Technology

Focus bands.

Focus bands provide an overarching framework to help guide you through your career at Artefact. Along with level-specific content, they help bring focus to your day to day activities, help you understand what you are accountable for, illuminate opportunities for your growth, provide clarity about the requirements for advancement and offer a starting point for you to reference when seeking feedback and having conversations with your coach.

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Craft

Doing world class work

Doing great work

Creating positive impact for people, business and society is our mission. As an individual contributor, your focus is hands-on, on the front lines doing the exceptional work that directly impacts our ability to achieve this goal. To start, you will contribute thoughtful, creative solutions within clearly defined parameters using the skills most central to your core discipline. Over time the problem spaces you tackle will get increasingly more broad and complex, and your impact will come from creating value across more ambitious and ambiguous outcomes and problem spaces.

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To start

Over time

Implements features, resolves bugs by writing working code.

Implements features, resolves bugs by writing well structured, sustainable code.

Writes automated tests covering the main conditions a component may encounter.

Writes automated tests covering all of the conditions a component may encounter. Follows a test-driven development workflow writing a test first then the implementation to make it pass.

Raises problems encountered while working with the product.

Identifies risks, oversights and future problems that could arise from the design or code of the product.

Conducts technical explorations given clearly outlined questions for investigation. Can explain findings to other developers.

Conducts technical explorations given a general area of investigation. Can identify considerations to investigate. Can explain significance/impact of findings to any project team member.

Responds to issues as they arise.

Triages issues. Works with the project team to prioritize and schedule issues alongside regular feature work.

Troubleshoots issues by trying different things until the symptoms stop.

Troubleshoots issues methodically using techniques like bisection or split-half search.

Keeps the system up and running by responding to system alarms, crash reports and automated warnings.

Keeps the system up and running by proactively, regularly examining logs, performance metrics and other telemetry looking for unusual or unexpected patterns.

Craft

Doing world class work

Delivering great results

Software development is a large, complicated field foreign to many people in the studio including your project lead. In effect, you serve as a second project lead focused solely on the development team. You help the project lead deliver positive impact for people, business and society by providing the direction, guidance, and support that helps your developers do great work.

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To start

Over time

Develop an action plan for how to execute a system. Help developers understand the code that needs to be written and how it needs to work.

Develop a vision for how a system could be. Helps developers understand the qualities it needs to have and the principles behind its design.

Help the dev. team understand what work is coming.

Help the dev. team understand what the client’s trying to achieve, what’s important to them and why.

Offer practices and techniques the team could use to improve its performance in the quality of work built, expectations management, efficiency of practice, etc.

Coach team members gaining their buy-in to adopt better practices. Help them understand why the new practice is needed, what’s in it for them and what performing the new practice looks like. Make time to give them feedback reinforcing the moments when they positively exhibit new practices and informing them of the moments when they negatively exhibit the new practice.

Help the team develop a version-control and branching/integration strategy that enables the team to work on multiple features at once without conflicting with each other.

Help the team develop a version-control and branching/integration strategy that not only minimizes conflicts but also provides a great deal of flexibility allowing the team to integrate features independently without coupling the integration of several features together.

Don't let the way something works remain a mystery. When no one on the team knows or has been successful in finding out you take time to learn the background you need to help the team understand.

Regularly study the fields, concepts, techniques, practices and technologies that make up computer science, software engineering and emerging technology. Not just new ideas, but also the historical to fully understand what’s available, what works, what’s been tried before and the wisdom our discipline has learned over time.

Help team members remove blockers by developing direct solutions to the problem.

Help team members remove blockers by reframing the problem or offering critical questions for them to investigate. Help them see the source of the problem and some lines of inquiry that moves them forward in developing their own solution to the problem.

Know the team’s velocity and guide the team to limit their commitments to within that velocity.

Hold the team accountable to their commitments. Help the team recognize when they overcommitted, identify what factors prevented them from meeting their commitments and coach the team into incorporating that knowledge when setting their next batch of commitments. Coach the team away from a repeating pattern of missing commitments.

Call the team’s attention to sustainability problems. Work with the design and dev. teams to find alternative solutions. Stop sustainability problems from making it into the finished product.

Forecast for the team moments that might impact the sustainability of the system. Help developers see implementation paths that lead to flexible, decoupled, modifiable code. Help designers see arrangements that won't break down as the contents of the system scale. Steer the team away from non-sustainable choices in the UX and code design phases.

Help team members understand the vision for the system and its evolution.

Take time to give team members feedback helping them see how and when their work connects to and affects the vision.

Choose an architecture for the system. Help the team understand it.

Identifies design principles and qualities the system must exhibit. Coaches the team through designing an architecture that exhibits them.

Choose a technology stack best suited to the product to be built.

Choose a technology stack balancing suitability for the product to be built, the familiarity and capability of the client’s team who will be responsible for it longterm and the maturity/longevity of the stack.

Help developers pick their next unit of work when they aren't sure what to do.

Help developers see the goal the team is trying to reach, the steps needed to get there and how they can contribute.

Help the team and client develop a delivery/release strategy. Help them break the product features down into releasable units.

Help the team and client develop a delivery/release strategy that surfaces problems quickly, enables the project to change direction at any time and avoids “losing work” if the project is abandoned at any time.

Establish high quality standards and gain team buy-in to uphold them.

Take time to give team members feedback reinforcing the moments when they uphold those standards and helping them see the moments when they don’t. Listen to and overcome objections or revise the standards with team input.

When working with dev. partners help Artefact’s team and the partner’s team act as one. Arrange for dev. partners to be included the same as Artefact developers.

Take time to help dev. partners understand Artefact’s processes, why we do them and how it benefits the project. Take time to help Artefact’s team understand the partner’s processes, why they do them and how it benefits the project. Seek to find shared processes that foster close relationships and direct collaboration between design and development.

Craft

Doing world class work

Raising the bar

Quality is at the core of everything that we do at Artefact. As an executive director you are responsible for ensuring your teams' work meets and exceeds the bar across all aspects of craft, process, delivery and service. You do this by maintaining connection to projects, clients, teams and individuals; strategically intervening to inspire, set expectations, provide feedback and/or do whatever is necessary given the unique situation and people to ensure the work is the best it can be.

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For example

Help project teams adopt good dev. practices, methodologies.

Develop practices and methodologies to help dev. teams deliver high quality products, consistently, in a forecastable manner.

Spot concerns, considerations, dangers projects are headed for and help the team understand them.

Marshal/organize/select teams.

Secure contracts with dev. partners.

Review contracts with clients for dev. concerns, risks, considerations. Make sure dev. teams understand legal obligations.

Draft RFP responses for new projects.

Build and maintain relationships with development partners. Maintain a roster of partners that can be called on to quickly start a project.

Qualify potential projects.

Work with lead developers to develop strategies for addressing client or project team concerns.

Uncover client needs, expectations/requirements.

Ensure the project team is meeting the client’s needs fully.

Develop Artefact’s technical expertise.

Craft

Doing world class work

Delivering on the vision

Your role is to champion the vision, devise strategies, and activities to help us achieve it, and take appropriate actions within the business in light of the priorities that the vision demands.

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For example

Listen to signals that influence or challenge Artefact's vision, help to hone the vision, and communicate it consistently, both internally and externally.

Establish practices/policies that align us to our vision and strategy, and that ensure quality

Consistently communicate to the studio about our priorities

Lead development of new offerings and methods

Provide feedback and guidance to individuals and teams to inspire quality

Participate in business development, and inform proposals to ensure positive outcomes and alignment with Artefact's vision

Lead high-priority organizational initiatives (rocks)

Promote new ideas in the world, through speaking engagements or writing

Craft

Doing world class work

Doing great work and building on specialized expertise

Delivering outstanding work is essential to Artefact's success. As a Principal, you are an expert practitioner who contributes primarily through the delivery of exceptional work and thought leadership that continually evolve the state of the art within a practice, and represents deep knowledge and capability within a specific domain or problem space (which may cut across practice areas). Your expertise is aligned to Artefact's purpose, and is directly relevant to how we create value for clients.

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To start

Over time

Consistently demonstrate mastery within a specific domain of expertise with clear value to the organization and our clients

You evolve your mastery to be at the cutting edge; in line with changes in technology, the market, Artefact and client needs

Maintain an expert understanding of the craft, via tools, technologies, and issues within your practice area

You evolve your understanding to remain relevant, to keep Artefact on the leading edge of innovation and capability

You push your practice forward, through the impact on the projects you are assigned to

You exert broader influence on your practice beyond the context of your own projects.

You are capable of working across domains and apply a generalist knowledge of our offering and practices across other disciplines and problem spaces; you are an expert collaborator

You exert influence beyond the context of your practice.

Compared to senior-level peers in your practice, you are able to take on challenges of greater complexity and ambiguity.

Process

Getting things done effectively (and with health in mind)

Getting things done

You play a critical role in helping Artefact deliver. This starts with a team and feedback-oriented mindset that helps you make and deliver on commitments. You will do this by managing your time and priorities effectively, proactively seeking feedback, being dependable and reliable, raising issues and sharing ideas about how you might best help the team. Over time you will become central to the creation of sound plans, you will anticipate and mitigate risks both for yourself and the team at large that will help your team operate with maximum efficiency.focus

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To start

Over time

Estimates the direct work needed to implement a feature or bug fix.

Estimates the direct work and peripheral work that may be encountered/expected (e.g. refactoring, automated tests, error handling).

Commits work to the team’s version control system. Follows team practices for branch management.

Commits work in small, atomic commits with one logical change per commit. Writes commit messages that include a description of why the change is being made. Addresses only 1 feature or bug fix per branch.

Recognizes structural problems in classes and functions encountered during their work and refactors them out.

Recognizes structural problems in submodules encountered during their work and refactors them out.

Contributions reflect easily observed principles of software design. For example: don't repeat yourself; dependency inversion.

Contributions reflect more subtle principles of software design. For example: coupling and cohesion; separation of concerns; single responsibility principle; modularity / information hiding.

Is aware of team practices and follows them.

Participates in the design and selection of team practices.

Informs design team of feasibility challenges, unexpected complexity encountered while working on features.

Collaborates with design team to generate options/alternatives when dealing with feasibility challenges and unexpected complexity.

Participates in daily stand-ups.

Leads daily stand-ups.

Learns to be productive with technologies the team uses.

Tracks evolutions, new developments, new thinking about technologies the team uses.

Documents all new requirements, bugs, changes as outcome-oriented user stories.

Breaks down user stories into smallest increments that still deliver a benefit to a user. Includes a descriptive story of the user experience. Communicates why the story matters to a person.

Claims features, bugs when starting them. Signals to team that they are working on them.

Coordinates with other team members to divide and distribute the workload.

Help new team members access the codebase, become oriented with the code, understand the team’s methodologies and practices.

Help new team members interpret the codebase, understand the system architecture and history of the application.

Deploys code when other developers are around to assist.

Deploys code when backup isn’t available.

Periodically performs code reviews for peers. Asks questions to understand the code itself. Catches existing, major bugs.

Actively watches for and responds to peers who need code review. Asks questions to understand code design intent. Catches potential structural problems and potential bugs. Provides critical feedback on structure, clarity and durability.

Keeps their team informed about what they are working on. Keeps the status of stories in the team’s issue tracker up-to-date.

Foresees and communicates potential indirect work (e.g. refactoring, testing, performance evaluation, etc.) remaining to be done. Accounts for feedback and iteration cycles when estimating when their story will be complete.

Asks for help when they've been struggling with a problem for a day or so and still aren't sure how to move forward.

Prototypes several different approaches within a day or so to figure out what works, what doesn’t. Asks for help when there is no obvious good way forward.

Process

Getting things done effectively (and with health in mind)

Leading healthy teams

Healthy teams are ones with a balanced focus on quality, productivity, morale, and growth. As a team leader your role is to determine and lead the day-to-day activities to ensure this balance is consistently met. At first, you will lead teams with people most near to your core discipline and/or may need support from others; you may not have all of the answers, however you can still succeed by monitoring your teams' health and seeking help when needed. Over time, you will gain confidence and independence in maintaining project (both internal and external) health despite the challenges that increased scope and complexity bring, always with an eye on elevating Artefact's reputation and scope.

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To start

Over time

Develop and maintain realistic short-term delivery schedule and expectations.

Forecast longer-term delivery schedules based on current team velocity. Help client and team make tradeoffs and adjustments to the scope of work to fit the work to their preferred schedule.

Inform the design team about the feasibility, cost and time requirements of initiative-level designs during the design phase.

Collaborate with the design team to generate alternatives.

Assess quality of the codebase.

Assess quality of each team member’s code. Understand each team member’s strengths and weaknesses.

Identify risks, oversights and cautions in the way the system is evolving or in the team’s work.

Coach the team to change practices and behaviors that led to the risks.

Help the team organize to limit overtime and respond to urgent requests from the client efficiently.

Protect the team from overtime, surprises and unnecessary emergencies. Push back on the team and client reminding them that development capacity is finite and new scope displaces or pushes old scope. Ensure the client is always aware of the current state of the schedule and roadmap. Help the client and team critically consider whether an issue raised is truly urgent or just needs to be addressed eventually.

Ensuring team is maintaining a consistent velocity.

Ensuring team can sustain their velocity long-term. Identify and pay down technical debt that will create a drag on velocity if not addressed.

Recognizes and points out single points of failure on the team (e.g. only one person who can deploy; only one person who understands x area).

Works with team to develop new or changed practices to prevent the development of single points of failure.

Recognizes and points out bottlenecks in development progress (e.g. too many deliverables waiting on the same person; avoidance of working on a task out of perception that x person is best suited for it).

Works with team to develop new or changed behaviors to prevent the development of bottlenecks.

Help developers find stories to work on to keep the dev. team fully utilized.

Identify ways to break development bottlenecks and remove barriers to working in an area concurrently with other developers.

Process

Getting things done effectively (and with health in mind)

Creating the conditions for success

Achieving goals requires teams to be set up for success. As an executive director, you are responsible for ensuring that teams, individuals and Artefact are set up for success to achieve goals around quality, profitability, and team health. You do this by monitoring project health, and making or enabling the right adjustments where necessary. Within the team you 'lead from behind' - having maximum impact with the lightest touch: Like a shepherd, you are not always hands-on and predominant, but you are always there. Though you are not usually the day to day leader, you have intent and ideas and are make both known. If there is a threat or an urgent situation, you are ready and equipped to help deal with the situation.

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For example

Set ballpark expectations about the time needed to build a system.

Coach project teams on good dev. practices.

Hold project teams accountable to good dev. practices.

Set resourcing levels for dev. teams.

Choose how to proceed strategically to meet both the client’s and system’s needs.

Discover client concerns, priorities.

Hold lead developers accountable to the responsibilities of their role.

Process

Getting things done effectively (and with health in mind)

Ensuring business health

Your role is to monitor the health of the business, participate in high level decision-making, and take appropriate actions to help Artefact achieve our business goals.

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For example

Participate in weekly Leadership Team meetings

Make key decisions about how we utilize resources, respond to opportunities, etc.

Help to identify new opportunity areas, in the form of potential business verticals, topic areas, client prospects, etc.

Participate in leadership discussions and decision-making related to business health

Maintain an awareness of business health, and make adjustments as necessary

See opportunities for improvement, and take action to improve performance

Process

Getting things done effectively (and with health in mind)

Leading through doing

Sometimes, great results require unique new processes and tools, that can be applied without impacting team health. As a principal, you deliver value through your work in a similar way as a senior individual contributor, but with greater performance and proficiency as would be expected from an expert practitioner, and with a keen eye for cutting edge processes, and tools. Your role as a Principal also Includes additional leadership responsibilities derived from the "team focus" area, as indicated below. You work in collaboration with the project lead and ECD to contribute to quality and team health.

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To start

Over time

Work quickly and at a high level of competence, while bringing along others and educating and mentoring more junior associates

Elevate the whole team through your efforts

Add value across multiple programs, have a firm-wide influence and elevate the quality of Artefact's work

Elevate the whole of Artefact through your efforts

Foster interdisciplinary project collaboration

Proactively bring in other disciplines strategically to drive quality

Mentor colleagues from the same discipline on work of your own and across multiple other projects

Mentor colleagues across disciplines, and across several projects

Facilitate critique within the team

Facilitate critique of work across the studio, when appropriate

Seek out ways to raise the bar through your work, as well as through introducing new processes and tools

Actively collaborate with the ECD and Project Lead to raise the bar

Service

Being a great partner

Being a great consultant

To deliver great work we must truly understand our clients and provide an exceptional experience that helps build confidence in Artefact. While others more senior on the team may take the lead in managing relationships and driving high level strategy, as a representative of Artefact, everything you do has the ability to build understanding, add or detract from the experience, and ultimately influence our mutual success. Beyond demonstrating professionalism, that starts with developing client empathy, active listening, engaging to understand clients' needs and perspectives and eventually leads to your ability to inspire and elevate a client's perspective. Over time your expertise will be relied on as a key to project success.

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To start

Over time

May serve as a point of contact for a client’s other technical partners. When doing so informs Artefact’s team of status updates from partners. Communicates Artefact’s needs to partners.

Keeps partners regularly informed of general progress by Artefact. Maintains an open channel of communication.

Is able to provide status updates to a client on their individual work using clear language in a manner the client can understand.

Is able to provide succinct, to-the-point updates in a manner that projects confidence to the client.

Notifies team and client if they will miss any commitments they made. Follows through on what they said they would when they said they would.

Meets the commitments they make. Doesn't make a commitment if they aren't sure they can follow through on it.

Responds to communications from the client when directed to them.

Responds to communications from the client when directed to the general team. Ensures someone has replied in a timely manner.

Refrains from setting client expectations about the time required to add new features or the capabilities the system will have afterwards until they’ve consulted with their team.

Sets realistic client expectations about the time required to add new features or the capabilities the system will have afterwards. Considers not only the time required for the direct work involved, but also the time and resources required for the indirect work needed to deliver the feature (e.g. refactoring, testing, feedback, iteration, deployment).

Service

Being a great partner

Guiding clients to success

As consultants our primary ability to create impact is through our clients, therefore your ability to effectively guide clients towards success is essential. At first, your focus will be on current needs. With the support of your team and sponsor, you will build trust personally and in your team by establishing expertise, ensuring the work is represented well, ensuring great communication and a smooth process, and making sure clients are not just heard, but more importantly, understood. Over time, you will become a truly trusted advisor though ownership that goes beyond the work to the project and relationship; by deepening your understanding of your clients' business, thier sitation, and thier future needs, elevating your ablity to lead a proposal or project in a direction a client may not have forseen.

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To start

Over time

Inform the client on how the product works, what’s possible to do and the time needed to make changes.

Manage the client’s expectations about what the product does, what it will do and when to expect changes to be delivered so the team is regularly over delivering rather than under delivering.

Translate what developers are saying into plain, everyday language spoken by non-technical people.

Help non-developers participate in technical discussions by simplifying and focusing the conversation, and using analogies to make the conversation accessible to them.

Track points of interest to the client and follow up with regular updates to them.

Proactively inform the client on development progress so they're never surprised by what’s been going on. Keep client aware as features are completed, complexities are encountered that require extra time or tradeoffs are made.

When collaborating with other dev. teams working for the client you notify them about any implementation your team needs from them (e.g. new API endpoints) and work with them to develop a delivery plan. Follow up regularly to track progress.

Inform other development partners about relevant changes made to the system or the development roadmap.

When facing time, cost or feasibility challenges implementing a feature develop and present options to the client for moving forward.

Help the client understand the time, cost, performance and other tradeoffs of each option.

Service

Being a great partner

Being a trusted advisor

The more clients trust you, the more they will seek your advice, be inclined to accept and act on your recommendations, bring you in on more advanced, complex, strategic issues, and share information that helps you (and Artefact) to help them, and improves the quality of services. As a trusted advisors to your clients, you place a higher value on maintaining and preserving the relationship itself than on the outcomes of the current transaction, financial or otherwise.

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For example

Field client customer service issues. Address complaints, frustrations, concerns. Reassure. Restore confidence.

Set client expectations about the project (scope of work, cost, team capabilities, major milestones).

Inform client on upcoming team changes, major scope or schedule changes.

Set expectations on what to expect from Artefact’s teams, their capabilities, how to engage us, our scope of work, how we work and why.

Set realistic expectations about what can be done within an existing scope of work, what requires a new scope of work.

Present options to client when facing time, cost or feasibility challenges implementing overall initiative or when changes in program strategy are necessary.

Set client expectations about how the project will progress at a phase level.

Present Artefact’s technical expertise to clients with confidence. Speak to the capabilities, potential usage of different technologies. Connect possible technologies to client goals, needs. Build confidence in clients that Artefact can provide expertise in the technical domains they require.

Service

Being a great partner

Establishing strategic relationships

Your role is to model best practices for how we establish and maintain strategic relationships, to ensure that our behavior as a firm is grounded in empathy for client needs and focused on their success.

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Service

Being a great partner

Being a great consultant

The trusted advisor relationship cannot only exist between a small group of colleagues at Artefact, and especially with regard to the aspect of credibility, you as a Principal play a key role. You are able to advise clients in your subject matter expertise with much greater authority and confidence as other expert practitioners, and you have a demonstrable impact on business development, via repeat engagements and contributions to generating and presenting proposal content.

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To start

Over time

Translate your expert understanding into clear value for your clients

Think in terms of business needs, and align skills and interests to both Artefact and client needs

Present work at a high level; articulating a strong and compelling POV, rationale and business value

Make contributions that have a direct impact on new and return business

Consistently and proactively support efforts to deepen client relationships, based on expertise

Contribute to the writing and presenting of proposals, particularly in terms of recommended approaches

Write complete sections of proposals, outlining activities and deliverables, relevant to your area of expertise

Community

Making the whole better

Engaging in the Artefact community

We all have a role in making Artefact the best it can be, and it starts with getting involved. At first you will engage simply by participating; making new connections and getting exposure to new perspectives. You may see opportunities for improvement along the way which you are encouraged to share with an optimistic/problem solving mindset. Over time you will take a more active role in driving the Artefact community by facilitating inclusion and taking a more active role in initiatives that help make us better.

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Community

Making the whole better

Contributing to the Artefact community

A healthy and engaged community is essential to ensuring Artefact is a best place to work. As a leader involved with many individuals and groups, you are naturally positioned to make a significant impact. In addition to coaching, you will do this via your contributions to recruiting top talent, by initiating and leading initiatives and pursuing thought leadership that enhances our process and culture and by serving as a positive cultural force helping to align leadership with individuals.

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To start

Over time

Lead small scale initiatives that impact profitability and/or make Artefact a best place to work

Lead medium scale initiatives that impact profitability and/or make Artefact a best place to work

Sought after for subject matter expertise, both internally and with clients

Participate in speaking engagements

Contribute to discipline growth

Define discipline growth goals

Help with initial vetting of candidates

Support on-campus hiring initiatives as well as on-site interview loops

Participate in candidate interviews

Lead candidate interviews

Leverage new tools, techniques, and technologies for Artefact

Contribute to the professional discourse through thought leadership (articles, conference talks, design concepts, prototypes, etc.)

Proactively identify and provide constructive insights/feedback about Artefact health to leadership

Relate strategic initiatives from leadership to the wider organization and vice versa

Community

Making the whole better

Creating Artefact communities

Artefact can only be a world-class firm, if team members of all ranks have the same understanding of vision, objectives, and of the immediate tasks at hand, and if they all collaborate as one to achieving the company's goals, big and small. You serve as the connective tissue between Artefact's core leadership and the wider organization.You effectively work with the core leadership team to improve Artefact, you lead sizable internal initiatives, groups, and teams, and you provide leadership within your discipline.

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For example

Maintain a pulse on the organization and relay key insights to the leadership team

Help connect company initiatives to the wider organization by communicating and adding context to what leadership is thinking/working

Identify and proactively help to fill organizational gaps

Responsible for discipline leadership & health; you define growth goals for your discipline and provide resources and support to help the group thrive

Help connect your discipline to others at Artefact to improve efficiency, collaboration, mutual understanding, and the overall experience for all

Lead medium-to-large scale initiatives that impact profitability, make Artefact the best place to work, and increase Artefact's visibility in the industry

Community

Making the whole better

Sustaining our culture

Your role is to model Artefact's culture, based on the values that guide our behavior, and to take action if you notice behaviors that are misaligned to our values.

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Community

Making the whole better

Thought leadership (internal/external)

Clients come to Artefact for our deep subject matter expertise, and as a Principal, you are a key ambassador for Artefact in this regard. In addition to making direct contributions through project work, as a Principal, you also contribute to the practice by proactively building community both internally and externally, relative to your area of expertise.

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To start

Over time

Evangelize best practices within your discipline, and further the understanding of your practice within the studio

Elevate Artefact's capabilities through demonstration, teaching, and contributing to communities of practice

Are a recognized leader within your practice internally, and the "go-to" person for your specific expertise

Demonstrate evidence of impact on others

Recognized thought leader within your practice externally, through tangible evidence, such as published articles and projects, events, community building, and other activities

Possess a growing reputation and recognition within external communities; you are sought after by external partners

Participate in recruiting and interviews; evaluating portfolios of candidates within your discipline

Your presence at Artefact draws in top talent

Growth

Growing self & others

Mastering knowledge & skills

Opportunities for growing knowledge and skills are plentiful as you work on mastery of your craft and becoming a great consultant. Everyone's growth path is unique, however the common denominator to a successful journey is a learning mindset fueled by feedback, self reflection and the willingness to ask for help. In addition to the tools Artefact provides, you should proactively seek feedback from others at all levels and with a variety of perspectives and frequently releflect to consider how you might continue to grow using your coach to guide you in understanding context and help you set and achieve your goals.

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To start

Over time

Learns new features of the language or framework they maintain primary expertise in. Learns new features of their tools (text editor; version control system; etc.).

Learns new languages, technologies, tools and approaches. Exposes themselves to new ideas by seeking out radically different paradigms (e.g. functional programming if they spend most of their time in an imperative language).

Occasionally asks peers for feedback on any code developed (even if not on a team or project). Openly considers the feedback they receive.

Always asks for feedback on code developed. Seeks critical feedback on the structure, clarity and durability of code developed.

Identifies how to make bugs go away not just how to work around them.

Takes extra time to explore the bug and identify its root cause. Gets inside it with a debugger. Can explain to another developer the mechanics that cause the problem to arise. Submits a bug report and/or patch to third-party projects.

Thinks critically about their work as they work. How they perform it. How to make it more efficient. How to build a higher level of quality into their process.

Reduces opportunity for error and frees up time for higher-order tasks by automating steps that can be automated.

When trying to understand how to use a framework or library examines the source code to see how it works.

When trying to figure out how to build a feature or application examines the architecture of open-source applications to understand how they solved similar problems.

Stays up-to-date on developments in the community for the language or framework they maintain primary expertise in.

Stays up-to-date on developments in the domain they maintain primary expertise in (e.g. Web application development; mobile application development).

Growth

Growing self & others

Helping others grow

Growth via a focus on career development is essential to employee engagement. Beyond retention, it enabling us to deliver on our professional and personal goals. As a leader there are many opportunities to help others grow. In addition to growing practitioners mastery of craft and process within the context of the work, you help individuals grow, by connecting their skills and interests to the needs of the business, and regularly providing them with actionable feedback.

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Growth

Growing self & others

Helping grow the next generation of leaders

While individual growth might seem most important for Artefact colleagues that are earlier in their careers, helping more experienced colleagues to grow in their careers, is not only critical for Artefact's continued success, it is also a task that requires experience to accomplish. And that's where you come in! You help other leaders in the company to better do their jobs, to expand their horizons, and to keep them motivated through a steady and continuous growth at Artefact.

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Growth

Growing self & others

Sustaining employee growth

Your role is to support the creation of a learning organization at Artefact, and to develop current and future leaders.

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Growth

Growing self & others

Helping others grow

Distributing knowledge and expertise within the organization helps to raise the bar for Artefact and will position us better for success. As an expert practitioner, you provide direct guidance to other team members in the context of project work and in the larger context of a practice. Similar to the Director level, Principals may also coach others, typically within their discipline of expertise, though this is not required.

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To start

Over time

Coach more junior colleagues within your own discipline

Contribute to assessing the level of performance for people in their discipline across Artefact

Help to connect the needs of the business to the skills and passions of individuals

Outline career paths for individuals relative to their passions, skills, and the needs of the business

Regularly provide team members with actionable and in-the-moment feedback

Maintain awareness of individual team members' career and growth aspirations and provide relevant feedback and guidance

Make yourself available for critique of the work of others in their area of expertise across the studio

Responsible for improving the discipline-specific skill sets of more junior associates

Focus bands.

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Individual focus

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Team focus

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Portfolio focus

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Organization focus

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Principal

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Organization

Portfolio

Team

Individual

Doing great work

To start

Over time

Delivering great results

To start

Over time

Raising the bar

For example

Delivering on the vision