Any examples to describe the project as a story for promo docs?

Question

I used to describe project in three sections:

Problem
Action
Impact

Not every project is straight line. Some projects have lot of ambiguities and need lot of discussion to clear those ambiguities, certain features where we spend are de prioritized/removed, process challenges, changing direction/vision. How to explain all these as a story to express the complexity of the project by showing the challenges faced?

Alex Chiou · Accepted Answer

I'm not familiar with the structure of Amazon promo documents (feel free to enlighten me), but I did leave a lot of my in-depth thoughts about the SDE 2 to SDE 3 promotion here.

It's very true that projects aren't a straight line - In fact, if you want to become a senior engineer at a FAANG company, the projects you take on should not manifest as a straight line. A key trait of a strong senior engineer is being able to handle ambiguity and thrash.

In terms of how to capture that, I think your 3-part format works just fine. At its core, every project is effectively a series of problem -> action -> impact.

For example, let's say that your project hit a snag as you realized some dependency didn't work:

Problem: Realized X component didn't meet project requirements
Action: Convened a task force to figure out alternate components that could be used to fill in the gap, held a tech review meeting, and aligned on the best option as a team
Impact: Unblocked the project to get it back on track to hit the deadline

For performance review at Meta, this was naturally split up as SWE performance was organized by axes:

Engineering Excellence
Impact
Direction
People

Impact was more about the "what", and Direction/People in particular were more about the "how". So when I captured these stories in performance review, problem/action was mainly in the Direction/People sections and impact was in, well, Impact.

Any examples to describe the project as a story for promo docs?

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