and Patching 154 Backups 154 Employee Education 154 Network and Endpoint Security Monitoring and Controls 154 Security Plan 155 Roles and Responsibilities of a Security Team 155 SLA for Bug Reports 156 Security Audits 157 Benefits of IT Security Audit 158 Requested Evidences and Correlation 159 Key Documents and Evidence That Will Be Requested 159 Summary 160 Chapter 21: Why Do Businesses Fail? 161 Solving Process Problems 161 RACI 162 DACI 163 Don’t Do Ad Hoc 164 Requirements Gathering 164 Epics, User Stories, and Tasks 165 Follow Sprints 165 Daily Scrum 166 Summary 168 Chapter 22: Exceptions to Processes: Good or Bad? 169 Exceptions in the Moon Landing 170 What Can Driverless Cars Learn from the First Moon Landing? 171 Not All Stories End Well 172 Why Do Businesses Seek Exceptions? 173 Management by Exception 173 Setting Objectives 174 Assessing Performance 174 Analyzing Your Deviations 175 Resolving Exceptions 175 Summary 177 Chapter 23: Processes as a Speed Booster, Not a Speed Breaker 178 What Is Business Process Management? 178 How Can Process Mapping Help? 179 Areas for Process Improvement 179 Customer Success 180 Finance 181 Human Resources 182 Operations 185 Sales and Marketing 186 Summary 188 Chapter 24: Are Processes Sacred? 189 What Is a Business Process? 189 Why Business Process Is Important 190 Different Types of Business Process Design 191 Business Process Examples 192 What Is the Most Important Business Process? 193 What Makes a Good Process? 193 Business Process Management 194 Summary 195 Chapter 25: Conclusion 196 Productivity 197 Financial 198 Marketing 199 Collaboration and Learning 199 Customer Service 200 Index 201 Link the use of technology with long-term business goals to optimize the core elements in your organization: people, strategy, and operations. This book will show you how effective planning of processes and execution of strategies with the help of technology can bring about an organization-wide increase in productivity and performance. Business environments have grown increasingly competitive. Before an organization realizes what has happened, it can lose or gain market share. Being agile is the key to success. This book covers the processes that can help your enterprise be agile and follow best practices when executing your business strategy. You'll review case studies from real-world experiences that dive deep into the problems a business encounters and the ways to solve those challenges. They deal with the different ways in which your organization can achieve dramatic performance improvements by changing your company’s processes. The book also explains how objectives and key results can be used to align business teams for increased productivity. With Use Tech to Mobilize Your People, Strategy, and Operations you'll learn how the intensity of core processes can ensure that growth does not wane in your organization. What You'll Learn Know the role of three core elements in organizations: people, strategy, operations Understand how technology can enhance these three core elements Be aware of the importance of scale and security in the information era Eliminate distractions and uncertainty in core processes Who This Book Is ForPeople with experience building businesses (founders, CEOs, COOs, CTOs, project managers, product managers, operation heads, sales heads, finance heads, strategy heads,technology leaders) who are looking for technology solutions to business problems Link the use of technology with long-term business goals to optimize the core elements in your people, strategy, and operations. This book will show you how effective planning of processes and execution of strategies with the help of technology can bring about an organization-wide increase in productivity and performance. Business environments have grown increasingly competitive. Before an organization realizes what has happened, it can lose or gain market share. Being agile is the key to success. This book covers the processes that can help your enterprise be agile and follow best practices when executing your business strategy. You'll review case studies from real-world experiences that dive deep into the problems a business encounters and the ways to solve those challenges. They deal with the different ways in which your organization can achieve dramatic performance improvements by changing your companys processes. The book also explains how objectives and key results can be used to align business teams for increased productivity. With Use Tech to Mobilize Your People, Strategy, and Operations you'll learn how the intensity of core processes can ensure that growth does not wane in your organization. What You'll Learn Who This Book Is For People with experience building businesses (founders, CEOs, COOs, CTOs, project managers, product managers, operation heads, sales heads, finance heads, strategy heads, technology leaders) who are looking for technology solutions to business problems