Two Years at Cellulant - My 2024 Career Recap

1. The Reward of Good Work

It was like yesterday, sitting at my desk, excited about what I have wrought, the metamorphosis of the Instore team and even Cellulant’s culture. I wrote about my adventures, and then there was Christmas, and I was thinking to myself:

We have laboured to build capacity and the team this year, next year we rest easy…

Little did I know what was to come. By January (2024), my manager reached out to me, saying, “I want you to take charge of another team this year”.

I was overwhelmed with mixed feelings. On one hand, I was excited about the new challenge. It’s a testament to a good job done in the past. After all, one good turn deserves another.

On the other hand, I am concerned. For I know the road that lies ahead. I have been there before. This time around, the team size is double. Moving from a team of 8–10 to a team of 24!

My curiosity and excitement got the better of me, and now I lead the Core Platforms team of Cellulant—an opportunity, for which, I will be forever grateful.

Follow me as I recount my second year working at Cellulant, including the highs and lows, lessons learnt, and what we achieved.

2. Challenges, Medals and Glories

The year has not been without its ups and downs. Between the global economy downturn, recessions, inflation, war and currency devaluation. It has definitely been eventful.

Upon taking the reins at Core, my first major project was taking care of an internal system responsible for transaction identifiers. It’s technically challenging and resource-intensive.

It’s close to changing a core banking system, but it’s not 😉. In addition to having an awesome team, one thing that worked for us is the use of feature flags to control system behaviour in real-time.

Next, we worked on some interesting internal automations to better position our operations for the future, save money and time.

Beyond the projects and features, one of the biggest wins for me in 2024 is championing the company-wide adoption of a new SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle).

This changed how we approach work as an organisation. Our backlogs and roadmap transmuted from a Brownian motion to a well-oiled assembly line. Trust me, everything is not a priority zero.

We are not there yet, but we’re way better off than where we used to be.

To further localise this new way of working, I led my team in adopting technical specification writing, ticket slicing, and refinement sessions.

This improved our output as a team, helped us to be 70% more efficient, all the while making us better professionals.

The biggest challenge with a paradigm shift is driving adoption sustainably. Especially, when you have a big team. I must confess, sometimes, I overlook some things, and other times I wear the hat of a commander.

What gladdens me is that, at the end of the day, every team member has seen the need for such change and experienced the benefits firsthand.

Shout out to the team for a good year, let’s do this again.

This is a good spot to mention that, my former team (Instore) won the Seismic Shift Award last year, for adopting these changes and transforming how we work.

This year, we scaled it to the company via a new version of the SDLC. Maybe we will get some awards for this one too, the jury is still out.

3. Once Bitten, Twice Shy

Experience, they say, is the best teacher. Leading a new team, learning how applications in the new domain, driving improvements and working with new team members. Mistakes are bound to be made and lessons to be learnt.

The first lesson I would like to share with you is that you should train your team. As an Engineering leader, you should put in the effort to build capacity within the team.

It may be hard (or not 🤷🏼‍️) but it’s worth the effort. Knowing that the best benefit we get working for other people is the experience. That’s what we can trade, that’s what will continue to pay, beyond any salary.

The training can be in the form of occasional peer-programming sessions, honest, timely, quantitative and qualitative feedback and so on.

Another one is delegating. This serves as both a training tool, and a means to give you (the Engineering leader) a breather. Delegating allows you to see how your people perform while you’re there.

It can start with small tasks and then grow accordingly. Going on leave for a day, appoint someone to stand in for you.

Do you have simultaneous meetings to attend? Consider sending someone to represent you in one.

The Pareto principle dictates that 20% of the people do 80% of the work. I have found this to be true anywhere two or more are gathered.

As an Engineering leader, it is our job to create structures that will ensure everyone performs their best. This is the best arrangement that will benefit everyone.

Daily standups, ensuring only one person is assigned to a ClickUp/Jira task and production support rota. These are some of the practical ways that has improved the unit productivity of the team.

Also, clear-cut OKRs and generally understood performance evaluation principles will foster accountability in the team.

4. Babies, Weddings and Promotions

One interesting thing that trails my leadership of a team is weddings, babies and promotions.

Last year, at Instore, my Indian team members (read friends) got married. One person got promoted to being Tech Lead and another confirmed to be a Senior Software Engineer.

In my current team, this year 2024. I have had one wedding (the bride is an Engineer), and six babies 🥳. We got enough paternity leave requests, that it became a thing 😂.

So if you hear that I am coming to lead your team tomorrow, and you’re single. Just know it is your year to settle down.

I don’t know how it happens, it just happens 😁.

5. Longing for the Glorious Yonder

As we prepare for the new year 2025, I want to give a special shout-out to my manager, Mike.

He created room for me to grow and make an impact. He cheers and corrects as at when needed. Thank you, sir.

A special shout out to the entire members of the Core team. Great things we have achieved, greater things we will achieve.

I want to do more capacity building and enablement in the coming year. One or two side projects with new technologies and more publishing.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year 2025!

Cheers to achieving more and being a blessing. 🥂