Vokal Engineering Initiatives
What are our internal initiatives?
The Vokal Engineering team as a whole tracks various internal initiatives on Jira. These are associated with discipline-specific epics, and tracked in a Kanban-style process. All Vokal employees (including those not on the Engineering team) are welcome to observe and participate.
Initiative stories are added and moved through the Kanban board.
What constitutes an initiative?
An initiative can be anything. Maybe you have an idea for a new testing tool that you'd like to explore, or maybe you've identified a way that the Engineering department can work better with the Design department. Regardless of what your idea may be, if you think it's important you should add it to the Jira backlog and associate it with the appropriate epic (a specific discipline like "Web" or "Systems," or "Global" for an initiative that benefits the Engineering team as a whole).
When can I work on an initiative?
Every initiative is important to somebody. However, the only way a tracked initiative can be successful is if members of the Engineering team have time to work on them. Week over week, Directors review staffing and determine who has available time to bill to internal projects. You may be approached to work on an Engineering (or R&D) initiative if you are not fully allocated to client work.
If you find that you have some downtime despite being fully allocated, you are encouraged to pick up initiatives on the Jira board that look interesting to you. Leave regular comments on an initiative to document your involvement, and note if you are no longer available and need someone else to hop on.
What else?
Initiatives are visible company-wide to provide transparency across all of our internal teams. Use that transparency to your advantage.
You can view other Vokal initiative boards here: