How Veracode’s Kim Beauchemin Stayed Agile Through 3 Company Transformations
When Kim Beauchemin is leading new backpackers on a hike, there are certain rules she always follows.
"We go in groups, and every group I lead is a team. We hike together, we stay together, and if the weather's bad, we all don't go to the summit, we turn around and go back down because we're a team," says Kim, who lives in Massachusetts and is a leader with the Appalachian Mountain Club.
Those are the same principles, more or less, that Kim, the Director of Engineering and Agile Practice at application security company Veracode, has used to manage herself and her team at work through several company transformations.
We sat down with the engineering leader to talk about how she approaches leading through change, how she invites change into her own career and development, and what tips she has for others who are finding themselves facing change at work.
Staying Agile through pivots
Kim was at CA Technologies for 12 years before they were bought by Veracode. She'd been through rounds of internal change and growth, but integrating into a completely new company was hard.
"Change brings challenge, but some people are motivated by change," says Kim. "I'm one of those people."
Kim started off as a technical writer and learned about agile practices when she was managing a team of other technical writers. She took on a program manager role where she leaned on Agile methodologies, including scrum and kanban, to drive her team towards results.
"I had to step away from being the domain expert or the person that's the expert in the content, but rather try to invite people into their own leadership and ask good questions so people could work better and collaborate better," she says.
That same skill set served her when Broadcom bought Veracode several years after the CA Technologies changeover—and then again when Broadcom later sold Veracode.
"[Veracode] went from being its own entity to being acquired by CA to being acquired by Broadcom and then sold again as its own entity under private equity," summarizes Kim. "My awareness of how change impacts people, both positively and negatively, helped," she says. "So did being able to work with and collaborate with different personalities to understand what individuals and teams need to be successful, and, especially during times of change, how to support them."
The top skill she relied on? Communication. "I'm a true believer in transparency—maybe too much sometimes," says Kim. "You do what you can to assure your team and make the transition as un-scary as it can be."
Learning to think strategically, with institutional support
Through those transitions, Veracode went from a startup to part of a 10,000-person company and then back to its own entity again. Along the way, leaders like Kim had to step up and think strategically at a different scale. She welcomed the chance to change the way she led her team.
"A new SVP wanted to create an Agile PMO for the whole organization," she says. "I had to be more strategic in order to define an organization, then build it and hire for it and lead it."
Becoming the director of that organization stretched Kim beyond what she'd done before. "I was so tactical before that, great at getting my tasks done," she says. "The ability to understand the bigger picture, develop a long-term vision and figure out what the strategic roadmap is to get there was a completely foreign thing to me."
She reached out to Veracode's VP of Corporate Development, Pete Ellis, for coaching. "He immediately responded with, 'Absolutely, let's set up a six-month thing,'" says Kim. "And he led me through six months of some great exploratory thinking around strategy and how to think about things in a different way and at a strategic level."
A particularly memorable lesson was around the idea of zooming out. You could look at a car accident and see a person who wasn't paying attention, or you step back and see the road conditions, the disruptions to a morning routine, and the other factors that could have contributed to what happened, Kim explained. "Having more than one lens to examine challenging situations through provides more perspective that can inform better decision-making and strategy," says Kim.
Her mentorship relationship with an executive isn't unique to her, says Kim. "Veracode is big on supporting its employees, especially if an employee shows initiative. Veracode often does anything they can to support them growing professionally."
3 ways to adapt to changes that are outside of your control
Kim's tips for adjusting to organizational change include:
- Don't panic. Take a breath. "People can get so worked up even before anything actually happens. I encourage people to take a step back, take a breath, and know that we'll get through it."
- Know that it will be uncomfortable. "You will be pushed out of your comfort zone, and while change and transformation are difficult, that's how we learn and grow as individuals, as an organization, as a company. There's a lot of potential and possibility that comes out of uncomfortableness."
- Realize that it won't be right the first time. "If you're going to transform, if you're going to try new things, some of them are going to work great. Some of them are not. You'll have to adapt, and that's okay. As long as we're learning, as long as we're improving, or trying to improve, we have to forgive ourselves in advance for making mistakes."
And remember the Appalachian Mountain Club's top recommendation—never hike alone—and stick together, says Kim. "The more you have, the better."
An Overview of the Top 4 Project Management Techniques
Why'd you have to go and make PMing so complicated? Know these 4 and nothing more.
Project management can get complicated. There's a whole host of PM certifications, tools, and terms—not to mention at least 15 different project management techniques. And while you can definitely invest lots of money and lots of time in becoming fluent in Gannt charts and getting comfortable with Microsoft Project, there's got to be something better you can do with your time. (Learn an actual language? Register to vote?)
You really only need to be comfortable with a few different project management techniques in order to accomplish your organization's goals.
Because at the end of the day, project management is pretty simple: understanding a goal and making sure you achieve it.
Whether that goal is getting a new product launched, approving next year's budget, redesigning a website, publishing a book, or throwing a work holiday party that is actually enjoyable—or quite literally anything in between—there's an approach that will best help you manage towards it.
Alan Zucker, founder of Project Management Essentials LLC, advises teams to choose a methodology that fits within the context of what the project and the team need. "New applications and significant customer interaction are well suited for Scrum. Kanban is good for enhancements to legacy applications. Teams starting their agile transformation do well with the structure of Scrum," he says.
Below you'll find an overview of the top 4 project management techniques—two overarching schools of thought and two popular techniques derived from them—as selected by PM pros, and what kind of teams they're best suited for.
Waterfall Project Management
Though this project management technique sounds extra flowery, it's probably one of the simplest techniques out there. It entails planning out project stages to flow together in sequential order, like a waterfall. Those stages include the following:
- Clarify requirements
- Analyze resources
- Design approach
- Code/implement
- Test
- Deploy
- Maintain.
As you move between steps, you'll need to get sign-off from the team that all defined goals of that step have been met.
Pros of this technique: It's straightforward, easy-to-implement, and can be managed with as little as a to-do list.
Cons of this technique: There's no opportunity to change the plan based on client feedback, adjust scope, or parallel-process steps.
Who it's good for: Industries that make physical products and don't often need to change plans as they go (like in product development or construction).
Gus Cicala, CEO and founder of Project Assistants, likes using the Waterfall approach at the beginning of his projects, even if he later switches to an Agile approach to better manage changes. "We maintain a high degree of rigor on the frontend. We place a high premium on understanding the foundations of the project: the why (benefits), how (solution approach), and what (requirements). Without knowing the fundamental basics of a project…we find many executives (especially CIOs) are just throwing money and people at a problem with no goals and little accountability," says Cicala.
Agile Project Management
The Agile approach was developed as a direct response to more rigid PM techniques (we see you, Waterfall Method) in 2001, when a group of software developers decided they wanted to focus more on individuals and interactions vs. processes and tools.
This approach has actual spawned several other PM techniques, like Scrum and Kanban, which we'll talk about below.
The Agile method is defined by constantly iterating and collaborating to create the best possible result for a client or customer, versus following a plan. Projects managed this way are broken up into several stages, all of which include interaction with stakeholders.
Pros of this technique: It's fast, wastes few resources since you're always doing what's most needed, and allows plenty of room for experimentation.
Cons of this technique: There's not often time to document decisions or processes, so it's hard to bring new team members up to speed, and it's hard to measure progress since you're constantly iterating on what you're working on. It's also harder to budget for a project managed with an Agile technique since it can easily increase in scope or time.
Who it's good for: Teams with lots of access to their customer or clients (and not a lot of bureaucracy to get in the way of collaborating and decision-making) and small-to-medium-sized organizations. It's popular in tech startups.
Olga Mykhoparkina, CMO of Chanty, a SaaS team-chat app, prefers the Agile methodology. She says it works for her team because "it favors communication over complicated processes and tools, which is suitable for a marketing team, [and because] it favors software instead of documentation, which is ideal for my team."
Scrum Project Management
This technique, an Agile methodology, gets its name from rugby, where the players start each play by joining up and trying to get possession of the ball. The Scrum approach is based on a series of short-term projects called sprints, which are continued until the project's goals are achieved.
Sprints are usually two-to-four-week chunks. Each sprint starts with a planning meeting and includes daily "scrum" meetings where teams communicate progress and issues. Sprints are managed by a ScrumMaster, whose role is to solve problems for the team, not to dole out individual tasks.
Pros of this technique: The short sprints keeps projects moving along quickly and allows for lots of client feedback.
Cons of this technique: Scrum PMing can cause scope creep, since the final deliverable is never defined, and be hard to implement in teams bigger than ~10 people. Its fast pace also makes it hard to work on multiple projects simultaneously.
Who it's good for: Small teams who work on one project at a time, like software developers preparing for a new release.
Kanban Project Management
This technique is also falls under the Agile umbrella. It was originally developed by Toyoka—Kanaban means "sign board" in Japanese—and is a visual-heavy method that focuses on improving processes.
It organizes work into three basic categories: requested, in progress, and done. Whether done on a whiteboard or a digital equivalent, like Trello or Notion, tasks are spread out among those categories in a way that lets you easily spot bottlenecks and track progress.
Pros of this technique: It's easy to get everyone on the same page and spot problems before they throw your project off track. It also works well with remote team members, since a digital board is easily shared.
Cons of this technique: Kanban is more tactical than strategic, so it can be hard to track progress against more strategic goals. It's also harder to visualize into the future, since you're very focused on what's happening now.
Who it's good for: Small teams, whether remote or working together, working in almost any industry.
Nikola Baldikov, digital marketing manager at secure instant messaging software company Brosix, says that Kanban works for his team because "the members of my team are experienced, independent, and visual." He notes that it works best for teams that can self-manage: "This method relies on a higher level of autonomy and independence among team members, so it may not be the best approach for a newly formed team. Kanban also puts a high emphasis on focused work, with little space for multitasking. This isn't always comfortable for team members who are used to balancing several priorities at once."
You Don't Have to Choose
If you like the visual aspect of the Kanban approach but the clearly-defined-outcome part of Waterfall technique, go right on ahead and combine them. Project management is about figuring out what works for helping your team reach its goals, and that doesn't have to mean sticking to one approach.
"Mature teams often develop their own hybrid practices incorporating many techniques," notes Zucker.
Have you pulled from different project management techniques to create the one PM technique to rule them all? Tell me about it in the comments!
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