Operations
Company structure at the operational level
The operational level is separated into three distinct areas:
Platform
The employees in this area are responsible for implementing, maintaining, and evolving cloud infrastructures and development platforms, for both the company and external customers. They also work as an internal service team, and deliver expert consulting services to those customers who want to implement in-house DevOps and cloud-native practices.
The Platform area also works to bring innovation at all operational levels, suggesting the creation and adoption of new technologies, creating new business lines, and enhancing the efficiency of the existing ones.
Digital Strategy
The employees in this area deliver discovery, analysis, strategic ideas, and plans, aimed at the cooperative assessment of the customers’ needs, as well as the co-creation of viable solutions measurable with precise KPIs.
They work primarily during the pre-sales phases, cooperating with different professional figures as creative directors and tech leaders, to help shape great early propositions. The output of their delivery activities is often input to UX experts, UI designers, and development teams.
Development
The employees in this area are responsible for implementing, maintaining, and evolving solid cloud-native web and mobile solutions, following different agile organizational patterns and DevOps practices.
They work in self-organizing, cohesive teams, with different technology stacks and with a strong accent on quality.
The Development area is broadly organized into three branches, based on expertise:
- PHP and Drupal
- Frontend Technologies
- Full-Stack Cloud-Native
Each of these branches contains one or more teams focused on specific projects or tasks related to evolutionary maintenance. These teams tend to remain consistent, with occasional shifts of team members among them.
Roles and seniority at the operational level
SparkFabrik has an almost flat organization, arranged around clear roles, each with its ownership and responsibilities.
Also, people grow in seniority and this grants them more authority on specific issues or in specific situations.
Every operational area has its seniority levels and project roles.
Seniority Levels
Development Area
We recognize four levels of professional skills, each with its salary bracket, mission, and clear expectations.
- Junior Developer: this is the level where duly graduated people or developers already experienced in other technologies start. We expect people to quickly step up to the next level, ideally in 12 to 18 months of employment.
- Developer: this is the level that makes up the bulk of our company and that we heavily rely upon. People at this level are skilled at and proficient with both our technology and our methodology. They can mentor juniors and are autonomous in their work.
- Senior Developer: seasoned professionals with a demonstrated track record of excellence and around 5 years of comprehensive experience in software development. They play a vital role in SparkFabrik, moving with ease across different technologies and projects.
- Lead Developer: these are the most skilled developers in SparkFabrik. They have a solid senior-level background on top of which they developed the soft skills required to handle the social, technical, and organizational complexity of our work.
Learn more about each level's accountabilities and how we evaluate people's seniority level.
Platform Area
We recognize three levels of professional skills, each with its salary bracket, mission, and clear expectations.
- Practitioner Cloud Engineer: novices to the field of cloud-infrastructure management, usually with previous experiences in development or traditional operations. We expect practitioners to quickly step up to the next level, ideally in 12 to 18 months of employment.
- Professional Cloud Engineer: people at this level are skilled at and proficient with a bunch of different cloud technologies and have absorbed our methodology. They can mentor newcomers as well as developers and are autonomous in their work.
- Architect Cloud Engineer: experienced professionals with diverse exposure across various cloud platforms and technologies. They can take on complex projects independently, engaging with the client and coordinating the work of their colleagues.
Learn more about each level's accountabilities and how we evaluate people's seniority level.
Digital Strategy Area
TO BE DONE
Project Roles
Depending on seniority, attitude, achievements, and personal inclinations, SparkFabrik may propose people take over one or more of the following roles on a project. Not all roles are accessible at all seniority levels and more junior employees should not expect to be assigned one.
Being appointed a project role means you earned the company's and teammates' trust, you proved your reliability and you display a strong customer orientation.
These roles are not mutually exclusive - even if covering all at the same time is usually unfeasible - and not all projects need all of these roles to be clearly appointed.
To better understand the relation between seniority level and project roles in terms of professional growth, visit the section on career advancement.
Development area
In development projects, we recognize the following project roles.
- Analyst: Analysts are great when it comes to mapping a domain, fathoming complexity, and expressing it in a clear, rational, understandable form. Analysts may not always have a solution at hand but for sure they know when a need is fulfilled or a problem is solved. If need be, analysts' skills make for great product owners.
- Architect: Architects describe the best possible solution to a framed problem. They are great decision-makers, understand the long-term implications of technical choices, know how to quickly probe, understand and adapt and always grasp the big picture.
- Team Leader: Team Leaders excel at enabling teams, coordinating efforts, and ensuring project milestones are met. Focused on the outcomes, they drive, motivate, and keep the team committed to the project's success. They ask hard questions, suggests alternative paths, and apply a good deal of common sense to risk management.
- Project Manager: Project Managers make things work. They coach, measure, look ahead, warn, and ultimately support people to give their best, removing obstacles, and improving their processes and procedures. In SparkFabrik people are never managed - work is. So Project Managers govern but never rule.
Learn more about each role's accountabilities and how we evaluate their outcome.
Interactions between development project roles
To prevent overlap in problem-solving and avoid the bystander syndrome (stuff that can wreck projects and interpersonal relationships alike) we've provided a RACI 1 table below that clarifies roles and responsibilities throughout the project's various phases.
In applying this clear information to your daily work, always keep in mind that effective teamwork and communication are essential for the success of our initiatives.
| Activity / Role | Team Leader | PM | Solution Architect | Analyst | CTO | COO |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pre-sales estimates | C | A | R | R | C | I |
| Initial analysis | C | I | C | AR | I | |
| Epic/Milestone Mapping and Project plan | R | A | C | R | C | |
| Functional requirements and backlog population | R | C | C | A | ||
| Definition of the work team | I | R | C | I | C | A |
| Week/sprint planning | A | C | R | C | ||
| Coordination of team activities | A | C | R | C | ||
| Drafting technical documentation | A | R | C | I | ||
| Retrospectives and corrective actions | A | C | R | R | I | I |
| Iteration events (plan, review, etc) | A | C | R | R | ||
| Customer communications | R | A | C | R | I | I |
| Monitoring and evaluating progress | R | A | C | C | I | |
| Coordination of external dependencies (other teams) | C | R | I | I | C | A |
| Definition of the solution | C | I | AR | C | C | |
| Compliance with best practices | R | A | C | |||
| Smoke-Testing e QA | R | I | R | A | ||
| Technical rebuilding | I | R | A |
Platform area
TO BE DONE
Digital Strategy area
TO BE DONE
1: For sake of clarity, read the table as follows: Responsible: who's practically performing the task or decision. Accountable: the single person held responsible for the outcome (you can call them "owner"). Consulted: People that MUST be consulted for information or validation before completing the task or decision. Informed: People that must be kept in the loop about that task or decision.