Any way you look at it, we have you covered, whether one is a client or an employee.
The pride we take in our work and our investment in the success of our partners is a reflection of everyone at First Factory. Our management structure, and the tailored responsibilities of those roles, are one example of how we value relationships above all and ensure the highest code quality while exceeding client expectations. We fundamentally believe in the role of a Manager as a Service, whereby managers support and address the needs of the employee as they recognize their potential and acquire the skills needed to succeed on the discrete tasks at hand and develop professionally.
Here’s a look at two of our key positions: the Client Experience Manager and the Engineering Manager:
Client Experience Manager
Client Experience Managers (CEM) are proven managers who are quality-driven, highly hands-on, and skilled in empathy-based mentoring for software development teams. In most cases, the CEM is the manager to whom the employee directly reports, and under their purview, employees receive HR Ops support, ongoing 360-degree feedback, and mentoring – mainly focused on soft skills and career development.
The CEM is the primary point of contact for our clients, whether the engagement is a Staff Augmentation or a Milestone-based Project model. They meet with client stakeholders (bi-weekly or monthly) without the development team to garner honest and critical feedback, to gain awareness of key milestones and the business impact of the work being done, and to understand the company roadmap and evolving development resource needs. Much of this feedback will be synthesized and shared with the Engineering Managers and the Executive group. Requirements for new positions will be shared with our Talent Staffing team.
The CEM will also ensure a smooth on-ramp for new resources joining our client teams, with particular focus being paid in the first few weeks to ensure we exceed expectations from the start and meet all compliance requirements, such as time-tracking and reporting. For in-depth knowledge of the clients and individuals employees assigned, Client Experience Managers will only be responsible for approximately 12 clients and/or 35 employees. There is never a charge to the client for the ongoing support from one of our Client Experience Managers.
Engineering Manager
Engineering Managers (EM) are technical leads for the engineers they support… and so much more. Each EM possesses a deep understanding of Software Development patterns and architectures, has demonstrated experience working with Scrum, is fully comfortable with Full Stack development, and has experience with cloud platforms, such as Azure or AWS. They mentor team members through task estimations, code reviews, pair programming, and regularly scheduled one-on-one meetings. EMs also assist in the hiring and development of new First Factory employees by conducting technical interviews with candidates and supporting their ongoing learnings through tech talks, mentoring, and internally written or curated courses.
For Staff Augmentation engagements, if the client permits, our EMs will be introduced to the client team, gain access to code repositories, and be invited as optional to sprint planning, backlog grooming, retrospectives, and even DSUs. They will dedicate up to 5 hrs per week to the team, if needed, at no charge to the client. This is to ensure that we always understand the requirements, dependencies, internal coding standards, and challenges prior to implementing complex tasks. With this access, our EM’s can do code reviews and help triage issues in order to reduce the dependency on the technical leads of the client. If the EM is not permitted access to the code repositories and is not introduced to the client’s development team, they will still provide outstanding support to the First Factory engineers assigned. Of course, our EM’s can always be reached to help clients identify technical solutions. Any feedback the Client Experience Manager receives about the developers will be shared with the EM, and it is the EMs responsibility to put the feedback into action, providing tangible results for employees and clients alike.
For client projects, EMs participate in the gathering of project requirements and then complete research to help create technical project plans. They write, review and revise product requirements and specifications, provide estimates, commit to a roadmap and oversee every step of the build. They are true professionals when it comes to software development and project delivery.
Since the demands of the Engineering Managers can be high and in an effort to not rush the quality interactions with the developers, each EM will only be responsible for approximately 7 clients and/or 18 employees.
Values
We are here to support each other, challenge each other, and grow personally and professionally together. There is always more to learn. There is always room to improve. Our commitment to the success of our partners demonstrated each day through the passion and dedication of our employees is what we believe makes the experience uniquely First Factory.
