Reflecting on the First 90 Days

Jennifer and her mentor Peter are having coffee at a café in London to review her initial quarter as Tech Lead at CloudNova.

Reflecting on the First 90 Days

Listen and choose the right answer

What did Jennifer do instead of immediately rewriting the deployment pipeline?

• She scheduled a skip-level meeting with the engineering VP.
• She conducted a listening tour with senior developers.
• She completely rewrote the core legacy architecture.

How did Jennifer gain momentum and win over the team?

• By prioritizing ruthlessly and fixing daily build failures.
• By ignoring Marcus's objections during sprint planning.
• By replacing the inherited codebase within two weeks.

What surprising revelation does Peter share about Marcus?

• Marcus is planning to leave CloudNova next month.
• Marcus secretly wanted to become the Tech Lead himself.
• Marcus had recommended Jennifer for the Tech Lead position.

Where had Marcus previously seen Jennifer present?

• At a conference keynote in Manchester.
• During a skip-level meeting in London.
• At an internal sprint retro in Boston.

Listen again and complete the sentences

• Jennifer: Honestly, Peter, I'm relieved. I was going to hit the ground running on day one, but the ____ was far worse than anyone admitted.
• Peter: I remember our first ____ back in March. You were about to rewrite the deployment pipeline right away, weren't you?
• Jennifer: I was! But I decided to take stock first and started a ____ with the senior developers instead.
• Jennifer: Exactly. I tried to map out a clear ____ after that, but Marcus kept shooting down every single proposal I brought up.
• Jennifer: I did, actually! I had to ____ and focus only on fixing the build failures that were annoying everyone daily.

Sources: photo by Jack Sparrow on Pexels