How This Program Manager Turned Server Issues into Success with Data-Driven Leadership

OK. So, this happened when I, uh, first joined this project. So when I joined this project, I noticed that, um, there are some like reoccurring server issue that was only taken care with like a corrective approach whenever the problem comes up. No one actually really dig in and then figure out what the root cause is and then how to like build a better solution or better fix towards this problem. So, at that time, I saw an opportunity that I can like build out a solution to improve this process or even like uh reduce this problem or solve this problem in another way. But at the time, like I, because I don't know the full scope and I don't fully understand the problem, so it's really hard for me to set up a Um, KPI to measure, um, if this idea is a success. And on top of that, this is not uh part of my day to day job. I also need to make sure that I would be able to uh balance between my, like my responsibility and this uh additional uh initiative. So, I focus on, uh, understanding the problem by one, interviewing the user and 2, getting data from the server itself. Um, after, so I set up like, uh, some meetings with the key stakeholders to see, um, what's the story like from their end and then how they are seeing this, uh, problem and what, what is their thought on that and how much does it affect them on their day to day job. And then I also collected some data from the server itself, uh, because I know that if I want to build a strong case to convince management to Um, to go with this solution, I would have to Um, have more, uh, evidence to back it up. So After, after that, um, after understanding, uh, the, the issue that the user is facing and collecting some data, um, I finally decided on what the KPI could be for this, uh, initiative which would be, uh, increasing the stability of the server or reduce the downtime of it so that, uh, people would get less affected by it. And then, um, I, um, so, Then I, um, I build up a, I, with the data that I collected and, uh, the information that I gathered from the user, I built out a Power BI dashboard because I know that, uh, this is the best way to present data, uh, visual, having vis having a visual of data is the best way to convince management, so I went with that. And then with all these ideas, it's not achievable by just me, myself like doing all the work and I'm no expert in all, all the other area. So, I reached out to the engineers and then um I presented uh them with like this scenario, this is the case. And um management has already approved for this initiative and um I'm hoping that I would get their help from uh building this initiative and because this would, uh, at the end of the day help the user and then at the end, helping the developer themselves. So, by working together, uh, closely with the engineering team, we were able to deliver this, um, initiative within a month of time. And then at the end result was that the server stability actually did increase by 10% and then we received a lot less complaint from the user and uh most importantly, uh, this problem is no longer taken care of by the old approach. Um, we were leveraging the new uh initiatives that the engineering team and I built up. So, uh,

Um, I would say the unachievable part would be people, there was already a solution like in place, like it was able to fix the problem, but uh people are like the team, like since I was new to the team, I had more time to observe things from like a different angle. Um, if I didn't implement this solution, um, there, this problem would Just be solved with the old way, just, uh, solve it whenever it happens, but my approach would be solving it before it happens, which, uh, in one way it's a better solution than what it was. But even if, um, I didn't implement this. They would still have a way to solve this problem, but not efficiently, I would say.

So how I saw this was because, um, first of all, we, like there was downtime and then there were users uh complaining about uh certain things because, uh, it, the server like Not being up and running did affect like some of the users' daily work, even though it's not like during business hours, it's sometimes like, like a little bit outside of business hour like 5 or 6 or even 7 o'clock. Um, And uh I see an opportunity there because um I'd like to Try to solve things before they happen. Um, I like to use like preventative approach instead of like corrective approach. So, um, when I solve this problem, I found out that this is an opportunity for me to demonstrate, uh, what I'm good at. And um the other impact that this uh issue had to the team was that uh because of this complaint, the team would have to handle like more of the additional work because uh of issue uh because of like problems caused by this um server instability. So by, uh, by my, with my approach, we were able to like reduce that type of issues and at the end of the day, it would help out the team uh and reduce the unnecessary workload.

I would say the biggest blockage that I run into with this uh initiative would be Getting clarity because this is, first of all, this is like not a project from my manager like there was no clear direction on uh what needs to be done, what is the end goal of this, and How this would be uh measured in terms of like success. So at the beginning, I was Having like pretty much no information except for that I know there's this problem and then there could be a potential way of solving it, um. Because of my, uh, like, Uh, like initiative of our, uh, of like interviewing like different users, understanding what's going on, and by slowly combing through the problem like like peeling it on the end like layer by layer, I start to understand more about like the core issue and how Uh, I can, uh, like tackle this, uh, problem and then how to set up a metric to, uh, measure the success of it. All right.