Building an operations organization
From the first operations role to specialist teams led by managers developed in-house.
Building the function
The operations function began with me as its first member, with help from a peer in the early stages. The work grew out of customer support, building servers, configuring services and resolving customer problems.
As demand expanded, I built a dedicated technical operations function alongside support. That meant deciding where to add capacity, hiring specialists and establishing teams with responsibility for their own areas.
Developing managers internally
Developed the management team internally, with every current manager entering management for the first time.
These leaders now own most day-to-day people management, projects, priorities and coordination across departments.
Responsibility at each level
Managers run their teams and coordinate the work with their counterparts across the company. My responsibilities include the direction of the department, staffing and budgets, architecture decisions, and decisions whose consequences extend across teams.
When requirements or competing priorities need a broader decision, I bring together the relevant leaders and specialists, work through the trade-offs and establish who owns the next step. Reporting and coordination practices give teams a way to raise problems and make those decisions visible.
Business decisions across teams
The role also connects technical operations with product, engineering, finance and other company functions. That has included bringing executives together to work through product pricing and features. Earlier responsibilities included business intelligence and company-wide reporting.
Supplier decisions draw on actual demand, operating costs and the work involved in changing systems. I negotiate directly where appropriate and put options in front of finance or product leaders when they own the decision.