Last summer, as I was coming up to speed in my new management position, Simon Sinek's Start with Why struck home for me. I realized that I would not be able to do anything worthwhile until I understood what this organization was about and where it could go, so I morphed the Why question into a mission statement and a vision statement, then I expanded the vision statement based on some other things I had read.
My team provides database management services for the Adobe Analytics organization. With feedback from my team, this is what I settled on.
Mission:
The Database Engineering team makes high velocity, high volume structured and semi-structured data available, accessible, and manageable so that Analytics components can reliably and performantly utilize business critical data assets. We use our passion for data, systems, and service with our deep data and systems knowledge to support ongoing and future data needs of Analytics engineering teams.
Vision:
Picture
Because of our systems, tools, and guidance, application engineering teams will be able to access their more easily, more scalably, and more performantly every year.
Change
We will manage data stores with continued focus on stability, performance, and scalability. To make this management available to every team, we will create and manage tools, document processes, and share our database expertise freely.
Values
We value service, responsiveness, attention to detail, and forward-looking technical vision.
Map
To get to our future state, we will need to do the following:
Each Map item will require concerted team effort. Because each team member has a particular set of skills and responsibilities, individual efforts may look different, with different topics and technologies of focus. These differences, however, will mesh together as to all fit under the Database Engineering Team Mission.
My challenge going forward is to keep the mission and vision in mind as determine the projects we work on and the people we hire into the team.
My team provides database management services for the Adobe Analytics organization. With feedback from my team, this is what I settled on.
Mission:
The Database Engineering team makes high velocity, high volume structured and semi-structured data available, accessible, and manageable so that Analytics components can reliably and performantly utilize business critical data assets. We use our passion for data, systems, and service with our deep data and systems knowledge to support ongoing and future data needs of Analytics engineering teams.
Vision:
Picture
Because of our systems, tools, and guidance, application engineering teams will be able to access their more easily, more scalably, and more performantly every year.
Change
We will manage data stores with continued focus on stability, performance, and scalability. To make this management available to every team, we will create and manage tools, document processes, and share our database expertise freely.
Values
We value service, responsiveness, attention to detail, and forward-looking technical vision.
Map
To get to our future state, we will need to do the following:
- Document systems and processes
- Find innovative ways to automate management of our systems, including such tools as infrastructure-as-code, service monitoring, auto-remediation, intelligent system analysis.
- Understand and document the ways in which engineering teams currently use the team’s database systems.
- Create tools to allow most data and database management to be easily self-serviced by engineering teams.
- Educate ourselves on current and upcoming data, database and information systems technologies through constant formal and informal learning.
Each Map item will require concerted team effort. Because each team member has a particular set of skills and responsibilities, individual efforts may look different, with different topics and technologies of focus. These differences, however, will mesh together as to all fit under the Database Engineering Team Mission.
My challenge going forward is to keep the mission and vision in mind as determine the projects we work on and the people we hire into the team.
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