At Six Feet Up, we pride ourselves on innovation and excellence. However, even the most efficient teams can benefit from an external perspective. As the VP of Engineering, I wanted to ensure our team was operating at its peak potential. To do this, I leveraged the BEST™ Framework, a strategic tool Six Feet Up designed to help engineering leaders accelerate their Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) by evaluating and optimizing their teams.
Despite regular check-ins and a collaborative environment, I felt there were areas we could improve. Many tech leaders may not fully understand what’s happening at the ground level. BEST helps bridge this gap by providing clear, data-driven insights into team performance and challenges. Additionally, the assessment process empowers developers by giving them a platform to share their experiences and feedback anonymously, which is crucial for continuous improvement and team morale.
My Objectives:
Identify strengths and weaknesses: Understand where we excel and where we need improvement.
Empower data-driven decisions: Use concrete data to make informed decisions.
Foster continuous improvement: Establish a culture of ongoing enhancement and feedback.
The Assessment Process and Findings
The process was simple yet powerful. The assessment, organized into 4 stages and 19 units, took each team member just 15 minutes, providing invaluable insights across 90 data points. Here are the highlights from our team’s results:
Best Performing Areas
Culture
Finding: Our culture is our strongest asset. We have a collaborative and supportive environment that fosters innovation and growth.
Action: We will continue cultivating our cultural values by hosting team-building activities and maintaining open communication channels. For example, every Thursday, we host an All Hands Meeting where the entire company gathers to share personal achievements and strengthen relationships.
Training/Growth Mindset
Finding: Continuous development and a growth mindset are prioritized, ensuring that team members are constantly improving their skills and capabilities.
Action: We will continue encouraging team members to collaborate and attend workshops/conferences to keep their skills sharp and up-to-date. In fact, every Friday, we hold a Tech Show and Share meeting where our engineers showcase cool tools and findings from their projects. Additionally, we implemented a clear career development path for the team.
Configuration Management
Finding: Effective configuration management practices are in place, helping maintain consistency and control across projects.
Action: We will continue to invest in refining our configuration management processes, ensuring all teams adhere to best practices and maintain comprehensive documentation.
Areas Needing Improvement
Development Environment Setup
Finding: Our development environment setup process needed streamlining, as it was taking too long for new hires to become productive.
Action:
Standardized Onboarding: We created a standardized onboarding checklist that includes setting up the development environment.
Automation: We implemented automation scripts to quickly configure new environments, reducing setup time from days to hours.
Mentorship: We were more intentional about pairing new hires with experienced team members to help them get up to speed faster.
Documentation
Finding: Our documentation practices required enhancement to ensure information was easily accessible and up-to-date.
Action:
Documentation Types: We agreed on types of documentation required for projects and the format/tools used to create them.
Regular Reviews: We instituted a schedule for regular documentation reviews and updates to keep information current.
Training: We conducted training sessions on the importance of documentation and best practices for maintaining it.
Security
Finding: Our security measures needed strengthening to protect against potential threats.
Action:
Security Audits: We conducted comprehensive security audits to identify vulnerabilities.
Security Training: We implemented mandatory security training for all team members to raise awareness and understanding of best practices.
Six Feet Up's Results in More Detail:
Why BEST™?
BEST™ has been a pivotal tool in identifying our strengths and, most importantly, our areas that need improvement. By focusing on precise, data-driven insights, we addressed inefficiencies and enhanced our culture of continuous improvement. From refining our onboarding processes, to ensuring robust backups, and enhancing security measures, the BEST™ Framework equipped us with the strategies needed to excel.
Our clients who have used BEST™ have been able to roll out better practices for:
Team building, environment setup, coding standards, and documentation.
Source control, security instrumentation, training, and code reviews.
Automation tools, testing, deployment, monitoring, and continuous integration.
Team resiliency, tracking & forecasting, innovation, and leveling up.
To ensure we continually benefit from these insights, we have committed to conducting the BEST™ assessment annually. Going forward, this initiative will enable us to make data-driven decisions, enhance team collaboration, and ensure our projects align with our strategic objectives.
