The Engineering Leadership Podcast How to Lead Large Scale Projects with Wendy Shepperd GVP Engineering @ New Relic #31
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Mar 9, 2021 Wendy Shepperd, GVP Engineering at New Relic, leads large-scale strategic programs with a focus on precision and teamwork. She shares her experiences navigating the challenges of multimillion-dollar cloud migrations, emphasizing the importance of effective communication and stakeholder alignment. Wendy reveals insights into project planning, execution, and the significance of celebrating team successes. Her mantra of making memories during tough times highlights the value of learning and collaboration in achieving project goals.
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Staging Passed But Production Failed
- Wendy recalled a migration that seemed fine in staging but degraded in production after week three, causing outages and data loss.
- The team rolled affected customers back and spent months fixing the architectural issue before relaunching.
Minimize Impact Then Present Trade-Offs
- Minimize customer impact first and present stakeholders with data-driven trade-offs and scenarios.
- Offer your engineering recommendation but let stakeholders choose based on organizational priorities.
Project Cumulus: Rapid Early Progress
- Project Cumulus is New Relic's multi-year cloud migration and in year one they migrated 70% of data in nine months.
- Wendy called this migration one of the smoothest of her four cloud moves so far.