Lukasz Szostak, Service Delivery Director at TBSCG, is in charge of making sure the projects are delivered on time. In other words, he's the one "whose head is on the table".
Lukasz, you are the Service Delivery Director. What does it mean?
It means that I am responsible for everything that our customers see coming out of TBSCG. Service delivery is composed of a bunch of closely intertwined disciplines, such as service level management, continuity management, or capacity management. Therefore, I have to be working closely with different departments across the whole business and actively participate in the design and execution of processes for project management, sales, resources management, recruitment, risk assessment and disaster recovery amongst others.
In other words – if we fail to deliver a project, then I am the one whose head is on the table!
What about the project management methodology used at TBSCG?
We are essentially a B2B services organization, which means that we are always working closely with our customers and have to “plug into” their existing processes to deliver our solutions seamlessly. We use agile techniques and tools, such as stand-up meetings, SCRUM cards, solution release sprints, user stories and task burn-down charts, but we do all that within a more traditional framework, which tells our customers exactly what and when will they get for their money.
What is the role of the clients? How actively are they involved?
We are always trying to make our clients a part of the team. We are encouraging them to actively participate in the project at its every stage, which on one hand ensures us that we are moving in the right direction, and on the other hand, gives the customer more visibility of the progress our team is making.
Even the busiest of our clients like to receive a weekly project report and appreciate the ability to see a working solution at the end of each sprint.
Tell us more about your team. Who are the project managers?
Our project managers generally fall into two categories: senior professionals that have developed their project management careers outside TBSCG and joined us to help us accommodate our exceptional growth and long-time TBSCG employees, who used to work for us as developers and therefore know our teams as their own pocket.
Both models have worked for us very well and we will definitely continue both hiring experienced project managers and encouraging our staff to develop their careers in that direction.
What all of our PMs have in common is great people and communication skills, attention to details, technical background, and real customer focus. It’s tricky to find someone with that perfect mix of skills, but it’s essential for smooth project management.
What about quality assurance?
Quality assurance lays at the foundation of everything that we do. How good is your solution if it doesn’t do what your customer is expecting it to do?
Quality assurance at TBSCG isn’t a process on its own, as some people would see it, but is an inseparable part of all of our processes. We are doing peer design reviews at the analysis and planning stage, internal testing and UAT at the end of each sprint, peer code reviews all the time and so forth.
Our senior team members are responsible for maintaining uniform coding standards and following industry standards across all of the projects. We are also making sure that all of our staff are continuously developing their skills, by encouraging them to include trainings and certifications in their personal development plans.
What’s interesting is the fact that we don’t really talk a lot about quality assurance. It has become a part of our company culture and is now an unnoticeable part of our daily routine, just like brushing teeth.