Techflix Presents – The Black Labelist (Seasons 5-9)
And now the long-awaited conclusion to our award-winning Techflix Series. Get ready to binge Seasons 5-9 of our COO’s harrowing adventures in “The Black Labelist.”
Previously on The Black Labelist… In the Season 1-4 recap I described my opening gambit at Black Label – starting from the iconic coffee shop recruitment pilot and ending in Season 4 when I had already moved into my new role as a Project Manager.
Now in the thrilling conclusion of The Black Labelist (Seasons 5-9) you get a front row seat to my Project Manager-to-COO multi-season story arc climaxing with my ascension to a fake-it-till-I-make-IT tech blogger in the Finale. But it’s possible I would have never become COO if it hadn’t been for a fateful Playstation FIFA Cup we organized at the office, so grab a gamepad, pull up a chair and let’s start right there!
Season 5 Episode 2: “The One with the FIFA Trophy”
Yet another year passed where Black Label ended the year looking like an entirely different company from when the year started. Our long-lasting relationships with our partners, clients, and individuals were paying off with yet another challenge appearing on our horizon; Black Label expanded our dataviz services to support our partners with both frontend and backend services, as well as a huge range of skills in between. But before expanding our services we had to prepare for the upgrade by bringing new people on board, then creating a set of rules for obtaining new knowledge, and finally understanding all the modern practices related to modern software development and delivery. Quickly we understood that for many of our clients we’re not just producing code, but more providing a team, a culture, and the soft skills to move their products forward. Understanding this subtle change shifted our way of thinking about projects forever.
Those days I spent a lot of time participating in (and acing) Agile courses with heavy Scrum and Kanban-related discussions related to the Project Manager, Scrum Master, Product Owner roles as well as how to support developers working in created environments. I didn’t have much time to prepare for the role or the process as our clients urgently needed our help. Trial by fire or for anyone in IT you could say we were “testing in the production environment,” and even though I would never recommend it to anyone, it somehow worked out well for us.
The number of dataviz projects coming in increased significantly and quickly I felt like I was juggling chainsaws while balancing on a tightrope between two mountains. I finally understood Greg’s role in the company and why he decided to delegate part of the work to me. We hired Dominika, who helped me to manage our projects and then my role moved from the person managing projects himself to the person building the processes, defining the rules of engagement for how we work with our clients and strategically thinking about the future of our Technology Team from the project management standpoint. It took me some time to see it but hiring Dominika was my first small step towards becoming COO.
The Highsoft team also decided to go with Agile methodologies and using a Kanban for all of their features and bug fixes. I was personally taking care of all development from the Black Label side as well as overseeing the whole Support Team which now included 15 people. Every team was working separately, had their own meetings, rules and rituals, so to improve transparency between them (and to not get crazy) I created a 45 page Black Label Manual. It was literally called “MANUAL: All procedures for the Black Label Team” and included all responsibilities per person and role, a description of the onboarding process, procedures of dealing with customers and clients, project delivery guidelines, regular meeting descriptions, brainstorming workshop rules, rules for surveys, links to templates for Kanban and Scrum boards, customer lead board templates, all tasks for our teams with long descriptions… and – what’s even more terrifying, much, much, much more.
The day of officially releasing the MANUAL was also the day when I officially took responsibility for everything written there, which officially moved me into the role I am in today – COO. But to be honest the role was much smaller and simpler and everything I did at that time I would now consider Junior-level work. If there was ever such a thing as a Junior-COO role – that was me.
The whole company continued to grow together and we were becoming closer by the day. We were spending a lot of time together at work and outside work on different activities. One day we decided to organize a company-wide FIFA tournament, easily the most popular football (soccer) video game in the world. I was a pretty decent player so I was able to get to the Final, where my opponent was Paweł. The final itself was a really big event. The whole team gathered on Friday evening with chips, beer, and everyone cheered for us for the entire game which lasted 40 minutes. After a close game, Pawel eventually won and received the first official Black Label FIFA Cup. Then we stayed for the next couple of hours, playing games, discussing the Final, singing Karaoke and generally just being there for each other.
That event where we randomly found an occasion to spend time together concludes my fifth season at Black Label, the season where we started to be more than just a group of coworkers, the season where every event we organized was a grassroots initiative and where we were finding absolutely random occasions for cheering for each other. It was the Season of the Golden FIFA Trophy.
Season 6 Episode 7: “The One with the Cow Poster”
While the FIFA Trophy era was more about me catching up with Greg, the next Season was about both of us going at the same speed and in the same direction, now as partners rather than as a mentor and a student.
Quickly Black Label became too big for our previous space so we expanded it further and further. We have established a solid ground with our customers, for providing them with much more than dataviz customizations. To make the learning process easier for the whole technical team, we created development paths not only for Highcharts, but also React, Node, Vue, and finally Agile. That increased the knowledge gap between us, as people started to specialize in specific areas. I was a bit worried that it may cause team silos in the company. The company that I still considered a group of Friends which only a few years ago had worked together around one table in a tiny room.
I saw a challenge, but I decided to turn it into an opportunity. I used specialization as the lever to rocket the skills of new members. I created a pair-programming schedule, where our best, most specialized devs helped the youngest to overcome their problems. Instead of limiting them after specialization, I was able to give them much more.
At the same time, our relationship with Highsoft grew ever closer. Paweł (FIFA Trophy winner) became the Highcharts Stock Product Owner, and Kacper became the Highcharts Maps Product Owner. The organizational obstacles that once were separate, became the problems of both worlds when we started intertwining our structures and goals. We started to not only talk about our current work but also about strategic decisions and long-lasting plans at both ends, to be sure we will all be prepared whenever necessary.
Looking at the organizational level, it became harder to pass on information so that everyone would know about it. We wanted to keep a good culture, through our relations, traditions, and a couple of small rules, just like the pair-programming keeping juniors and seniors together. And that’s how our manual with procedures became a whole separate knowledge base about Black Label.
Finally, we came to the point, when we understood that we needed even more people to take some of the work off our shoulders. The obvious choice was an office manager, as over the last couple of years we had been working in almost a sterile white office. We hired Justyna, who was the perfect person to cheer up our office a bit.
There was a day, a few years ago, when we heard from Justyna that one of our teams wanted to brighten up their room. They chose everything, even posters on the walls. The initiative was great, so both Grzegorz and I naturally agreed. You can imagine my surprise when I entered their room a couple of days later, and was greeted by an enormous poster of a purple cow, just next to Kamil’s chair.
This concludes the fifth era of our journey, an era of closer collaboration with our partners, experiencing new technologies and becoming specialists in several new fields, understanding what our culture was all about and what elements we wanted to keep, and finally, giving people enough independence so they could determine the boundaries of our processes by themselves. The era of the purple cow poster.
Season 9 Episode 4: “The One about the… Butterfly?”
Now fast forward a few years to the present tense where I’m now currently in the middle of the ninth season of my Black Label journey. This season is all about Greg and I going in different directions but towards the same final destination. We have both delegated loads of our work to other team members. Greg created a strategic Mission-Control group and I set up Black-Ops, the Black Label Operations team, discussing potential improvements in all the areas in which Black Label operates. We have prioritized removing gray-area work from all of us and establishing a structure allowing us to grow more steadily, keeping the good old days just like they were when Kacper taught me how to use the coffee machine in the small house near the Vistula River, in the heart of Krakow. At the same time, we are working on growth, internal roles and responsibilities, or on further collaboration with our partners. We have created new rules, new procedures and, while still mostly flat, decidedly more complex structures. We established our Vision, Mission and Values. We have started becoming more professional in every aspect of the company.
On the other hand, we have faced new challenges, becoming more detached from some teams and individuals. We have worked on tightening the 1-2-1 meetings with employees, gathering regular feedback from all of them and simply listening to their needs. That is the element that moved us to our current position in the first place. Not the big dream of conquering the market, not the cold business style of finding budget cuts wherever possible, but listening to the needs of the people we have on board.
When will my ninth season wrap up? I’m not sure myself, but looking at the previous ones, I’m already worried about what object I may end up connecting with it and what the name of the episode will be… The only hope that I have is that I will love to constantly rewatch it from the beginning and that the last season, if it ever happens, will conclude like the cherry on top of a cake.
BL Sequel Pilot Episode: “The One with the Blog Post About Why Companies Change”
In every season of my Black Label journey there has been a specific episode and often a milestone that stands out in an otherwise constant process of implementing small changes. And every change was caused by some need or a goal that we found or put in front of us. I have mentioned the needs of our people as the main force moving us forward, but there were definitely more reasons to consider when to make a change.
I think that change isn’t possible without both a concrete reason and a person who is actually listening and willing to act. The problem might sometimes be to identify the proper moment. Therefore, just to give you a small heads-up, in my next article I will focus on the “Why” factor. I will tell you more about why people decide to make both small and large changes to their work environment from my own experience and that of my friends and the teams I’ve worked with over the past decade. Just like the caterpillar knows when to create a cocoon, or when a director knows they need a plot twist in their long-running series, I would like you to know when exactly to prepare your own change or even metamorphosis, and how to act when you are in the thick of it.
But, for the moment, I would like you to think of your own team. How many Seasons have you had so far in your journey? Are there any memorable episodes in your professional and personal growth? I’m excited for you to share your thoughts in the comment section of my LinkedIn post!
