PCRM Engineering Culture & KLAPP Improvement Proposal
Background
Our engineering culture at PCRM has been deeply interwoven with KLAPP. However, KLAPP has not been fully optimized for PCRM's specific business case. We've experienced notably slow developer experiences, suboptimal pipelines, and even with improvements, we feel we've somewhat outgrown it.
The challenge has been compounded with the existence of a PCRM monorepo which heavily depends on one individual — a singular consultant. This macrodependency risks the creation of a knowledge silo that we must actively preempt.
Furthermore, we acknowledge the historical hurdles PCRM has faced in building a strong engineering culture and see this as an opportunity to rectify that.
Proposal
We propose to commence small, by constructing a management structure enveloping three teams: the Offsite channels, COPR, and Decisioning Platform. This structure will form a new focus group termed the "Monorepo-Infrastructure Group."
The focus group will operate virtually, spearheaded by one Change Leader (CL). This initiative's execution will consume CL time and teams' tech debt budgets.
What We Need Input On
- Is there a possibility to allocate time within our roadmap Cycle One to facilitate the faster realization of value?
- If allocation isn't feasible, we recommend executing the aforesaid proposal as an engineering initiative that will engage CL's time and teams' tech debt budgets.
Motivation
There are significant and valuable synergies between this proposal and our automation initiatives.
The backbone of these motivations includes:
- It's simpler to create and maintain cross-team libraries in a monorepo. Libraries prove to be smaller and easier to manage than services.
- The prospect of an enhanced engineering culture that not only retains its engineers but also attracts potential talent.
- A swifter and improved developer experience resulting in faster deployments.
- The maintenance work for the PCRM monorepo is already in play; this initiative aims to magnify the transparency, distribute workload better, and augment knowledge-sharing.
We believe this is the start of a game-changing shift towards an improved engineering culture and infrastructure.